Interview

Filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter makes quirky movies and equally idiosyncratic wine lists

By Lettie Teague

Jonathan Nossiter is trying very hard to make himself heard. It's lunchtime at Balthazar and the noise level is just a few decibels short of deafening, augmented by what seems to be an unusually large number of people singing "Happy Birthday" to their fellow diners--hardly the sort of activity one would normally associate with this hipper-than-thou New York bistro.

It's difficult to imagine many occasions on which Nossiter hasn't been able to make his feelings known, for he is a man of many convictions, all of them willingly expressed. Fortunately, they are matched by an equal number of accomplishments. Nossiter is the director of the critically acclaimed film Sunday, which won Best Film at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and is opening at movie houses across the country this fall. It's a quietly powerful picture about a chance meeting between a man and a woman in the unfashionable New York City borough of Queens. Nossiter is also a sought-after restaurant wine consultant, having created acclaimed wine lists for such Manhattan clients as Balthazar, n Tapas Bar, Rice, Cafe Gitane and Il Buco.

We are sitting over plates of perfectly cooked fish and a half-bottle of the '95 Lucien Crochet Le Chene Sancerre, discussing how Nossiter has managed to combine two very different, and very successful, careers.

Q. Which was your first passion, wine or movies?

A. I've been involved with wine, in one form or another, since I was 15 and working at restaurants in Paris. I grew up all over Europe--my father was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. It wasn't really until 1987, when I worked with [director] Adrian Lyne on Fatal Attraction, that I really found out what it was like to make a movie. Adrian was my film school.

Q. You seem to have intertwined the two worlds very well, but how much do they overlap? Is the way you look at a wine and a movie similar?

A. I look for much the same thing in both. With a wine, as with a movie, I want to be seduced by what I see or, at the very least, intrigued. It doesn't have to be an obvious Christy Turlington kind of thing, but there has to be something about the nature of it--the wine or the movie--that makes me want to continue, that seduces me. Wine should be like a story when you drink it: it should have a beginning, a middle and an end. The nose is the preamble, and if it's an interesting story it should go somewhere, it should develop. And, finally, it should have an ending, a resolution. Winemakers who make wines like that, wines that are interesting, that have personality, are role models for me more than any filmmaker that I can think of. They give me something to aspire to.

Q. The only wine reference made in your movie Sunday is when Madeline offers Oliver a "grisly domestic Chardonnay." It sounded pretty grim. What's the story behind that?

A. This is going to make me incredibly unpopular, but you'd have to put a gun to my head to get me to drink a California Chardonnay. It's a wine that's all about America's culture of marketing. It's on every wine list; it's as if every second movie theater in America was playing only Showgirls. I predict that for every 20 Chardonnay vines planted today there will be just one in 200 years. Basically what I've created at Balthazar is an anti-Chardonnay wine list.

Q. Let's talk about the Balthazar list, which features wines from both well-known and little-known regions in France at a wide range of prices, from $15 for a Cotes du Ventoux to $700 for the '78 Lafite. What's your philosophy?

A. By calling the Balthazar list anti-Chardonnay, I mean that it doesn't condescend to customers; it doesn't assume they have a vocabulary limited to two words: Chardonnay and Cabernet. It's also an homage to the small unsung winemakers who are making wines with a real sense of place, not marketing, wines that speak of individual human experience, of a long-standing culture and involvement with nature. Like the '91 Domaine de Baruel Vin de Pays des Cevennes Rouge from Provence, which is amazing and only $28 a bottle. And then there's the '95 Schleret Sylvaner, which has so much character and so much going on--and it's only $12 for a carafe.

Q. I understand that after each day's filming of Sunday you and your crew went back to your apartment to watch the dailies over a bottle of wine. What were you drinking?

A. We were drinking some amazing wines. Actually, we pretty much cleaned out my entire cellar. There were lots of Nuits-Saint-Georges from the mid- Eighties and my entire Alsace collection, including the Cuvee Theo from Domaine Weinbach. We also drank quite a few Volnays. I'm a big Volnay fan.

Q. Did your crew realize how lucky they were?

A. I think I realized how lucky I was to have people still working with me, given the budget of our film.

Q. What about food? Was it as exalted as the wines you were drinking?

A. No. We only ate pizza, although it was really great coal-oven pizza from Lombardi's, which is down the street from my apartment. We had clam or ricotta pizza with white wine and sausage or mushroom pizza with red.

Q. Have you ever taken wine with you to the movies?

A. I sneak wine into the movies all the time. Usually it's a half-bottle of something that I drink straight out of the bottle. Bruno Paillard Champagne is one of my favorites. The more dubious I am about the quality of the movie, the better the wine I'll usually bring, so I won't feel as if I'm wasting my time.

Q. What would you bring to your own movie, Sunday?

A. Oh, it would have to be at least a bottle of some 19th-century Yquem.

Q. How about a horror movie?

A. That's easy. It would have to be a California Chardonnay. A big, alcoholic, out-of-control monster.

Q. To a Marx Brothers movie?

A. A Brachetto d'Acqui [a sparkling red wine from Piedmont]. It's such a ridiculous wine, so maybe it would have to be a W. C. Fields movie for that wine.

Q. A date movie?

A. You mean a movie that I took some woman to, hoping to seduce her? I don't think I can answer that. I don't think I even know what a date movie is. I did take a woman to Last Year in Marienbad once. Needless to say, that relationship didn't work out. (Nossiter shakes his head; the subject is changed.)

Q. I understand that you're working on a new movie called Signs & Wonders. Can you tell me about it?

A. It's a psychological thriller set in Greece. We're working on the script now and probably won't start shooting until next spring or fall, but I'm looking forward to getting there and tasting some wines. I hear that Greek wines have improved enormously since I lived there. As a matter of fact, I won't be ready to shoot until I have a firm grasp of all the best new wine producers.