Sideways and the Allure of the "Man's Golf Trip"

Sideways found a wide audience, and was generally well received, but what backlash it got was about its focus on middle-aged white men and their problems. To which I say: aren't middle-aged white men allowed a movie about their problems? The movie did take the feelings and personalites of the key women in the story(Maya and Stephanie) into account, but it was a "guy's story" at heart.

And this guy right here LOVED how the story was framed: a golf trip.

I've done those in real life, but never with just two guys. Three or four, more usually, so as to make sure that there is a "group rather than a couple."

And Sideways captured the allure of such trips.

They start quiet and slow, usually with somebody meeting somebody at somebody else's house. There may indeed be a need to be polite to someone's wife or even parents before "setting forth with the guys" for the trip. Then a long drive(in my case, inevitably to a coastal area, pretty much the case for the guys in Sideways, too.)

And at the beginning of the golf trip, always this thought: "Will we have some sort of adventure on this trip?" Nothing major, just something to remember. It could be comical. It could be...women. It could be a good drinking session or talking about old times over cigars.

There is usually a motel involved. Or a timeshare. One's time is split between "outdoors in the sun"(on the golf course) and "going out at night" (usually to a cool restaurant with pretty waitresses and sometimes, a good band.)

And when the trip is over, and the long drive home is made ...and the feeling "This was great, but I need to break off from these guys for awhile before we get tired of each other; I need to go home"....that's the end of the ritual. Til next time.

What I found amazing about "Sideways" is that it captured the relaxation and pleasure of the "man's golf trip ritual" and turned it into a much more "major sequence of events" with a much more difficult pair of men to share our time with. In the end, "Sideways" is a MOVIE, and so we get such "movie scenes" as the rescue of the wallet from the home of the Naked Obese People Having Sex, and the comedy of the "faked car crash into the tree." We get hot sex(Jack and Stephanie) yearning romance (Miles and Maya) and the realities of male lives rather played out too soon (Jack's still locked into the horndog POV of all women and it looks distinctly infantile in a man in his forties.)

There IS an adventure in the story of Sideways, and when Jack and Miles return to the home of Jack's rich future in-laws to be -- Jack with a broken nose, Miles with a wrecked car -- we realize that the story went a lot of places, that this particular "Man's golf trip" was truly an adventure and an odyssey.. And yet, as Miles drops Jack off, there is that "wind down" ("I better not spend anymore time with this guy for awhile") that perfectly matches how our "real life," comparatively non-dramatic golf trips conclude.

There are lots of reasons that Sideways was a hit, and won that Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar(I didn't even talk about all the wine talk here) but I contend that the film's "ode to the Man's Golf Trip" was a wonderful hook for the movie, made me smile, made it memorable...and connected it to the real life of millions of men.