Pusher Media Club: There Will Be Blood

Transcriber: vesta #5711

ALI: Hi everybody! And welcome to another Pusher update, another Pusher Book Club, another Pusher Media Club, is that what we were saying? Anyway.

ART: I don’t think we’ve done a book once, so.

[ALI chuckles]

JANINE: We could just say like AV club or something, that’s a little more umbrella-y, right? Audiovisual.

KEITH: Ali has been calling- Ali has been calling it a book club since the first thing we did, which is watch a TV show. [ALI laughs]

JANINE: And we’ve never done a book once!

KEITH: Yeah never.

ALI: But when you think of them like a watch-along like this, you think of a book club!

JANINE: N- nuh?

KEITH: I think you mean that when you think of a book club- [laughs] [ALI laughs]

ALI: I suppose so, I suppose I do do that. But yeah, here we are! And we watched There Will Be Blood-

JANINE: And there was! Pleased to report.

ALI: [chuckles] There was indeed. And I’ll include this in the post as well, but the movie includes like, there’s blood there, obviously, there’s some depiction of disability, both like the cause of it and some rough stuff around the attitudes about it, and lack of care.

JANINE: And also, familial abuse. Lots- like, a fair bit [KEITH: Yeah] of abuse.

ALI: Yeah. [laughs]

ART: A whole first section of this could just be talking about what we think we need to warn people about.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: This is a- I mean,

JANINE: Fundamentalist Christianity.

KEITH: This is a rough movie in a lot of different ways, but in a lot of ways it is that like, they jump off the page like, the whole time I watched this movie, I go like “oh this is serious”. [ALI chuckles] This is rough. But also this is not like, it is not like- I also, I don’t find it difficult to watch. [JANINE: No- it’s really interesting like that, right? ] It’s not a gross-out movie, or yeah.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: I think it is trying to be at worst, unsettling.

JANINE: It’s- just on that note, a thing I find really- this is my first time watching this movie even though like for years I was like, I should fucking watch that movie. And even like, on a bunch of like weird Canadian streaming services that get like hooked into your Roku, like, Tubi and Veebo and all this shit, it was free for like years.

ART: These all sound fake.

JANINE: One of those is real, one of those is made up, guess watch one. [ALI chuckles]

KEITH: Veebo is real.

JANINE: Wrong. Wrong, you’re wrong.

KEITH: Aw fuck!

JANINE: So I had to unlike my watch-list on these like weird dodgy free services and I would go and watch like, Fox Catcher or something and be like, I don’t think I’m ready for There Will Be Blood, I’m going to watch something light like Fox Catcher. It is not a light movie, but.

So finally like getting around to it, I was really surprised that it wasn’t, you know, I think there are certain things that we expect in like a, this is an adult, serious, dark, dramatic movie. [KEITH: Mm.] And these are the things you do in that kind of movie. And it mostly doesn’t like do those things, or like when it does them, it does them in a way that’s like, surpri- not surprising, but it didn’t- I was really surprised there was no like, sex, I guess, is like a big part of it, [KEITH: Yeah.] because it feels like if you set out to make a dark serious movie then shouldn’t you have some sort of scene where Daniel Plainview’s like fucking someone, and for some reason, [ALI chuckles] and that just like, it’s just not-

ALI: Is meek about it.

JANINE: Yeah! And it’s just not even like, you overhear flirting. Like that’s kind of the- [KEITH: Yeah.] then there’s like vague compli- not compliments, vague like, talk about like, I- women really like me and, blah blah blah. Like-

ART: No, you got the closest thing we have to a romantic arc late in the movie is like a scene where someone sits next to someone. [ALI chuckles]

JANINE: Yeah!

ART: And the next time you hear from either of those characters, they’re married.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: And also like, you see them like, you know, she’s learning sign language so that she can communicate with him- it’s very sweet, it’s like this, it’s really great. But I was really really surprised cause I sort of went it to it expecting like, okay, this is gonna be, there’s gonna be a sexual assault within the first forty-five minutes for sure, right? And, all of these things, I had this like list of shit that I was expecting because of the tone the movie projects, right? And like the way people talk about it, because that’s what you expect from movies like this sometimes I guess. So it was nice to see something be dramatic, but also not like-

KEITH: Checking a lot of like “films for adults” boxes?

JANINE: Yes, exactly, yeah. It wasn’t like checking boxes, it was telling its story in a way that is sometimes shocking and-

ART: No they replaced all of that with footage of people dying in oil mine accidents.

[ALI, JANINE, KEITH chuckle]

JANINE: Yeah, right! It’s still- it’s still super shocking and violent and like, [KEITH: Yeah.] It still does those things, it doesn’t shy away from it either. I just find that interesting.

ALI: Yeah.

KEITH: It is sort of funny though from like a movie where the character murders three people in it? It also isn’t visually very violent either. Like there’s blood, but not a lot of blood for a movie called There Will Be Blood, [ART: Yeah.] like you see some blood splatters like two times. [JANINE: Yeah.] Five- well five people die on screen in the movie? Three- two of them are accidents, one of them- three of time are murders- [ALI: What’s the third murder?] it’s not a gory movie. What was that?

ALI: I feel like I missed a murder, did I miss a murder?

KEITH: He kills his brother, he kills- or you know, the person posing as his brother. [ALI: Yeah yeah yeah.] He kills Paul Dano- oh did he only kill two? I thought you killed one other person, but no, you’re right. He only killed two-

ALI: Sorry, I was like- wait [laughs]

KEITH: I guess in my head I was sort of counting that first one, but that wasn’t, that was just an accident.

ALI: Yeah.

KEITH: I was like yeah, right, at the beginning, there was an accident- that was one of the accidents, so I guess four people die.

JANINE: It’s interesting cause I guess like, yeah they don’t, I would totally describe those moments as violent and brutal, but they’re not shot in the way that violence and brutality typically are in movies now, right?

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: It’s quick and the thing that’s violent and brutal is how fast it is and sudden and just like, it’s a shock. It’s just like, it’s- you know, it’s the same with the accidents, the accidents are treated like a shock, and like the way [KEITH: Right.] the blood is shot, often you get this- especially the accidents, you get this like sort of shock of red and then it kind of blurs and blends into the mud and the oil, and like dims away, but like for a bit you get that hit of colour. And it’s very jarring because everything else has been so dark.

KEITH: And there’s this tension of like, almost like a rollercoaster gearing up for its first drop where you’re like, you watch for forty five seconds as they raise big heavy pin that they drop? [JANINE: Mhm.] And you’re like “oh, this is a scene where someone is going- is about to die, probably”. I think, it’s been so long since I’ve since I’ve seen this movie cause I saw-

JANINE: So I, I didn’t have that feeling.

KEITH: Oh sorry, the first time- oh, really?

JANINE: Like, when those things were happening, when stuff went bad, it all felt like it did kind of blur into the mechanics of like, here’s just the work. Cause they show enough of just like, here’s what the work is, it’s messy, it’s bad [KEITH: Yeah.], it’s harsh, like, here’s stuff that’s you know- it felt mundane, it felt like a thing they do all the time cause it was a thing they do all the time. And then you know, I felt like a lot of those accidents- like right from the jump, like when he- when the ladder breaks and he falls in the hole, a lot of that stuff is like, you feel kind of how mundane it is, and then just suddenly, everything fucking goes wrong, it’s very quick.

KEITH: Mmm.

JANINE: And then its aftermath.

KEITH: Yeah it could just totally be in rewatching it, where I’m like feeling how the- how things get- first of all, knowing that it’s about to happen, [JANINE: Yeah.] and also seeing how they get telegraphed in the soundtrack really well?

ALI: Oh yeah, for sure.

JANINE: Yes, the soundtrack is amazing with that.

ALI: [chuckles] I listen to the soundtrack when we record Sangfielle.

KEITH: Oh is that by one of the Radiohead people, which is really weird?

ALI: Yeah yeah yeah, Jonny Greenwood.

JANINE: Oh.

KEITH: Yes, that’s who it was, yeah.

ART: In the middle of watching it I sent Jack a message like, is this on purpose? [ALI laughs] Does Sangfielle sound like this on purpose? And the answer is no.

JANINE: Cause it’s wild, right? I- yeah I imagine you could get a lot, you could get a lot on rewatching this, especially from paying close attention to the soundtrack, because I feel like I mostly notice the soundtrack when it really really really hit a peak [KEITH: Mmm.] of things being really disorganised and chaotic and noisy and like, you lose all the kind of pretty film score qualities and get into this sort of more emotive thing? I don’t know how to talk about music really well [ALI chuckles]. This is more expressive, impressionistic like thing that sort of overtakes the symphonic kind of elements. And I imagine if you were watching it, and you’re not trying to pay as close attention to what’s happening because you know, [KEITH: Yeah.] and you’re focusing on details like that, you could get a lot. It’s very, it’s very interesting.

KEITH: They do a lot of- they switch in back and forth sort of like songs, and then like a lot of texture stuff with drums and violins.

JANINE: Mhm.

KEITH: Where it’s like oh, this stopped being a song and now it’s just like, nine different kinds of drums beating at a slightly irregular pace [ALI and JANINE chuckle]. That’s when my head rolls, when there’s like-

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: Something is dramatic is happening, and it sounds like this weird, horrible like, it sounds like if you could hear nine heartbeats at once? [ALI laughs]

JANINE: God, what’s- there is- what scene was that? I feel like I took a note of it somewhere.

KEITH: Um, oh! It’s, it is during, it’s during the aft- I think it actually happens twice, but I’m pretty sure it’s during the aftermath of when H.W. Plainview gets blown off of the oil derrick,

ALI: Yeah.

KEITH: And everyone’s sort of running around?

JANINE: Oh yeah, yeah.

KEITH: And being like,

JANINE: That’s a big one.

KEITH: Ah, there’s a big fire, and this kid is hurt, and what’s going on.

JANINE: But there's one that’s even more drummy, like that one is a lot of noise..? [KEITH: Yeah.] Like very percussive, yeah, but like specifically there’s one where it’s like, there are nine different drums and they’re all attacking me. [ALI chuckles]

KEITH: Yeah. I think he’s- is he near the ocean? I can't’ remember, I wish I could remember. [ALI: Oh when he was-] It is like halfway into the movie.

ALI: Maybe when he swam into his brother? His, his quote unquote brother?

JANINE: Maybe.

KEITH: It might’ve been the one then? I don’t know if they had even met yet.

ALI: Oh fair.

KEITH: I think it was before the murder, cause I don’t think there was a lot of like moving around.

JANINE: It might have been on the beach, right? When he’s having that real- I don’t- [sighs] I wish I remembered.

KEITH: Yeah. It’s tough because here’s the secret to this movie, I mean it’s not a secret, but. Daniel Day Lewis is in every single scene but like one, and is the focal point of every single scene but that one that he’s not in. Two, he’s not in two scenes. He’s not in the scene where there’s a montage of H.W. like, and Mary Sunday?

ALI: Mhm.

KEITH: And then there is the scene after Plainview slaps Eli Sunday around where then Eli like flips out on his dad. Those are the two scenes in the entire movie that don’t have [ALI chuckles] Daniel Day Lewis in them. So it’s kind of hard to remember things, [JANINE: Yeah.] because you can’t go oh, before and after when this person was here, and this person was here, because 85% of the movie is just Daniel Day Lewis’ face.

JANINE: I have a question. Oh also, we- [chuckles] sorry, we got like so, we forgot to like go around do intros and stuff. [ALI laughs]

KEITH: Oh yeah, we didn’t go-

JANINE: [laughing] Because it was just like, let’s just talk about this fucking movie right now.

ALI: No, like at this tier people know-

JANINE: I know, but-

ALI: But yeah, okay, so hi, I’m Alicia Acampora, [laughing] I’m joined by Janine Hawkins.

JANINE: I’m Janine Hawkins, I’m @bleatingheart [laughing again] on Twitter.

ALI: Keith J. Carberry.

KEITH: Hi, you can find me on Twitter @KeithJCarberry and you can find the Let’s Plays that I do at youtube.com/RunButton.

ALI: And Arthur Martinez-Tebbel.

ART: Hey you can find me on Twitter @atebbel, I think we should also tell people we’re gonna just talk about spoilers from the very first second just like, [ALI laughs] right away, late in the movie spoilers?

KEITH: I spoiled- I said the last scene of the movie the first thing we talked about.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: Which is sort of the cultural perception of the movie also?

ALI: Yeaaah.

KEITH: Is that scene?

JANINE: There’s got to be an expectation if you click on, on There Will Be Blood discussion cast that we’re gonna- [KEITH: Yeah.] we’re gonna get into it.

KEITH: I’m curious-

ART: And it’s a 14 year old movie, [ALI laughs] you had time to go see it.

KEITH: That’s true.

JANINE: I didn’t, evidently.

KEITH: Well Janine, you- this is your first time watching it, Ali you said you’ve watched it before. Art you didn’t say but I’m pretty sure that you’ve seen it, as I think I know that you’ve seen it.

ART: Yeah, I saw this movie theatrically at the Brooklyn Art Museum.

ALI: Oooh!

ART: In its first run, you know.

JANINE: Oooh.

KEITH: Did you like it Janine, watching this movie for the first time in 2021?

JANINE: Ummm, it was o- I mean, I’m the kind of person where like I sometimes don’t know how I feel about a movie until a year later.

KEITH: Okay.

JANINE: I think this was a thing [chuckling] so, a thing that I told Austin after watching is, was that my perception of this movie as someone who hadn’t someone it and only heard about it, was that it was basically like a dark dramatic version of the monorail episode of The Simpsons. [KEITH laughs] [chuckling]

ART: That’s a hundred percent accurate.

KEITH: It’s kind of perfect!

JANINE: That’s not super wrong, to be honest!

ART: I mean, the perspective is shifted, [JANINE: Yes.] [KEITH: Right.] but yeah.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: It definitely is, but-

KEITH: And- and I have a slight issue with that episode because I think that a monorail is a great thing to build in this city.

JANINE: Not a tiny city, though.

KEITH: I think that even small cities should have reliable public transit.

JANINE: Sure, but-

ART: Not reliable public transit build by shifty con men though.

JANINE: No, you have like a, you have like a streetcar that goes up and down the main thoroughfare.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: Anyway- I- [chuckles] so I don’t- I think I like enjoyed it, I think one of the reasons I enjoyed it was because it didn’t do a lot of things I was expecting it to do. Like when I went in braced for it like, oh this is gonna be rough, like, what the fuck was the- The Good Guys, right, no? Nice Guys? Nice Guys.

ART: Mhm.

JANINE: I didn’t go into that movie braced for some of the stuff it was going to do, and it did those things and I was kind of bummed out. So it was nice to like watch a movie where like yeah, rough shit’s happening but also, it’s rough in a way that feels earned and compelling, and not just like, you’re taking cheap shots because you feel like you gotta earn your rating. I, okay, I have a question.

ALI: What’s up?

JANINE: And this is a question that’s maybe going to come out of nowhere. Is Eli Mary’s dad? And not Abel? Because- because H.W says that Mary says, her father hits her when she doesn’t pray. But Abel doesn’t seem to do anything ever.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: And the violent one that we see is Eli.

ALI: I mean but he’s just as religious, or at least like we see his faith in the like four lines that he has, right?

JANINE: But when we see his faith, Eli is bullying him through it.

ALI: No, but like even when Daniel makes that first offer and is like, hey I wanna buy up your farm or whatever, he’s like trying to shut Eli down from being involved by being like “God sent him here”. So I think that he has [JANINE: Hmm.] that instinct in him as well, I don’t think that it’s like, [KEITH: Yeah.] I didn’t read that.

JANINE: But also there’s that like scene where Daniel is sort of like, implies sort of being like, and now your dad doesn’t hit you anymore, right? And Abel’s sitting there just kind of like, side-eyeing him, and it just, to me felt kinda like, it- I don’t know.

KEITH: I read his expression as embarrassment, like he’s deeply embarrassed.

ALI: Yeah.

ART: Mhm.

JANINE: Yeah I guess I could see that. It just seems strange cause he seems like such a pushover.

KEITH: But Eli also is a pushover.

ALI: Right. Well, I mean-

ART: Yeah.

KEITH: He’s just a pushover on a different level.

ALI: Right. And also is like more of a theatrical person, or like- [KEITH: Yeah.] is looking for pride or attention in that way, in a way that Abel isn’t, but like, I don’t think that that makes him not capable of violence.

KEITH: The- I also think that the Dano characters are meant to be slightly younger than they seem? That’s just always my impression in movies, but-

JANINE: It’s so hard to tell with him, right?

KEITH: Yeah and in movies in general, I just always feel like people are play- like I think he’s meant to be like, he was sort of like a child preacher, and now he’s just a young preacher? Like I think he’s really onl- I mean, you know, it was, the movie’s set in like 1905 or something, 1908-

ART: It goes from 1911 is when they- he gets there, and the movie ends in 1927, so it’s a big range.

JANINE: Yeah.

ART: And the first scene is in 1898.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: Yeah.

ART: So everyone’s playing you know, thirty years or whatever.

KEITH: Right, yeah.

ART: And I think that it’s tricky when you only have one actor to convey that kind of-

KEITH: Yeah, that’s a good point.

JANINE: But also, they were twins, and his twin brother was old enough to set out on his own.

ALI: Yeah…

JANINE: So they’re probably not like, eleven, right? Like

KEITH: Yeah, you know I think that they’re like,

JANINE: Fifteen, sixteen.

KEITH: Yeah, maybe seventeen, somewhere between sixteen and eight- like nineteen.

JANINE: And you can- listen you can have a kid at fifteen.

KEITH: Totally. I mean-

ART: And so he’s mid, mid like thirties at the end there? That, that seems to track.

KEITH: Yeah. I do- we got into it so fast. I have this whole page of notes- [ALI chuckles]

JANINE: [chuckles] Me too. I took notes, they’re not as- my Fargo notes were impenetrably chronological, these ones are a little bit less that, but.

KEITH: I did wanna say, cause this is just not something that I thought of like, well at least- it is something that I thought of, but it is not something I did the math on any other time I saw this movie? At the very very beginning when they introduce, when Paul Tompkins is there, he is giving his first version of the “I’m an oil man, it’s a family business” shtick that he does?

JANINE: Mhm.

ART: Mhm.

KEITH: And he says that he’s got the- look I’ve got this well, it’s just one of my things that I’m doing, is this great well that just came in, it’s pulling down five hundred dollars per week, I did the math. That is a hundred and forty five thousand dollars a week, compared to modern day currency?

JANINE: Yeah, yeah.

ART: Mmm.

KEITH: He’s set. This is a movie that is- like, he could’ve just stopped there. Which is I think important to the movie, [JANINE: Yeah.] is how rich he was the absolute very beginning of the action of the movie basically?

ART: I think the point of the movie is he can’t stop-

KEITH: Right, right, no, I know, but it’s like-

JANINE: Yeah. Cause it’s not about that- even when he has literally everything and H.W. is like, I wanna go to a different country and set up a similar business, he’s like, ohh, competition- [ALI chuckles] like it becomes a whole thing, it’s just like, no. We’re not even, what are you talking about?

KEITH: It just hit- it hit me different when I took the time to be like, what the fu- what do you actually mean by five thousand dollars a week, and what they mean is [JANINE: Yeah.] a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a week.

JANINE: I mean, this is back when you could get like a fancy lady dress for twenty five cents, so. You know.

ALI: Five thousand dollars a week is a good paycheck now, like [laughs]

KEITH: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.

JANINE: Mhm.

ALI: Tremendously good.

KEITH: Right, it’s an excellent-

JANINE: If you were- if you were getting that amount in British pounds at the time, romance novels are like, wow, he’s doing great! You should marry him, like, for a year, it’s that what you’re getting a year, it’s like- [ALI laughs]

KEITH: Yeah, it just never- it just never hit me how totally set for life he was [JANINE: Yeah.] at the very very beginning of the movie. I mean obviously after he broke his leg and his oil buddy died but, basically the beginning still.

ALI: Sure. But all of that could be like dressed up though, I think it’s interesting that like it immediately goes from like, you know, I think it’s interesting in the opening scene of this movie is really him like, down in the wells himself doing the thing and like almost died. [JANINE: Yeeeah.] So like as he rises to this stature that he ends up doing it’s like, [JANINE: He’s left the ones involved] but he did the damn thing, like.

KEITH: He did- and he also, he walks with an increasingly difficult limp throughout the movie, like his, that, that leg breaking at the very beginning [JANINE: Yeah.] follows him for the rest of his life. Up until the end where it’s like, extremely obv- like a lot of the movie he disguises it. Does it and I think, Daniel Day Lewis does a great job, almost doesn’t even need to be said basically. [ALI and ART laugh] Everybody understands this about this movie. But,

ART: Hot take from Keith! [ALI chuckles]

KEITH: Hot take, I think Daniel Day Lewis did a really good job portraying Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood.

ALI: [laughing] I have never heard anybody ever say that!

KEITH: He does a really good job of downplaying the limp that is obviously hurting him.

JANINE: I’ll be honest, I didn't even notice it. Like now that you’re saying it it’s like, oh of course, but I think at the end when it’s obvious, I was just thinking like, oh he’s just like still, he’s just like so drunk and like, drugged out of his fucking mind that he can’t, he can barely stand upright. [KEITH: Yeah.] That was my read on it, I had not, and like in hindsight like, well of course, he broke his leg and then it got set by god knows who, probably not a doctor, probably just like someone [KEITH: Mhm, yeah.] who was out there.

KEITH: God, and they have that drone that like, violin drone that is really good. And you hear it twice in that first scene, and the second time is after he breaks his leg, crawls out of the mine that he’s in, and it just shows that he’s about to crawl maybe thirty miles [ALI chuckles] [JANINE: Yeah.] on his hands and knees. It’s, yeah it’s bad, it’s really bad. And then, very like this movie, it doesn’t actually show any of that. You hear the drone and like it’s like, oh this is brutal, everything about this is telling me that this is about to be really difficult, but then it just cuts to black and fades in on him getting a pretty decent cheque for his silver that he found down there.

ALI: Mmm. Yeah there’s so much of like, to Janine’s or your point at the beginning around how like prestige drama sort of dresses itself up, and like expectations with this movie, I think like especially within- especially like thinking about like our goals with Sangfielle or whatever, I think that like, this movie does a really interesting thing of like portraying cruelty in that way? Like, Daniel is kind of a shit person from the beginning of this movie, and it just like has constant reminders of like him talking over people, or just being weirdly rude in small ways.

KEITH: There’s some really good rudeness in this movie.

ALI: [laughing] There’s some really good-! A scumbag all-timer in this movie is when Paul comes to him, and the first thing that he says is, what church are you with? And then he pauses and says,

KEITH: Oh, it’s so good.

ALI: Oh, I enjoy all faiths. [laughs]

KEITH: It’s so condescending. He’s so condescending to Eli because he has- he has such a low opinion of people, and they really go out of their way to like, I mean cause- what ha- the first thing you see- Paul Dano plays two characters in this movie. He plays Paul Sunday, and then Eli Sunday, and when Paul Sunday shows up and gives him the tip like hey, you should go to my brother’s place, he’s got oil, you should buy it from him. I didn’t even notice what the rude thing was. I actually never noticed, but at some- but very early on, Paul’s like, don’t talk to me like I’m stupid. And every time I forget to pay attention to exactly what [ALI laughs] is said, immediately preceding that, but then you see it for the entire rest of the movie, the way that he talks to people is terrible.

ART: He is like the embodiment of like going to another country and just speaking English loud and slow.

[ALI and JANINE chuckle]

KEITH: He, god, one of my favourite bits of that is- oh, he goes to, he goes to Eli’s church for the first time, and watches the thing and Paul’s like, are you gonna give me the money that you promised me? Which he never actually does give him, but he promises him $5000 dollars to rebuild his church.

ART: Which you’ll remember is $140,000 in today’s money. [ALI laughs]

KEITH: Yeah, it’s a lot of money. Also it’s-

ART: A lot of money to rebuild a church that’s one room.

KEITH: It also is a severe underpayment for the land.

ART: Mhm.

KEITH: It’s sort of both, and he openly tells his son about trying to like, swindle them on the price. But you watch Eli’s really inelegantly shtick, his like stupid pastor thing is really not very good. Where he’s like, I’m not angry anymore, God told me to whisper, I whisper the demons away, but he can’t help himself, and he gets loud and obnoxious at the end. And then he’s like hey, I need money for my church and Daniel tells him, that he put on- in the church and to the pastor! He says, that he put on a one goddamn hell of a show.

[ALI laughs, ART and KEITH chuckle]

ALI: It’s so good!

KEITH: It’s really good.

ALI: That’s the other thing is like, the betrayal of faith in this movie is also really interesting cause like. I, Eli is such a pathetic person-

KEITH: Yeah, he’s a worm.

ALI: [chuckles] -when he’s in a scene, and like he’s so, it’s so obvious that like the kindness that he’s putting on is an air. And that’s like interesting in comparison to Daniel who’s just like an asshole all the time. But like in the point in the movie where like faith really comes up, and they’re really trying to like, you know snipe at each other a little bit, specifically the like section of scenes I’m thinking of is when Eli is like, hey, I wanna bless the oil rig before everything starts. I know that you’re having this little show, and I wanna bless the rig, and here what’s you should say about me, and here’s the time we should do it.

KEITH: Yeah.

ALI: And then Daniel doesn’t- does the prayer without him, and instead with his sister, like while he’s standing there? And that’s just like a shitty thing and was fun to see. But then, all the like, the two major disasters that happen in this movie happen like, the two scenes immediately  after, so you’re like left with this feeling of like, would it have gone different if Eli had blessed the oil rig? Like the- the thought of that for the like twenty five minutes in this movie is a satisfying thing of being like, what could’ve gone differently here?

JANINE: But like you’ve also-

ART: I think that it’s a fascinating choice that neither Daniel nor Eli are good people in the slightest.

KEITH: Right. Yeah, yeah.

JANINE: Yes, they’re- they’re the same.

ART: Like I think the temptation is to like, make someone in the movie good.

JANINE: There- like to me this whole movie is just like one person and a mirror where you know, you have church and you have the oil derrick side by side, they’re both wood constructed steeples, you see the construction of each of them, you see the flocks that go to each one of them every single day, you see the people who lead those flocks, you see the fake kindness and true rudeness of both of those people, you see both of those people abusing and neglecting their families even though you know, they have sort of different circumstances, like it’s- and then you eventually see one of them take the other one out in a way where it’s like, where he’s like trying to beat his own nature out of himself, kind of? It’s like he snaps cause it’s like this constant desire for money, it’s like but that’s your whole thing, Daniel. Is you can’t stop because it is this constant desire for money and more and etc.

That was the other thing I was trying to remember that Austin was like, this movie scratches all of the parts of my brain that made me be an English major? [ALI chuckles] Without making me really work for it. Where like I don’t- [chuckles] I don’t feel like I need to do a really deep dive to see all of the cool things that I like about- like I really, I find like parallels and things like that really satisfying in books, in movies in whatever, where it’s a really clean thing of like, you can compare this to this, and they’re similar in these ways and different in these ways, and here’s what it says about the greater work. Here what this is saying about money and religion, or here’s what this is saying about like this character’s relationship to family, or to capital or whatever.

All of that stuff is really satisfying in this movie, and it’s really accessible like, there’s a lot more that you can get into deeper? But like there’s so much, you know again, you can go back to the soundtrack on this. How the soundtrack responds to what’s going on, where it’s like, so much of it is just right there for you to grab on to and be like, oh I understand this part, or like oh, this is a cool thing they’re doing. And that’s like really satisfying in a way where like, I described it to Austin as the thing I felt kind of guilty about. But, there is nothing wrong with that, right? There’s nothing wrong with something being smart and accessible [ALI: Mhm.] [KEITH: Right.] and kind of laying it all out there. LIke it’s not like it’s being heavy-handed necessarily either. It’s just not, it’s not going out of its way to hide things either I guess?

KEITH: Yeah, yeah. The interesting thing to me about parallels between Eli Sunday and Daniel Plainview, is that like they have similar depth to their ambition, like they're both extremely ambitious. But Daniel Plainview operates on such a vaster scale that it- Eli believes so much that he should be getting the things that he’s not getting, and you see him work towards them that it makes you, or it sort of obfuscates that compared to Daniel, Eli- the obstacles Eli presents are, it’s like a gnat on a horse, like it’s nothing? [ALI chuckles] It only is treated as this big deal because Daniel Plainview has a totally off-the-rails need to not be told what to do at any point ever? [ALI and JANINE: Mhm.] And Eli recognizes this as his one bit of leverage, and is able to humiliate Daniel like, I would say a couple times minorly, and then once pretty majorly? [ALI chuckles]

ART: Mhm. Great assessment of those-

KEITH: Yeah [chuckling]. And it goes like wow, this is serious. But the reality is that Daniel Plainview is a billionaire, and Eli is like sort of a sniveling worm who is trying to like get his share of the crumbs that he feels that he deserves. And which he kind of does deserve a little bit of, at least. I mean he was promised $5000 that he never got. But they are both supremely unlikeable, and it’s- I would say to the credit of the movie, that it’s able to find this balance when the reality of their circumstances is really really unbalanced. And I think the movie’s able to sort of strike this thing where it makes the things happening to Daniel feel as significant as they would to Daniel himself, when in reality it’s just his sort of drive and ambition and need to, I mean something that he says is that like, he has a hatred of other people, and he wants to see everyone out- he doesn’t just want to succeed, he wants everyone around him to fail. And it sort of passes that perspective onto the viewer where you see other people’s successes as hurting Daniel in ways that actually are not really.

JANINE: Yeah. That’s the thing like when that guide who was trying to make a deal, I forgot what company- not the Union Oil, but the other guy comes back-

KEITH: Yeah the one who also owns the railroads.

JANINE: Yeah the railroad guys. When they come back and they’re like just at the restaurant talking about their deal and stuff, it was such a weird moment of like, why do you? You gain nothing by interacting with them here.

KEITH: Yeah, they did nothing.

JANINE: No, and they’re probably- they’re here- they’re not here as some affront to you, it’s probably the only restaurant in town, there’s like five buildings here! Like where else are rich people gonna go get served by a waiter? Nowhere, for miles.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: So it’s- the fact that he like makes that a scene as if they have come there to rub his nose in something is, I think like- for me is a really big standout moment of like, no he’s not just an asshole, there’s like-

KEITH: It’s sort of a turning point for his character I think of like-

JANINE: Yeah. And putting the napkin over his face so that H.W doesn’t read his lips, I guess? Is what he’s doing there?

KEITH: Yeah that’s also how I read that.

JANINE: As he’s like stirring shit up, but then fuck it, he just stands up and stirs shit up anyways? Is [exhales] at that point it’s like, what is your game? Like I… it’s so…

KEITH: It is another really satisfying bit of the script where he is making such an obvious ass of himself and then buttoned his whole scene by being like, and now, you look like a fool. Where it just like- it is sort of a heavy-handed bit, but it’s very like, oh Jesus Christ, if I ever saw this happening I would die in my seat.

[JANINE, ALI, ART chuckle]

ALI: I mean, it’s also really compelling because it’s like, aside from the final scene it’s sort of the biggest blow up that we see from him, but also like, it’s so close to the end of the movie that we’ve already seen him succeed at his quote unquote goals like, his like you know chip in that argument is like, I was able to sell to somebody else, and now my son’s here, and like I, I was a success here, but like. Just having the success isn’t enough? It’s like, I, my success needs to actually make someone feel bad and [chuckling] if they don’t, I’m just going to scream at them at their table for some reason.

KEITH: Well cause the con- the context of that whole scene was that in the last scene they were like, hey, your son is like sick. I don’t even know they knew what had happened to his son but-

JANINE: All they were like- all they said was like, you can spend more time with your son.

KEITH: Yeah! If you sell to us, you can be rich and spend time to your son, and Daniel literally says I’m gonna cut your throat-

JANINE: In bed, yeah.

KEITH: For telling me my business for my family.

JANINE: Don’t tell me how to raise my family.

KEITH: And then he carries this through like eight months, the anger of that, and then throws this fit of like see, I sold to someone else, and have- and I’m spending time with my son, you idiot! [ALI laughs, ART chuckles]

JANINE: Look how good a dad I am [KEITH chuckles] yelling at you in this restaurant while my son waits for his steak and water.

KEITH: And goat’s milk.

JANINE: And goat’s milk.

ALI: Yeah.

KEITH: I’ve never had goat’s milk, I bet it’s sour.

JANINE: I bet it’s not [laughs].

KEITH: Yeah?

JANINE: Maybe it’s a little more sour than like cow’s milk? But like it’s probably gonna be a similar composition, right?

KEITH: I don’t know, goat cheese is more acidic than cow cheese.

JANINE: Yeah.

ALI: Mmm.

ART: I bet all of these people are eating food- regularly eating food and really enjoying it that you would not eat voluntarily. [ALI chuckles]

KEITH: I’m not very picky. But yeah.

ALI: I mean that’s also another interesting point about like the setting and sort of what Daniel ends up promising to people, right? Where like [wheezes] we never did the like, here’s what the plot is thing of this, but like, when he’s initially making the pitch to everybody of like, I’m gonna buy up all different sections of your land then you know, the thing of him being like, you know I have my men, and they’re gonna bring their families because family is important, and we’re gonna make schools for their kids and then I’ll, you know, because I’m here, and because I’m doing this thing, there is going to be a school, and because I’m here and because I’m doing this thing, there’s suddenly going to be water now, and people are going to be able to eat bread now, where in a previous scene we had known that like, they can’t grow other grains to eat bread in the specific area. But him being like yeah, me and my business is going to create that for you, is like an interesting showboating [laughs].

JANINE: And then, it’s really- the thing that makes that super interesting right, is that we get that, and we can sit there and be like, he’s, this is bullshit, he’s not gonna do these things. And then you get years of- I think years, possibly months, but I think years of like him fucking around and like things mostly just look the same except there’s a couple new buildings and some more people, and then some tents?

But then when he finally goes to survey the bandy tract, and it’s so green. It’s like the first time there is green [KEITH: Yeah.] in that movie. And there’s so much of it. And then it sort of like, it’s so much- there is so much food, it’s all of a sudden just green green green, and then it gradually tapers off as they get to the ocean. But it’s amazing that like you know, they didn’t you know, most of the land in that area didn’t have, or wasn’t able to sustain crops in that way. And he makes all these promises about you know, we’ll bring in irrigation and do all this stuff. And you know the one piece of land that he hasn’t touched is the one that would almost look like he had delivered on his promises in any way, but obviously he hasn’t. Just this one piece that he- he didn’t even like, want to bother with it right? [KEITH: He forgot about him.] Like the guy just wanted to talk to him, and he was meh, fuck him.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: Fuck that guy.

KEITH: It was like “he’ll come around”, and then it’s like-

JANINE: Just forgot.

KEITH: Two or three years later, and he’s like “why don’t I own this?”

JANINE: Why don’t I own these beautiful orchards and like- [ALI chuckles]

KEITH: Yeah, by the end of the buying phase, he had bought up 11,000 acres of land, which is a lot of acres.

JANINE: Mhm.

ALI: Yeah.

KEITH: It’s a bout seventeen square miles of land.

JANINE: Maybe- should, should we do a sum- should we do the Just King Things style five-sentence summary of what this movie is just for people who don’t necessarily know? [ALI chuckles]

ART: But still listened to fifty minutes of this?

JANINE: Yes. That’s a niche-

ART: Okay, that person, if this describes you, I’m very impressed with you.

KEITH: Yeah I think you should email like, that’s me. I’m that- you don’t have to explain yourself.

JANINE: I mean, I listen- I cited Just King Things, I listen to Just King Things, I have never read a Stephen King book. So I, you know. My mom read one when she is in labour with me if that counts? But-

ART: [overlapping] But if they waited fifty minutes to get to the summary part, would you still be-

JANINE: Yes, yes, absolutely.

ALI: Okay, so five sentences, right?

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: Mhm. Who wants the challenge? Ali?

ALI: Daniel Day Lewis is an oil rigger who co- [laughs] who sees a co-worker with a child die, and takes that child with him. He gets a tip from-

KEITH: This is a new sentence? This is sentence number two?

ALI: This is a new sentence, yeah. Okay, two.

JANINE: Period?

ALI: He gets a tip from some kid who shows up who is like “hey, there is oil that’s coming out of the ground up where my family lives, I want you to give me five hundred dollars for this information”; he gives the money, he goes to the place.

JANINE: So that’s three, you’re at three [ALI laughs] unless there was, was that a colon? Was that a period? We can say that was a colon or a semicolon.

ALI: Yeah, that was the second sentence, this is right now my third sentence. Daniel goes to that area under the guise of hunting quail, basically scams that guy by being like “oh I saw some-”

ART: This is going to be such a fifth sentence.

ALI: [laughs] “I saw some oil out there, and you know, I would like to buy it from you”; he does buy, and he buys up all the lands surrounding so that he can make an oil drill from that ranch to the coast. Four. [chuckles nervously] He’s a bad person, and [laughs] he spends a lot of time [KEITH laughs] showing that he’s a bad person-

KEITH: It’s like when you write your name but you don’t give yourself enough space and you have to like, squeeze shit downwards?

JANINE: Write it sidewards?

ALI: I haven’t even gotten into H.W., I can’t talk about his brother.

ART: I think, I don’t- I’m not entirely sure you understood the assignment.

[ALI, JANINE, KEITH laugh]

ART: I think you went a little dense for five sentences.

ALI: Sure. I don’t listen to Just King Things, so I don’t have a-

JANINE: Shout out to Cameron Kunzelman and Michael Lutz.

ALI: Yeah.

JANINE: It’s a good podcast. I mean that is kind of the heart of it though, like, maybe you need like six or seven sentences there, cause the rest of it is like, you see him become a worse person [KEITH: Yeah.] or just out himself as a bad person in a more obvious way because he’s not alone all the time anymore, he’s got more people around him to be an asshole to, and eventually he has everything he wants but he’s still miserable and he kills- he kills a preacher that he doesn’t- who’s annoying to him.

KEITH: We’ve almost- that’s really what it is, a preacher who is annoying to him [laughs]

JANINE: Yeah. And who also like, he seems to be really, he- okay, I’m going to use the word triggered, but I mean it fully in the like sense of someone who has like relationship trauma, where things can be triggering? I know triggering, that word has sort of lost its meaning a lot of ways and it’s, it’s a tough one. But there’s kind of no better word for the way he responds to someone asking him for money, right?

Where [KEITH: Mhm.] his sort of fake brother, the imposter brother asking him for money seems to be the thing that really catalyzes him fucking murdering him, and the preacher constantly asking him for money and finally being super desperate at the end in terms of asking him for money, catalyzes that murder as well. Like the two killings are largely catalyzed by someone coming to him asking for his money. And I, I’m sure there is an explanation for that that can be inferred that I kind of don’t have, but I, it feels like there’s kind of a missing piece there in terms of like, why does that really got to him as badly as it does?

KEITH: I think it’s the greed, I think- it’s one of the things that he says to his brother when they’re talking is that he has an ambition and an anger in him. He hates the success of other people.

JANINE: Mhm.

KEITH: And he is extremely protective of his own success. And so I think there is this part of him that thinks other people are trying to trick him, and even when they’re not, asking for something-

JANINE: To drink his milkshake.

KEITH: That- right. When someone asks for his milkshake, he says fuck you I’ll kill you.

ALI: Yeah, I think that there is an interesting parallel between the fake brother, who’s Henry, and Eli, who’s the preacher, where like-

JANINE: Yes.

ALI: Eli is calling himself his brother in that scene even though he isn’t? I guess he’s like-

JANINE: That’s the other thing that made me think-!

KEITH: Brother-in-law. His brother-in-law!

JANINE: Okay, he’s not though.

ART: No, he’s his uncle in law.

KEITH: Uncle, yeah, uncle.

JANINE: This is the other thing that made me go like, [KEITH: Yeah, fair.] is Eli secretly Mary’s dad? Because the fact that you said he says to Daniel, “we are brothers by marriage” it’s like, no, you’re not! [chuckles] [ALI laughs] That's not how it works!

ART: It could be using brother like very casually.

KEITH: Yeah I think that’s sort of how I’d take it.

JANINE: In that sense, you’re already brothers then, if you’re using it in a casual religious sense, you’re already brothers under god, whatever.

ART: In the Assassin’s Creed brotherhood. [ALI chuckles]

KEITH: Well, he does say “by marriage” in that bit.

JANINE: Yes, so it’s weird.

KEITH: So, I think what he means is, brothers as in relatives, and by marriage. We’re related by marriage.

ALI: Right, yeah.

JANINE: Yeah. Sorry I derailed what was- [laughs]

ALI: Oh yeah, but like, yeah I mean there’s- you know it’s interesting cause it is really a movie about just seeing someone decay, right? Seeing their personality decay even though they become successful and get the things that they want, but they like lose so much.

KEITH: His ability to be the slick guy who does the monorail speech is what decays about him- he can no longer go somewhere and be like, “I put the Sunday ranch on the map!” like, because he just is too- I don’t know, too rich? Like he’s like, been, he totally loses touch with whatever part of him was able to [JANINE: He laid roots down.] dupe people into doing what he wanted.

ALI: Yeah.

JANINE: He built a house which means he couldn’t- he didn't have an excuse to be out in the open and be going around doing things himself anymore. Like that’s the other- the other thing that’s interesting that we sort of touched on earlier is like, this movie is also the process of him getting further and further away from the work, right?

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: Like it starts out with him being the only person in the hole. Then he’s one of two people in the hole. And he’s, when bad things happen, he’s experiencing them first hand. And then it gets to the point where bad things happen, he’s in an office, a bit away and someone- and he says “who was it?”, and they give him a name, and he’s like “did I know him?”, and it’s like no, you didn’t. He you know, someone says “no you didn’t know the guy who just died” and it’s like “oh well, okay”.

ALI: Mmm.

JANINE: And then years- in the end you get to him in this house that just looks like nothing we have seen at any other point in the movie. He’s drinking his tea out of the fanciest teacup you’ve seen in your life [ALI chuckles] instead of this like shitty little earthenware thing. Instead of smoking-

ART: And an automated bowling alley.

JANINE: Yes, he has a bowling alley, he has you know, for the rest- he had, he used to have a mason jar full of pipes on his desk, which I thought was really fascinating, cause it feels like, it feels like a rustic old-timey version of like a cig- like a humidor, like a little cigar box on the desk. But he had like a glass jar full of pipes and then at the end, he’s got a cigarette in a cigarette holder. [ALI and KEITH laugh] And some of that sure is the passage of time and stuff, but you know, you see him-

KEITH: It does have some nice Cruella de Vil vibes.

ALI: Mmm.

JANINE: Yes, you see him getting further and further away from it.

KEITH: He also in the mansion seems- every time I watch, I don’t know what it is, this is probably just me, but every time I see him in the house I just like, go like, oh he’s a Sith Lord now. [ALI wheezes and laughs] Like he seems like, just kind of like an evil person who’s like, so paranoid and he’s like surrounded by all this stuff that really doesn’t mean anything. Where he like thought that, he thought that the thing that would fulfill his life would fulfill his life, but actually he’s just like.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: A horrible, shriveled, angry old man.

JANINE: He’s won the game, but he’s not like, you know, everything he did was leading up to that. And now he’s just kind of stagnant cause it was the whole pursuit I guess. I’m now thinking though like, the thing I said earlier about this being a thing where Daniel and Eli are kind of living in parallel, I guess maybe the turnabout at the end is actually him being like, actually Paul is the parallel. He’s off screen the whole time, but like Paul- or maybe Paul is the one that he used to be? And now- he would’ve seen himself in Paul than in Eli, but then by the end he sees more Eli in him than Paul, and that’s why he has to kill him?

KEITH: Well, he says a couple things about Paul at the end there. He says that he gave Paul ten thousand dollars, and now he’s running his business-

ART: But he did not.

JANINE: No, yeah.

KEITH: But that’s a lie, right? He doesn’t know where the fuck Paul is. He gave Paul five hundred dollars.

JANINE: That’s true. Like he’s, he is kind of just twist- there’s a lot of stuff that’s just like, you know when he reveals to H.W. like you’re an orphan from a basket, we don’t know that that’s true. Like, I went back and rewatched the beginning and it’s like, okay, well when it starts out he is alone, yeah. But then when he has other people the baby is there and like, his friend is a little more interested in keeping the baby, or in attending to the baby but were like- when I first watched the movie, I, because I knew it was a story about a dad and a son, that was my understanding, my interpretation of that was like, oh well the dad’s a workaholic, and his friend is a little bit softer, so he’s taking care of the baby. And I just kind of taken for granted that the baby was his, and by- for reasons and we just skipped over that part.

KEITH: I always took that at face value. That that was that guy’s kid?

ALI: Yeah.

ART: Yeah I think that’s what you’re supposed to think.

KEITH: What I thought you were going to say was, we don’t know that that baby didn’t have like, a mother who’s alive at home, whose child was kidnapped by Daniel Plainview.

ALI: Fair.

JANINE: That’s also true- I mean like, we don’t know. He says he has multiple different stories, and they change depending on what he’s trying to get, right? Like you know, he says that one time that like, you know, his mother died in childbirth, and like that’s when he’s trying to sort of get sympathy as a family man.

KEITH: Right, and doesn’t even want to seem like-

JANINE: And then when he’s trying to hurt H.W. he says you’re an orphan found in a basket. Like, but we don’t really see it either way. It’s just the baby isn’t there, and then the baby is there.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: So I guess it- it honestly like, it could be true, it could also be that that’s that guy’s kid, like, it’s- nothing he says at any point actually can be relied on.

KEITH: I think H.W. is interesting as a character because it’s one of the like, you can see the story as a series of like, people that Daniel Plainview is trying to let into his life, in like a more serious way? And for most of his- most of the movie it’s his son, like. He has a very weird relationship with his son, it’s a very long time into the movie before he acknowledges the kid in a serious way? But he does seem to act fatherly kind of, in a way that you wouldn’t expect from the Daniel Plainview that’s towards the end of the movie?

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: And when he doesn’t have to, it’s not like part of a show? And then later with the brother, he sends H.W. away, presumably to a school for him to learn sign language I think it what it literally is. [JANINE: Yeah.] They don’t actually say that in the movie, because he loses his hearing, we haven’t said this earlier, he loses his hearing when the oil derrick explodes. And then he sort of like really quickly brings his supposed brother Henry Plainview into his life to replace the H.W. role.

ALI: Mhm.

ART: Well that was like the thing right, he needed it to be a family business, but, as soon as he like a slightly convenient family member-

JANINE: That’s before. But he, he does that before H.W. gets sent away. Right? Cause H.W.-

KEITH: Yeah, there’s a little bit of overlap.

JANINE: H.W. like lights- tries to burn, like he sets a trail of fire to the guy’s bed because I think he sees that he’s going to be replaced because he now can’t- he can’t do as he’s told right? And that’s Daniel’s whole thing, is like, he needs someone who’ll kind of do as he’s told, and now H.W.’s in a position where he doesn’t know what he’s being told. So he’s going to get replaced.

ALI: That’s a really interesting-

JANINE: And he kind of lashes out.

ALI: -scene, because you’re right that we see Daniel sort of accept the brother before H.W. is out of the scene but like, H.W. is also like digging through his shit? The brother’s stuff, I mean. And like reading his diary and like looking through stuff, and I always wondered if that scene was like, H.W. trying to communicate that he can’t? Which is like, you shouldn't trust this person? Like is it just like a-

KEITH: Right, yeah, that’s actually what I was gonna ask-

JANINE: He’s not reading the diary though. If like, this is- cause this is a thing I had- when H.W. loses his hearing I was like, is H.W. not literate? Because he’s never been in school, he’s only ever been traveling with Daniel, right? And it feels like the easiest way to communicate would be to write back and forth, but they don’t do that.

KEITH: They never do that.

JANINE: And then when he goes and looks at the brother’s diary, he’s holding it upside down.

KEITH: Right.

ALI: Mm.

KEITH: Yeah he finds a picture, he looks at the picture, the picture meant nothing to me. But, yeah, I, that’s one of the thing that I’ve always been like, did he know? Can’t tell, did he freak out and was like “I’m gonna burn down this faker’s bed” or whatever [ALI chuckles]. It does make sense that he would be like, “I’m gonna burn down my replacement’s bed”. [ALI: Yeah, right.] And that’s the thing is that, Daniel is using, he uses H.W. as a cute what the lawyer that he meets for the oil company, he like, Gene, that guy Gene, he comes off the train and he’s like “hey look at you,” you know, “you’re selling the sweet face, like I know your shtick”, like he just says it in the movie. He’s like, I know what you do, you do your little kid thing. [chuckles]

ALI: [laughs] You say it so much worse than it actually happens, cause he’s like, he says like, “it must be easier to buy that up with such a cute face”.

KEITH: Right.

ALI: And then Daniel’s like are you complimenting my son? And he’s like yeah, and then immediately after the lawyer guy is like, if you need me to draft you up a contract let me know, you should be making- [laughs]

KEITH: Right, the guy is being friendly, the guy is being friendly but he does say what the movie is actually doing, which is Daniel Plainview uses his son to get people to sign contracts. But he also does mostly seem like a father for most of the movie. For most of the childhood bits of the movie anyway. But then his brother- he never really does the family guy shtick with the brother. He’s just kind of there and helping him-

ALI: I don’t think that-

KEITH: Just seems like the same way he’s like, he can’t stop using people, and he can’t let anybody in, but he is trying to have someone that he can trust, but also cannot trust anyone.

ALI: Yeah. I mean I think that you’re right in that like, it’s interesting how quickly he comes to the place where he’s like, confiding in his brother? Like, the like deep like, I have competition in me, I hate most people stuff, comes from him just, wanting to express his emotion to his brother, which is like something he hasn’t had a chance to do. But at the same time, his brother is just some dude off the street who he like brings to a different contract meeting, when he could’ve brought like the guy he’s been working with for years, the guy who took H.W. on the train to the [KEITH: Yeah.] sign language school, who had been his number two guy that whole time. So it’s definitely like-

KEITH: What is his part-? Who?

JANINE: Ciarán Hinds’ character.

ALI: Yeah, there’s definitely the air of-

KEITH: Who?

JANINE: Ciarán Hinds.

KEITH: Oh.

ALI: Yeah. But there’s definitely the air of like-

JANINE: The guy with the most face in the world.

[KEITH and ALI laugh]

ALI: If I’m gonna sit down at a table with somebody, I want a family member to be there, because this is how I’ve done this con this whole time.

KEITH: And one of his, one of his partners is like confused by that too. Like it’s just an off-hand comment that he makes as he’s walking out of a room, he goes like, did you take Henry to the Union meeting? The Union Oil meeting? And then that’s the only time it’s ever addressed, but one of the guys is like why are you doing that?

ALI: Why are you doing that.

JANINE: Yeah, I- I mean I think a thing that’s worth saying here is that like, I don’t think that- [sighs] when I was watching this, my first thought was like, it was not that Daniel was suddenly becoming a bad father, right? It was that like, the thing that he’d relied on in terms of making it seem like they had a good relationship and communicated well and stuff, now communication was harder and was sort of laying bare the fact that like no, this wasn’t, this wasn’t a real relationship. This was one direction. Like this was a single direction kind of arrangement, and now that that sort of, that that sort of pathway is cut off, he’s not spending- you know he’s not gonna take the time to figure out another pathway.

Or like he’s not going to, you know there’s that scene where he puts, I guess it’d be whiskey or something like, he spikes H.W. milks and then like forces him to drink it? Which is another good- that’s another good like, English Literature 101 metaphor that you could pluck out and be like, ahhh!, it’s like a corruption of the mother nursing the child, [ALI chuckles] it’s like that kind of, you know, it’s low hanging fruit. But it’s there in terms of like, it sort of underscored for me like, this was never a positive parent-child relationship? This was someone who was taking good care of a tool to them, right?

Like they- [KEITH: Yeah.] you know, they were- it was utility, right? And H.W. was useful and respectful and helpful, and sort of knew his place quote unquote, and could play his role, so it seemed like a positive father-son relationship. But the second you remove that utility, you know, it’s obvious that like there was no communication or understanding or love there, really, at least not from Daniel to H.W. Cause you know, H.W. probably feels the same he always felt about his dad, but there’s no you know, the affection just stops being there. There is no- he’s not getting what he needs at that point.

KEITH: Well they skip all of this time, but he remains his partner even after he- when he is a child, he loses his hearing, and then they sort of fast forward like twenty years or however many years it was.

JANINE: Yeah, but he has an interpreter now so he can like.

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: You know, fit in with that role again.

KEITH: But he doesn’t- it doesn’t break their relationship- it takes twenty years that we skipped to break the relationship fully, which is sort of interesting- I don’t think it really- I don’t have anything to say other than that, it’s sort of interesting that the- I mean it really shows him being terrible to H.W. for that last like-

JANINE: I mean I think- but I think the break in the relationship is really the train thing, right?

ALI: Yeah.

JANINE: Where he abandon hims on the train with Ciarán Hinds’ character whose name I don’t remember, and then you know when he-

KEITH: I don’t think they ever said his name.

JANINE: I think they did, I just, [KEITH: Oh yeah right at the very beginning.] I don’t remember. It was Mr. some some, I don’t know. But then when he comes back, he just like, there is that reunion that should be this really touching moment and they hug and stuff, and then he just starts fucking slapping the crap out of Daniel until Daniel’s like sort of pushes him away like, yeah, I get it. You got me. Like it kind of feels like- I can’t imagine the relationship was good after that, you know? Even if we don’t see a lot of it.

ALI: Yeah, it’s definitely interesting. Like the breakdown in communication is definitely a huge part there, just in terms of like, you know it’s almost, it’s almost similar to the Brady thing, where you see Daniel at some point being like, oh can you call this guy to do this thing for my son, we’ll take care of him. And then weeks or months happen where like there’s been no progression on that, because it’s just not a priority to him versus like setting up the lines, or like dealing with people on the neighbourhood or whatever else where it’s like, yeah, this isn’t the most important thing to me. But once it’s like, okay I need to get rid of H.W. because he is like actually a threat [chuckles] to what I’m trying to do it’s like, okay, he should go somewhere else, and, this can’t be this anymore.

JANINE: Yeah.

ART: Although the one he was trying to do in that sentence is, sleep without being on fire.

[ALI, JANINE, KEITH chuckle]

ALI: Sure.

JANINE: I have a quote- was it, was it Daniel, or what was the- the fake brother’s name?

ALI: Paul.

KEITH: Henry.

ALI: Oh Henry.

JANINE: Henry, yeah. Which one of them grabbed him? Like chased him and grabbed him? Cause they both had the same mustache, and it was dark, and I couldn't tell which of them it was.

ALI and KEITH: I think it was Daniel.

JANINE: Okay.

KEITH: I’m pretty sure, cause he was- you could, that was one of the scenes where you can see him sort of limping.

JANINE: Right, okay. Okay. I was really bad at catching that limp. [ALI chuckles] I just did not notice.

KEITH: I think it is intentionally suppressed by Daniel Day Lewis to look like-

JANINE: I would just assume they were drunk.

KEITH: Right, yeah- I think it is sort of intentionally like, I wanna walk like a guy who doesn’t wanna show that he has a limp would walk. Which is really, a really tough ask, I think, but he do- and maybe wasn’t asked- he probably was. It probably was asked of him. And yeah, there’s scenes where he- I’m reading a lot into it, but there’s the scene where he’s in the water, and he seems like so relieved to be in the water, which could just be like it was a hot day, [JANINE: Yeeeah.] but it could also be like I’m off this fucking leg?

JANINE: He seems to enjoy it a lot more than Henry.

KEITH: Yeah. Yeah. Henry looked like he was having a heat exhaustion- yeah.

JANINE: Like Henry doesn’t really seem like he’s getting anything out of it- yeah.

JANINE: And like Henry gets- Henry definitely gets way more tired at the end of that, in a way where is like, sitting there like, am I missing something? I had- because I hadn’t put the leg thing together. Again, very obvious in hindsight [laughs]. But, yeah that makes the swimming thing make a lot more sense.

KEITH: I don’t think I have anything that I like really missed in my notes. They baptize H.W. with oil at the beginning of the movie, that’s fun. [ALI laughs] Like a fun little thing, they anoint him in oil, literal oil.

ALI: Yeah, that’s such an interesting thing cause like obviously when you’re watching this movie there’s like, it ends up being compelling story because it’s hard to like separate modern opinions of oil and oil drilling from like, what the depiction of it is here and like seeing it done by this like, cruel horrible person.

KEITH: Well the movie was made in 2007, so it’s not-

JANINE: Yeah I was gonna say, I don’t think you have to separate it, like it feels-

ALI: I mean- no no no, yeah I’m saying that, it’s one of the reasons that the movie is enjoyable is that like, [KEITH: Ohh.] [JANINE: Yeah, yeah.] even through this other thing that’s like a modern, also, like horrendous situation, yeah.

JANINE: It also lines up really well with like current anti-money hoarding [ALI: Sure. Sure.] sentiment. [ALI laughs] You know? Like it’s- yeah.

ALI: But yeah, the like putting your finger in oil and then like rubbing it against an infant’s forehead, like Ash Wednesday, Ash Wednesday is when you do that? [chuckles]

ART: Mmm.

KEITH: Yeah, but it also is like a baptism when you would do the same thing with actual oils.

ALI: Oh, sure sure sure.

JANINE: Which is, it’s super interesting, like another thing that I sort of noted, and again this is more like, this is more like lapsed English student shit, is the sort of contrast of oil and water like, you know- there is, you know he promises irrigation really the thing he does, instead of building water pipelines, is an oil pipeline. That’s you know, one. Two, there is that baptism scene where you he has to get baptized in order to get the bandy tract that wants, so he can build his pipeline. And you get you know, the same- you got H.W. being baptized in oil, and then you get Daniel being baptized with water and kind of playing this role and sort of, lying the way that he ends up making Eli you know, perform for him at the end. But there’s also this really cool scene where right before he kicks the crap of Eli the first time, and like half drowns him in oil. There is this scene where Eli is walking towards Daniel and like, Daniel is [KEITH: Oh yeah.] you know, workers, and he’s walking towards this big pool of oil, and the sky is reflected in it, so it’s just, it looks like perfectly blue and cloudy. And like it looks like a little pond almost, like you know it’s oil. But it’s-

KEITH: It looks beautiful, it's like a really cool looking thing.

JANINE: Yeah! It looks so beautiful, and it’s just this long shot of him walking towards it. And then the next time you see it, it’s just you know, it’s oil, it’s mud, he’s like getting shoved into it. He’s, you know Daniel’s like stuffing it in his mouth and stuff like that. So it’s a lot of like really interesting [chuckles], I’m making a lot of jokes, but this is some like prime midterm in-class essay stuff, right? Of just like, oh yeah, I’ll write about oil and water in There Will Be Blood, and there’s like a lot of material there. In a way that’s cool visually and thematically.

KEITH: Just coming back a little bit, that’s actually, that first- the oil, the H.W. oil baptism thing is actually the- maybe why I never questioned that H.W. was that other guy’s son, was because it did sort of just look like a playful little boop of like [ALI chuckles], I got my hands dirty like, boop, now you’ve got oil on you, kid! My kid. It just seemed like a fatherly thing to do? To boop your son with oil?

ALI: Yeah.

[KEITH and JANINE chuckle]

JANINE: The classic.

KEITH: Oh I loved the look of those- the horrible rickety derricks in the beginning, like the ones that kill a bunch of people?

ART: Mhm.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: Like, just like monstrous things where he’s like, he’s sketching them out in his little like, bank notebook? Being like, here’s how we should build it, and then you see it and it’s like, it looks like-

JANINE: Even when brand new, they look old.

ALI: Yeah.

KEITH: Yeah, yeah. Who’s that- who’s that, not character? Shit, eh it’s fine, it doesn’t matter. It just looks- it’s just the wood everywhere, stuff nailed into stuff that doesn’t make any sense like, obviously not built like people who knew what they were doing.

JANINE: Yeah.

ART: Yeah I wonder what the process of constructing that for filming must’ve been like, because like you can’t just make unsafe fake oil derricks for your actors to interact with, you know? [JANINE and KEITH chuckle]

KEITH: Yeah.

ART: So they must’ve had like framed them out and then like add rickety stuff to them?

KEITH: Yeah, yeah. And then in comparison, the full-fledged derrick that they build on the Sunday lot is like, really well-constructed. Cause he obviously is massively wealthy at that point.

JANINE: Mhm.

KEITH: I reckon the volume of the re- all the oil stuff while it was happening was so much louder than everything else? Like the first time oil blows out of the ground is like fully 80% louder than everyone’s voices. Just like a lot of the oil derrick stuff had a really like kind of startling volume to it? Which is fun.

JANINE: Yeah.

ALI: Mhm.

ART: And the scene where H.W. is deafened is in itself a deafening scene, [KEITH: Yeah.] you really feel the eardrums exploding [KEITH: Right.] on your own ears, watching it in your own house, [ALI chuckles] minding your own business.

KEITH: And it’s sort of going back to something that we talked about at the very beginning with the, like, switching back and forth from like these like, sort of textural orchestral noises from songs, the scene- I don’t know if it was right before that, it might’ve been like right before that, where this camera is sort of taking a tour of the derrick, and there is just like happy little like, diddle-li, diddle-li! Look at all this cool stuff happening, [ALI laughs] like violin piece, and then you see H.W. sort of lazily lying on this bit of wood overhanging the well, which should not have been allowed.

JANINE: No.

KEITH: Someone should’ve said, hey kid, get off of that. And then it is like, chaos. Just out of almost nowhere.

ALI: Yeah.

JANINE: I really- a thing I really like about that scene is, there are a couple shots where there’s like this weird red-orange vignette? And like at first it’s kind of just on either side of the screen? It’s just like these lines of red-orange? And then the second time you get it it’s this full, this full super intense vignette that’s framing the entire shot. And it’s like, I- I don’t know what perspective that’s supposed to be from? Or if it’s just purely supposed to be a thing of like, representing sort of building heat and tension or whatever. But it has this look of like, if it was being shot through a window somewhere. As this sort of fire gets brighter- it was really, it was one of those things of like, I don't fully under- I feel like I don’t know enough about cinematography to really pin down what about this works, but it’s neat.

ALI: Yeah, I think-

KEITH: Good movie.

ALI: -the like, the scene of the like fire just shooting out of the oil derrick, and coming up through the like entirety of the weird like tower that’s-? I’m saying tower, but it’s really like [laughs], just like a triangle structure on top of it, was like one of the first things that Austin sent over in the like pre-Sangfielle chat, of being like, here’s a visual.

JANINE: It looks like hell. Like, he also, by the end of that scene-

KEITH: Looked like a demon, yeah.

JANINE: Yeah! I literally wrote in my notes [KEITH: Yeah, me too.] that he looks demonic by the end of that scene. Cause he’s just covered in oil, he’s laughing just like, really like he’s laughing in this really unsettling and tense way. And then he just like, he’s covered in oil and smoking a pipe which is just so- [ALI chuckling] [KEITH: Yeah.] you’re so indifferent to it at that point?

KEITH: I have written right here, yeah, Plainview looks like a demon covered in oil watching the burn. And then one of the like, most brutal lines in the entire movie is, Fletcher, that actor that you knew with the face?

JANINE: Yeah, yeah.

KEITH: He’s like, “oh, is H.W. okay?” And he just goes,

KEITH (as Daniel Plainview): [Daniel Plainview voice] “No, he is not.”

[ALI laughs]

KEITH: And then just keeps, [chuckling] he keeps smiling, like watching the fire.

ART: I can’t believe you weren’t doing this impression this whole time.

[JANINE and KEITH laugh]

ART: We could’ve done this whole thing with Daniel Plainview here with us, it could’ve-

JANINE: I found a diagram of the parts of an oil derrick.

ALI: Oooh!

JANINE: Gonna paste it in.

KEITH: It’s nice, it’s nice to- with an impression you can either strike out, or you can hit a home run, there’s not much in between, so.

ALI: Sure.

KEITH: I’d rather sort of hit the surprise home run eighty percent of the way.

ART: And it really- we finally hit enough distance where the fact that like people were doing this,

KEITH: That voice,

ART: So much at the time, has like faded from memory?

KEITH: Yeah.

ALI: Ohhh, yeah yeah yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting [KEITH: It’s a good voice.] to be able to be in this place now and sort of separate the like, perception or the like, then and memes about this movie [chuckling] when it was like popular, [KEITH: Right.] versus what it really is.

JANINE: It was like 90% “My boy,” right? “My boy!” like, I feel like that was-

ALI: No no no, it was-

ART: No it was the abandon my child- abandon my child a little bit, it was the “I drink your milkshake”

KEITH: Yeah, that.

ALI: Yeah.

JANINE: Oh yeah, I fully didn't know “I drink your milkshake” was from this movie. [ALI laughs] [KEITH: Oh wow, wow.] I didn’t know where that was from, I just had just somehow forgotten, or was just not aware.

ALI: Yeah, a pizza said that a lot [laughs].

KEITH: It is such a shame how big of a thing that was to say? Because it really did take a lot away from what is a great scene. [ALI: Yeah.] And his voice, the way that he speaks in that movie, Daniel Day Lewis, it’s like this sort of like hypnotic bouncing voice that he does like, it’s always going up and down and up and down, it’s bizarre, it’s such a strange cadence, and he never lets up, even in the scene where he’s like shouting, he’s still sort of doing this like weird sing-song thing.

ART: I choose to believe no one ever talked like- [ALI laughs] I choose to believe that.

KEITH: He was sent- I know this from today, doing a very small amount of research, he was sent by Paul Thomas Anderson a documentary to watch about a character that was like, hey this character is a lot like Daniel Plainview, and he talks like the character from- or the person from that documentary. That is what I saw. Couldn’t tell you the documentary, just went- that part of it went out the other ear.

ALI: Sure [chuckles].

KEITH: But yeah, it is not that I’ve ever heard anyone talk in real life.

ALI: It’s so good. And like sometimes, especially when he’s getting more like erratic, he’ll start like stretching out the syllables, or like he’ll just like sort of grunts like a dog sometimes? [chuckles] [KEITH and JANINE laugh] That like, it becomes a really interesting performance. I think it’s interesting the perception in this movie because like, watching that final is so comedic?

KEITH: Yeah, oh it’s really funny.

ALI: As much as it is shocking, just like Paul Dano just like hopping around getting like bowling balls thrown at him? [laughs]

KEITH: His shrieking, that he does in both scenes where he’s attacked, it’s really shriek- yeah.

JANINE: [overlapping] Yeah, he shrieks very well, he’s a good shrieker.

KEITH: He’s a tremendous- I love Paul Dano, he’s one of my favourite actors.

JANINE: He’s- have you seen the BBC War & Peace that he was in?

KEITH: No.

JANINE: Because that’s a really good like Paul Dano piece. I watched it because I’m a clown, and the voice actor for Cole from Dragon Age Inquisition [ALI cackles] was in it, I found him very attractive in his other roles, so I was like sure I’ll watch- and it’s him and like Lily… Evans? Not Lily Evans, it’s Lily someone. And like Paul Dano, and Paul Dano like really steals the fucking show- or Dano? I don’t know.

KEITH: Dano.

JANINE: Really steals the show in terms of, he’s really good at swinging from like, really passive, meek, calm dude, to dude who is having the worst day of anyone’s life, ever. [ALI chuckles]

KEITH: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah.

ART: Mmm.

JANINE: And just like squealing, and screaming, and just like being snivelling in his like suffering. He’s interesting, I’m- I have been really checked out of Batman movies? But I have heard he’s playing the Riddler soon-

ALI and KEITH: Ohhh!

JANINE: And that might get me back in. That might do it.

KEITH: I would watch a Batman movie from Paul Dano.

ALI: Yeah!

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: He was in- the last thing I saw him in, was five years ago, he was in a movie with, shit- Daniel Radcliffe, called Swiss Army Man. And that is a trip.

JANINE: Was he the swiss army man?

KEITH: No. [ALI stifles laughter]

JANINE: Was Daniel Radcliffe the swiss army man?

KEITH: Daniel Radcliffe is the swiss army man. It is truly a bizarre movie-

ART: Is that-? Yeah okay, then we must be talking about- I was about to ask some clarifying questions, [ALI chuckles] but I don’t want to get into- [JANINE chuckles] just by saying it’s truly a bizarre movie, I am confident we are talking about the same film.

KEITH: It’s a- I really like it. It’s one of those movies where you watch it, and you’re like, this got like really- this got made? Like they made this and put it in a theatre? And they did, they made it and put it in a theatre. There’s not a lot of movies like that. Yeah, I don’t know, just a weird movie that hits pretty- not the whole thing, it’s not perfect, but. It’s hits a lot of notes for me, and that’s a great Paul Dano movie. Also the sort of thing where he goes from kind of calm to having the worst day of his life. Over and over again.

JANINE: Yeah, it’s his- that’s the thing he does, he’s gonna get cast for right? [ALI chuckles] I bet that’s gonna happen with the Riddler for sure. So I was just gonna ask a question about that last scene.

ALI: Sure.

JANINE: Where-

ART: Yeah, I think you should.

JANINE: Do we think the butler- the butler’s vision was so bad that he didn’t realize that Daniel had killed Eli? Or do you think he didn’t care because Daniel is very rich, and he’s a butler for a very rich man, and knows how that goes?

KEITH: Rich and dangerous man.

ART: The latter.

KEITH: I think it’s the latter, yeah.

JANINE: Okay.

ALI: Yeah.

JANINE: Do you think that means that Daniel’s killed people in that house before? [ALI wheezes]

ART: I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.

KEITH: Yeah I would- I think it’s kind of a coin toss? But twenty years of a coin toss you’re eventually getting [ALI: Yeah.] heads.

JANINE: Yeeah. Especially if you’re like shooting guns down a hallway or whatever. [ALI laughs]

KEITH: Yeah.

JANINE: Whatever the fuck he was doing. Like shot from like-

KEITH: Let’s see, it’s his hobby, breaking his expensive shit with guns.

JANINE: I love that they show this beautiful, private bowling alley, and then they cut to a hallway where he’s shooting stuff down the hallway, which is like. Again, again, I know I keep saying it, but it’s some real like, I’m taking an English Lit class and have to write an essay about this book, I’m gonna talk about the contrast of bowling and shooting stuff down your hallway. Yeah.

ART: So the thing that I looked up, I posted this in our chat the other day. [ALI chuckles]

JANINE: The weight of a bowling pin.

ART: Was, how much is a bowling pin weigh? Because, I mean yes all the way spoilers, this movie ends with Daniel beating Eli to death with a bowling pin-

JANINE: A wooden one.

ART: And my original thought was like, there is no way a bowling pin is heavy enough for that! [ALI chuckles]

KEITH: Those look like carved out of solid wood to me. That was a club.

JANINE: Yeah, they’re old-fashioned bowling pins.

ALI: Yeah.

ART: I mean, I think you could do it with a modern bowling pin.

KEITH: Okay.

ALI: Oh, did you look it up?

ART: I think- yeah I looked it up, a bowling pin ways three and a half pounds, which is way heavier than I thought a bowling pin would be.

ALI: Huh.

KEITH and JANINE: Hmm.

ART: It makes sense if you think about, they have to stand up to some-

JANINE: Yeah that’s the thing is you don’t want it to tip over instantly. So a light one would be bad.

KEITH: Yeah. Well, but then the other thing is the context of seeing a bowling pin and seeing them fly all over the place like the weigh nothing. But that’s because they’re getting hit with very heavy balls.

JANINE: But they’re also like loud, and like bounce around.

ART: Mhm.

KEITH: Terrible- I’m a terrible bowler.

ALI: The thing that I looked up for this movie, since we all look stuff up, was, there’s this scene where the sign language teacher is teaching H.W. like as a child by- on the oil rig? They’re like having an interaction back and forth. So I looked up if anyone had been like, “what are they saying?” And apparently they-

JANINE: It was the alphabet in one portion, right?

ALI: I think so, but when they’re on the steps they’re like signing the language for the equipment around them. Which I thought was interesting because we end up seeing H.W. later like still having an interest in the oil business.

KEITH: Yep.

JANINE: Mhm.

ALI: How do people feel like, [chuckles] this response to the show, or like changes of the context of how they’ll end up like playing in it, or something they’re gonna go back to?

ART: I don’t know if it’ll like change anything going forward, but I’ll say, if I had watched this before we did character creation, I might just be playing a different character. [ALI laughs]

JANINE: Yeeah.

ART: There’s like a lot in here that’s so fun to chew on, it’s like oh, I could’ve- I could’ve this instead, and it’s like well, but I’m doing something else, I can’t just like shift into this now.

KEITH: You are already the most Daniel Plainview out of the group.

ART: But- but couldn’t it be more? [ALI chuckles]

KEITH: Yes, it could always be more

[JANINE and ART chuckle]

ART: Life is good, but it could be better, I think, as the equally good movie Wonder Woman 1984 put it.

ALI: Ohh? Equally good?

ART: I’m kidding. [ALI laughs] It’s not a good movie. I don’t mean to trick anyone into watching Wonder Woman 1984, a bad movie.

KEITH: Nobody else here watched it, so we were just going to have to believe you that you thought that.

ART: No, it’s not, it’s not particularly good. I mean it’s not- it’s not offensive or anything, it’s, you- you leave the movie no worse than you entered.

JANINE: Sure.

KEITH: Right.

ALI: But not a-

KEITH: Bad movies don’t hurt us. They just suck. [ALI laughs] Yeah I don’t know, I think it’s sort of to Art’s point, it’s- there’s definitely Daniel Plainviews out there in Sangfielle. They are there.

ALI: Oh for sure. I mean the person y’all entered- acted with is already part of the- the Roseroot guy, right?

KEITH: Yeah, yeah.

ART: Mmm.

KEITH: I think that that-

JANINE: I mean he’s- I feel like he’s more of an H.W.

KEITH: Yes, he’s more of an H.W.

ALI: Sure.

JANINE: He’s dealing with a legacy of a- in a way where it’s like, ennh, his hands aren’t entirely clean, but he’s trying to wash them. Like he’s, he’s trying. [ALI chuckles] Kind of, that was my read anyway, I, you know. Talk to me three months when Austin has made him a super murderer.

KEITH: [chuckles] I don’t think that guy was like, like an unhinged murderer greedmonster who like, we definitely didn’t spend any time like trying to characterize him as analogous with like a devil.

ALI: Oh, no no no. But he’s like the prospector role. Like that’s the thing that he is.

JANINE: Yeeeah, he kind of felt more like a liberal who’s like, well, I believe there was a lot of oppression, but I don’t know that I should have to pay reparations. [ALI chuckles]

KEITH: My gut feeling is that the pe- where we will find, where we will find people like Daniel Plainview has more to do with the trains than with the you know. Whatever weird storefront that guy was trying to set up. What was he trying to do? Can’t even-

ALI: Oh yeah, he’s- he had like a market at some point, right?

KEITH: Yeah, yeah.

ALI: Or there was like a flea market-

JANINE: He like invested in a marketplace in town. [ALI and KEITH: Yeah, yeah.] He owns that.

KEITH: But, we’ll see.

ALI: Yeah.

ART: And perhaps the thing to from this take into Sangfielle, is how unpleasant it seems to have been to live in this era?

ALI: Oh for sure,

ART: And like [JANINE: Yeah.] perhaps internalizing that a little bit better- I find like, you often think of your characters as reasonably comfortable unless something is happening, and perhaps like, leaning into the passive discomfort of the early 20th century is perhaps something to keep in mind.

JANINE: Yeah, that’s kind of what I was gonna say is that like, I think from me, if I had watched this before we started, I would’ve maybe been thinking a little like, dirtier, right?

ALI: Mhm.

JANINE: Like,

ART: Mhm.

JANINE: The idea of just like- a thing I kept thinking when I was watching this movie is, how are any of these people cleaning? [ALI chuckles] Like how do they clean off at the end of the day, because there’s not a lot of water around, like. I’m sure there is water, because there are people who live there, so obviously they have water, that is a necessity. But you only see water in really like, narrow and specific circumstances. You don’t see people like washing up very often, if at all.

KEITH: Yeah there’s no bath happening, ever.

JANINE: Yeah.

KEITH: The most water you see until the ocean is the baptism.

JANINE: Yeah, so people are like covered in oil, which is not easy to wash off. And I just kept thinking like, how you know, like how do you ever really get truly clean. I think there’s a shot of, there is some shots where it’s like, even with people who are like quote unquote clean relative to other scenes, there’s still you know, they could still use a handwashing, you know? Which is a thing that like, obviously, that’s an obvious thing about history right? Is like people didn’t bathe as often, and were very spoiled by indoor plumbing, and like frontier living and whatever, you know, oil stuff is all very very dirty work. But I think my inclination is often to sort of, not take that stuff into account in the way that I would if I was looking at something purely historically like, when it comes to thinking of characters in worlds and things. That’s something that I don’t really factor in in the same- in the way that I could, I guess. So that’s, that’s I think a takeaway from me, is just like, how, how like dirty and- I’m saying dirty, but I mean-

KEITH: Like literal dirt.

JANINE: It’s some- for me it’s something about how it’s not just that it’s dirty. It’s that when you get dirty the dirt stays with you for a while, [ALI: Mhm.] right? Like you can’t immediately purge yourself of it. It sort of clings. It sticks with you. It becomes you know, even if you can wash off, it’s like, you’re probably washing off with like a small basin of water and a rag, and like, you’re not gonna wash your clothes very often, you know. It’s a lot of things like that that accumulate into a general griminess.

ART: And now it sounds like you’re just writing an episode intro.

[ALI, KEITH, JANINE laugh]

JANINE: About griminess. But yeah, that’s I think a thing I would’ve taken into account more and might take into account more in the future, at least if not in a material way in terms of like, how I’m picturing things, right?

ALI: Mhm, yeah.

JANINE: Yeah.

ART: [doing an Austin intro narration impression] The dirt gets into you and it doesn’t get out. [JANINE chuckles] I don’t have an Austin impression, I don’t do Austin, so.

JANINE: I thought you were doing Daniel Plainview.

ART: That’s just my intro voice. [JANINE chuckles]

ALI: Well. [laughs] I think we could wrap this up.

ART: We’re over forty more minutes with the run time of this movie.

ALI: Yeah, I was hoping this would be like a ninety-

KEITH: I do always like to go over the runtime doing a podcast of a movie.

ALI: Sure. Sure sure sure. But yeah, this has been There Will Be Blood with the Pusher Media Club. I don’t know what the order the things are gonna go in, so I can’t tell you what’s going to be next.

KEITH: Pusher Media sounds like a startup, it makes me feel uncomfortable.

ALI: I freaking-! The last time I said this, somebody was like [JANINE laughs], the PM- wait, [laughs]

JANINE: PMC, paramilitary corporation?

ALI: PMC, yes. Yes yes yes. Yes yes yes. I got that last time too-

JANINE: Paramedia corporation-

ALI: Which is why I say fucking Pusher Book Club! Because people keep coming at me! The Pusher Non-book Club.

KEITH: [chucking] Pusher Media does sound like I’m trying to sell you like a weird app.

ALI: You know what- [wheezes]

JANINE: It sounds like an ad-serving thing.

ART: I’m secretly trying to sell you drugs.

KEITH: Right. [chuckles]

ALI: I’m Alicia Acampora, I was joined by Janine Hawkins.

JANINE: You were.

ALI: Keith J Carberry- [laughs]

JANINE: [laughing] You didn’t do your thing, so I just assumed we were doing names!

ALI: I was joined by Janine Hawkins, Keith J Carberry, and Arthur Martinez-Tebbel. You know us, you enjoy our podcast, thank you so much for supporting us. I hope people listening are enjoying Sangfielle. At this point we recently released the Inhuman Conditions stuff? And it was good to see the response to that be so warm and positive. It was a big thing to do, we’re glad that people liked it.

JANINE: Also great work, Art, you really- that was a good- that was good. The thing you did was good [chuckles]. [ART chuckles] Just saying that. It was great. The Inhuman Conditions uh- I won’t spoil it, for people who haven’t listened, but.

ART: That was such a fun and uncomfortable episode to do.

JANINE: Uh huh! [chuckles] It was amazing. [ALI chuckles]

ART: And let’s not do it again, [ALI: Sure.] but let’s encourage people to listen to the one we did do.

JANINE: Oh here’s a fun game. Daniel Plainview, human, robot, or violent robot?

KEITH: Oooh, violent robot.

ART: Violent human.

KEITH: Yeah. [ALI chuckles] That was a fun game. I liked it.

ALI: Yep. Well, thank you everybody, until next time. Bye!

KEITH: Bye!

JANINE: Bye!

ART: Bye!