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Bottle Shock

Alan Rickman, Chris Pine, Bill Pullman

Barrack Obama is an elitist. If Senator Obama loses the election this November, it is because the Republicans are able to paint him with that brush even though he is worth only $1.3 million against a gentleman from an elite family whose wife is worth conservatively $100 million and probably closer to $1 billion and Barrack is the elitist. It does not matter that he is the poorest individual to be a major party nominee since Jimmy Carter in 1976. The guy has that elitist smell to him. I bet he has never eaten a corndog on a stick and belongs to one of those private clubs that would not have him as a member because of the color of his skin. I even heard that he has Scarlett Johansson’s email address. (Obama’s money is rather new. Garnering most of it from royalties from his first book.) It is the cardinal sin of our culture. We are a country that worships the cult of the common man. Never mind that almost everyone who climbs to a major office is usually filthy wealthy, has graduated from a school that costs more than the house most people live in, and are friends with people who would turn the dogs on you if you stepped foot on their property, other than to mow the yard or walk around holding a silver tray at their party. This is a country run for and by the elite but we cannot let the common man know that. So, Slick Willie is the man from Hope not Yale Law School, Richard Nixon’s wife only owned a Republican cloth coat, although you would think she would have been able to afford better with the huge slush fund he had, and George W. Bush is a cowboy oil man not the dandy alcoholic, screw-up Yale-educated son of a wealthy New England family. He knows how to eat pork rinds after all. Still, we cannot have Barrack as President with his elitist ways, even though two of the best Presidents in the last century, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, dripped elitism from every pore.

Since this nation’s founding, the rich men, like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, have always ruled us. Ask your history teacher, children. One of the main reasons the Revolutionary War was fought was so that a lot of rich, elitist Virginia planters did not have to pay the money they owed to a bunch of rich British creditors. In the Civil War, a bunch of poor southern kids, even though it was against their economic interests, in the name of Southern pride died so a bunch of rich plantation owners could keep their slaves. Think this stuff is just a thing of the past? No, no, no. There is a reason why, even though adjusted for inflation since the 1980s wealth as doubled in this country but the middle class has not enjoyed a slice of that and the poor have actually lost ground. Whether it is tax cuts, the mortgage crisis, or the war in Iraq, ask yourself who benefits?

So, if I am right, why haven’t we rebelled and toppled these so-called elites, and brought Mr. Smith to Washington? The “””Cult of the common man”, the elite know how to play that tune like a Stratovarius. Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, all held up as men of the people while the elites continued to work quietly behind the scenes. The worst thing that ever happened to our political spin doctors is when our Presidents stopped being born in log cabins. (Can you name the seven Presidents who were actually born in a log cabin?) The myth goes that the common man made this country, that the roots of America’s greatness lies in the fact that unlike Europe, with its class structures, in America, all men are created equal and the quality of one’s character can be seen in the height of one’s reach. It is the only class warfare that matters in America. It is the United States in the home of the Horatio Alger story. It is why extremely rich, Wall Street Republicans can rage against limousine liberals with their Hollywood pals. Hollywood loves the myth as well because it makes rich executives and bankers even richer when they throw it on the silver screen. Audiences thrill to tales of young men who have graduated from the “school of hard knocks” and give the elitists a punch in the nose. Long before Rocky, there was Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp and Frank Capra. Still, one of the things I would have thought impossible is bringing the cult of the common man to wine drinking. The elite owners of California wineries have routinely exploited the labors of poor agricultural workers who pick and cultivate the grapes. Still, Hollywood has done it thanks to five little words, “based on a true story.”

For centuries, French wine had been considered the best vino on the planet. For example, at the White House, from the time of George Washington (until Lyndon Johnson ordered that only American wines were to be stocked), French wines were served to guests and foreign diplomats at executive branch functions. In 1976, during the Bicentennial, a blind wine tasting contest was held by Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant. To the shock of everyone present, California wines won in every category. Wines that bespoke “the magnificence of France” according to one judge turned out to be from Napa Valley. Chaos broke out when the location of the vineyards that won were revealed with several of the judges acting indignant and one even trying to change his score card before Spurrier was able to grab it. Even though a host of reporters were present, only Time magazine wrote about what happened. After several months of ignoring what had happened, the French press downplayed it as being “laughable” and Spurrier was banned from the national wine-tasting tour for his crime. U-S-A, U-S-A, we make better hooch than those frog-leg eating, Jerry Lewis loving, surrender monkeys.

This is the jumping off point of Bottle Shock. Alan Rickman plays Steve Spurrier in this tale of his trip to America to find the best vino this continent has to offer. It is a tale of American hayseeds against those elitist French snail-eaters. Steven decides to head across the pond after being told by an ex-pat American customer, Maurice (Dennis Farina) that California wines are pretty good. Even though it seems ridiculous, Steven sets off to the land of John Wayne, surgically enhanced blondes, and Mickey Mouse. There he comes across Jim Barrett, owner of the Chateau Montelena, a man who has dropped out of the rat race to pursue his dream of making Jesus juice. He is constantly butting heads with his slacker son, Bo (Chris Pine). There is also Gustavo (Freddy Rodriquez), a Mexican agricultural worker, who dreams of owning his own vineyard someday. Bo and Gustavo both have eyes for blond hottie, Sam (Rachael Taylor) and Eliza Dushka as a bartender is along to provide a little more eye candy.

Because of the subject matter, Bottle Shock will naturally be compared to the superior Sideways, even though the only thing the two films have in common is California wines. In many ways, this film is a great commercial for the California wine industry and tourism. It is a nice, little film that presents a myth about the wine industry that people should enjoy. In the movie, Steven comes to appreciate these American hayseeds and their superior wine. In real life, the British wine merchant was horrified when he realized the Americans had won the white competition. He grabbed the nine French judges and told them that no matter what, a French wine needed to win when the reds were judged, as the red wine competition was the only one that really mattered. The judges guessed wrong when it came to figuring out which wine came from France and accidently awarded a Napa Valley wine the top prize. All the wines in the competition, from both sides of the Atlantic, were made by people worth millions of dollars and in some ways, it was like a Rockefeller beating J.P. Morgan in a golf bet, but that is not nearly as good a story as the common man giving it to those beret-wearing, existentialist reading, clove-smoking elitists. I hear Barrack Obama is really French.

Verdict: A Nice Little Comedy