T H C ~ One Texas Stud

If You Build it...

2005-05-17T12:45:00.000-07:00

New THC fanlisting site. Show a little support, I did.

Best Kept Secret

Truth & Fiction

2005-05-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

TS: It's also exciting to see interesting casting of people in middle age. Thomas Haden Church was a revelation.

Alexander Payne: I had never seen him in anything. He auditioned for both Election and About Schmidt, and he has that larger than life quality. That kind of hilarity that he has in the film he has in real life as well. He makes a big impression. Also, I suffer from typecasting and the fact that he was indeed a veteran of a couple of TV series, and that his career had slowed down and that he was doing commercials now, I rather liked that. Cast the guy! I like to cast actors who really have a lot in common with the character they play.

AND

I'm not one for Fan Fiction, I personally find it creepy, but for those that don't, here's a little Sideways Fan Fic, just for you.

A Little Something is Not Always Better

2005-05-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

All is quiet on the THC front, but in the meantime:

Thank you MadDog for the Sideways Parody, very cute.

And on a side note:
Congratulations to Paul Giamatti who's getting a lot of attention for his new film,
Cinderella Man. Hopefully this one will give him the Oscar nod he deserves!

Heard it on the Grapevine

2005-05-09T06:45:00.000-07:00

Sideways: First Look From Premiere.Com

Paul Giamatti gets wet in Alexander Payne's Sideways

By Cristy Lytal

A pasty Paul Giamatti grades papers in the Jacuzzi of a California inn while two Sideways crew members transfer buckets of hot water to the pool. As the spa level lowers, more of Giamatti's hairy chest and back becomes visible. "Today we're shooting a guy in a Jacuzzi," deadpans director Alexander Payne (About Schmidt), who is sitting in a white plastic patio chair and wearing a V-neck sweater. "Nothing much going on here," Giamatti says.

As if to prove the actor's point, a crew member yawns and stretches out on a nearby bench to sunbathe. Across the street, a sign reading "Buellton, Home of Pea Soup" identifies one of the town's two claims to fame. The other is wine. Based on the upcoming novel of the same name, Sideways follows Miles (Giamatti), an English teacher, and his soon-to-be-married friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church) as they take a weeklong bacchanalian tour through wine country. In addition to the local vino, Miles and Jack sample the local women, played by Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh, Payne's wife of more than a year. "The guy's a bit of a failure, which I play a lot," says Giamatti. "He's able to tell himself he's not a drunk because he's a wine expert."

The real-life Giamatti drinks his wine from screw-top boxes and is, instead, a connoisseur of arcane wildlife. "The other day Paul was asking me, 'Do you know what a narwhal is?' " Church recalls. "And I do actually know what a narwhal is. I feel I've known him for so long." (By the way, a narwhal is an Arctic whale known for its spotted pelt. The male has an ivory tusk.)

Meanwhile, four extras with Super Soakers cannonball into the pool just before everyone breaks for lunch. Giamatti wraps himself in a white hotel robe and gleefully gives Church the finger. Payne heads to his trailer the same Winnebago Jack Nicholson drove in About Schmidt but Church intercepts the director and yells: "Wow, dude, you just grabbed my penis! He did!" Payne shrugs and says dryly, "I pat the genitals of my cast and crew," before disappearing into the Winnebago for his daily lunchtime nap.

SIDEWAYS CAST TALKS WINE

Beverage of choice? Well, it's not surprising that four out of five people involved in a movie about wine country choose the fruit of the grape.

Alexander Payne: "I've been drinking a lot of wine. I like it all. Everything but white Zinfandel."

Sandra Oh: "I am also a lover of wine, and all of us now have quite a good knowledge of California Pinot. We (she and husband Payne) drink a lot of it."

Thomas Haden Church: "I love wine, and I do fully understand why Pinot is the grape of the elite palate. It has to be nurtured and fully aerated to let the bouquet blossom and to get all the different strains and tendrils of succulence. I am such a pseudo-intellectual."

Virginia Madsen: "I'd never been into Pinots, but because of the movie, of course we were all fascinated with Pinots. And (Santa Barbara County, where the film is set), is one of the most perfect places to grow Pinot grapes because of . . . the wind from the sea and the way it comes through this mountain pass. It's the perfect temperature for such a delicate grape."

Paul Giamatti: "I just enjoy straight vodka. Stoli on the rocks."

In the Immortal Words of Big & Rich

2005-05-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

Save a horse ride a ...

Forum Open

2005-05-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

No forum - I hate eZboard. So, I added a shout box on the right.
Easy simple DONE!

Director Sam Raimi Quotes THC

2005-05-04T07:22:00.000-07:00

"Thomas Haden Church (Sideways) will play a new as-yet-unidentified villain who is appropriate to that emotional journey, Raimi added. "We had to choose a villain that represented a proper obstacle in the path of that growth," Raimi said. "And so, though I'd rather not say who Thomas Haden Church is playing just yet—because Sony likes to make a proper presentation to the fans along with Avi Arad from Marvel Comic books—he was chosen because he represented that proper obstacle to ... Peter Parker's growth." Spider-Man 3 is in preproduction now."

Read Full Article at SiFi.

Never Leave Home Without It

2005-05-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

Non alcoholic wine with/ Bud chaser at The Hitching Post II: $14.00

Room at the Days Inn, Solvang: $89.99

Brontosaurus Burger and Bud at AJ Spurs : $9.00

Sleeping with the Directors wife accompanied by an Oscar Nod:

PRICELESS

Image of Tom with his SAG card courtesy of the Screen Actors Guild

Sideways Roundtable Review

2005-05-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

Reel Review - Sideways Roundtable Discussion. As promised, I got together with the guys from Grape Radio for a great roundtable discussion of the film Sideways. We had a blast discussing the film and its impact on Merlot, Pinot Noir and the beautiful wine country of Santa Barbara, California.
Posted by Michael W. Geoghegan

Damn Alexander and his Trickery!

2005-05-02T06:26:00.000-07:00

The final Easter egg has been found. It's apparently a series of outtakes and bloopers but the kind (this term used lightly) poster refuses to give directions. To read the post, follow the link:

Fox Searchlight

Update:
Added 2 new links to the right, AlexanderPayne.com and the pdf. Sideways Script.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE:
If you have a media program on your computer, go to Languages and click just below Spanish. This will take you to the 15 minute Sideways Blooper real.

Ask A Stupid Question...

2005-04-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

Thomas Haden Church (Winner Best Supporting Actor, 'Sideways'). When ask about his tan in Sideways: "I didn't feel tan. Maybe I felt tan in spirit."

Same Egg - Different Route

2005-04-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

Fox Searchlight
from Projectionist

Another one has been found. You will need to play the DVD on a computer with a DVD-ROM drive to see this Easter Egg. From the Main Menu, access the 'Special Features' option, then the 'Deleted Scenes' option. Move your mouse over the right eye of the Virgina Madsen Charicature (the middle one) until the mouse pointer changes, then click. This will reveal a parody of Project Greenlight called "Project Searchlight."

Kodak Moment or Not?

2005-04-25T07:37:00.000-07:00

THC Quotes
Do you name your cows:
"You don't name hamburger"

"well, ya know, when I drink a lot of wine,
it tends to make me......well.....drunk"

So, Tom...

2005-04-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

Yet another friend from the past calls out to Tom. IMBD.
Word of advise to Mrs. Louisiana: posting your phone number on the net; not smart!!

1 Down 2 Down. 1 To Go & Some filler

2005-04-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

I accidentally found another Easter Egg

If you have Windows Media, it's under tract 2 / first file.

It's a home movie of some guy from Fox Searchlight. He's out to investigate the excessive parting on the set of Sideways or rather "Camp Sideways". (With Searchlight's money)
The best part is Sandra and Alexander's crack style house and Paul Giamatti's tantrum on the set.

Thanks KiKi!! That's 2!

Old quote from the Specials:

DR: The Specials seemed so quick, almost improvisational. Was there any improvisation?

JG: No. Not every word there was mine, but it's pretty much the script. It's the way I write. I'm somewhat schizophrenic, so that when I write people think that my scripts come from some sort of improvisational work-out, but it's not. It's all in my head. Some people stayed to the script more than others. Tom (Thomas Haden Church) is pretty funny, but for the most part it's the script.

James got dragged away by a publicist before he could say more nice things about Thomas Haden Church, who spent most of the press conference asking where he could find memorabilia from his upcoming film with Brendan Fraser, Monkeybone. Before Daily Radar could reach him, Church got inexplicably sucked into a Battlefield Earth presentation (a movie so bad it tried to take down the careers of actors not even involved…). Luckily, director Craig Mazin stepped in to fill the void.

Before making his directorial debut with The Specials, Mazin wrote the first drafts of Disney's Rocket Man and Senseless, starring Marlon Wayans. Please don't hold this against him, because his work on The Specials redeems him. While Mazin spoke, actress Judy Greer (Deadly Girl) came over, followed closely (maybe too closely, hmm?) by actress Paget Brewster (Ms. Indestructible)

Sideways Status
Sideways crossed the $70M mark grossing $578,495. It's also worthy to note that Sideways has earned over $100M worldwide making it the first Fox Searchlight film to do so since The Full Monty.

The DVD also grossed 1.5 million in it's first week of release.

Today on the Tube

2005-04-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

CNBC
Late Night With Conan O'Brien

Journalist Diane Sawyer; actor Thomas Haden Church.

CHUD INTERVIEW: THOMAS HADEN CHURCH

2005-04-20T07:12:00.000-07:00

10.21.04
By Devin Faraci

CHUD

You probably know him best as Lowell from Wings. If you're a long time CHUD reader you probably know him from his role in the best superhero comedy ever, The Specials. Starting this week, though, people are going to know Thomas Haden Church from his phenomenal performance in Alexander Payne's new film, Sideways. He plays Jack, best friend of Paul Giamatti's Miles. The two go on a wine tasting trip to celebrate the last week before Jack's wedding, and Jack, an insufferable pussyhound, gets them involved with two amazing women. In Jack Church has gotten one of those roles that will help to redefine him as an actor.

In person, Thomas Haden Church is big, friendly and LOUD. The guy projects like he's giving a speech at Yankee Stadium, even when in a small conference room in the Newscorp building. He was also almost surprisingly serious about his craft (I'm sorry, but have you seen Wings? If so, you'll know why I say surprisingly. And by the way - Tony Shalhoub and now Church... not bad for that show's alums).

Q: Is it easy playing an actor?

Church: It was. It's not a big part of what's onscreen. Certainly anybody who auditions for the role is an actor, so everybody brings whatever backstory they have, their experiences in LA. Good or bad. Honestly I never really thought about that. I think there are a lot of things that go on subconsciously that you're not aware of when you're doing it and now whenever I watch the movie- like in the scene when they're in the bar, the first time they interact with Virginia's character, it's like so cheesy. Because he's so demonstrative about being an actor.

Q: What do you think about the character you play being so free-spirit?

Church: I would say that if there's a connector to me, that probably it, even more than being an actor. I did television for a solid 11 years, interspersed with movies here and there - some good, some not good, some shitty. But I do think that Jack's position in the industry is pretty far afield from where I am or where I was. But I certainly know a lot of people that existed at that level and are always kind of pining for more, always thinking that the next big break, the next opportunity, the big role are just around the corner of the next audition. For a guy that's had virtually no success and to still be clinging to that well into his 40s - that's a level of pathos where you hope you'd recognize that and move on. But still, like in the scene where we're walking to the Hitching Post, he's talking about folding into the lap of luxury with the wealthy fiancee's father and the real estate and all that, but still wanting to stay in LA and not wanting to do it full time so that if an audition comes up he's available. To me it's a heartbreaking admission that this guy is still not letting it go. But that's who he is.
They're both really immature men in that their behavior is so puerile and yet they're so oblivious to it. They don't understand how childish their choices are. They think, “I'm doing what's best for me.” Miles pursuing writing after so many failures, and especially this particular book after being rejected by 17 publishers - you can't get kicked much worse than that. Yet he still won't give it, even to the extent - and this is before he gets the rejection phone call at the winery -to the extent that at the end of date that goes horribly awry with a beautiful woman who may or may not be his kindred spirit, he hands her the two boxes of his book. Which is really funny, but it's also really sad. He's looking for any approval, even from someone he just horribly fucked up with.

Q: In the film you and Paul both have great reaction shots. Is that a natural thing, or do you work with Alexander on stuff like that?

Church: I don't think I ever really focused on that. I just react to whatever happens - you've heard that expression, there's acting and there's reacting. I just react. Sometimes I see it later and I'm like, “Ehh, wish that had been more subtle.” Sometimes that's a very fine line that you walk - sometimes it's too subtle and it looks like you're doing nothing, and as much all the great teachers have espoused that less is more, sometimes less is just less. And sometimes less is not enough or less is nothing. It's a very fine line. There's nothing in the movie that leaps out to me as too big, unless it's intentionally too big. Like in that bar scene I just referenced, when he goes through his voice over bullshit, that's arch for a good reason. That's him performing for her. It's gotta be slightly performance surreal. I struggled with that and Alexander kind of really set me free. I don't think I've ever had to do that in a performance, where I'm in movie playing a guy and the guy is commenting on his own behavior, his own acting, his own performance. It was an awkward kind of thing to do - and this may not make sense to you guys - it was an awkward thing to find how to make it work where it isn't absurd or ridiculous. Then I learned it has to have a slight absurdity to it or it isn't interesting. And that's Jack - Jack is interesting because he's always slightly absurd.

Q: What's great about Jack is that for most of the movie he's all about cock, but at the end when he thinks he won't be getting married his life is over.

Church: It isn't that his life is over, it's that he's stripped of all dignity and he's clinging to saving these icons because if I don't go back to LA with them she's going neuter me. Which is ridiculous, because his fiancée really loves him, it's all in Jack's mind. I don't know how to clearly express it, but it makes me really happy because it sounds like you did get the essence, the denuded core of what that scene is. A big word we bandied about on set was verisimilitude, which is a different interpretation moment to moment based on whatever your perspective, as it's informed moment to moment, by whatever your experience is, what you're bringing into the movie. That scene has gotten an unbelievable variance of interpretations. Some people think it's nothing more than Jack manipulating Miles to do what he wants to do. Some people think that it starts out comedically and it stays comedic whether he is so pathetic that he's begging or he is so pathetic that he's attempting to manipulate Miles or that he is pathetic that he is completely fragmenting and starting to come apart emotionally. Maybe all of them are true. But I know how it was written, I know how it was acted, I know how it was directed, and that was in line with what you're saying, that it's a very dramatic moment. The thing is that the scene played on quite a bit longer - after Jack breaks down, he starts to really come apart to the point that Miles starts to comfort him. I think that Alexander decided that it was better to have that ambiguity of what it was then to start out one way and you take the whole journey and you realize that as an audience that it's appropriate to feel sorry for Jack and empathize with the pathos that he feels in the movie. I think that Alexander split the difference and I think it's brilliant.
This was always my interpretation of the movie, and I said it to Alexander early on: These guys ironically deliver each other unto their individual salvation. It is ironic because Miles makes a concession that he will do this thing for Jack because, simplistic as it is, he knows that Jack needs it. On Jack's side he drags Miles kicking and screaming to Maya, and shoves him at Maya repeatedly, and it turns out that she is Miles' salvation. If you believe in the hopeful, romantic ending, if you believe that when he knocks on the door that Maya answers the door and they are together, Jack is responsible for that. Miles would have never taken another shot.

Q: The buzz on this film is that your performance is award worthy. Would you be offended if you got a supporting actor nod?

Church: Not at all, I definitely think I'm a supporting actor in the movie. The movie is Miles' story. The counterpoint is Jack's story. They're on the roadtrip because Jack is getting married and the tensions rise during the journey because of the bilious things that Jack is pursuing and the wedding is on Saturday. They're on the big clock because of Jack, but no. I think it's a strong supporting role, but it's a supporting role nonetheless. If anything, I think Virginia's role is more of a leading role. She's the love interest and they have that scene, which I think is remarkable. But I don't know how she's being characterized.

Blank Interview with Thomas Haden Church

2005-04-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

February 22nd 2005

Until recently the name Thomas Haden Church didn't mean much to the world at large, but then the actor gave an outstanding performance in 'Sideways',won several awards and got shortlisted for an Oscar. Jack, the character that Thomas Haden Church plays in 'Sideways', is an immature, sex-obsessed womanizer and washed up actor. Haden Church is best known to American audiences for work he did in two TV series a decade ago - 'Wings' and 'Ned & Stacy'. So does the film in any way reflect his life as an actor?

Thomas Haden Church: "No, not so much. I certainly was an actor and then I drifted more towards writing and directing. Having said that, I certainly can reflect back on when I was very dedicated to being an actor. I kind of have a rededication in my life now to acting because I'm very fond of being in this movie.

But all actors go through the process, it's hit and miss, you have achievement and failure. And there have certainly been movies I wanted to be in and milestones I wanted to surpass that did not happen. And I think that certainly with Jack as an actor, I can reflect on that. I think I probably have had a more successful acting career than Jack ever came close to."

Tom Brook: "How would you describe the relationship your character has with Paul Giamatti's character?"

Thomas Haden Church: "Two guys that were college roommates, they have drifted apart but reconnect probably on an annual basis. This is the most time they've spent together in probably twenty years."

During the road trip that forms the backbone of 'Sideways' the question begins to loom: who'll end up with the most optimistic prospects: sad-sack soulful Miles, portrayed by Paul Giamatti, or the more primitive and
immature Jack? Academy members may identify with both, but some may be put off by the predatory Jack, who is always on the lookout for a sexual conquest.

Tom Brook: "You play this guy who's a bit of a sexual conqueror, but in emotional and spiritual terms you don't win out. Is there a message there?"

Thomas Haden Church: "I think predators ultimately come under the knife if they prey too long. And I think the Miles character has a much more emotionally resonant approach to love, where Jack's is a completely unresonating approach to sex."

Many think that not giving Paul Giamatti an Oscar nomination was an egregious oversight. Haden Church could win, but he faces tough competition in the Best Supporting Actor category from both Morgan Freeman and Alan
Alda. However, win or lose the Oscar, this actor did spectacular work in Sideways' and that has definitely put him on the map.

Watch the interview here.

Thomas Haden Church: he's said adios to Hollywood

2005-04-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

Debra Messing Interviews THC
Interview March 2005

DEBRA MESSING: So, I am purely thrilled that we have this opportunity to talk because I know that you live out in Texas now, and I didn't know when or if our paths would cross again after we worked together on Ned and Stacey. After Sideways came out I felt like a proud ex-girlfriend from junior high school or something. To see your performance celebrated in such a large way is fantastic. How did this film find you?

THOMAS HADEN CHURCH: I think I first met Alexander Payne in the summer of 1997. I had already signed to do a movie with the great Marion Brando [Free Money, 1998], but I read Election [1999], and I just thought it was wonderful. So I called my agent, and I was like, "Can you see if he would consider seeing me, just to talk?" As it turns out, Alexander, who isn't a huge TV watcher, really enjoyed Ned and Stacey, so he agreed to meet with me. But to this day I am convinced that the real reason we met was because Alexander is from Nebraska, and he was completely fascinated that I was about to go off and make a movie with Brando--perhaps the most famous Nebraskan of all. A few years later, he requested to see me for About Schmidt [2002], and I went down to the wire with Dermot Mulroney on that one. But I am convinced that he only remembered me because of the Brando thing, even though he says that's bullshit. When we were doing Sideways, every now and then he would be like, "Tell me a story about Brando."

DM: So he was just using you.

THC: He was using me. When he cast me in Sideways I was nothing but a vessel. [laughs]

DM: Do you think that you inspired your character in Sideways?

THC: Well, when I read the script I actually said to Alexander, "This at times mirrors my life very closely." But he was like: "I don't know anything about your life. I just know you as someone I've met a couple of times who I really wanted to cast." And then, of course, there were some pretty lofty guys that pursued the part, among them George Clooney. But I think Alexander felt like the joke of the movie would be that one of the world's most famous, handsome, successful actors is playing this out-of-work actor, and he didn't want the movie to be about that.

DM: Did Alexander ask you to tell him anecdotes about your life in sitcoms?
THC: No. He actually did say to me: "Dude, you have nothing to do with Jack, and we have to make sure that we can separate you from the character. Jack doesn't live on a 2,000-acre ranch in Texas." I did try to ground the character in something that was familiar, though: When I moved to L.A. in 1989, the very first thing I did was this horrific pilot called To Protect And Surf.

DM: Oh, Lord. [laughs]

THC: We were cops on the beach, protecting Los Angeles. All those guys that I worked with on that show, there were six of us, were so convinced of their imminent stardom, and none of them went anywhere. That's who Jack is--this fortyish guy who is completely oblivious to how the business has kind of passed him by. To some extent I could identify with that because I kind of just made my money and got out.

DM: Well, something about your performance has resonated with so many people. How have you dealt with all these accolades?

THC: Between Clive Owen winning at the Golden Globes and the British Academy announcing its nominations, of which Sideways received only one, I'm feeling pretty humbled these days. But the acknowledgment has been overwhelming. Look, all the years that I was on Wings and Ned and Stacey, we'd keep our fingers crossed whenever the Emmy nominations came around because that's the voting body that truly appreciates what television is about; so it's overwhelming but also wonderful.

DM: But it's not why we go into this business, anyhow. I would dare to say that if you went into any acting school across this country and said, "How many of you want to become actors because you want to be celebrated and get trophies?" not a single person would raise their hand.

THC: Okay, but what if you posed the question, "How many of you want to do this for season seven Will & Grace money?" Literally a forest of hands would shoot up so fast that Lee press-on nails would be planted into the ceiling.

DM: What do you want now that the whole industry is very excited because they can pat themselves on the back and say: "Oh, we rediscovered him. We've always known that he was this spectacular talent." Everything is in front of you. What is your hunger?

THC: I don't know. That's a very difficult question to answer, but I thank you for asking it. What I do like is that I can say no to shitty things because I don't need the money. I made a comfortable living for several years. I invested, and I protected myself, so I enjoy that freedom. But at the same time, if the right thing came along, I would do it in a second. People have said, "There's no way you'll go back to TV now, right?" And I have actually countered with, "You know, if it was the right thing, absolutely." I'm not so proud to think that anything is unworthy, and I don't think I was that way 10 years ago. I love living in rural Texas. I love going to the feed store and drinking coffee and talking about how much rain we need. I love knowing that I'm not better than any other person on the planet. I love that.

Debra Messing can currently be seen in The Wedding Date with Dermot Mulroney.

1 Down. 2 To Go

2005-04-15T07:19:00.000-07:00

From: The Fox Searchlight Sideways Forum

1 of 3 Easter Eggs found on the Wide Screen DVD ~

-Go to scene selection
-Go to 13-16
-Highlight scene 15
-Press left

A wine bottle should appear. Select it to view a Slideshow on the making of "Sideways".

Movin On Up

2005-04-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

1 Texas stud has been getting 65 hits a day and some of those IP's are in the Texas area. Just in case one of you is Mr. Church, I would like to direct you to a recent message on Yahoo:

Yahoo!

For the rest of you, a picture is all I can offer. Enjoy!

Got News? Got Pictures? Got Comments? Let Me know

Q&A With Thomas Haden Church

2005-04-11T13:16:00.000-07:00

Thomas Haden Church's performance in Sideways, just released on DVD, won him an Oscar nomination and a role as the villain in 2007's Spiderman 3.

There's a shroud of secrecy around your Spidey 3 role. Let us in.

I had to sign a confidentiality thing. I will say this: he is a he.

So, you're not Catwoman?

No. But there's a franchise asimmerin' around Catman! Or maybe Thunderbaby. When I cry, I will emit thunder and lighting. I'll be swaddled in a diaper the entire shoot.

When Sideways came out, people compared you to your character, a has-been TV actor. Did that sting?

They didn't pry the lid off my coffin with the Sideways offer. I was busy living my life. I have a baby daughter. Acting wasn't a priority.

Why do you live in Texas?

I have two ranches, about 400 head of cattle. It's real. It's hands-on. It's an anchoring thing for me.

Among the many anchoring jobs you've held is roadkill collector.

We would drive along the highways of South Texas picking up dead animals. Once you've dry-heaved for the thousandth time in the back of a dump truck with dead dogs and raccoons, you do some soul searching about vocational choices that you will not be making later in life.

Did you think about that at the Oscars?

There were some moments of reflection. But the Oscar nomination is just something to build upon. Hopefully, it's the launch sequence.

Career of Sideways actor gets new wings

2005-04-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

Church at home on Texas ranches; but Hollywood is a good fit, too
By BRUCE WESTBROOK
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

As a Texan with 400 head of cattle, Thomas Haden Church walks the walk of a cowboy actor who hits Hollywood only on business. But does he talk the talk?

A sudden star for the acclaimed Sideways, due on DVD Tuesday, Church is cresting after years of respected but modest work. As Sideways' roguish road-tripper Jack, he earned an Oscar nod as best supporting actor. And he just cashed in by signing to play a villain in Spider-Man 3.

Since his biggest pre-Sideways hit film was the oafish George of the Jungle, you can't blame him for grabbing that bull by the horns. Yet it's still disconcerting to hear a rancher spew studio lingo about script meetings and development deals, as if his Lone Star roots are no deeper than La-La's latest face-lift.

Just who is Thomas Haden Church, anyway?

Well, he'd rather not say. He won't say where he was born, except that it was "in Texas." Raised a military brat, he's lived in El Paso, Harlingen, Laredo, Fort Worth, Dallas and Austin.

"I like to keep my private stuff pretty vague," said Church, who owns up to being single, having a girlfriend and having a daughter, whose name he won't divulge. He will say he owns a home in Dallas that he's leased out, and he prefers beer to wine.

Which beer? He won't say, only that "given my physical training for Spider-Man, they only want me to drink light beer."

Church has been in Los Angeles lately for wardrobe fittings and "being in the mud all day. They did plaster casts of my body for prosthetics. They also wanted to cut my hair to get an idea for (computer) animators (to determine) what my look will be."

He's also mum on whom he'll play when director Sam Raimi starts shooting near year's end. Rumors swirl that Church will be Venom, a classic villain from Spidey comics, or perhaps a new baddie.

He's been training at a gym in Kerrville, and he may make two more movies before Spider-Man 3 starts to roll. He also just did voice work for an animated Charlotte's Web with Julia Roberts and Jennifer Garner. But Spider-Man 3 is "my biggest commitment so far in budgetary terms. It's pretty huge."

Though the intimate, offbeat Sideways is the opposite of an action film, Church said its writer-director, Alexander Payne, told him his favorite film of last year was Spider-Man 2. Church feels Alfred Molina, who played villain Doc Ock, was robbed of an Oscar nod.

Most actors downplay awards, with or without false modesty, but Church seems keenly aware of award-season permutations. Sideways "peaked too early," he believes, losing its December momentum from year-end honors when Oscars rolled around, then winning just for adapted screenplay.

Church won awards from critics' groups, the Golden Satellite Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards and the National Board of Review, then lost the Oscar to Million Dollar Baby's Morgan Freeman. Though a first-time nominee, Church said he felt he belonged.

"Dang, it's overwhelming, but it didn't feel alien to me, because all the (pre-Oscar) receptions and balls and ceremonies prepare you for the big dance, if you get to go," he said.

"I was swimming in an ocean I'd never experienced," he said. "All those awards were important, because they all created buzz."

Even the speeches are important, he said.

Church got emotional after winning a Broadcast Film Critics award in January. He partially credits that speech for landing him Spider-Man 3.

The film's producer and the head of Marvel Studios were in attendance. "(They) told me I was perfect for the character, given that speech," he said.

Church says he falls between the funny small-time actor he played in Sideways and the morose wine snob played by Paul Giamatti.

"People expect me to be larger than life and gregarious, like the guy in Sideways or all the way back to Wings or Ned and Stacy ('90s sitcoms in which he starred). But when that guy gets emotional you see a different side."

Church had almost given up on stardom after leaving television. Ranching had been in his blood since he worked cattle as a youth. So in 1998 he spent some of his Hollywood dough on 2,000 acres in the Hill Country, between Kerrville and Uvalde, and another spread south of Brackettville.

With employees and a partner, Church runs the ranches and is there "most of the time. I have no home in L.A. Home is in Texas," he said. "I only go to L.A. to work."

So there you have it — his heart belongs to Texas, not Tinseltown, even though he's lassoing big pictures.

Spiritually, at least, "ranching and acting are equally rewarding," Church said. "One is to maintain that agrarian anchor, and the other is creative. But I'm a citizen of Texas and try to spend most of my time there. As an actor, that keeps me sane."

THOMAS HADEN CHURCH | Sideways

2005-04-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

Maybe he could play Lear or Hamlet, but there's no need for Thomas Haden Church to try when he can so fully inhabit likable doofuses. Could Laurence Olivier have played Jack Lopate, the ex TV star who goes on a weeklong wine-tasting toot with his pal Miles (Paul Giamatti) in the widely laureled comedy Sideways? For that matter, could Jack find a more engaging explicator than the genial Texan who plays him?

It helps that Church, 43, who commutes from his Kerrville, Texas, ranch to Hollywood, was Jack, sort of. He won TV fame as the mechanic Lowell on Wings, then as the male half of Ned and Stacey before fading out of sight, though not out of sound. "Jack does voice-over work," he says in his leathery baritone, "which I have done off and on for 20 years, which can provide you with a handsome living. In Jack's driveway you will see only late-model luxury vehicles. He has his own confidence, financial and otherwise."

But some things mean more than a fat paycheck. Like a happy kid who has never learned how to play it cool, Church loves "luuuuvs" the acclaim he has received as Jack. "All these years after I moved to L.A, it's wonderful!"

You've earned all that wonder, Jack. Sorry ... Thomas.

By Richard Corliss

De-spooged?

2005-04-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already, check out the Sideways Commentary for some great laughs and gushing, at times, sickening sweet compliments to the lovely Mrs. V from MR. Haden Church.

JoBlo.com Interviews Sideways Star Thomas Haden Church

2005-04-06T06:43:00.000-07:00

JoBlo
I remember Thomas Haden Church best from the shortlived series "Ned and Stacey." Some people remember him best as Lowell from "Wings" or from THE SPECIALS. There's even the people out there that I'm sure recognize him from GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE 2 or his booming voice from the popular Icehouse beer commercials. The point is, despite not being Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise or just another Tom, Dick or Harry, Thomas Haden Church is remembered. I sat down with him recently to discuss his latest film, SIDEWAYS, and what he's been up to lately.

I take it there wasn't a lot of convincing needed to get you to do this movie.

Oh no. I had met with Alexander (Payne) on ELECTION. It was between Dermot Mulroney and myself to play that role and it took Alexander quite a while to make up his mind between Dermot and I. After he cast Dermot, he got in touch with me a few months later and expressed to me how close I had come. I would never know how close I would've come to getting that part. And that we would probably meet again somewhere down the road. Look, I had to fight for this part just like the rest of the cast, well, with the exception of Sandra (Oh, who is Payne's real-life wife). [Laughs] I had to audition and go through the process just like Virginia and Paul did. But Alexander is the one and (Producer) Michael London likes to tell me that when they had their first meeting about casting Alexander said, I want to meet with Thomas Haden Church for Jack. And Michael knew who I was but was not really that familiar with what I had been doing recently. And that was not really that much acting and more writing and directing. He was like, Wow, that's an interesting idea, why? And Alexander said, Cause he's perfect for the part. I know him and he's perfect for this. And here I am.

Why did you go from acting to writing/directing?

Um, I did television for 11 consecutive years and I was alittle burned out. Kind of had done Lowell on "Wings" for six seasons and "Ned" for two seasons. In my first year in LA did a lot of guest star stuff and then got "Wings" and then the pilot got delayed a few months but I was already locked into it four months before we started shooting. Then after "Ned and Stacey" I had a deal for two years with ABC and Disney to create and star in a series. You know, I wrote two pilots and pitched two others, none of which got picked up, and it was just like... And I had already started writing with my partner screenplays. I was ready to put TV behind because if you don't try to get away from it, you'll suck on that teat forever. It's a damn good living whether you're on the living or not. I was like, this is a pact I've got to break. I've got to move on. I moved to LA in '89 cause I wanted to make movies. My aspirations were always about writing and directing and acting just was an accident. But then it completely controlled my life for years and years and years. And I was just ready to return to what I thought were my routes. And then in the middle of last year that Alexander wanted to see me. I had been living in Texas for about three-and-a-half years exclusively and they called me up in Texas and said, he really wants to see you for this. I read the script and flew out and that was it.

Was going back to acting easy?

Well I still have to go back to meet on movies to direct and write but SIDEWAYS was the only movie that I met on last year to act in. Then in 2002 all I did was post my movie (ROLLING KANSAS) that at Sundance last year and then I actually did a sequel to another movie that I was contractually obligated to do (GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE II). I acted in one movie in 2002 and I acted in one movie in 2003. It's a sideline thing. It can be a very lucrative sideline but has definitely not been the focus of my professional life for a while. Years actually. I'd have to go back to 2000 to say I was really focused on it.

Do you think that taking time off was even better for your acting?

It could be. I'll tell you something, Alexander was very proud of the fact that Paul and I, and he said this a number of times, that neither one of the lead actors live in California. He kinda dug that, that Paul lives in New York and I live in Texas. I think he kinda...I don't know how to describe it but I think it's kinda this poetic irony that these two guys are these almost singular southern California types. Particularly with Miles, who's based upon Rex, the novelist who is a failed novelist, failed screenwriter, failed director. Rex is a very much Hollywood guy. Lived in LA and tried for years and years to break in and never made it. But they just decided that two Hollywood guys so they turned Miles into the 8th grade English teacher in San Diego, who's a failed novelist. And Jack, the guy in the book, is also an actor. But in the book he's gone from being a quasi-successful TV actor to being a very successful TV director who make a lot of money. It didn't quite work. You needed two losers to give the story balance.

Do you think you could ever be lured back to TV?

I'm actually reading a script right now that a couple of my friends have at NBC that I do like. I know NBC wants me to do it. It's... It's just not a priority right now. I like doing movies. I like directing movies and I like acting in movies. But I will never say never about television. I won't even say probably not. Hey man, if the right thing is there... Actors look for great characters. I don't give a shit if it's in TV or movies. Movies still have that lofty, critical laurel that TV tries to ascend to and sometimes does, especially what's going on with HBO. I mean they're nailing it. They're doing stuff at HBO that's better than most, shit, almost all movies. But a movie like SIDEWAYS isn't gonna happen anywhere near television. Which makes it tough. It's a tough thing to follow up... There's a chance I'm gonna direct a movie for Fox prepping in the spring.

Big Fox or Searchlight Fox?

No, big Fox. By the way, "big Fox" is a name that's just starting to be bandied about recently. Nobody ever called it that but it's because of Searchlight's profile. Let me tell you what, Searchlight is absolutely the masthead. They are leading the industry.... Now they're all trying to emulate what Searchlight is doing. I heard a rumor that Paramount is chasing Michael London to run their Searchlight division. He has a deal there and I heard they're pursuing Michael to run that division. Now Warner Independent is emulating Searchlight. Peter Rice has got it going on. I'll bet someone will lure him to run a big studio in the next few months. I wouldn't be surprised to see him running Sony or Universal. He's gonna run a big studio, I guarantee it.

So what project was it you were thinking of directing?

It's a movie they found for me. I'd rather not say right now cause any number of things could go wrong and then I look like a jackass when it doesn't get made. Or it gets made with Jay Roach directing.

Did that directing gig come about as part of your Sundance gig?

Oh for sure. They're not gonna give me a directing gig cause they liked my performance in SIDEWAYS that's for sure.

How did you and Paul rehearse for the movie?

Alexander called me at the beginning of July – we started shooting in September – to ask me to do the movie and in the inaugural conversation said, I would like to give your phone number to Paul and here is Paul's phone number. I hope that you guys will start having dialogue. There was some coversation at some point that they kinda wanted Paul and I to road trip from Texas to California together. That didn't work out for whatever reason. But we didn't need it cause we talked a lot on the phone for a couple months and started reading through scenes on the phone. And when we got to Santa Inez we spent a couple of weeks rehearsing. You guys already met Paul, he's the easiest guy to get along with. He's such a sweetheart and he's so generous. I can't imagine Paul not having chemistry with anybody. Sadaam, Hitler, Paul can work with all of them.

Return to Santa Ynez

2005-04-05T06:52:00.000-07:00

Frank Ostini, owner and Executive Chef of the HItching Post II Restaurant and co-owner of Hartley Ostini Hitching Post Winery reminisces about the screenplay and the experience: Read More

Master of the Sideways Glance

It turns out that filmmaker Alexander Payne, the author of such meticulous cranks as retiree Warren R. Schmidt and wine connoisseur Miles Raymond, can be something of an ornery guy himself. Read More

Technicolor Tom

2005-04-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of.

Thanks to Miranda, Anon and Elle for all the great pictures of Tom!
More coming!

If you have any pics, comments or news, email me: ModernTrix@yahoo.com

Hollywood Reporter

2005-04-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

'Incredibles' flies in Key Art finalist field
Pixar's superhero tale leads with 12 nominations; Fox top among studios

by Nicole Sperling
An animated blockbuster about a family of superheroes and an offbeat indie comedy about an awkward teenager from Idaho top the nominations for this year's Key Art Awards honoring movie marketing and advertising. The noms were announced Tuesday.

The Walt Disney Studios' "The Incredibles" led the 34th annual Key Art pack with 12 nominations. Fox Searchlight's "Napoleon Dynamite" earned seven mentions, and Sony Pictures' "Spider-Man 2" and Lions Gate's "Saw" tied for third place with six bids apiece.

Winners will be announced May 5 at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland. Prizes will be handed out in 29 categories including posters, trailers, TV spots and print, outdoor and home entertainment. Comedian Kevin Nealon will host the event.

"In its 34th year, The Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards program is bigger than ever before," said Robert J. Dowling, editor-in-chief and publisher of The Hollywood Reporter. "Like the films it promotes, movie advertising seeks to make an emotional connection with viewers, turning consumers into customers. We are pleased to honor the movie advertising community and its tremendous achievements."

Among the releasing studios, 20th Century Fox raked in the most noms with 22. The marketing muscle Fox devoted to Ben Stiller's hit "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story" and its VFX extravaganza "The Day After Tomorrow" was recognized, as was the work of its indie division Fox Searchlight on "Napoleon Dynamite" and the Oscar-winning "Sideways."

"The vendors and creative advertising executives work incredibly hard and tirelessly to come up with original concepts and images that will sell our movies in the very best way," said Pam Levine, president of domestic marketing for 20th Century Fox. "Many people have no idea the kind of work that goes into this. It's worthwhile that we as a business take the time to acknowledge some of the amazing work that is done."

In the studio heat, Disney (and its Buena Vista distribution unit) placed second with 20 nominations, and Sony Pictures (including Columbia TriStar) is third with 17.

The nominations haul for the Pixar-produced "Incredibles," which was distributed and marketed by Disney, included nods for best teaser trailer and best outdoor advertising, among other categories.

Two For Tuesday

2005-04-01T07:33:00.000-08:00

Tuesday April 5th, pre-order:

Sideways

Spanglish

Sideways Clips,Trailer

2005-03-31T11:17:00.000-08:00

& one wine featurette on iFilm.

Flights, Bars & Rotten Tomatoes

2005-03-30T07:29:00.000-08:00

2001 Sighting
I recently sat next to Tom Church on a flight from San Antonio to Dallas and then on to California. He lived in Laredo from 1969 to 1978. He played the role of the goofy mechanic on the television show WINGS. He also starred in a short lived series called Ned And Stacy which starred Debra Messing now on Will and Grace. Just curious if anybody out there knew him. Does anybody remember him from Laredo? He worked at Leyendecker Paving Co. He said he ran around with Mark Leyendecker.
Andy

Rotten Tomatoes has a booming Spider Man 3 Forum

Old Tidbits
BLAST FROM THE PAST

From a 1995 Helen Bryant column in the News:

Thomas Haden Church (Lowell on Wings) has been hanging at the Art Bar a lot lately, helping out behind the bar. Last weekend he had a bit of a run-in with an eager fan. The fan, Leo Landin (son of the Cockrell Hill councilman), tried and failed to summon Tom's attention. So he sent Tom a note. Says Leo: "I wrote, All I wanted was an autograph or to shake hands, and I didn't realize you were such an obstinate creature.' " Tom didn't like that characterization much, and words ensued. The result: Leo was asked to leave the bar. He's less of a fan now. As for Tom, he was back behind the bar the next night.

RE: SIDEWAYS

I brought it up because THC is now the shizzle, yo, having scored major props for his work in Sideways. A tippling FBvian amplifies:

I used to love it when Tom HC was bartending at Art Bar. Always a good time. I think he thought me a bit strange when I told him he must do an episode of Star Trek as an alien. Better now, however, is his brother, who looks like him but with dark hair and who has a nice sales booth at the monthly antiques show in Fair Park. Just don't say, "Hey, have you been told you look like that strange dude on Wings?"

Doubting Thomas

2005-03-29T12:19:00.000-08:00

Sitcom success is nice, thank you, but native Texan Thomas Haden Church will be much happier when he's a movie star and when he has a ranch he can call his own.

by Jason Cohen
From the December 1995 issue of Texas Monthly

These are some of the things that Thomas Haden Church has been: a busboy, a waiter, a disc jockey, a surfer, a car-wash attendant, an air-conditioning contractor, a gravel separator, a bellman, a veterinarian's assistant, and a road-kill collector. All told, not a bad range for a rising actor a bit heavy on character parts, perhaps, but, really, isn't that where all the best work is done these days? Except that those were all real jobs, positions he actually held in his pre-Hollywood days, during a youth and young adulthood split between the Rio Grande Valley and the Metroplex area. It's not exactly an employment history that screams "stability" or "focus," so it's a good thing that he no longer has to worry about his resume. Although his list of showbiz credits is not quite as long or varied, Tom Church is in fact an actor, and his prospects are indeed on the rise.
For six years Church occupied a healthy chunk of cathode-ray space in the guise of Lowell, the resident Dadaesque savant-philosopher (a la Taxi's Reverend Jim or Seinfeld's Kramer) on NBC's genial ensemble sitcom Wings. Wings remains a going concern, a capable, highly traditional show that's always a ratings hit despite not having megastars or media buzz. But this fall, 34-year-old Church left it all behind. Now, as a self-aggrandizing New York City ad executive who enters into a marriage of convenience to improve his career prospects, he is half the title and most of the bite on Ned and Stacey, which has been airing Monday nights on the Fox network as the second half of a comedy block (with Partners) that follows Melrose Place.
It sounds like a risky move, throwing over an established show, one that's contracted to air on NBC for two more years, for an unproven entity with a thirteen-week commitment from the so-called Fourth Network. But Church's contract was up, and he was tired of Lowell's wacky observations and surreal comic gestures. He had been-there-done-that on more than a hundred episodes, and even when his character was involved in a story line, at the end of the day Wings was still a vehicle for three performers who weren't Tom Church. "For the most part it was a part-time job," he says. "Wings delivered me to a place where I was a known commodity that Fox and Tri-Star [the studio producing Ned and Stacey] felt they could bank a series on. Now that gamble is paying off."
This is true as far as it goes. During the pilot-development process, with its bevy of screenings, surveys, and focus groups, Church tested higher than any comic actor in the history of the Fox network (theoretically putting him ahead of, among others, Martin Lawrence, Jim Carrey, George Carlin, Sam Kinison, and Homer J. Simpson). And while Ned and Stacey can't yet be classified as a hit, the show has been bumped up to a full season run of 22 episodes, having demonstrated those nebulous qualities that networks like to analyze and trumpet: the ability to keep a decent percentage of people from changing the channel after an established hit (in this case, Melrose), a viewership that makes up for in demographics what it lacks in numbers, the potential to do better when a mammoth competitor (Monday Night Football) isn't on, and least scientifically of all, that certain quotient of hipness, quality, and likability, as measured by critical acclaim in the right showbiz quarters.
The latter, at least, is there for Ned and Stacey in spades or so Church will tell you. "The show has been well received by the critics who truly matter," he says. "The L.A. Times loved it, the trades loved it, Entertainment Weekly loved it." Time did too; in an essay arguing that TV is in a new "golden age," Church was singled out as one of six new actors helping to make it so. No wonder he's a happy guy, as brash and booming as the stentorian bass that is his signature acting tool. As far as he's concerned, deciding to spread his, um, Wings and strike out on his own was long overdue. "It was hard to have to sit in the back of the bus for so long," he says. "And now I'm driving the bus."
Now, actually, Church is driving his green 1970 Ford Bronco: He has been talking about his show and his career while the old heap is springing and shaking and throttling amid the rocks and brush of what passes for road on nine hundred acres of ranchland just outside of Hunt. Though Ned and Stacey requires him to be in Los Angeles most of the time, Church comes back to Texas as often as he can, to the point that Fox publicists begrudgingly book him a Dallas or San Antonio layover whenever they send him on the road. On this day, he's fresh from his first-ever appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman it went well, except that everyone he knows seems to have missed it and he has managed to put aside 24 hours to relax in the Hill Country. He spent the previous night carousing in Dallas' Deep Ellum before making the 6-hour trip south, but if the exhaustion is evident in his craggy features and crinkle-lined eyes, there's an eternally boyish vivacity in the lively jump of his pupils and the no-razor-needed peach fuzz that dusts his lower lip.
Clearly, his real passions remain rooted in Texas. Some actors are obsessed with the business of Hollywood and the arc of their careers, others with the nuance of artistry and craft; Church is definitely ambitious and dedicated to his work, but his true obsession is with the land. "People ask me, ‘Did you always want to be an actor?' I say, ‘No, I've always wanted to be a rancher.' Acting is going to get me there." For the past three years, he says, he has been searching for his dream spread. In the meantime his home away from home is here, the longtime residence of his friends Bob and Danelle Bocock.
Bob Bocock likes to say his little swatch of Texas with its indigenous wildlife and small herd of cattle, as well as a garden and a freshwater pond and a gorgeous stone house just yards from the Guadalupe River is "somewhere between paradise and prison." That's because he has to work the place. For Church, it's just paradise. He has hunted and camped and hiked and drunk and just tooled around the place so much that he could be a professional tour guide: Here's where the state's largest black rattler was captured, here's where wild turkeys flock every night at sunset, here's where he was attacked by a feral hog. Let him go on and he'll tell you every biological fact there is to know about ferals; give him another minute and he'll have moved on to weeds or deer overpopulation. "I'm the sitcom equivalent of Ted Nugent," he jokes.
"I remember the first time my father ever took us to a ranch in Central Texas," Church says. "It was in San Saba I was probably eight years old and I knew right away that I wanted to be a rancher in the Hill Country. It's almost like a limbic brain recall: The things that I found enormously dreamlike and pleasurable when I was a kid I can now go back to. I could be happy as a tick chopping cedar and building fences and tending to sheep, or goats, or cattle, or whatever I was running on my ranch, and hunting, and having friends and family out, and letting them enjoy the land. This is really what I'm about."
Church was born in El Paso, one of six children. His father, an officer in the Army who later worked for the Texas Department of Health, moved the family to Fort Worth and then to Laredo before settling in Harlingen by the time Tom was of high school age. Church's main interests back then were pretty much par for the teen course: "I wanted to surf, chase girls, and go to Mexico." He was able to afford to do those things thanks to the above-mentioned list of jobs, several of which he occupied during a year he spent not attending school. "I got fired from most of them for one reason or another," he recalls. "A big part of the problem at that time was that I was a longhair and a surfer." His steadiest work turned out to be in radio. Before he was eighteen he had put his bassy vocal chords to work at two stations, spinning records and doing weather, news, and commercial voice-overs. Still, old habits died hard; once a station temporarily canned him because he was constantly showing up for work wearing nothing but surf trunks.
Eventually, he did return to high school, where he found himself trying out for improvisational groups, mostly because a cute girl would be involved. "I still remember stuff we did back then that was absolutely hysterical," he says. "We'd go to competitions and constantly get reprimanded for using bad language." By the time he had made his way to North Texas State University, he still had a bit of an acting bug, but radio was his real calling. Though he initially supported himself with yet another assortment of jobs (mostly at Dallas' Adolphus Hotel), Church was on his way to becoming a professional voice-over star, working for such clients as Red McCombs' car dealerships and Miller Lite beer.
After keeping himself afloat that way for a good two years (even today, he is the voice of Icehouse beer), Church took a casting director's advice and made his way to California, where "acting started off pretty damn quick for me thank God." His first role was in the Richard "Shaft" Roundtree-Elizabeth Ashley film, Stolen Moments, which he doesn't even own a copy of. Later shades of Baywatch! he starred in an unrealized TV pilot called Protect and Surf, playing an undercover cop on the beach. His big break was a one-shot appearance on Cheers, which led to the role of Lowell (Wings was created by a group of Cheers veterans, the same ones who've since gone on to do Frasier). While Church is loath to be too closely identified with that character, at times he reveals a similar sort of strange but bone-dry sense of humor. Here's Lowell on Wings, responding to the observation that three years is a long time: "Not if you're a stone crab." Here's Church, parrying a ranch foreman's anecdote about a particularly unusual deer: "What's really rare is a deer that knows good jazz."
"Tom, you've been spending too much time out on the West Coast," the mystified foreman shoots back, but in fact Church's brand of folksy absurdism is utterly Texan a sort of blunt, stubbornly off-kilter Zen goofiness. Out on the Bocock ranch in late afternoon, a couple of bees draw near, and Church notes that the insects are attracted by strange fragrances that don't occur in nature. "No cologne out here," he says. "Oh sure, there's the occasional flamboyant squirrel . . ."
As Ned Dorsey on Ned and Stacey, Church is equally droll but thoroughly Eastern, with an elegant wardrobe of three-piece suits and a streak of effete refinement epitomized by his knowledge of women's fashions, horticulture, and the Renaissance. In a TV season full of bland nice-guy actors who seem as if they'd be boring acquaintances (to say nothing of Friends), Church brings a welcome edge to the sitcom universe. But even as he soaks up the challenge of stretching his comedic talents and carrying his own show, he's already looking ahead. "Like 99.8 percent of the acting universe, I won't be where I want to till I've done a lead in a successful feature film," he says.
The closest Church has come so far has been Tombstone, which put him alongside an Oscar-worthy Val Kilmer and as marvelous an assortment of seedy character actors as there has ever been, including Bill Paxton, Sam Elliot, Stephen Lang, and Powers Boothe. Church's part was trimmed in the editing room, but as he points out, "[Kevin] Costner was completely cut out of The Big Chill and he recovered. And the film business is very TV-actor-friendly right now, with the success of the Jim Carreys and the Tim Allens." He pauses, as if to realize that he's getting a little ahead of himself. "You know, I don't know where I fit into that scheme. Right now I am responsible for carrying Ned and Stacey, and I gotta tell you, I think it's going pretty damn good."
Time will tell, but there's little doubt that leaving Wings and signing on with Ned and Stacey was a can't-lose proposition for Church. With Fox's heavy promotional support and the validation of his Letterman show appearance, his visibility has increased along with his versatility. People are starting to know him by his name, instead of as "the guy who plays Lowell." Besides, if Ned and Stacey fails, at least Church will have failed at a higher level; Hollywood is pretty generous with its forgiving second chances. In the short term, he's obviously operating on a more lucrative plane the top-billed star with a track record does bring home a little more each week than the unknown supporting player. And if the show is a big hit, who knows? Let's just say high ratings and syndicated reruns could buy an awful lot of ranchland.

Image courtesy of Bonniesmom

THANK YOU!

2005-03-29T11:38:00.000-08:00

Thanks KiKi for the new layout!

I love it!
"Gozzi"

The Sandman Cometh!

2005-03-28T20:13:00.000-08:00

Multiple spies at Sony have confirmed that Thomas Hayden Church will indeed be playing SANDMAN. There's a ton of Sandman conceptual art all over the Spidey-offices! I have to admit, as much as I love Sandman - he really did have the best episode of SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS... that scene of him on the beach tormenting Parker is still one of my all time fave Spidey images... I also was kinda wishing for the whole Kraven / Lizard story line that McFarlane did that I absolutely fucking loved. But all in good time.

From Harry

Thomas Haden Church

2005-03-28T11:44:00.000-08:00

The 43-year-old Oscar-nominated actor on the role of his lifetime, working with Brando, and the Hill Country ranch he calls home. "I knew immediately that they'd be serving ice water in hell about the same time I'd be cast in [Sideways]."

by Evan Smith

When you were making Sideways, did you at any point think to yourself, "This is a film that's going to change my career, get me an Oscar nomination, propel me"?
The answer is no. I did believe that the movie would garner some attention because of [director and co-screenwriter] Alexander Payne's pedigree. He did Citizen Ruth, which won a bunch of awards, and then Election, which is kind of a legendary American film, and then About Schmidt. For Election, he and [co-screenwriter] Jim [Taylor] were nominated for an Oscar for best [adapted] screenplay, and they won the [Golden] Globe, and Kathy Bates and Jack Nicholson were nominated for Oscars as well as Globes for About Schmidt. And I knew the script was good, so I thought he was definitely handing me a gift, an opportunity.

You see scripts all the time, so at this point you're able to distinguish a good one from a bad one. You could tell it was that good?

I just knew, because those guys are damn good at what they do. Though if it was written by anyone else, it still would have been a great script. If it's a beautiful coat, it doesn't matter who made it.

The part [of Jack] was also pretty great.

When I read it, I thought, "This is the role." Jack is the party guy; he's an injection of energy every single time you see him. [Co-star Paul Giamatti's character] Miles is so morose and so beaten down and so convinced of his own worthlessness that he doesn't even need the gallows man. He's ready to step through the trapdoor himself.

Did you see yourself in the part? How much is Jack like you?

I actually saw myself in both roles. I told Alexander that I was kind of adrift when I read the script because I could identify with both guys. I think that was one of the smarter things I said to him, because he always wanted them to be two parts of a whole man.

You've obviously thought about the movie a lot. If I were asking you questions about another of your movies, George of the Jungle, would you be as articulate and passionate about it?

Passionate, yes. Articulate, no. It's not that kind of movie. You can be passionate about entertaining children, but articulating the finer elements of characters—kids aren't interested in that.

Is Sideways the first of your movies that made you feel this way?

I did a movie that came out about six or seven years ago called Free Money. The three leads were Charlie Sheen, myself, and Marlon Brando, and I really thought it was going to be extraordinary. But it just came out smaller than it should have been. There was a grandeur to the story. It was about these two blue-collar knuckleheads who live in way upstate Minnesota, and they find out about a train that comes from Canada delivering old American money back to Fort Knox or wherever they take old money to be destroyed. They hijack the mail car and steal all of the old money. Marlon is the warden of the local prison, and we marry his twin daughters. He starts to put it together, and, you know, one thing leads to another.

Only in Hollywood. What was it like working with Brando?

We shot the movie in '98, six and a half years ago. He was having problems then. He had gained a huge amount of weight, and he was battling the respiratory infection that eventually took him down. I remember him saying, and I don't think I'm revealing anything, that he had been on that fen-phen diet in the mid-nineties, and he was convinced that it had damaged his organs, not the least of which his lungs.

Was he still a great actor at that point?

Oh, yeah, he was tremendous. Look, was it the best material in the world to serve Marlon Brando at that point in his career? Probably not. But it wasn't bad material, because he was this stern, avuncular presence in the film. If you ever see it, it certainly has its charm, and there's some funny stuff, but the tone of the movie was too shifty. It opens with this dark incident that Marlon's involved in, and then it becomes this light romp, and then Mira Sorvino shows up, and it gets dark. Marlon and Mira did not like each other for whatever reason, and I think that made their interaction even darker. When I saw it, I was disheartened. I went to a test screening at Warner Brothers, because they were going to pick it up for distribution, and I think the audience was completely befuddled by what they were watching.

Does that happen a lot? You're making a movie and you go in with high hopes and by the end your hopes are dashed?

You can't always tell what it's gonna be. Some movies deserve more than they get. I did a Mike Figgis movie called One Night Stand, his follow-up to Leaving Las Vegas. It was based on a Joe Eszterhas treatment that New Line had paid a lot of money for, but then Eszterhas refused to be involved in it, so Mike wrote the script himself. It was actually quite extraordinary. But they put Wesley Snipes in the lead, and I don't know that he was the right guy. He's a gifted actor, but it didn't seem that [Wesley and Mike] got along when we were shooting. There were great things about that movie, but it really bombed.

The George of the Jungle movies, I suppose, are the opposite case—low hopes going in, and they were huge.

I did them for my nieces and nephews. I did them because they were fun kids' films. The money was actually great, and you know what? I went to Australia for two months and had a blast.

How can that be bad?

Here's the other outgrowth of that: I'm now doing Charlotte's Web, which is being produced by Jordan Kerner, who was the producer on George of the Jungle. Jordan really considered it a big favor for me to come back and do the sequel, and he rewarded me by giving me Charlotte's Web. It's gonna be a huge movie. It's got Julia Roberts, Robert Redford. Everybody knows the story, but they've updated it in a way that's very clever, very funny. Charlotte's the Virgin Mary, Mother Teresa, and a spider all in one. I really enjoyed the script. With a kids' film, you're always like, "Is this gonna be Iron Giant, or is it going to be Princess Diaries 2?"

Come back to Sideways for a bit. Tell me the story of how exactly you got the part.

Here's where the Marlon Brando movie is significant: I had already signed to do that movie, but I read Election, and I wanted to meet with Alexander. When we met, we talked about Marlon. I am convinced he only remembered me [when it came time to audition actors ] for About Schmidt because I had worked with Marlon.

You were a big fan of both Election and About Schmidt, right?

I had read those scripts, and I thought they were brilliantly crafted and so character-specific and also had at times these great, kind of dark observations on the frailty and absurdity and poignancy and sadness of a normal life. Alexander and I had a great work session on Schmidt. I got very close to being in that movie.

You were going to play the son-in-law, the Dermot Mulroney part.

It was down to the wire to the point that Alexander called me just to let me know he hadn't made up his mind—I shouldn't be alarmed that I hadn't heard anything. It was between me and another guy. I think it took him four months to make up his mind, and then he picked Dermot. I talked to him on the phone later, and he was like, "I just want you to know, it was so close that I had to cover my eyes and pick a picture. But you and I will be crossing paths again."

When did they send you the Sideways script?

In 2003. It came with a request, because I'd been in Texas full-time for almost four years. They said, "If you respond to the script, Alexander would like to meet you in Los Angeles." And I called them back and said, "I don't even need to respond to the material. This is gonna happen, because it's him." I read it, and I knew immediately that they'd be serving ice water in hell about the same time I'd be cast in the movie. But I flew out and we had amazing meetings, and I found out I was definitely in contention. Then I got a phone call that Alexander wanted to meet again, only this time it was going to be less formal. We had supper and hung out, just to get to know each other a bit. Probably two weeks after that I was out at the ranch, looking at my caller ID, and there was this "Alex Payne" with a 323 area code. And I was literally like, "Who is that?" Because if you've ever met him, you do not call him Alex. It's Alexander. So I was like, "Alex Payne?" And then I was like, "Oh, Alexander. What the hell is he calling me for?"

You had written off the possibility of getting it.

Oh, totally. Even though I had gone back and had supper with him, I didn't believe there was any chance of it happening, because I knew guys like Brad Pitt and George Clooney were pursuing the role. It got back to me through a casting director I know that Matt Dillon was seriously in the hunt. And I'm like, "Well, you know, that's it. He's perfect."
So I listen to my answering machine, and it's, "Hey, Tom, it's Alexander Payne calling you. I sure would like to talk to you if you wouldn't mind giving me a call." And I'm like, "You know, here it is, one of the most defeating moments in modern history, and he's letting me down in person."

But, in fact, you got it. I guess it's the case, isn't it, that getting the part you want happens much more infrequently than not getting it?

I've certainly been the bridesmaid a number of times. I screen-tested for the lead in Ace Ventura. I screen-tested for Quiz Show.

For the Ralph Fiennes part?

Yeah. I screen-tested for Tom Sizemore's role in Saving Private Ryan. I wanted to do that movie bad. Then again, Sideways was the only movie that I auditioned for in 2003.

The perception out there is that until it came along, you'd pretty much given up on acting.
I really have to give you the quick chronology of my career. From '89 to 2000, I did nothing but television and the occasional movie. I did a lot of guest-star stuff, and I was supposed to do ten episodes of China Beach, but I got fired. But thank God I got fired, because that made me available to do Wings. I did six seasons of Wings, two seasons of Ned and Stacey, and then I had a two-year deal at ABC to develop and star in a series. So I did eleven solid years of television, and, yeah, I got to do Tombstone and George of the Jungle. In 2000 I'd already owned a ranch in the Hill Country for a couple of years, and I was like, "That's enough TV for a while. I've made plenty of money. I've put it away. I've invested. I have property. I'm fine financially for a long time. Now I'm really going to relax and step back and try to figure out what I want my next choice to be." My writing partner, David Denney, and I had already started writing scripts, and one of them, Southern Story, got green-lit, with Whoopi Goldberg directing. That was in the spring of 2000. Then the movie falls apart by the end of 2000. I'm like, "Okay, now I gotta refocus on acting, because I've kind of been fallow for a couple years." So in January of 2001, I was cast in a movie, Lone Star State of Mind, and then right after that I was hired to play Billy Bob Thornton's brother in a movie called The Badge. The guy who made The Badge found out about Southern Story through Billy Bob, who had read it and liked it. So he flew to New Orleans, where we were shooting, and said, "We would like to read some of your stuff." So we sent them Southern Story and this other thing, Rolling Kansas. Southern Story was a drama, and they weren't interested; they wanted to make a comedy. But they just flipped for Rolling Kansas. So they were like, "As soon as you wrap in Louisiana, we want you to fly back to L.A., because we want to have a meeting." And in that meeting they said, "We want to make this movie. We want to be in prep by the middle of August." That was on June 1, 2001.

Stuff generally doesn't happen that fast, does it?

Oh, never. Never ever. In fact, I even said to them in the meeting, "You realize you guys aren't doing this right. We're supposed to develop this for a year." They just laughed. And literally, about ten weeks after we had that meeting, I was in prep in Austin on Rolling Kansas.

I finished shooting that movie and pretty much cut it for a good portion of 2002, and then I went to Australia to do George of the Jungle 2. When I got back, Rolling Kansas got into Sundance, and then that spilled over into all the other festivals, in Maui and Croatia and Canada and all over the United States. I went everywhere with that movie. And then, you know, I went home for a few weeks and got sent Sideways.

So it's not that you were lacking for work. You were busy.

I was busy. Somebody said to me, "Man, you've been off the radar screen for so long. This is a massive opportunity for you to have new life breathed into your career." And I was like, "Look, they didn't exactly pry the lid off my coffin with Sideways."

Talk about your ranch. It's around Ingram, right?

No, it's equidistant from Kerrville and Uvalde.

But you grew up all over Texas. You lived in Harlingen

. . . Harlingen, Laredo, El Paso, and Fort Worth.

Why'd you move around so much growing up?

My dad had been in the military. He was kind of semiretired, but he worked for the government for the Department of Health, and, you know, we just moved around a lot. And then, on my own, I went to college in Denton, and then I worked and lived in Dallas. I actually had a house in Austin for several years, and I still own a house in Dallas that I bought four years ago.

But the ranch is really the place where you live.

This is where I live. I bought the ranch because I looked all over the Hill Country—as far north as Goldthwaite and as far west as Rocksprings and Menard and Mason and even out past Junction towards Sonora. Not too much farther south from where I am, because I wanted to be in the true Hill Country. My brother Andy was looking for me. We looked for five years, and then it just happened.

Wasn't there a car trip down from Denton involved?

That was way back in the early eighties. He and I stopped at a rest stop that's a mile from the gate of my ranch. We were having a rock-throwing contest, and I told him, "Man, I would love to be around this part of the Hill Country." See, we went to church camp in Leakey all the way back in the early seventies, so I knew that part of Texas, and my dad leased ranches in San Saba County to hunt. So I knew the Hill Country very, very well. Then Andy called me in '98, and he's like, "Dude, I found the perfect ranch, and you're never gonna believe where it is: a mile from that rest stop that you and I visited when we were in college." I was in L.A., and I immediately got butterflies in my stomach. I didn't want to let it get away. And it was the perfect size. It was a 3,100-acre ranch, but they wanted to break it up into 1,100- and 2,000-acre parcels. I wanted to buy around 2,000 acres.

It worked out perfectly.

As soon as I saw it and drove through it, I was like, "This is it, man."

So much for wanting or needing to be in L.A.

You know, it's one of those things where you don't know what you're missing, 'cause you're not there. But on the other side of that, as cocky as it sounds, I'm an Academy award nominee, so how bad has it really been? I got a movie made that I co-wrote and got to direct, and the movie I directed went to Sundance. I got to go to Australia. Sideways was the massive event of 2003, and then last year it was all about promoting it. I did a few things in the spring. I did a little part in Jim Brooks's movie [Spanglish]. I did a little part in Mike Judge's movie [the forthcoming 3001]. This year started off great with Charlotte's Web, and there's another big movie looming.

My writing partner says that if I'd stayed in L.A. all these years, there's a damn good chance I would have gotten sucked into another TV series or would have been doing another movie and wouldn't have been available to do Sideways. And, buddy, let me tell you, that would have killed me.

TOM on the Cover of TEXAS MONTHLY

2005-03-28T10:37:00.000-08:00

Name That Villian for THC

2005-03-25T09:57:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to all the villians in Spider Man history:
WHO??
My money's on The Scorpian or Wolf-Man.

SIGHTING

2005-03-25T08:45:00.000-08:00

I just saw this movie on friday and I thought it was pretty good. I am not a very good movie critic in that I am not very good at explaining what I got out of the movie, but I thought it was interesting. By the way, not to brag or anything but I have an aunt who lives in Texas on a ranch and lives a couple ranches over from Thomas Hayden Church's ranch. I guess he lives mostly in California but spends a lot of time at the ranch. My aunt works part time at a small store and he comes in once and a while to pick up movie scripts. They have chatted a few times and she said he is really nice. Just the other day she was driving by his gate and he was out there and she honked and they exchanged waves. I was actually down there ths past fall and she pointed out his property, but I did not get a chance to meet him.I jus think that is a cool story.
Erik

Nice Try, Pittsburgh

2005-03-25T07:02:00.000-08:00

Q: Back in the early '90s, Thomas Haden Church starred in a sitcom with Debra Messing called "Ned and Stacey." I thought this show was really funny and enjoyed it in its first run. Then, once it was canceled, it was shown for a long while in syndication on the USA Network. Then, sadly, at least to me, USA stopped showing it. It was on in the morning and I used to tape it every day.
My question is, then, don't you think it would be a wonderful programming move for USA or somebody to take advantage of Haden Church's newfound fame and popularity from having won an Oscar for his work in "Sideways" and start showing this sitcom again? It would be a brilliant programming move, and, just incidentally, would reward us early fans of Haden Church, those of us who began appreciating him when he was younger (and cuter) and always very talented and funny!

Are you aware of any plans along these lines? Can you use your vast influence on the TV industry to make this suggestion to the powers that be? Thanks so much!

- Sheryl DeMille, Pittsburgh

A: Ugh, I disliked that show, so can't say it's one I would ever go to bat for. Frankly, given how brief a time the show was on Fox -- just two seasons -- it's surprising that it made it into syndication at all.

THE SCORPION?

2005-03-23T11:41:00.000-08:00

According to a recent radio interview, John Stewart claims, Thomas Haden Church is to play the Scorpion in the upcoming Spider Man movie.

THOMAS HADEN CHURCH IS SPIDEY 3 VILLAIN

2005-03-23T09:33:00.000-08:00

Thomas Haden Church, who was most recently nominated for an Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actor in Sideways, has been cast as Spider-Man's
new archenemy in Spider-Man 3, it was announced by director Sam Raimi and
producers Laura Ziskin and Marvel Studios' Avi Arad.
Spider-Man 3, which is scheduled for release on May 4, 2007, will
reunite the team that was responsible for the first two films. The franchise
has grossed more than $1.5 billion in worldwide ticket sales and the new
film will reteam director Raimi, producers Ziskin and Arad, and actors Tobey
Maguire as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane.

Production on Spider-Man 3 is scheduled to begin early next year.
"In addition to the on-going relationship between Peter Parker and
M.J., these films are driven by the great actors who have brought our
villains to life," said Raimi. "Thomas Haden Church will be a fantastic and
challenging new nemesis and we all look forward to working with him."

The identity of the new villain is being kept secret and while
speculation is rampant about which character is being called into action, the
studio will not comment on the casting beyond confirming Church.

Church is voicing one of the characters in the upcoming animated film
Charlotte's Web, and he recently appeared in Columbia Pictures'
Spanglish. Church previously appeared in such films as George of the Jungle, 330
Miles to Graceland and Tombstone. In 2003, he also starred in, co-wrote and
directed the comedy Rolling Kansas. From 1990 to 1995, Church played
Lowell Mather in the TV series Wings.

Venom Background w/ spoilers

2005-03-22T06:33:00.000-08:00

Special effects creator Tim Phoenix, confirms what he is working on the next Spider-Man film. He previously worked on designing Doc Ock's tentacles and on-screen puppeteering. He mentioned that the crew are working on conceptual design for villians, MAN-WOLF & VENOM. Read about it here, Spider Man 3

THANK GOD! VENOM!

SPOILER

By Orca_the Artist

I couldn't be happier! Venom is the best. We all know how it's going to go down! Here's what happened in the comic books, if you don't know:

J. Jonah Jameson's son, (I think his name is John) who is an astronaught, goes to the moon. There, he finds a dark black crystal lodged into the surface, which he brings back into the shuttle so scientists can study it. As the spaceship comes back, he turns into a werewolf because of this magical pendant that he always wears for good look, and becomes Man-Wolf for a short while. He goes nuts and thrashes the shuttle and kills the other astronaughts on it, and the shuttle crashes into the Brooklyn Bridge next to Manhatten. He goes back into human form and is unconscious on the shuttle, which is burning ont he bridge and about to blow up. Spiderman comes to the rescue and goes into the ship to save him right before the shuttle explodes. After that, spidey goes back home and notices some black liquid all over his suit, and thinks it's some sort of pollution. What he doesn't know is that the black liquid is a liquid alien symbiote that came from the black crystal. As spidey sleeps, the liquid comes off of the suit in the hamper, crawls up into his bed and infests him.
The next morning spidey wakes up, and he's feeling great. He's somehow extremely confident all of a sudden, and starts hitting on all the ladies like they're nothing. Mary Jane is frightened at Peter, who was always a dork, suddenly turned into such a cocky self-confident guy. Peter tells Mary Jane that he doesn't care about her ugly ass. She cries, he laughs. Later, he turns on the news and there's a huge truck that was supposed to be transporting fuel to a space station, and some criminals hijacked it and are threatening to blow it up in front of some building. Peter wants to put on his suit, but suddenly this black liquid comes out from under his skin and covers his body. He doesn't know where it came from, but it looks a hell of a lot better than his regular suit.
Here's some pics of him in this form, in case you're wondering:

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/2933/GraphicsSpiderman2a.jpg
http://spiderman.sonypictures.com/fans/art/content/set9/9_026.jpg
http://www.alaph.com/spiderman/pictures/suits/suit1.jpg
http://www.spiderfan.org/fans/art/images/cs_black_spidey.jpg

Anyway, he goes to the criminals and picks up the 40 ton truck and throws it across the street. He's WAY stronger than he was before. He starts to realise that the suit can morph into any clothing he likes, and when he walks around, he makes it turn into a thousand dollar buisiness suit. He starts to get cockier and cockier. He gets really mean, and there's this big guy with a kind heart named Brock who's only looking for a job at the Daily Bugle where Peter works, and Peter purposefully gets him fired, makes him lose his appartment, his girlfriend, and even turns his own family against him, ruins his life, and brings Brock practically to the point of suicide. He starts becoming EVIL. He starts to wake up every morning very, very tired. He finds out that while he's asleep, the suit actually takes over his body and goes web-slinging and doing horrible stuff like killing people for fun. So he goes to his college science professor (as spiderman) and asks him to help him find out what the hell the suit really is. The doctor asks for a small sample of the suit, and tries to cut off a piece of the suit, but as he moves the scissors to his arm, the liquid moves off that part of the skin so he can't do it. Spidey grabs some of it and tells him to hurry up and cut some off. The professor succeeds, and does several tests on it and examines it under a microscope. He tells Spidey the bad news. It's an evil alien symbiote that needs a host in order to survive, and that the longer he has it in him, the more attached he becomes to it. Soon they would merge into one being if he didn't do something about it very soon. The good news is that the professor found out that the symbiote has two weaknesses: loud sound and fire. Shoots an extremely high sound wave from this scientific device and the symbiote immediately detaches from spidey. Spidey falls naked to the floor, passed out, and the professor covers his face with a towel and doesn't look who his identity is out of respect. After that, Peter realises that he was attached to the symbiote even more than a cocaine addict. It had already partially grafted itself into his mind. He yearned to get back with the symbiote, which was now in the science lab under a constant sound wave to keep it paralyzed. Peter loses his mind and breaks into the lab and sets the alien free, mending once again. He goes on like this for a while, until he starts talking to himself and refering to himself as 'us'. He realises that if he doesn't act immediately, he's going to lose his humanity forever. So he goes to a church with a huge bell at the top, and he pulls the rope and goes inside the bell, and the noise is so loud that the symbiote seperates again. Peter falls to the floor, and looks at the symbiote. It looks like a horrible liquid monster. It wants to come back into Peter and merge once and for all. Peter tells it that he can't go on living like this, and explains to the symbiote that he's a human with feelings, and explains that he would rather die than harm other human beings. The alien symbiote understands his emotions, and because it deeply cares for Peter, it lets him go on without it. Peter goes home, and the symbiote starts to deteriorate at the top of the church because it doesn't have a host to live off of. It seeps through the boarding of the roof of the church. By coincidence, Brock, the guy whose life was ruined by Peter, is at the altar praying to the Lord as a last resort to stop himself from suicide. The chuch is empty because it's midnight. The alien symbiote seeps through the roof and bonds with Brock. When they bond, the symbiote becomes insane because it feels deeply rejected by Peter, and Brock hates Peter as well. Brock realises that Peter, who ruined his life, is actually Spider-man, and knows every one of his deepest secrets, he now knows everything about his life, perhaps even more than Peter knows about himself. He also gains the powers of Spider-man, multiplied by many times over, so he's much more stronger than him. Spider-man cannot use his spider-sense against him, because the symbiote knows how it works and can cancel it out. He calls himself Venom and takes on a monstrous appearance, and starts to torture Spider-man's mind, and ruin his life like he did to him, and threatens to reveal his secret identity. Here are some pics of Venom, if you've never seen him before:

http://guru-efx.com/marvel/venom/venom_02.jpg
http://starverse.dwnonline.com/ryanverse2/ink/wolvievenom.JPG
http://www.scifidimensions.com/Feb03/venom.jpg
http://www.comics-unlimited.com/news/images/spiderman-vs-venom.jpg http://www.public.iastate.edu/~tpebenit/Frank%20Cho%20-%20Venom.jpg http://members.shaw.ca/ranjeevah/art/illustrator/big/Venom.jpg
http://www.planetcomics.jp/illust/1/venom.jpg
http://www.samruby.com/SpidB/Large/Spiderman053.JPG

They have a lot of good material to work with, let's hope they don't mess it up. :)

Whoa! Thomas Hayden Church Vs. SPIDER-MAN!!!

2005-03-22T06:31:00.000-08:00

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a big big break in SPIDER-MAN 3 casting. Over at The Hollywood Reporter they've broken the announcement from Sony that Sam Raimi has cast Thomas Hayden Church as the villain for SPIDER-MAN 3!!!
The villain hasn't been announced yet, but I've heard some pretty strong whispers that it'll be Sandman, but I'm not 100% on that. I love the idea of casting Church now... it falls into the strong, non-star character actor casting of the previous Spidey flicks, but who could he be? He wouldn't make a bad Sandman if that's who's in the movie... Hobgoblin, perhaps? Remember, Hobgoblin wasn't Harry Osborne, Harry later went on to be the next Green Goblin... Surely they wouldn't go with something as cool as Kraven, would they? Mysterio? Doesn't seem like a good fit for Mysterio. What about Eddie Brock? The Venom rumors won't die, but Raimi has said many times that he's not a fan of Venom, so unless Avi is twisting his arm in order to get the huge Venom fanbase frothing at the mouth, then I'd rule that one out. What do you folks think?
Ain't It Cool News

Thomas Haden Church Talks About "Sideways"

2005-03-21T14:21:00.000-08:00

From Rebecca Murray,

The Meaning of "Sideways" and Alexander Payne Films
We haven't seen much of Thomas Haden Church in movies or on TV recently. According to Haden Church the explanation is simple: he's been busy behind the camera rather than in front of it for the past year or so.
Thomas Haden Church moved away from the Hollywood scene three years ago to a ranch in Texas and stays busy writing, directing, and working his land. However the script for "Sideways," combined with the opportunity to work with writer/director Alexander Payne, proved too tempting to pass up.
In "Sideways," Thomas Haden Church plays Jack, a womanizer who is about to be married. Best friend/wine lover Miles (Paul Giamatti) takes his buddy on a tour of the wine country as a last hurrah before Jack ties the knot. The two buddies soon find themselves caught in a heady mix of wine and woman, with Jack's upcoming nuptials fast approaching.

INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS HADEN CHURCH ('Jack'):

What's the title of this movie mean to you?
The title of the movie is open to interpretation.
Stay in Santa YnezLuxury Hotel Suites and service in the Santa Barbara Wine
We talked about it often. You go through a door sideways. Or the little roads that go off to the wineries in the Santa Ynez valley are sideways of the 101. But it's also these little portals that open up, and the experience. These guys are at such a crossroads in their lives. Their lives have been largely defined by failure and you would think the prospect of marriage, which is supposed to be bountiful and hopeful, it's just really another kind of tangential thing in his life. I mean, he's so kind of desultory about it even at the beginning. Whenever Miles comes, he can't wait to get away from it. One week away from being married and he can't wait to get away from his new in-laws and his fiancée. And there's actually some stuff that we shot that was cut out of the movie, these very antagonistic phone calls with his fiancée that Alexander [Payne] took out of the movie.

Why?
We debated it early on. I never felt the necessity for it because I think you get a sense of that antagonistic [feeling] between [them]. Like the very first moment she's like, -We want you to try the cake," and Jack doesn't want to try the cake. He wants to get on the road. And whenever they're backing out, he's sugary sweet to them saying goodbye and then immediately whirls on Jack and is kind of attacking Jack. That's the dynamic that exists in his engagement.
How difficult was it for you to tap into that delusional sense of self-justification?
Difficult because my value system couldn't be more diametrically opposed to the characters. I believe in singularity in relationships because you've got to have trust on both sides. Although, having been a guy that has existed in that world... I've lived in Texas exclusively, but I certainly had my run of years in LA and success in television and some in movies. Just being plugged into the industry and seeing how fast and loose people play it, in terms of romance, it's almost like a parallel universe. And the rest of the world, unfortunately, sees it like a benchmark or a template of some sort. Especially like the whole J-Lo and Ben Affleck thing. You know, where they're just so destiny bound? They're giving each other multi-million dollar gifts. And then it's over and she's pregnant with some other guy! So it's like the justification sort of exists already, by virtue of the environment he lives in.

What's one of the things that makes Alexander Payne's movies so interesting?
Alexander always has this kind of 'beef for human'-kind of tendril that goes through his movies. We comment on it in the movie when we're walking away from the golf course and [Paul] says, -We're all just pasture animals waiting to be slaughtered." Alexander sees everything as just a struggle against the inevitable, which is death. And however lonely or rote or insignificant - it's like everything that you dream that it might be and you absolutely campaign and challenge it the whole way. It's completely what -About Schmidt" was about and it is absolutely what this movie is about. It even to some extent is what -Election" is about. This guy that's so middle-aged and middle American and middle of the road and he pinpoints this senior and she's where he makes his stand against inhumanity. And he fails. He gets his ass kicked by an 18 year-old girl.

Are you a wine drinker?
No. I mean, like many people I had a brief vocational fling at waiting tables in college. You kind of have to try to learn something about it to knowledgably serve it or make recommendations about it. But no, I'm really not. Last summer when we were preparing for the movie, I actually kind of wanted to stay fairly uninformed about it. As we went through the process that we do in the movie, I wanted to be a little wide-eyed. It's a complete new experience for him and one that he's willing to embrace because it serves the larger purpose, which is to hopefully pick up girls with this pseudo-intellectual lexicon of wine aficionados.
Was it just grape juice on the set?
You know, people are so curious about that. For the most part it was. I would say 95% of the time, because you just can't remember your lines if you're drinking alcohol. I would say about 95% of the time it was grape juice or this fake wine, which was horrible. It's like they make it and then they extract the alcohol. It's really terrible. But the grape juice could get... You know, it's such a high sugary content it starts giving you gastro-intestinal fits and then you're asking for anything else. We would, late at night every now and then, Alexander would want to open some wine for the cast and crew just as a reward for a good day's work.
From what you can gather about how the film's being received, how will the 25 and under crowd like this movie?
They are probably going to be the harder demographic to get in, because it's wine and everybody is 40ish.
But I think once the word gets out that the movie is funny - funny is transcendent - it will traverse all demographic barriers if people embrace it as a funny movie. But also what I think is going to attract 25 and over is that it is poignant and that there is drama. And at the end it is romantic and hopeful, which is a little bit of a departure for Alexander. I think -Schmidt" was hopeful but on a much subtler level.

Can you talk about working with Paul Giamatti? The casting and chemistry in this movie really worked.
I really have to defer entirely to Alexander. I did not know anybody other than Alexander. I met him on -Election." We had just met. I had already signed to do another movie but I loved the script so much, I asked to meet with him. We met and just talked and then he remembered me a few years later and invited me to audition for -About Schmidt." And it was actually all the way to the end, it was between Dermot Mulroney and myself for that role. I wrote and directed a movie that was at Sundance last year, and right when he was posting -Schmidt" I was scouting in Nebraska for my movie. The Nebraska Film Commissioner said, -I told him you were going to be here and when I had you with me, he wanted us to call him." So we called him in New York and Alexander got on the phone with me. Riding around in a van in the middle of nowhere Nebraska and he was like, -You'll never know how close you came to playing that part. But you have my word we will meet again." And last summer they just called me in Texas and said he was casting -Sideways" and he wanted to see me. I flew out and we met, and that was it. He just called me to do the movie.
My point is, circuitously, Paul I did not know. Alexander is the only person I knew. And I never met with Paul through the process, nor Virginia [Madsen] or Sandra [Oh]. And I think Alexander just understands the nuance of personality and how he's going to integrate that into the character. And he knows how people can kind of be woven into the same fabric and have that fluidity. When he called me and asked me to do the movie, in the same conversation he said, -I would like to give your phone number to Paul, and here is Paul's phone number." The first time we spoke, Paul said we talked about 3 ½ hours on the phone. He was in New York and I was in Texas, and there was just that spark. It's like a dear, dear, intimate friend that's been floating in the universe and you didn't know until you meet him. And then there's just this quick-start friendship.

Did you have any trepidation about doing a love scene with Sandra Oh, the director's wife?
Huge. Gigantic. Towering. You know, he attempted to put me at ease about that from day one. And then Sandra was very sweet about it. Wasn't it John Huston's character in -Chinatown" who said, -You never know what you're capable of until the circumstances prevail, and then you're capable of doing anything." It's one of those scenarios where no, I never imagined that I'd be directed in a love scene - not even a love scene because it's kind of a hard-core sex scene because it's kind of just purely played for this carnal venting. At first Sandra and I are like, -Let's make it funny because that's safe." Then he just kept pushing us to make it more real and more sensuous. One of the takes he used is somewhere in the middle. I really don't know which one. Alexander certainly would. But yeah, it's a little awkward. But he told me straight up when I first met with him, -That's going to be my wife. That's going to be Sandra." It's just one of those things. Everybody is a professional. It's just part of the story. It's just a piece of it.

Contactmusic.com

2005-03-21T13:20:00.000-08:00

OSCAR nominee THOMAS HADEN CHURCH is convinced he only landed his role in acclaimed comedy SIDEWAYS because he once appeared in a movie with MARLON BRANDO.Sideways writer and director ALEXANDER PAYNE first met with Church in the late 1990s when the moviemaker considered him for a role in his black comedy ELECTION - and discovered he had signed on to make FREE MONEY with his hero Brando.Payne then called Church in to audition for his JACK NICHOLSON movie ABOUT SCHMIDT and he gave him his failed actor role in Sideways after turning down GEORGE CLOONEY.But the Sideways star is convinced Payne has only ever been interested in him because of his links to Brando.He says, "To this day I am convinced that the real reason we met was because Alexander is from Nebraska, and he was completely fascinated that I was about to go off and make a movie with Brando."When we were doing Sideways, every now and then he would be like, `Tell me a story about Brando.'"

Austin Film Society

2005-03-11T07:05:00.000-08:00

Actor Thomas Haden Church (L) and an unidentified companion (Mia Zottoli ?) arrive for the Texas Film Hall of Fame awards in Austin, Texas March 11, 2005. The Texas Film Hall of Fame, presented annually by the Austin Film Society, recognizes filmmakers from or influenced by the state of Texas.

REUTERS/Jeff Mitchell

Sighting - Yahoo! Groups

2005-03-05T13:22:00.000-08:00

by: foxsrus2004
03/05/05
Hi, my husband and I were eating at a Mexican Restaurant in our town Kerrville, Tx and saw Thomas Haden Church eating with his woman and his baby.

From North Texas days to Oscar nights

2005-02-27T13:26:00.000-08:00

Ex-NTSU student is considered a strong contender to win for his 'Sideways' role on Sunday.

By Todd Jorgenson / Staff Writer

Not many people remember Thomas Haden Church from his days as a deejay on KNTU-FM (88.1) during the early 1980s. But Church's name is one of the hottest in Hollywood today, thanks to his first career Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for the road-trip comedy Sideways. Many have called the nominated role a career renaissance for the former North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas) student, who was best known for his work on television sitcoms during the 1990s and whose best-known film role to date was as the cartoonish villain in George of the Jungle." I never really qualified it in terms of a comeback, because that's really more of a media thing," Church said. "Some journalists have characterized it like Alexander [Payne, the director] was prying the lid off my coffin, and that's not true. I worked in television for 11 consecutive years. I made a really nice living.

I'm financially secure for the rest of my life." However, Church was not very active in show business when he received the script for Sideways while living on his West Texas ranch in May 2003. He flew to Los Angeles to audition for the role of a washed-up actor who embarks on a life-changing road trip through the southern California wine country with an old classmate (played by Paul Giamatti) during the week before his impending wedding." He [Payne] had become a filmmaker of note, and with a respected profile," Church said. "I knew it was a great script, and I said I had not a chance in hell of getting this, because I knew how good it was, and I knew the caliber of actors that would be pursuing it." Church, 43, already has received plenty of accolades from national film critics groups. He lost to fellow Oscar nominees Clive Owen (Closer) at the Golden Globe Awards and Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby) at the Screen Actors Guild awards. Yet many prognosticators still consider him the favorite to claim one of acting's top prizes during today's ceremony at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre.The film topped numerous Top 10 lists for 2004 and earned five Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. Sideways won for Best Ensemble Cast at the SAG awards, which is considered that union's top prize. Today, he will compete with Owen, Freeman, Alan Alda (The Aviator) and Jamie Foxx (Collateral) with the hope of becoming the first Oscar winner among a collection of former NTSU students that includes Joe Don Baker (Walking Tall) and Peter Weller (RoboCop).

Church came to Denton in 1979 to pursue a degree in radio-television-film, specifically as a disc jockey. He worked as a deejay for a couple of years in the Rio Grande Valley, and chose NTSU both because it was close to his grandparents' home in Fort Worth and because of its campus radio station, which then had an album-rock format." I dug that it was close to my grandparents, and I thought the campus was cool," Church said. "It was a small town and had a good vibe to it. "He attended the university on and off until 1985, earning almost enough credits to graduate. He took some screenwriting and film production classes and dabbled in acting, but never took it seriously until a few years later, when an independent film led to his introduction to a Hollywood casting director. That encouraged Church to move from Dallas to Hollywood in the spring of 1989, where he won bit parts on episodes of Cheers, China Beach and 21 Jump Street and, a short time later, landed a regular role on the NBC sitcom Wings, which ran from 1990 to 1997.He worked steadily in television throughout the 1990s, and shared in the box-office success of George of the Jungle when Disney released it in 1997. In recent years, he saw the number of good roles dwindle and spent most of his time in Texas with his family.

Church spent most of 2002 touring the film festival circuit with his directorial debut, Rolling Kansas, which was partially set (but not filmed) in Denton but never received regular theatrical distribution. He also earned a nice paycheck by returning in a George of the Jungle sequel that went straight to video. Sideways was Church's only audition in all of 2003. He had previously auditioned for two of Payne's previous films - and almost won a role that went to Dermot Mulroney in About Schmidt - which stuck in the filmmaker's mind as he cast his latest movie. Church reportedly beat out George Clooney, among others, for the plum Sideways role." I was unfamiliar with him from his TV work. I think I'd seen half of one Wings. But I knew him because he had auditioned for Election and About Schmidt and made a big impression," Payne said. "My casting director and I asked him to come in for this one, and it worked out. I'm sure glad it did." Church and Giamatti had the benefit of spending two weeks together prior to shooting so they could become acquainted and more convincingly portray their characters' longtime friendship." It wasn't to rehearse, necessarily, but just to get them together, to taste wine and to play golf. If you didn't believe their chemistry, then the movie is going to stink," Payne said. "They'd never met before rehearsal, and they had to get in sync with each other. They really hit it off."

Besides the personal satisfaction, Church said he has enjoyed the whirlwind of attention that goes with being an Oscar nominee. Today will mark his first time to attend the ceremony. Since Sideways started generating positive buzz last summer, Church has received plenty of scripts and movie offers. He knows a return to working regularly probably will take him away from the ranch for much of the upcoming year. But he plans to return to his home in Texas whenever possible." It's vastly surpassed any critical acclaim that I ever got in TV. It's been thrilling," Church said. "Between the critics' groups that have embraced the movie and all the nominations, it's been great. It puts you in a different level. There's a lot of actors that have gone their whole careers and never been nominated."

Stumbling "Sideways" With Alexander Payne

2005-01-20T10:20:00.001-08:00

In the world of screenwriting idols, Alexander Payne occupies his own firmament. The writer/director of the film masterpieces "Citizen Ruth", "Election" and "About Schmidt" is again blowing audiences' minds with the original, multi-award-nominated-and-Golden-Globe-winning movie "Sideways". I was lucky enough to get my little hands on the very last ticket available to see the movie opening in the Sonoma County, California wine country. Sandra Oh, Thomas Haden Church and one of my favorite actresses, Virginia Madsen, were appearing along with the director at a swanky party hosted by the Sonoma Film Festival.

Was this the opportunity of a lifetime? Over the top excitement at meeting artists who I really admire? Ideal scenario for me to drink too much and make a perfect ass of myself? You bet!

The lovely, tasteful soiree at the Hotel Healdsburg was a cup runnething over that night. Healdsburg, California was eager to woo the filmmaker and maybe even kill him with kindness for setting "Sideways" in Santa Barbara instead of Sonoma or Napa. The appropriately named Cinema Epicuria (aka the Sonoma Film Festival) put on a spread of alcohol that made me feel like I had arrived on Burl Ives' Big Rock Candy Mountain where the licker flows in streams! (In their defense, we were following this romp with a two hour movie.)

There was a Pinot Noir table, a Sauvignon Blanc table and a Champagne table, not to mention the martini bar! "Nothing exceeds like excess" as my dear mother used to say. Waiters in tuxes circulating with tiny hor d'oeurves provided me with a tiny dinner. The grape was flowing and I was nervous about meeting my heroes. Thomas Haden Church was like a father to my children (along with Mr. Rogers and McGuyver) during all those years when, as a single mom, I parked them in front of the TV to watch "Wings." I'm sure he deserves some credit for the fact that my boys are really funny!

Besides wishing to thank Mr. Haden Church for being a great role model to children, I had a friend in common with Virginia Madsen. And my biggest ambition was to talk to Alexander Payne about a great fellow Nebraskan screenwriter, Jan Kelley Weinberg, and ask if he would take an interest in helping her. It would certainly be easy, I was sure. But that was before I discovered the martini bar and ended up inadvertently insulting Mr. Payne's beautiful wife Sandra Oh. Back to that later.

Virginia Madsen entered the room, a petite Goddess shining so brightly that people stepped back in awe. She stood all alone looking shy and temporarily lost, so I went up to her and introduced myself as a friend of Vivienne Radkoff (the screenwriter and executive producer of "Temptation" a movie Virginia starred in a couple of years ago.) Virginia Madsen, besides being a living doll, is a very earnest, sweet person. She actually guiltily remembered that she still owed Vivienne money for some postage.

At some point, the handsome, rugged Thomas Haden Church (wearing a butter smooth leather cowboy jacket - y'all know, he lives in Texas! ) had joined us. Overhearing Virginia reminded him that Paul Giamatti was indebted to him for some cash from the set of "Sideways". " I'm sure he'd be devastated to know he owes me," Haden Church deadpanned. At this point, the mixture of pinot and champagne I had quaffed nervously at the start of the event was just reaching an effect in my bloodstream. Imagining myself witty beyond belief, I proceeded to thank Mr. Haden Church for being a surrogate father to my children. He looked taken aback. "How'd they turn out?" he quizzed. Lots of people arrived at this point. Later, my denouement with Haden Church would, unfortunately,also follow my encounter with the martini bar.
I'm an excitable girl and the sheer glory of the occasion (plus the martini bar) soon had me in upbeat conversation with whoever I could collar. I hung around my friend Trevor Cole, owner of Zebulon's Lounge in Petaluma, a stylish live jazz club that serves fine wines and Belgian beer. He was there with his usual group of "hot" and interesting people. At one point I turned around and there was Sandra Oh. In person, she has exquisite, porcelain skin and perfect, delicate features. I was so struck by her oriental beauty that I was reminded of a movie I had just seen, "Hero". Before my brain had time to process all the peripheral implications, I blurted out, "Wouldn't it be cool, now that this movie is so successful, to star in one of those martial arts epics like "Hero"?

To Ms. Oh's great credit she did not take offense with my boorish comment, which some might interpret as racist or typecasting at its worst. I sincerely meant to compliment her beauty, and the beauty of the film. "Have you seen "Hero?" she inquired graciously. Already infected with foot-in-mouth disease, I began to hemorrhage, "OH GOD YES! It's beautiful, so Beautiful! Absolutely gorgeous! A work of GENIUS!" At this point, she was whisked away by someone more important than me.

There was still some clear delicious liquid left in my glass, and so I nursed it. Thomas Haden Church was deep in conversation with a couple at the bar, his buttery leather back to me. He had been parked in that spot most of the evening, avoiding the general crowd of Northern Californian local yokels. "He can't leave Sonoma County without getting at least one pitch from a local screenwriter!" I said to myself with martini logic. Moments before, the role I had originally imagined for Sean Penn or John Malkovitch or Campbell Scott (David , the Russian mafioso who takes over the US

government) in my thriller screenplay "The Sword of Allah" - WOULD BE PERFECT FOR THOMAS HADEN CHURCH! "Make hay while the sun shines!" I said to myself cheerfully as I tapped the buttery leather shoulder and Haden Church's irritated face turned to greet me. His worst nightmare! Another screenwriter with a pitch!

"O MY GOD ARE THEY EVERYWHERE?" he seemed to be screaming inwardly. "What kind of screenwriter lives around here? " I could see it in his eyes. The poor man had long had it with my kind. Undeterred, I stumbled and lurched ahead with my pitch, "I have a role that is TOTALLY perfect for you. He's a Russian mafioso who takes over the U.S. government. There are these sexy twins and a murderous bitch with a brass champagne glass and ah....." Haden Church showed the same interest in my screenplay as a recently gutted cod at the fish market. His eyes glazed over and an invisible hood descended to cover all signs of human life in them. "Long practice in Hollywood" I surmised. Saved by the proverbial bell, someone shouted "It's time for the movie!" and Haden Church gratefully resumed his public duties.

The crowd walked, teetered, lurched and wove their way the two blocks from the Hotel Healdsburg to the Raven Theater. We were promised an audience with Alex Payne and the cast members after the showing. I highly recommend sharing alot of nice California wine and martinis with your fellow audience members before you see a film. The movie "Sideways" is so very funny and the sound of a whole roomful of people laughing uproariously, all inhibitions flying three sheets to the wind, is the most heartwarming sound to experience.

"Sideways" like Payne's other masterpieces, contains a brilliant mix of dry wit and slapstick comedy that achieve archetypal status by perpetuating ancient mythologies. In "Citizen Ruth" the inflated claims of the opposing activists became more hilarious with each raising of the hyperbole bar in a classic slapstick routine that has existed since forever. "Elections" laundry list of Job-like punishments meted out to the hapless Matthew Broderick ends with him eating dinner alone in an apartment the size of a closet, a total washout. In "About Schmidt " we are treated to Jack Nicholson's incredulous responses to things that happen to him as to a modern Candide figure, when he leaves a sheltered existence for his daughter's wedding.

As a chronicler of American life in the midwest, Alex Payne has no equal. He is the equivalent of the great American novelist. Now I am a person who has actually survived two weeks spent in Nebraska (at Lew Hunter's wonderful Screenwriting Colony in Superior.) Nebraska, in its innocent, upstanding way, is totally surrealistic; I can see why it took Payne so long to leave this palate for other realms.

"Sideways" lovingly portrays the California many of us who live here know well. What our hero seeks in going wine tasting north of L.A. in the bucolic countryside surrounding Santa Barbara is the endless possibility of reinventing oneself. It gives hope to those of us who dwell here. But even the most beautiful afternoon drinking wine with a breathtaking view of the mountains can end up in drunken rage, perceived betrayal and extremely silly behavior of all kinds.

What's so wonderful about "Sideways" is the dead on realism of the scenes in the motel room and in the women's apartment. In the movie and its characters Payne accurately captures the wonders and disappointments of life in this state. The juxtaposition of the claustrophobic, in your face depressing drabness of the motel room the guys are sharing vs. the beautiful countryside.

Californians love to travel the state, meet new people and get invited over to their houses. That's what we're here for! But sudden intimacy with strangers can be volatile. Sometimes the dream boat turns out to have a fiancee and sometimes a great woman like Virginia Madsen wants to see you again. You always get another chance to reinvent yourself and try again. And it's a big state!

That's why, at the end of a short Q&A, the commentator (who had predictably asked Alexander Payne only one question, why didn't he film the movie in Sonoma County?) requested a question from the audience and my little hand shot up in the air! The fear-striken look on the faces of Sandra Oh and Thomas Haden Church when they realized I had been called on was something I'll not soon forget (sort of "who let her out of her cage again?" ) But my question was directed not at them, but Alex Payne. Fortunately no one had had time to tell him about me. "That was the most INTIMATE movie I have ever seen!" I gushed. "How did you achieve that up-close feeling, like you could practically smell their breath? What were your inspirations in achieving that effect?"

He smiled. "Good question!" Out of the corner of my eye I could see visible relief on the faces of the two actors. " The way we created the scenes in the motel room was by using multiple cameras and the actors never knew which angle was going to be used," he answered. "It made for more naturalistic performances. My inspiration came from movies made in the seventies, like "Klute." Also documentaries." The audience was fascinated and there were more questions, but time was up and the commentator told the audience to leave because the next group of mere mortals were to see the movie.

I wanted to say something more to the director and started to approach him. To my great surprise, Alex Payne jumped off the stage and walked towards me. I said to him " I wrote an article that mentioned you. It was about about Janet and David Webb Peoples. They said you were their favorite filmmaker. " Payne looked at me quizzically " oh yes, he wrote..." I jumped on his line and blurted out "The Unforgiven. Blade Runner." Payne looked skeptical, "But he wasn't the only screenwriter on that one." "No, you're correct," I replied, "there were three." Payne focused totally on talking to me as we passed hundreds of faces lining the aisles eager to interact with him. I realized later that he used me to whisk him out of there, but I sure didn't mind. Besides being a brilliant filmmaker Alexander Payne is very handsome, with dark penetrating eyes and fine features. We fell into step with his production designer, who he politely introduced me to, and walked out of the theater into the lobby together. He said "She can tell you what our influences were; we watched alot of movies together from the seventies in preproduction." Just as I was about to tell him about my brilliant friend the Nebraskan screenwriter, Payne announced "Please excuse me, I have to leave." Politely (How unusual is this man in Hollywood! Manners, consideration for a newcomer, respect!) he shook my hand and departed. To my relief, I had not stumbled nor made a fool of myself but I do need to say I'm disappointed for Jan Kelley Weinberg. Blame it on the martinis.