Sideways, the new film from Alexander Payne, won several Golden Globes last night. I’ll leave the artistic judgments to more qualified voices, but allow me to point out how well this film markets wine, and specifically Santa Barbara County wineries like Firestone, Foxen, Fess Parker and Kalyra.
Actually, the lead character Miles, an ornery oenophile, disdains Fess Parker, but he adores the others.
Fox Searchlight does a seamless job of integrated marketing, making a map to all the locations in the film available for download from the studio’s site.
For me, it calls to mind Jay McInerney’s 1980s novel, Bright Lights Big City, and how fans of the book would frequent the bars of lower Manhattan looking to live the written experience for themselves. Of course, McInerney’s publisher did not provide a map, but that was then. If the book was coming out today, they well might.
