May 18 2007
The other day I wrote a post about the opportunity I took last week to check out Crushpad wine in San Francisco.
The next night, I met up with filmmaker Bret Lyman a.k.a. B. Napa to have a glass of wine and talk shop—his filmmaking and my blogging.
I last talked with B. Napa on the cusp of the screening of his film at the Sonoma Film Festival in April. Then, as now, Bret strikes me as the kind of guy that combines a subdued charisma with heartfelt passion and a desire to put a stamp on the world, albeit through his own filter, the lense of a filmmaker’s camera.
If you haven’t checked out the short film yet, you should.
Thankfully, B. Napa has bigger plans for a larger scale documentary, many details still being fleshed out, and the obtuse answer to a specific query deflects his plans not yet ready to be revealed.
Quotes about wine being a social lubricant are numerous and apt. People that have problems drinking usually drink to forget, but wine lovers usually drink to feel, as a part of social intercourse. Bret, unwittingly, or perhaps very knowingly, captures the essence of “feeling” in his work; there is an undercurrent of humanity to all of his stuff that marks him as a talent to watch. When you watch the short film, clocking in at a brisk 13 minutes, you’ll see an eye for detail rarely seen on a broad level, in any subject area. B. Napa has a lyrical eye for detail and a sense for music that matches mood that elevates his work to a level worthy of a bigger stage.
An appropriate quote from Bret’s narration at the beginning of the short, “Crush” sets the stage:
In reference to Don & Son’s winemaker Richard Bruno:
“He and I, we’re not so different.
As a filmmaker I harvest images; clusters of time measured in seconds, minutes. Together they tell a story, become a film.
As a winemaker, Richard harvests the landscape where time is measured in years, each one a vintage, the resulting wine a documentary of taste.”
Check out the films and leave a comment. I personally think that a film that cuts to the human element of the wine industry is ready for a national audience, a sort of Wine Film 2.0 evolution to the macro niche-interest of Mondovino and the black comedy of Sideways. Just as the Oscar winning documentary “Hoop Dreams” told a bigger story then two kids in inner-city Chicago trying to make it in basketball, so too is there a bigger tableau to explore in wine. What do you think?
“Crush” Short Film (Links to Don & Sons site with great video clarity)
http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=770018169
“Topaz” Short Film
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