Sandra Oh, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen and Paul Giamatti in Sideways | Image: Fox Searchlight
If you've ever seen Alexander Payne's 2004 movie Sideways, you're familiar with at least two of the director's sardonic (as well as his sardonic treatment of) film characters. In this case, Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church as Miles and Jack are having a last hurrah before Jack's wedding, and it involves quite a bit of drunken debauchery. How drunken? Well, there seems to be a difference of opinion on that between Church and Giamatti. Let mental_floss, in their list of facts about Sideways, explain:
5. THE ACTORS DRANK GRAPE JUICE. AT LEAST SOME OF THEM DID.
Church estimated that grape juice or non-alcoholic wine was what they consumed 95 percent of the time. Conversely, Giamatti claimed the actors drank real wine, and that he was actually very drunk after shooting a dinner scene.
One might expect the screenplay to show the hard partying characters regretting their decisions in the form of hangovers the next day, but in real life, the actors paid dearly for a mere meal.
8. THE MALE LEADS GOT FOOD POISONING.Giamatti and Church got sick after eating at Miles' mother’s house; at one point during filming, Church had a temperature of 104 degrees.