Today’s VINTERVIEW is with filmmaker, branded content creator, and now documentarian Chris McGilvray.
We chat with Chris about his narrative short filmmaking, how he quickly realized this was never going to lead to the kind of breakthrough previous generations enjoyed, pivoted to branded content and became a champion of pushing that type of work into more organic and authentic expressions, and then segued from that into his first feature length documentary about the Mount Eden Winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains, considered to have the longest lineage of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in all of North America.
We thought this Vinterview would run 20-30 minutes. We had the whole thing Q&A’d scripted out and it was only 5 Q’s! But the conversation evolved organically and we talked at length about the themes of the documentary, themes you rarely see in a Wine doc yet pertain to nearly every aspect of the wine industry.
Chris’ story is the first half, roughly, then we chat about the documentary starting at the 28.5 minute mark.
The film opens at twilight, with an older man, Jeffrey, smoking a cigar next to a campfire as the light fades in the distance. We then see his face. He looks lost, bewildered. Contemplative but also adrift.
We cut to beautiful vistas of the vineyard at dawn. A younger man pruning in the morning air. Then making an espresso. This is the son, Reid, and he is uncertain how much he wishes to embrace the vineyard and the winery. It did not make for the happiest childhood, so high up on a mountain, away from friends and greater civilization.
There is an older daughter as well, Sophie, who is more enamored with the work ethic of her parents. Her father was the 7th winemaker in a 9 year period, and the first after its founder to make the vineyard and winery succeed, a 40+ years and counting.
These are the kinds of stories and people-of-the-land myths we celebrate in the fine wine world. And for the first many months of filming, so did director Chris McGilvray. But he soon worked through the footage and realized he had a glorified travelogue. The parents were always acting as brand ambassadors, rarely showing anything under the veneer of the winemaker myth.
Then Reid came home. A much more internal, contemplative chharacter than the others. He had wanted to forge his own path in life, but suffering setbacks, returned to the family business. Not entirely happily. The film’s first real sit down interview with him does something documentaries rarely do: it shows him struggling for words, thinking, starting to speak, stopping, thinking some more. This sets the tone for the doc going forward.
We follow the famiily struggling with legacy: will the children take over? Do they truly want to? Retirement is, eventually, a necessity, but do both parents want to retire? Or has one become the thing that he does?
The film is bookended with Ellie stating this:
We become what we did, what we do, that’s who we are. Which is…unfortunate. You’re not your reputation; that’s not who you are.
In the opening, it’s a curious moment. By the end, it’s repeated in context to heightened effect.
EDEN is a film that is equal parts a celebration of the Patterson family’s incredible achievement with the Mount Eden Winery. But it is equally a tale of heartbreak and familial reckoning, as the obsession and single-mindedness required, the loss of identity outside of one’s work, proves a rupturing force.
The documentary was filmed over the course of 7 years, the story slowly taking shape as the family drama evolved. But it is now my favorite wine documentary I’ve yet seen. It’s about the wine, but it’s much more about the family sacrifice involved. And whether this shows wine in a good light, bad light, or something in-between will be up to the viewer.
EDEN (2024) is streaming on PLEX. And can also be rented or bought on Prime, Apple, YouTube, and Fandango.
Join us in a couple days as Chris joins us for a proper Vintertainment episode to talk about one of his favorite films of all time:
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST - we’ll see you then!
You can watch Chris’ narrative short films:
The Silence
Damage
Out of Nowhere
Terroir
