REX PICKETT'S SIDEWAYS WINES
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I’m Rex Pickett, author of Oscar-winning SIDEWAYS. Here are my new #SidewaysWine from Chile and from New Zealand, for the next generation of wine lovers. REX PICKETT'S SIDEWAYS is a range of high quality, yet affordable wines from two-time Oscar winner Rex Pickett, the author of the novel and cult wine movie Sideways. OUR STORY After a 3-month research trip in Chile for his Sideways Chile novel, Rex fell in love with the country, the people, and their wines. Several years later, brainstorming with culture entrepreneur Mario Velasco, the two had the inspiration to come out with a Pinot Noir from Chile that would express Rex’s philosophy of a wine that was both expressive of the grape and affordable, an everyday wine that everyone could enjoy without the guilt of the usually high Pinot price tag. "My Rex Pickett's Pinot Noir is a wine that I believe in with all my heart and soul. After many fits and starts I have finally found a Pinot I’m proud to put my name on." When I visited New Zealand (2023) researching for the writing of my new novel, Sideways New Zealand – The Long Road Back, I fell in love with the wealth of truly superb world-class wines on offer. During my travels, I hand selected each of the outstanding wines within the REX PICKETT'S SIDEWAYS New Zealand range.
REX PICKETT The Oscar-winning film of the same title. Sideways won over 350 awards, including the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, making Rex a two-time Oscar winner. In 2011 and 2013, Rex published three Sideways sequels, Vertical, Sideways Chile and Sideways New Zealand. In research for Sideways Chile novel, Rex discovered his love for Chilean wines. In 2012, Rex wrote Sideways the play and staged it to record-breaking success. In 2020, his Sideways: the Musical will see its premiere. Rex grew up in southern California, graduated from the University of California at San Diego. The Rex Pickett Papers are now enshrined at Geisel Library’s Special Collections & Archives. SIDEWAYS THE NOVEL Sideways, the movie, is adapted from Rex Pickett’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same title. Miles Raymond is the classic self-deprecating, introverted intellectual. Hitting 40, divorced, near bankruptcy, he has all his hopes pinned on getting his first novel published so he can escape the perception that his life is a total failure. His best friend Jack, Miles’s polar opposite, is a gregarious, upbeat guy, oblivious of the torments that have lain siege to Miles. Jack’s a week away from marriage to a woman of privilege and a life that promises plenitude and happiness. Inspired by Miles’s passion for wine – and especially Pinot Noir! – the two embark on a weeklong last hurrah to unfashionable Santa Ynez Valley wine country. Murphy’s law ensues: anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Sideways is a bawdy tragicomedy that encompasses every timeless theme known to story and character, and somehow manages to fire it all in the cauldron of riotous humor, with an infusion of soul. Nearly 20 years ago a film comedy titled Sideways was released. It was directed by Alexander Payne and starred Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church as best friends on a bachelor bacchanal through wine country. The movie was faithfully based on my novel Sideways. A confessional novel, it mixed fiction and fact in what critics called a hilarious, deeply human comedy. Not many fans of the movie, which still resonates today, realize it was based on a book. And for good reason: my novel was released in a trade paperback and given no promotion. Now, from my new publisher Blackstone, it's been re-issued in a gorgeous hardcover, one I'm excited to autograph and inscribe. The film is a gem, but it was not the Immaculate Conception. It came into the world wholesale from my novel, and now, after nearly two decades of near anonymity, my Sideways novel has been restored to its rightful place in the collaborative pantheon that all great films rest on. |
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