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- [00:10]
A
Hello and welcome to the There Will Be Blood episode of Slate Money Goes to the Movies. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios. I'm here with Anna Shymansky.
- [00:24]
B
Hello.
- [00:25]
A
And I'm also here with my multi talented colleague, Naila Budu. Naila, welcome.
- [00:32]
C
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [00:33]
A
Tell us about yourself.
- [00:35]
C
So I have a morning news podcast called Axios Today, which everyone who pays any attention to Axios knows we are all about smart brevity. So it's a 10 minute morning news show that comes out every weekday morning. And my background is, as you know, Felix, I am also a alum of Reuters and started in the business world and spent years as a business reporter before I moved into audio and public broadcasting and now podcasting.
- [01:01]
A
Wow. All three of us have worked for Reuters. All three of us have a background in business journalism. All three of us have watched There Will Be Blood, the 2007 Paul Thomas Anderson movie, which we are about to talk about. Spoiler alert. We didn't love it, but it is an interesting movie all the same. Stay tuned for that and especially for Anna Shymansky teaching us all about Christian iconography, who knew the depths that she had. All of that coming up on Slate Money Goes to the Movies. Okay, so, Nyla, most of our guests on this mini season of Slate Money have picked a film that was dear to their hearts and that they saw in their childhood and that has lived in their soul for decades. This is not the case with you.
- [01:51]
C
This is not Trading Places.
- [01:54]
A
So had you ever even seen this movie before? Like this week?
- [01:59]
C
I had not seen this before two days ago.
- [02:02]
A
So the first question has to be, what possessed you to pick this movie?
- [02:09]
C
I think Anna actually has a really good answer to this. I'm gonna let Anna answer and then I'm gonna chime in.
- [02:15]
A
Anna, what possessed Nyla to pick this movie?
- [02:19]
B
So before we started taping, we were talking about how I saw this film when it was released in 2007, and I convinced myself I should like it because it was one of these films that became part of the canon and everyone said how amazing it was. And then rewatching it again now I'm like, yeah, I really don't like this film very much, but it is this canonical film of the last 20 years.
- [02:43]
C
And that is why I picked it, because it's always been a film that I thought I should see. And then it's. I'm never going to pick it. It's going to be at the bottom of my list. You know, like, when you put things on your Netflix list, then that means to me that I'm never going to watch them. That's where this was, which is why I picked it, because I thought, oh, now I'm really going to watch it.
- [03:02]
A
So I love this idea that it's a bit like in the olden days when Netflix was DVDs that would arrive in the mail and you had a queue and there were all of these incredibly worthy movies on the queue. And you never quite got to the worthy movies because you were always like, I'm. I don't want to watch that tonight. This was a forcing mechanism for you. This is your way to force yourself to finally watch this movie. And after having sat through two and a half hours of Daniel Day Lewis being actorly, what is your final verdict?
- [03:40]
C
I actually was very impressed in it's. Let me put it this way. I think it's one of those movies that you know is a great film because you're kind of turning it over in your mind, and there's just a lot to think about and process. And so from that standpoint, I think it's an incredible thing because of all of the pieces that you want to process, it is not something that is enjoyable to watch. At least I didn't think it was. But I do think it's a very interesting to talk about in process.
- [04:16]
A
So one of the reasons you know that it's a great film. You slacked me when you started watching this movie and you're like. And I was like, yeah, it's going to take a while until you get to the first line of dialogue. Like, you have this very auteurish, serious thing that Paul Thomas Anderson does where you spend like 25 minutes until anyone says anything, which is always a sign of great seriousness in a movie. He's not going to get to any plot anytime soon.
- [04:45]
C
To which I responded to you. Yes, it's just like Wally.
- [04:48]
B
It's true. Except that Wall E is a better movie.
- [04:50]
C
Wall E is a better movie.
- [04:51]
B
You're right.
- [04:52]
C
I completely agree with you.
- [04:53]
A
Okay, so this is Slate Money. So, Anna, as an investigation and interrogation of capitalism, how does There Will Be Blood compared to Wally, which is also a very interesting sort of treatise on capitalism.
- [05:13]
C
Yeah.
- [05:13]
B
So maybe I'll take somewhat of a step back from that question. I would say the two most important things this film is trying to say about capitalism that Paul Thomas Anderson is clearly trying to say about capitalism, one thing is this relationship between religion and capitalism, and in America, this somewhat incestuous relationship where one kind of needs the other one is on top of the other until the end when capitalism is victorious and ends with the line, I'm finished. Clearly a biblical reference to Christ. It is finished. So that's one part of what this film is kind of clearly getting at.
- [05:47]
A
Okay, let me stop you there because I'm not a Christian. What is this Christ it is finished reference, which I totally didn't get.
- [05:56]
B
Oh no. This film is like, it's so overwrought with religious symbolism. The title is from Exodus. There's a baby in a basket. That's a Moses reference. A the child is anointed with oil. A father forsakes his son.
- [06:10]
C
Even the font is like biblical. The font is like King James font.
- [06:13]
B
Yeah. And then, and then I think the other side of this fits into something that I think you often see in films, American films about business and capitalism, especially dramas about business and capitalism, which is a somewhat of a morality tale. This real suspicion of capitalism, despite the fact that capitalism is the reason that Hollywood exists. But nonetheless, and this at the end of the film, the person who becomes very successful must be taken down in one way or another. This film is very similar to Citizen Kane. The ending is this idea that he has to be punished. He is punished through his son, he is punished through his lack of a family.
- [06:54]
A
So the idea is that because we are coming out of liberal Hollywood, we paint this portrait of a rapacious capitalist who gets his comeuppance in some way at the end, living alone in some grand expensive mansion that gives him no pleasure.
- [07:15]
C
I think it's also not subtle. It's a rather heavy handed message of the costs and the sacrifices that one must make to get ahead in a capitalist society, which is namely, you know, abandoning your son. And you know, I think the line when he says, I don't like people, I think it's kind of like the perfect line where he's just like, I don't really like people anyway. And then of course all these people kind of get killed along the way that he literally kills.
- [07:47]
D
So I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.
- [08:00]
B
I think it's interesting with the idea of him literally killing and this idea of death and people being injured throughout the film. Is that the way the music works in this film? It's like a horror film. You are always waiting for this horrible thing to happen and it tends to come out of nowhere. And the early stages of the industrial age, you had these very violent industries. I mean, most people who worked in these industries that Was their daily life that they could die at any day. And even today, working in oil rigs is still actually very, very dangerous. And so I thought that that was something that was interesting. There was an element of the people's reality at that time was somewhat of.
- [08:38]
C
A horror show, which is, I feel like the only. I think that's a very Upton Sinclair. Right. Like, I think that's really the adaptation. When you think about the jungle or the cost to the everyday worker, I think that's kind of also what completely hits you over the head with this.
- [08:54]
B
Right. And this is based on. Well, very loosely based on, like an Upton Sinclair novel.
- [08:59]
A
Oil.
- [09:00]
B
Exclamation point.
- [09:01]
A
Which, you know, I mean, if you. Did you read the novel? I have to admit, I do not know this novel.
- [09:06]
C
I've read the Jungle.
- [09:06]
B
Have you ever read this novel?
- [09:10]
C
I've read the Jungle. That's the only Upton Sinclair novel everyone's read.
- [09:15]
B
Every Upton Sinclair novel ends with somebody becoming a communist. That is how every Upton Sinclair novel ends.
- [09:21]
A
So this, to me was a portrait, as you say, of the much sort of redder in tooth and claw period of expansionary capitalism in America. Do you think? I mean, obviously it's correct in terms of the physical dangers that were attendant with that expansion. People did die. It was very dangerous work. Do you think that the individuals were as heartless as this film makes you out to have to be in order to be a success?
- [10:02]
B
I would say no. And I think that that's actually one of the weaknesses of this film is that the characters are so over the top and really caricatures. And if you read biographies of the robber barons. And my favorite robber baron is John D. Rockefeller, you know, Standard Oil actually plays a role in this film. And, you know, Rockefeller is a really complicated figure because he was ruthless in a number of ways. He was also a very devout Baptist. He gave away money from almost the first time he started making money. That wasn't something that just happened later on. He wasn't this simple figure of greed. And not to say he wasn't greedy and did bad things, but he was quite complicated. And you could probably say that about a lot of these figures. And this film doesn't totally allow that. It does a little bit in the beginning and then completely goes away from that.
- [10:55]
C
Yeah, I do think the characters were really flat in a way in that they are, to your point, caricatures, I would say. For me, I think the problem that I have with it even more is just there's sort of this always this conflation that there are bad people and there are good people. And I think that's a real problem because I don't think that's how the world works. I think people are complicated and good people do very bad things or vice versa. And so there's none of. I do feel like that was a little too black and white when I don't. And I think, especially when you're thinking about capitalism, it's very gray when we're thinking about to your point, like someone like Rockefeller in real life.
- [11:37]
A
Well, who are the good people in this movie? In this movie, it seems to me there are bad people and there are worse people. There's not a lot of, like, goodies who you're rooting for.
- [11:46]
B
There is the son who becomes deaf and there is the angelic girl who is really the only female in the entire film.
- [11:53]
C
That's what I was gonna say. The women who were never talked about and the women who are in the background, maybe they're the goodies with no line.
- [11:59]
B
And I think, I mean, I will say I'm pretty sure this film is very self consciously an all male film because the first scene of the film you have a man holding a baby. Then people keep saying, where's your wife? So I don't think that's necessarily just Paul Thomas Anderson breaking the Bechdel test. I think it's him making a point. And to be fair, at that stage in American capitalism, although women certainly did work, and they certainly did work in factories, obviously the leading figures were mentioned.
- [12:25]
A
So we do have a bunch of men in this movie. And there's obviously one main character and then one adversary in Eli Sunday. Everyone else is kind of sketched in. I was particularly struck on the second viewing of this movie how Paul Thomas Anderson hired Kieran Hines, who's one of the great actors of his generation, to basically just stand there and do nothing all movie. And you're like, what? Okay, so this. There you go. Kieran Hines, I think he had like two lines in the whole movie, and one of them is like, I'm with him.
- [13:03]
C
And I think it was, are you taking your brother to go have this conversation instead of me?
- [13:09]
A
So Kieran Hines had a lot of, like, acting to do just by standing there, because he suddenly couldn't do it by saying lines. But on one level, it really was and is just this Daniel Day Lewis vehicle, right? And I think that was how the movie entered the canon. That looked at this acting feat and said, well, you were, you know, you did a lot of acting in this movie, and you're in almost every scene. And congratulations on acting well.
- [13:37]
B
And it doesn't help that most of the other actors who do have lines by which I mean Paul Dano are just not very good. Like, you know, there's no contest in this film. And the Paul Dano character, I mean, granted, the script is not great for his character, but it is the same note the entire film. There is zero nuance to that character whatsoever. And he doesn't. He's incapable of giving the character any nuance. Whereas I do think, to give Daniel Day Lewis credit, and granted, this is acting with a capital acting, but he does make some of the material, I think, better than it actually is.
- [14:09]
A
Tell me about family and this whole theme running through the movie that Daniel Day Lewis, in buying up and leasing the land that he needs, feels the need to pretend to be a family man. So he kind of acquires a small child somewhere along the way to use as a prop. And then when that prop disappears off on the train to learn sign language, he acquires a brother until he decides that he's had enough use for that brother. What's going on with that?
- [14:47]
C
I mean, to me, that was just sort of like a commentary of America and the idea that this is part of our social fabric in terms of what's socially acceptable. And so if he had just been this guy, as opposed to, like, I love the ruse in the beginning when they're going quail hunting and they just kind of show up. They're just like, randomly like, hey, can we quail hunt on your land? Can you give us some bread? Oh, you don't have bread? You know, it's the whole, like. I think it's just like this whole Persona of, like, no, I really care about people because I'm a parent, you know, and so, like, I think that's how he ostensibly is, this trustworthy figure. Even though it's interesting, Like, I do love, like, the fact, like, Anna, to your point, like, the women are very skeptical. Like, they're just like, where is your wife? Like, why do you have this kid? Like, I feel like he gets that question a lot, but only from other women, not from men.
- [15:45]
B
No, I agree. I mean, I think that it partly goes back to that idea of his relationship with family. Shows how broken he is. And we see that at the end of the film. But. But I agree. It's also this idea of, like, you often hear business people when they are being praised as saying, this person's a family man. It's something that humanizes Someone. And I think this is clearly commenting on that.
- [16:06]
D
I'm a family man. I run a family business. This is my son and my partner, H.W. plainview. We offer you the bond of family that very few oil men can understand.
- [16:19]
A
What about the colors? This was so washed out in browns and grays and ochres. I believe it was filmed largely in West Texas around Marfa, which is one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. And you kind of get a hint of that, but not really. And you would also kind of think that in a movie, the title of which is There Will Be Blood, there might be some actual blood in the movie. There might be, like, a splash of red somewhere. But I don't even remember that.
- [16:56]
C
Everyone's really dirty. It's like, there will be blood, but there's no water. That, to me, was what struck me more than the lack of the landscape. Just sort of, like the griminess of the whole thing.
- [17:09]
B
And I would also say, in a way, there's a number of scenes where people are covered in oil and the oil is like that blackness that blood actually, in real life often is. I mean, obviously this is blacker because it's oil, but I kind of think that that's supposed to be, to a certain extent, this is the blood.
- [17:24]
A
And then he cleans. He has that weird baptismal thing in the Pacific Ocean. Yeah, I didn't really understand that scene. You understand all of the Christian symbolism better than I do, Anna.
- [17:35]
B
Yeah, no, I mean, I do think that that is the moment, too, where he initially. It's when he is connecting with this person who he thinks is his brother and he is being humanized slightly, and there is this sense of a cleansing. But then he goes back in after he's discovered that his brother is lying to him, which is interesting, because obviously that's not representing any type of a cleansing. If anything, it's like parroting the baptismal ritual.
- [18:08]
C
Can I ask you guys a question?
- [18:09]
A
Yeah.
- [18:10]
C
I wonder what role you think the brother serves, because he is. Adds a lot more texture to the story. It's bizarre to me that he decides to confide in the brother after saying, like, I don't like to explain myself. Then all of a sudden, he just, like, takes this complete stranger and then just starts, like, acting like he can share his life with him. Like, what does that say about his character?
- [18:35]
B
I think there is a sense throughout a lot of the film that the Daniel Plainview character is longing for a family. Even though he says, I don't like people, I don't want anyone else to succeed. But the relationship he has with his adopted son and how angry he gets when his adopted son abandons him, and then that desire he has to connect with this person who has this connection with the rest of his family, I think suggests that there is some humanity there.
- [19:08]
A
Suddenly. When I first saw the movie, I was under the impression that the whole brother subplot was a way of dialing up the evil of our antihero, showing just how heartless he could be. Because we didn't actually see a completely premeditated and heartless murder up until that point. Like, he can do anything and will do anything on second viewing. I did kind of wonder what that was about because it seems even by the sort of Old Testament standards that we are supposedly judging this movie by, that that was not really condign punishment for like, lying about who you are. Like, it didn't even seem that he was that angry about it. He just said, oh, well, you know, in that case, I'm just gonna have to kill you. I don't. I. That, that. That bit didn't make a lot of sense to me, except I suppose as a way of. No, it doesn't even make sense as a way of like, setting up the final scene, because the final scene would be even more shocking if the murder came out of nowhere.
- [20:20]
B
It's true. But I do think that violence also does often come for almost no reason in this film. Like the first time that he attacks the Eli Sunday character. You understand why he's doing it, but it seems a little bit overdone when that character then attacks his father. It again seems like way too much. And where is this coming from? And then even the ending. Why does he feel the need to beat this person's head in with bowling pins? You know, there's not really any reason for it. And again, just to go, I'll just keep doing my Bible stuff. There is potentially also the kind of Cain, Abel, this idea of man, the brother kills. This is this step in man's unfortunate development.
- [21:04]
A
Wait, wait, expand on that because again, I didn't go to Sunday school.
- [21:08]
B
So Adam and Eve, partly. I could be wrong about this because I haven't read this part in a while. But, you know, Adam and Eve have these sons, or it's like their children have children.
- [21:19]
C
It's their kids. Cain and Abel are their kids. Yeah, that's.
- [21:22]
B
And think it's Cain kills Abel. I can't even remember why it is he kills him, but it's not for a good reason, I think to A certain extent it represents you have the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. And then this is another instance of this kind of. You know what that means. And what that means is this violence between humans. And it is. This is really the first family you have in the Bible. And the first family you have a brother kills his brother. It's not for a good reason, you know, it's I think to a certain extent it represents you have the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. And then this is another instance of this kind of. You know what that means. And what that means is this violence between humans. And it is you. This is the really the first family you have in the Bible. And the first family you have a brother kills his brother.
- [22:10]
C
Wasn't it that Abel, Abel. They both made sacrifices to God and God liked Abel's. So Cain got mad and then killed Cain. But I was thinking, I feel like it would be better. And this doesn't fit either. Like I was thinking if we were gonna go with a biblical brother analogy, I would have gone with Jacob and Esau, not Jacob and Esau. Who's Jacob? And is it Jacob and Esau where Jacob takes Esau's birthright? They fool the dad cause he's blind. And then Jacob's mom like to just make it everything even more messed up, right? Like she encourages him to cheat cause that's her favorite son, the younger son to steal his birthright. But I feel like we don't get any of that nuance with these two brothers. It's just weird. Maybe it is. You're right. Maybe it is more of a Cain and Abel. But it's just sort of like why I agree with you. I Felix, I don't really understand. Like it's just sort of like did.
- [23:02]
B
You need to kill him?
- [23:03]
A
Yeah. Why can't we all just get along? There is a very aggressive. And this is where the I hate other people, I just want to compete with other people thing comes in. Right there is this very aggressive, not so much narcissism. It's just like self centered drive that Plainview has that he needs to go off and beat everyone and make lots of money and come out on top in every relationship that he has. And I think Anna's absolutely right that that's the sort of anti capitalist message of the movie, right? Is the idea that in order to be financially successful you need to have that kind of very horrible competitive drive. And I'm not. I mean that certainly doesn't seem to be true today. I'm not sure it was ever true. And, yeah, I think you're right that we look at this movie in vain, trying to find some sort of nuance and complexity to that.
- [24:14]
B
Yeah. Because even, like, I'm going to go back to Rockefeller, even Roc, a fella who obviously puts all of his competition out of business, he creates this trust. The reason he does that is because the early days of the oil industry, when you had this constant price spikes and people would run into the industry and run out of the industry and overproduce, and it was impossible to grow an industry in that environment. So his whole idea was like, look, the only way we develop an industry is if one person's essentially controlling all of it, so why not be me? And he quite clearly says this. And, yes, you could argue that that is him just justifying his desire to destroy all these other people. And granted, there could be some of that, but yet I would just argue that it's just not as simplistic as this person who. This erman who wants to conquer all. And that is it.
- [25:01]
A
Nyla, how about you? You can see a few more redeeming features in this movie, surely, than Anna can.
- [25:06]
C
I mean, I don't know what. Redemptive. It's hard to think of the redemptive aspects of this. I think, for me, the redemptive aspects of the film are more just that it's an ability. It's sort of a lens into this era of America that we often, I think, are completely romanticized. Right. And I think it fits so well into the American mythology of capitalism and the idea that everyone thinks that if I go on a lucky quail hunt, I, too, can become a millionaire. To me, that's the more redemptive part of it, is just that exploration. I struggle to find something particularly redemptive within. I'm gonna have to think about that one.
- [25:52]
A
No, I think that. I think that's right. What we have here is it's kind of a revisionist take on that era and that time in American history and when people laud it as a time of American greatness. You then look at it close up and you're like, there's really nothing great going on here. All of these people are terrible. And maybe that's a message that is worth being reminded of, that there were terrible people back then, or maybe that maybe it's not. I don't know. They're all fictional, pre osha, although it.
- [26:32]
B
Is based, like, loosely on some real people. It was involved in, like, a Teapot Dome scandal under Harding that's what the book Oil is actually based on. And so the film is loosely based on.
- [26:43]
A
Wow.
- [26:43]
C
I haven't heard about the Teapot Dome scandal in a while, but yeah, it.
- [26:46]
B
Was basically a bribery scandal for land related to oil. And I think the town that this is actually supposed to be is like Huntington Beach, California.
- [26:54]
A
Oh, you mean where the pipeline ends up?
- [26:56]
B
Yeah. Oh, there's actually one interesting thing is there's a point in the film where he's giving the spiel and he's talking about all the things that this drilling is going to bring to the town, you know, this education and advancement. And he's right, obviously. I mean, this is what industrialization did bring, not only to this town, but to America. However, it was a very violent process and a lot of people died and were exploited. And I do think that that is actually one of the more interesting scenes.
- [27:27]
D
To my mind, it's an abomination to consider that any man, woman or child in this magnificent country of ours should have to look upon a loaf of bread as a luxury. We're going to dig water wells here. Water wells means irrigation, and irrigation means cultivation. We're gonna raise crops here where before it just simply wasn't possible. You're gonna have more grain than you know what to do with. Bread will be coming right out of your ears. Laugh. New roads, agriculture, employment, education. These are just a few of the things we can offer you. And I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that if we do find oil here, and I think there's a very good chance that we will, this community of yours will not only survive, it will flourish.
- [28:16]
C
I think to me, what I felt like was missing out of that is we never see that. Like, we don't see the town. Like, I was kind of expecting we were gonna have this sort of like fast forward to like the town, really. Although when he eats in that restaurant, is that supposed to be in the town?
- [28:33]
B
You know, I think so, but I'm not sure.
- [28:35]
C
So maybe that's like a. Oh, look, you can get steak dinners in a hotel. But I just, I wanted to. I was hoping we would see more of that as opposed to just sort of like the church that the preacher.
- [28:48]
B
Built and then his house later on inside his house, his Xanadu.
- [28:53]
A
Was that, do you think, in California? His like lovely California retirement near the coast, or was that still out in the hardscrabble oil field plains? Where was the house?
- [29:07]
C
I felt like there was like a water scene, wasn't it?
- [29:09]
A
I think it was in California.
- [29:10]
C
California, yeah, yeah.
- [29:12]
A
Everyone gets out, if they can, from that miserable existence.
- [29:16]
B
One last thing, and I'm sure I should be overreading into the film as clearly evidence by this entire conversation, but the film ends in 1927. And I'm sure they probably just picked that date because it actually had some importance in the Teapot Dome scene, scandal, trial. But it's actually a really interesting date to pick because the roaring twenties, you had a mild recession in 2627, but it was really through 2627, where you had significant profit growth. So even though you had the stock market going up, you also had significant profit growth. And so it really wasn't really going out of whack. But that was the moment when. In 27, when the stock market really became divorced. And it was the beginning of the end of this era of American capitalism, because that ends in a crash that ends in the Depression. That era of American capitalism, where you have incredibly small government would never return.
- [30:08]
C
So that's what's finished.
- [30:10]
B
So that, I think, is. That's my attempt to make it give the film a more interesting meaning.
- [30:16]
A
So let me ask you about that, because that is actually on point for a Slate Money episode. First question. Why is Eli Sunday so desperate when he comes to Daniel Plainview at the end? It seems that he's lost all of his money in some kind of speculative disaster. But from what you were saying, that was like, two years later.
- [30:42]
B
So you did have a mild recession, I think, like towards the end of 26, part of 27. So there was a little. It was mild. But I think that that's what they're referring to now. Of course, the major point where the economy falls apart is in obviously, like, 29 and in the 30s. But I think that that's what that references to.
- [31:04]
A
And then the other question is just in terms of the sort of economic history of America, the two industries, the only industries we see in this movie are oil and railroads, is that correct? Are those basically the industries that drive the expansion of the United States in the early decades of the 20th century?
- [31:26]
B
Well, you obviously had steel to help build all those things. It's also because the relationship between oil and the railroads was really important because part of the reason Rockefeller was able to gain his dominance was because he had these sweetheart deals with the railroads. And so they charged him way less than everybody else because he shipped so much, and that helped him put everybody else out of business. So I think that's partly also why you would always see those two together.
- [31:48]
A
Right. So the railroad is something that Plainview has a very conflicted relationship with because it allows him to expand his empire, but it's also an avatar of the hated competition from Standard Oil. And his great gambit, the big sort of life defining gamble that he makes and succeeds in making is to abjure the railroads and to say I'm going to build a pipeline all the way to Huntington Beach. And that seems to be the most important thing in his life. More than. Certainly more than any. I mean we don't really get much feel for any family. He never falls in love. He certainly doesn't seem to appreciate his house very much. It's just, let me stick it to the railroad and to Standard Oil and I'll do something else. With Union Oil, it's like, why is Union better than Standard?
- [32:44]
C
You know, he just seems so bitter about the shipping costs.
- [32:50]
A
It's like Star wars is about like a trade dispute and there will Be blood is about shipping costs.
- [32:56]
B
To be fair though, shipping costs were actually like legitimately a really big deal. But yeah, but I also feel like, you know, human. He introduces himself saying, I am an oil man. When Standard Oil tries to say we're gonna buy you out, he says, well, what am I gonna do? It is his entire identity.
- [33:12]
C
He also seemed to really take pride in the fact that he's this one man operation. Right. And that he runs everything. And so he will run the drilling. Not only does he. And he's out surveying. There's so much surveying that goes on. It's like a survey lobby was really strong in this movie. There's survey but it all himself. And I think that's also. Again, I feel like that's part of the mythology of like, yeah, like you, you as your one person become this multi million dollar corporation. If you could just work hard enough to survey the land and first find. Find the oil. Survey the land drill. Is that also. Is that how they did it? Like, did they really just like have a fire that blew up and then people died and that's how they knew they had got the oil?
- [34:01]
B
Not entirely sure. I'm guessing they probably tried to not have people die. But I was just going to say jumping off of what you just said, this focus on this individual, which again obviously Americans, but also in the oil industry. Because when Ida Tarbell wrote her screed about. I don't mean screed, I mean it is a screed. But it was relatively fair about Standard Oil. It was really because she was. And many people were so upset about what he did to small producers to These individuals. And actually her father was an individual producer, which was part of the reason that she was so upset. The film, as you said, he wants to both be this enormous corporation to compete with Standard Oil and just be an individual.
- [34:46]
A
So, Naila, you were telling me that you had, like, an oil derrick in your backyard, in your aunt's backyard in Trinidad.
- [34:58]
C
My grandmother, so my family's from Trinidad. So that was also like my little, like, my sort of background interest. Like, I have cousins who work in the oil industry in Trinidad. So I really want to talk to them about, like, have you guys seen this? But no. My grandmother growing up, my grandparents, my mom's side, they had a little oil spout in their backyard. And I would always go out there and you could see, like, the little black, like, I don't know why. I have a very clear, distinctive childhood memory of, like, this, like, mound that had all these, like, bottle caps sort of, like embedded into it. So it must have. But then there was oil coming out of the top. But this is always like a big story in our family that my grandparents never owned the oil rights to the land. So even though they own the house and the property, I guess whoever sold it to them retained the oil rights. So it's just a byproduct of having Trinidadian heritage that I was kind of interested in the oil part of that.
- [35:55]
A
Did someone, some horrible capitalist, drink your grandparents milkshake or. They were sitting on top of. They were sitting on top of all of this oil and they could never monetize.
- [36:09]
C
Yeah, I don't think it was that big.
- [36:12]
A
Yeah, people kept on saying a lot for years, I drink your milkshake. And, Yeah, I guess, I mean, there aren't that many memorable lines. It's definitely the most memorable line.
- [36:23]
D
If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and I have a straw. There it is. That's a straw. You see, watching my straw reaches across the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I drink your milkshake. I drink it up.
- [36:54]
B
And apparently, sorry, my fun facts. But apparently in the trial documents related to the Teapot Dome scandal, someone mentions a milkshake. And Paul Thomas Anderson read that. And he was like, this word seems to make no sense in this period. And so that's part of the reason.
- [37:10]
C
I think probably the most horrifying scene to me was when he forces the son to drink the alcohol milkshake. That was bad. Like, I mean, obviously killing the people is bad, but I was like, ooh, I don't wanna Watch. I did feel like I spent a lot of this watching this with my hand over my mouth. Like, what is happening now?
- [37:28]
B
I literally. The end. Almost had to cover my ears because it was just. Yeah, it was too much.
- [37:34]
A
Too much. Too much. In service of not enough. Most of this season has been good movies that we loved. I feel like this is the first time we've arrived at meh. But that's okay. Not all of them need to be good.
- [37:49]
C
This isn't the feel good movie of 2007.
- [37:54]
A
I don't even think it was the feel good movie of the one hour window that it was released in it. Yeah. And he can do moments of Grace. Paul Thomas Anderson. He just didn't in this one.
- [38:11]
C
I mean, I would put it in. Like if you're thinking about pandemic viewing, Slate money fans. Like, I feel this fits.
- [38:19]
A
Yeah. No, how does it fit? You don't want to watch this during a pandemic. Maybe you do. Maybe. Maybe it's like one of those things where you grew up, you know, with your grandparents sitting on a bunch of oil and everyone told you this was a great movie and so now you need to watch it. But I would say probably given our druthers, we wouldn't necessarily recommend this one. And you really didn't like it, did you?
- [38:43]
B
No, really didn't.
- [38:44]
A
And Naila, if you had to give it like a letter grade, where would it come out for you?
- [38:49]
C
Oh, I would, I would give it a B.
- [38:51]
A
A B.
- [38:52]
C
B minus maybe? No, I'd give it a B. I'd go straight with a B.
- [38:55]
A
All right, well, Nyla Budu, thank you so much for coming on Slate. Money goes to the movies. And I, I will say insofar as we ended up forcing you to sit through two and a half hours of the movie that I picked, it was your choice. No one picked it for you, so you can't blame me for that one. It's been awesome having you on. And yes, everyone must listen to you on Axios today. Every morning at some crack of dawn, you come out so early, just 5:30 in the morning.
- [39:28]
C
For all of those hard working capitalists who get an early start on their day.