Freddy Rodriguez & Rachael Taylor Interview, Bottle Shock

MoviesOnline sat down with Freddy Rodriguez and Rachael Taylor at the Los Angeles press day for their new movie, “Bottle Shock,” directed by Randall Miller and shot on location in California’s wine country. Based on a true story, the film reveals America’s initiation into and contribution to vinification, along with the enterprising and passionate artisans who bottle it.

It's 1976, and Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) is struggling to create the perfect chardonnay at Chateau Montelena, his vineyard in the not-yet-famous Napa Valley, where he has jeopardized everything for a dream. His son, Bo (Chris Pine), at first glance doesn't seem to have inherited his father’s love for the family business, and the two of them are often found duking it out in the backyard boxing ring, each trying to knock some sense into the other.

Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman), a British expatriate living in Paris who owns the strugging Academie du Vin, develops an idea to educate Parisians on the new wines coming out of California. A twist of fate along a dusty road brings the floundering vintner and the struggling shop owner together and forever changes both their lives and the wine industry.

Australian actress Rachael Taylor (“Transformers”) plays beautiful intern Sam who spurns Bo’s advances in favor of his best friend, budding vintner Gustavo played by the award-winning Freddy Rodriguez (“Six Feet Under,” “Bobby,” “Grindhouse,” “Ugly Betty”).

Here’s what Rachael Taylor and Freddy Rodriguez had to tell us about their new movie and the excitement of doing their L.A. press day during an earthquake:

MoviesOnline: Is your hair lighter than it used to be?

RACHAEL: Well, maybe. Yeah, I think possibly. Maybe it's just summertime.

MoviesOnline: Just wondering if you had done something. We saw you a couple months ago.

RACHAEL: Yeah. During the Shutter stuff?

MoviesOnline: Did you enjoy the earthquake today? Was it your first one?

RACHAEL: It was my first one. And I've got to say, I got a bit actressy around it. And I was really terrified, and I clutched Freddy's arm. Because I've never been in an earthquake before, so I didn't know at what point it was going to stop, or if it gets worse, or what the deal was. But it was fine. I survived.

MoviesOnline: And Freddy, you've been through them.

FREDDY: No, I've been through one. But you know, I'm a husband and a dad, so I went into husband/dad mode, and just said, "Hey, everything's going to be fine."

RACHAEL: He was like, "Let's just move..." Really quietly he was like, "Let's just move out from under the chandelier."

FREDDY: Yeah. Before it becomes a guillotine.

MoviesOnline: Were you on a high floor?

RACHAEL: No, we were on this floor. Floor #2.

FREDDY: There was a gigantic chandelier above us, you know? Not good.

MoviesOnline: So what did you guys know about wine before this? And what do you think you might have learned? Especially you, since you had...

FREDDY: Yeah. You know, I gotta be honest, I didn't really know much about wine. What I knew about wine is what was served at dinner parties and dinners, you know? But I didn't know all the intricacies of wine. Not until I got out there and learned how to sniff it and, what is it...? Swirl it.

RACHAEL: Swirl, sniff, sip, swoosh, swallow...

FREDDY: The five S's...And then I learned all of that, and really tasted great wine. There's nothing like tasting great wine. Before I went out there, I used to ask myself, "What's all the hoopla about? Why is everyone into wine so much?" And it's not until you taste an excellent glass of wine that you truly appreciate and understand it.

RACHAEL: You do have that wine epiphany, I think.

FREDDY: Yeah!

RACHAEL: I sort of actually was a wine enthusiast before this movie, but by no means knowledgeable about it. And I feel like my palate has become slightly more discerning since shooting this movie. But you do have that first special glass, and you go, "Ah, I understand now!"

MoviesOnline: And what was your first special glass?

RACHAEL: [sighs]

MoviesOnline: Do you remember which one?

RACHAEL: I do remember which one, but it's a sort of point of contention because it's a rival vineyard. But it was the Cayman wine. Cabernet Sauvignon 2004. And it was a really, really glorious drop.

FREDDY: Yeah. It was good. It was really good.

MoviesOnline: That must have been fairly recent then?

RACHAEL: It was fairly recent. That was when I was shooting the movie. Just before we shot the movie.

MoviesOnline: So was it a special occasion?

RACHAEL: It was a special occasion because we had only just got in to Sonoma. And myself, and Freddy, and Chris Pine, and Bill Pullman and the director and producer, Randall Miller and Jody Savin, all went out for our first of many nice cast dinners. We went to this extraordinary little restaurant called Harvest Moon right off Sonoma square, and it was really a beautiful night.

MoviesOnline: Are you each wine snobs now?

FREDDY: [laughs] "Wine snobs." No. By no means. I can just taste it and tell you whether it's good or not. That's the extent of me being a wine snob.

RACHAEL: If knowing what you like and what you dislike...Does that make you a snob?

MoviesOnline: No.

RACHAEL: Well, I'm in the "not quite too snobby" category. But I know what I like now.

MoviesOnline: Do you see yourself pursuing wine education?

RACHAEL: Maybe not, you know, formal wine education. But I'd love to continue to learn about it.

FREDDY: Through trial and error!

RACHAEL: [laughs] Trial and error. Yeah, right. But I'd really like to go back to Napa Valley. And next time I'm back in Australia, I'm going to do an Australian wine tour. I really enjoyed it. It was really fun. I liked the wine tour thing. The process of winemaking is a really interesting thing.

MoviesOnline: Did you meet the real people your characters were based on?

FREDDY: I did, yes. My character is based off of a gentleman named Gustavo Brambila, who actually has his own winery now called Gustavo Thrace, and he was a very important character in the film. And I got to sit down and talk to him one afternoon, and I was very fortunate because I had something to pull from, you know? I think sometimes when people play true life characters, 9 out of 10 times they have to watch videos or listen to audio tapes. And I had him for one afternoon. So what you see on screen is what I got from that day that we met.

MoviesOnline: Did his wine go over to the competition, or is that just part of the story?

FREDDY: It's part of the story. But the part where he made his own wine and eventually broke off and started his own thing is true.

MoviesOnline: So his wine didn't come in second?

RACHAEL: That was the Stags Leap. It's a different vineyard.

MoviesOnline: I loved your relationship with Miguel.

FREDDY: Oh, yeah!

MoviesOnline: Was that there from the beginning?

FREDDY: Yeah, it was there from the beginning. Yeah, it was in the script. You know, I think that was derived from Gustavo's relationship with, I think, his father. You know, his father was an immigrant farm worker, and Gustavo was the first Latin American person to get a degree at UC Davis in viniculture. And his father pushed him to do so.

MoviesOnline: And is Sam based on a real person?

RACHAEL: No, Sam is one of the few fictional characters in the movie. But there was a woman. Obviously I did some research about female vintners and winemakers, and there was this one woman that I met by the name of Heidi Barrett, who is Bo Barrett's wife. Obviously Bo Barrett is the Chateau Montelena winemaker who Chris Pine plays in the movie. And she was just such an intelligent and knowledgeable woman, but still so distinctly feminine to me, and very full of life and vital. And I just kind of wanted to bring those components of Heidi to Sam. They did actually have interns at Chateau Montelena, but about four or five years after that sort of seminal wine tasting event. So they just pulled that timeline up slightly, I guess.

MoviesOnline: Did they put the interns in the little shed your character stays in?

RACHAEL: Yeah, sure. [laughs] Actually, Bo Barrett told me that at one point, they had them stay in an old office. But it's not nearly as romantic as being in like a sunlit shed. [laughs]

FREDDY: With the incredible view...

RACHAEL: I know! I think there's sort of a magical realist sort of element to the Sam character. In a way, you almost go...Not that you don't completely buy it, but she's got such a kind of positivity to her or something. And it's something sort of slightly just magical, I think, that shed moment. It's like, "You don't really live here, but it looks really pretty!" [laughs]

MoviesOnline: How difficult is dropping in and out of accent?

RACHAEL: Well, I hope I don't drop in and out of it in the movie! [laughs] No, it's hard. Because I'm also from Tasmania, which means I have like a broad Australian accent. I'm not even from a city. I'm from like the outback. But I work on it. And I continue to work on it. I think you should never stop learning. I would never be like, "Okay, I've nailed that American accent now." I continue to learn. And I'm shooting a movie next week, and I've been going to see my dialogue coach all week. You just have to keep honing it. It's not always perfect. You've just got to keep going at it. But I really do enjoy it. I enjoy learning accents. And I enjoy the freedom of speaking in someone else's voice. Speaking in someone else's accent lends a lot to a character, I think.

MoviesOnline: Rachael, how was it being the only female on set? And Freddy, is there racism in the wine industry?

RACHAEL: Well, there certainly are some very prolific female winemakers now. I mean, Heidi Barrett is one of the most prestigious winemakers in Napa. And I think Sam obviously would have been one of the earliest viniculture students--if she really existed in 1976, she would have been one of the kind of forbearers. But yeah, women are known as being very accomplished in the winemaking industry. They have very sharp senses of smell and senses of taste, which makes them very good at what they do, and a very good intuition apparently for the land, which is very important in winemaking--how the seasons change and how the earth changes, and how no season in winemaking is the same. But what I tried to do was to not...I didn't want to make her tomboyish just because she's a woman in a man's world. I thought there was a really nice opportunity with her for her to keep her distinctly girly. And I wanted to do that after my meeting with Heidi. You know, Heidi said to me that when she was young and she first started working in the vineyards, that she would still always wear blue mascara. It was the '80s, I guess. She'd still wear blue mascara to work in the vineyards. And she said, "Well you're still a lady, you know?" And I thought that was lovely, and I wanted to keep that.

FREDDY: Yeah, racism in the wine industry. Well, you gotta think, 9 out of 10 Latinos that work in the wine industry are the fruit pickers, the people harvesting the grapes. And so there's obviously a sense of superiority, I think, maybe from the hierarchy, you know? And that's what made Gustavo so different, is that he wasn't one of those guys. He was amongst the winemakers and amongst the people conducting business, and not one of the grape pickers. And that's what attracted me to him. So yeah, I think those guys experienced that stuff all the time.

MoviesOnline: It's not that easy to do, so it's not like they're just laborers...

FREDDY: Well, that's how they get treated out there. I mean yeah, the way they pick the grape and the time that they pick the grape are all determined by the winemakers. So in a sense, they are kind of laborers who are just taught how to do it and told when to do it.

MoviesOnline: Did you do any wine tours off camera?

FREDDY: Well hey, we have to do our research, right? Excuse!

RACHAEL: We did a lot of really nice dinners, and one wine tour. And we just did another wine tour recently when we went up to launch the film in Sonoma. It was the nicest experience I've ever had shooting a movie, honestly. I mean, I've only shot three. [laughs] But it was really lovely. And it was a cast that any young artist would be absolutely privileged to work with. So it was fun.

MoviesOnline: What have you shot since then, and what's coming out next?

FREDDY: I executive produced my first film, being released by Overture on Thanksgiving weekend. It's called Nothing Like the Holidays. And it's myself and Alfred Molina and John Leguizamo and Debra Messing, Luis Guzman. And it's a family holiday film.

RACHAEL: I went back to Australia and shot a movie there called Cedar Boys. Which is actually really interesting, because it was worth going back to Australia to shoot this because I really think the story's important. There are a lot of racial tensions at the moment in Australia between the Lebanese community and the white Australian community. And it's set against the backdrop of that. And then I'm about to go next week and do a comedy called Splinterheads. And it's slightly nerve-wracking, actually, because I've never done comedy before.

MoviesOnline: Who's in that? Where are you shooting?

RACHAEL: We're shooting it in New York. It's called Splinterheads, and the lead boy, there's no one sort of super famous in it, but the lead boy is a stand up comedian by the name of Tom Middleditch, who's done a few little pieces for Saturday Night Live and was from the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York. And it's just like, I don't know, I'm really drawn to doing different stuff and different challenges, and I feel like it's going to be kind of scary, because he's a big improv guy. I don't know how to deal with that yet. It'll be fun.

MoviesOnline: Can you talk about your love scene in this? You should have stayed together.

RACHAEL: I'm not sure that they didn't stay together, actually. For me, in the film, I think that the moment between Gustavo and Sam is like a lovely kind of impulsive moment of romance, you know? It's not really thought out. She just has this respect for his passion for wine, and she just goes, "Sexy man, fantastic, in my shed." [laughs] But I think she also is really happy for the person that Bo is becoming, you know? She's really happy to see him suddenly develop this passion and champion his own vineyard and his father's work, and she's optimistic about who he's going to turn into. I don't know, maybe in the sequel?

FREDDY: "Bottle Shock: The Sequel." Yeah, it was beautiful. I thought it was really classy and just beautifully shot, you know what I mean? Just the location up there is so incredibly breathtaking, and I think you can really see it in the film.

RACHAEL: It was a special scene, actually. I think when you and I were shooting it, we were like, "This is going to be poetry!"

MoviesOnline: How many takes did that scene take?

FREDDY: Forty.

RACHAEL: Fun little anecdote. We actually... [laughs] We broke the bed, right?

FREDDY: We broke the bed. Yeah. Right at the end of the scene, I throw her on the bed and I go on top...

RACHAEL: It kept breaking.

FREDDY: I hope that's in the bloopers. On the DVD. [laughs]

MoviesOnline: What was the reaction in Napa from people who lived through this time?

FREDDY: I think they were grateful because everyone there knew about the story, you know? I never heard of the story before, but over there, everyone knew of it. And I think they were really grateful that a film was being done about that event.

RACHAEL: You know, this movie is just so pleasant to watch. It's just a lovely experience. There's nothing nasty in it. There's nothing violent in it. It's not a dark movie. It is like a good glass of wine. It's just pleasant, and it just has a nice little aftertaste, and it's like a nice Sunday afternoon glass of wine or something. And I think when people saw the movie up in Napa, obviously they're intimately a part of that environment and that landscape, they were really pleased that that's what we were saying about them. Something happy and easy, and there's this great sort of lightness to that world up there. I think they were very charmed by it.

“Bottle Shock” opens in theaters on August 8th.