When
he is not making films, Jonathan Nossiter moonlights
as a wine buyer for various New York restaurants.
And it's not a job he wants to quit.
"I
find the world of wine and wine-makers very salutary,"
he says. "It's much healthier in personal and social
terms than the world of film."
There
are, he suggests, alarming parallels between the
two businesses. Nossiter believes that just as Hollywood
makes bland, standardised movies, Californian vineyards
produce wine with little discernible character.
"Something
very dangerous is happening. Alas, more and more
European wine producers are adopting an 'easy-listening'
approach and they're betraying their roots. They're
making easy-drinking, international-style wine that
has no character. It's a kind of 'MacDonaldisation'."
Signs
And Wonders has nothing directly to do
with wine, but its lead characters make some of
the same mistakes as the European wine growers.
"It's about the terrible price we pay for allowing
a world to spring up around us which is corporatised,
homogenised and which crushes individual expression,"
says Nossiter. "Things
are taking a definite turn for the worse in the
wine world and elsewhere."
Geoffrey Macnab
