Before Sideways swirled its way into a Pulitzer-caliber wine country classic, screenwriter-novelist Rex Pickett wrote Repairman — a script about a coin-op laundry repairman with fetal alcohol syndrome, a checkered past as an accidental arsonist, and an unshakable code of honesty in a world full of people skimming, scheming, and selling out.
Rex is the novelist and screenwriter behind Sideways — the book-turned-Oscar-winning-film-turned-stage-musical-turned-Latvian-train-show — and the author of numerous screenplays exploring the messier corners of California life. Long before wine country made him a household name, Rex was sending Amy email dispatches about a script loosely inspired by his brother.
On this episode:
- The wild true story of how Repairman almost got made twice — first with Gil Bellows attached to direct, until a surprise phone call from Christina Ricci that blew up the whole deal
- A nearly-greenlit $2.5 million, 35mm production at First Look — derailed when the studio asked to cut Rex's co-director from the deal
- Why Rex still considers Repairman one of his most personal scripts, rooted in his real-life brother, Hack
We run Repairman through our AI pipeline for a new deck, a Paul Dano–heavy casting board, and a trailer that doesn't quite land — then pitch it live to our AI exec Finn, who calls it "a quietly brutal portrait of what decency costs in a rigged world."
Could it get made now? Listen and find out.
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