Alan Rickman, left and Bill Pullman star in the new film "Bottle Shock." (Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer)

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By Evan Henerson, Staff Writer

Does the public have a palate - or at least a nose - for a wine-inspired movie, four years post-"Sideways"?

Bill Pullman and Alan Rickman, who play key figures in a pivotal event that made California wine history, hope so.

And so do the writing/directing team of Randall Miller and Jody Savin, whose film "Bottle Shock" opens Wednesday.

In 1976, a Paris-based British wine merchant dreamed up a stunt to boost interest in his shop. Steven Spurrier, 34, traveled to California's Napa Valley, sampled several of the local vineyards' offerings and brought bottles back to Paris for a blind taste test. With the creme de la creme of French oenophiles serving as judges, the California vinos beat out their French competition.

Time magazine ran a small article about the results of the test. Shortly thereafter, bottles of the winning wines started leaping off the racks in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. The days of perceived embarrassment over drinking California wines were officially over.

And Miller and Savin knew they had found in the Judgment of Paris a tale ripe for the picking.

"We were like, `Oh my goodness, what a great story!"' says Savin, "Bottle Shock's" co-writer and producer. "We weren't quite sure what the movie was, but we felt the backdrop of this story would be great."

Co-written by Miller, Savin and Ross Schwartz and filmed on location in Northern California, "Bottle Shock" divides its focus between the test quest of Spurrier (played by Alan Rickman) and the wranglings of Jim and Bo Barrett (Bill Pullman and Chris Pine), the father and son who ran the struggling Napa vineyard, Chateau Montelena. Freddy Rodriguez, Rachel Taylor and Dennis Farina also star.

LA.COM chatted with several members of "Bottle Shock's" cast and crew and unearthed some choice anecdotes. These "wine droppings," if you will, follow.

 

Drinking in the research

The actors were permitted to sample the merchandise on more than one occasion, although putting words to taste presented something of a challenge.

"I had a talk with this woman about the difference between `buttery' or `full,"' says Pine. "Take the Chateau Montelena: It's got a big kind of citrus-y feel in that first taste. I thought it was buttery, but apparently it's not buttery."

"I'm no discerning palate," adds Pullman. "It tasted French to me, not American. That was as far as I got."

 

From slacker vintner to the Enterprise

Before he took over the reins of Chateau Montelena, Bo Barrett was a largely uneducated, self-confessed "surfer dude." In the film, Barrett is a composite of three of founder Jim Barrett's sons; a screw-up who eventually makes good.

In search of an actor to play Bo, casting director Rick Pagano instructed Miller and Savin to check out Chris Pine's work in a production of Neil LaBute's "Fat Pig" at the Geffen Playhouse. Pine, the son of actors Robert Pine and Gwynne Gilford, was playing the brutally honest best friend of a man who is dating an overweight woman.

The filmmakers liked what they saw. So, apparently, did "Star Trek" director J.J. Abrams, who subsequently tapped Pine to play the young James T. Kirk in the upcoming "Star Trek" movie.

"He captured the stage, so we basically took a chance with him," Miller says of Pine. "We had never seen him do a big role. Of course, later he gets `Star Trek,' so that turned out pretty well."

 

Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction plays better.

Among the creative liberties taken with actual events involving the Barretts and the Judgment of Paris:

Several characters, including those played by Taylor, Farina and Eliza Dushku, were invented.

Events were compressed or placed in different order than from when they really happened. Gustavo Brambila (Rodriguez's character) did branch off to make his own wine, but not during the time period that "Bottle Shock" depicts.

And that now famous taste test took place in a hotel, not in a picturesque outdoor courtyard.

"I said to Randy, `You must be joking,"' recalls Rickman. "We're going to have a competition for world-class wines in the open air with the sun beating down on the wines?

"We're kind of dying with sweat, and I'm looking at this wine and thinking, `All this wine would be ruined by now,' but Randy found a great location," Rickman continues. "He said, `It's a movie!' and he's right."

 

The missing Spurrier

The Barretts and other Northern California vintners gave the filmmakers all the access and help they needed. Spurrier had sold the rights to his life story to another project and was therefore prohibited from contributing directly to the "Bottle Shock" research.

Rickman, who had previously met Spurrier through a mutual acquaintance, had a single phone conversation with the wine expert, and persuaded him to allow the film to use his name.

"I knew it was never going to be an impersonation. It was so clearly that I was going to play the person that was in the script," says Rickman. "I think he was a little horrified that I was playing him."

"We have a little fun with him because Alan is a bigger-than-life character, but we're hoping (the character) is very close to who he is," adds Savin. "We think he's a hero. He changed the world of wine."

At Rickman's suggestion, the filmmakers added an end credit note about Spurrier's arranging a 30th anniversary Judgment of Paris retest in 2006. Spurrier was convinced the French wines would emerge victorious, but, alas, the California entries triumphed again.

 

Dynamics of Team Miller-Savich

When they tap an actor they like, Miller and Savich get positively bulldog-ish in their quest to rope him/her into doing their movie.

Rickman's representatives had twice passed on the team's offer to play a kidnapped patriarch in their upcoming film "Nobel Son." Through a friend, Miller and Savin got a number and managed to snag some phone time with Rickman while he was shooting the film "Perfume."

Convincing the actor that the "Nobel Son" shoot would take but 12 days - and rearranging the schedule to accommodate the promise - Miller and Savin got their man.

"We're pretty persistent," says Miller, "as you can imagine we have to be because we make these independent movies."

As "Bottle Shock" was coming together, Miller and Savin turned to Rickman again. Initially lukewarm to the subject, Rickman asked to see 20 pages of the script, and Miller quickly agreed.

Except no script existed, which meant Savin had to dash off a quick 20 overnight. The, er, rough draft turned out to be enough for Rickman.

"He and Jody are such a kind of yin/yang of energy on the set," says Rickman. "I like the movies that they write, and I like the groups of people they put together. There's room for a lot of opinions."

Pullman had also enjoyed working in "Nobel Son," but the staging of his play "Expedition 6" at San Francisco's Magic Theatre would conflict with the "Bottle Shock" shooting schedule.

Or so Pullman thought, before Miller and Savin went to work on him.

"We said, `But you don't do the play on Monday and Tuesday. We'll get someone to drive you back and forth between San Francisco and Napa,"' says Miller. "Basically, we rearranged the whole schedule around him. In the other movie, we rearranged the whole schedule around Alan. It seemed only fair."

A grateful Pullman agreed and joined Team Miller-Savich again.

"They're around each other all the time. They're scrambling all the time, and I've come to really love them a lot," says Pullman. "They're wacky sometimes, but there's something kind of hilarious. They're usually just inches ahead of catastrophe."

Evan Henerson (818) 713-3651

evan.henerson@dailynews.com