- "Road to 'Wine Country': It's Maya Rudolph and Rachel Dratch's Party" by Ben O'Donnell - Wine Spectator - May 7, 2019
When Rachel Dratch met up with some friends in California wine country for a weekend to celebrate her 50th birthday, she didn't expect it would become a movie—with her in a starring role. But that's how Wine Country, the directorial debut of one such friend, Amy Poehler, got its start. Also on that fateful trip: fellow early-2000s Saturday Night Live alum Maya Rudolph, who steals scenes in the movie as a foul-mouthed mom of four prone to spontaneous wine-fueled outbursts of song and dance.
Wine Spectator associate editor Ben O'Donnell spoke with Dratch and Rudolph while researching the behind-the-scenes feature "Welcome to Wine Country" in the May 31, 2019, issue of the magazine. They shared some favorite Napa memories—stomping grapes, learning to taste (instead of just gulping)—as well as the stories behind some of their scenes, and what it's like to make a film with an "amazing basketball team" of costars and real-life friends.
[...]
We had an experience at Artesa where once we were done shooting, we actually had a wine tasting, and we all sat down, and I just liked that feeling of hospitality. They just made us feel completely at home and not intimidated at all, in knowing that we’re not wine aficionados. We’re people who enjoy good glasses of wine or good bottles of wine. They heard that I was in a Prince cover band, and so they put on Prince.
"Emily Spivey on Loving Prince, Leaving Twitter, and the Possibility of a Wine Country Reunion" By Josef Adalian - Vulture - 27 May 2019
Any songs you couldn’t get in because they were too expensive to license?
Well, I wanted to use some Prince lyrics in the scene with me and Maya in the hot tub, and I couldn’t use the Prince lyrics that I wanted to use because it was just impossible to get rights to “Let’s Go Crazy.” And then I tried to rewrite the line and it didn’t work. So that was disappointing, because I wanted to reference some more Prince songs in that scene. But you know Wendy and Lisa did the score, right?
I did not know that!
Yeah, Wendy and Lisa from the Revolution. And then at the end of the movie, that’s all of us singing “I Would Die 4 U.” The Revolution came in and they rerecorded the song, and we sang it with them, which was like — I cried. It was one of the best afternoons of my entire life.
Where is the behind-the-scenes featurette of that recording session!?
Somebody was filming! Maya also filmed the whole time, but we had a proper film crew there. I need to ask Poehler about that because I want all that footage. It was insanity. I floated out of my body. It was so amazing.