WEBVTT NOTE Oil, Socialism, and 'There Will Be Blood' 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.400 A classic tale of greed and corruption, promises the back cover reviewer of Oil, Upton Sinclair's 2 00:00:06.400 --> 00:00:11.920 1927 novel of the development of Southern California's oil fields. Sinclair, well known 3 00:00:11.920 --> 00:00:16.920 for his sympathies for socialist solutions to the paradoxes of capitalism, became rich 4 00:00:16.920 --> 00:00:24.960 and powerful from the profits made on his muckraking book of the Chicago meatpacking 5 00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:30.320 in Industry, 1906's The Jungle, writing dime novels at the early age of 15 to pay for 6 00:00:30.320 --> 00:00:35.440 his college education at CCNY and publishing more novels as a graduate student at Columbia 7 00:00:35.440 --> 00:00:40.160 Sinclair was anything but a socialist in his personal achievement as a self-made man and 8 00:00:40.160 --> 00:00:46.080 entrepreneur. His book caused a sensation and led directly to the passage of the Pure 9 00:00:46.080 --> 00:00:52.720 Food and Drug Act in 1906. By 1934, he set aside his Socialist Party membership and gained 10 00:00:52.720 --> 00:00:57.360 and the gubernatorial nomination of California's Democrat Party, capturing nearly 40 percent 11 00:00:57.360 --> 00:00:59.440 of the popular vote. 12 00:00:59.440 --> 00:01:04.240 But oil is certainly not as strident nor shockingly repulsive in its descriptions as Sinclair's 13 00:01:04.240 --> 00:01:08.560 earlier work of expose of one of America's most carnivorous industries. 14 00:01:08.560 --> 00:01:13.520 Whether one looks at the J. Arnold Ross oil baron of the novel or his transformation into 15 00:01:13.520 --> 00:01:19.800 Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson's Academy Award nominated 2007 adapted script, 16 00:01:19.800 --> 00:01:25.120 This is a kinder, gentler capitalism, greed at its most altruistic. 17 00:01:25.120 --> 00:01:29.880 The film version, There Will Be Blood, garnered eight Oscar nominations, including those for 18 00:01:29.880 --> 00:01:33.860 Best Picture, Best Director, Anderson Again, and Best Actor, Daniel Day Lewis, who took 19 00:01:33.860 --> 00:01:34.860 the honor. 20 00:01:34.860 --> 00:01:40.480 A comparison of Sinclair's book and Anderson's film turns up an astonishing alteration that's 21 00:01:40.480 --> 00:01:44.040 unusual in the film adaptation process. 22 00:01:44.040 --> 00:01:48.280 The settings of each are the California oil fields of the early 20th century, but beyond 23 00:01:48.280 --> 00:01:50.840 that precious few similarities remain. 24 00:01:50.840 --> 00:01:53.480 Upton Sinclair shows a researcher's knowledge 25 00:01:53.480 --> 00:01:56.240 of oil drilling processes, geology, real estate 26 00:01:56.240 --> 00:01:58.520 and political industrial details. 27 00:01:58.520 --> 00:02:00.640 And Anderson duplicates this analysis, 28 00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:03.360 but the central characters are completely changed. 29 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:06.320 The book's emphasis on socialism and its open sympathy 30 00:02:06.320 --> 00:02:08.760 for the Russian Revolution are totally absent 31 00:02:08.760 --> 00:02:11.680 and the focus on the oil man's disdain and cruelty 32 00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:13.280 toward the flamboyant preacher 33 00:02:13.280 --> 00:02:15.320 are heightened to murderous proportions. 34 00:02:15.320 --> 00:02:20.980 With respect to the accusation of greed, Anderson points out that it's not only the Daniel 35 00:02:20.980 --> 00:02:24.840 Plainview character who exhibits greed as he conducts his oil drilling business, but perhaps 36 00:02:24.840 --> 00:02:29.520 even more so the frenzied denizens of Signal Hill who compete with each other to get the 37 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:34.000 oil man to drill on their land before the underground pools of black gold are sucked 38 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:38.940 dry by others. You see, drilling on one property naturally drains the oil from underneath the 39 00:02:38.940 --> 00:02:43.600 joining properties, like someone with a long straw who can reach across the room so that, 40 00:02:43.600 --> 00:03:00.600 Daniel Day-Lewis demurs, he's just a fellow trying to make a living, whether his natural son is in the book or his adopted son is in the film. 41 00:03:00.600 --> 00:03:06.360 Although the relationship between father and son is the core of the book, Anderson essentially 42 00:03:06.360 --> 00:03:10.280 makes the boy a minor player in the film. Anderson has not explained much about his 43 00:03:10.280 --> 00:03:14.120 reasons for the changes, other than the usual justification that books are too long and 44 00:03:14.120 --> 00:03:17.960 need to have their essential story distilled from them for the movie house. But here one 45 00:03:17.960 --> 00:03:23.560 wonders why not only the usual shortening of a novel, but also the core character changes, 46 00:03:23.560 --> 00:03:28.200 ideological softening and interpersonal conflict escalation. In fact, there's so little of 47 00:03:28.200 --> 00:03:33.600 The book left that Anderson admits he's unwilling to even call it a proper adaptation. 48 00:03:33.600 --> 00:03:37.260 As for the film title, Anderson just sort of wrote down the words, there will be blood 49 00:03:37.260 --> 00:03:40.400 on a sheet of paper as a lark and liked the way it looked. 50 00:03:40.400 --> 00:03:43.880 And again, since the film had so little to do with the book, he didn't feel that it 51 00:03:43.880 --> 00:03:47.120 would be particularly fair to call the film oil. 52 00:03:47.120 --> 00:03:48.760 That's left yet to be made. 53 00:03:48.760 --> 00:03:53.080 The post-cinematic printing of the book only claims that it was the inspiration for the 54 00:03:53.080 --> 00:03:54.080 motion picture. 55 00:03:54.080 --> 00:04:00.980 In the book, the focus is on Ross's son, Ross Jr., or Bunny, as he is known diminutively, 56 00:04:00.980 --> 00:04:05.520 and his strong relationship with his attentive and forebearing father, even as he is conflicted 57 00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:10.460 by his liberal sympathies for his socialist friends and the plight of the working man. 58 00:04:10.460 --> 00:04:14.440 Although Sinclair puts forth many criticisms of American capitalism and the virtues of 59 00:04:14.440 --> 00:04:19.300 Russian socialism, such are couched in what is shown to be the naive idealism and sophomoric 60 00:04:19.300 --> 00:04:21.060 thoughts of young Bunny. 61 00:04:21.060 --> 00:04:25.720 We follow the lad from about age 9 on through his collegiate days and into his 20s, unlike 62 00:04:25.720 --> 00:04:30.400 the film where he merely accompanies his father to some business meetings as H.W., his name 63 00:04:30.400 --> 00:04:35.520 is, and is sent off to a boarding school and returns at age 11, absent until he is seen 64 00:04:35.520 --> 00:04:40.040 years later at the end of the film, setting off on his own with a new wife. 65 00:04:40.040 --> 00:04:46.060 Sinclair's Bunny, the book's protagonist-narrator, reveals an engaging, winsome use of the youngster 66 00:04:46.060 --> 00:04:51.040 as the storyteller, ameliorating the social-political critique through the lens of a boy on the 67 00:04:51.040 --> 00:05:06.040 Throughout oil, J. Arnold Ross is long suffering and tolerant of his son's humanitarian protestations of injustice toward the oil workers, property owner rubes, and public officials whose palms must be greased to smooth the way of progress. 68 00:05:06.040 --> 00:05:11.040 Even as Ross enterprises includes the young man as the heir apparent and partner in the endeavor. 69 00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:20.040 Ross patiently explains each step of the way of why this and that must be done for the ultimate good of owner management, labor and the public. 70 00:05:20.040 --> 00:05:26.320 Public. Even as Bunny befriends leftist organizers of all types, journalists, communist sympathizers 71 00:05:26.320 --> 00:05:31.520 and strikers, Ross still supports him, even shelling out $15,000 to bail out the father 72 00:05:31.520 --> 00:05:36.000 of one of Bunny's socialist girlfriends. Quote, but what could he do? His dearly beloved son 73 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:41.820 was ablaze with indignation. Elsewhere, however, the book is less sanguine, veering into outright 74 00:05:41.820 --> 00:05:47.820 condemnation of the humanitarian capitalist argument. Ross's paradigm of limited government 75 00:05:47.820 --> 00:05:52.720 goes like this, quote, yes, politicians were rotten and so you saw the folly of trusting 76 00:05:52.720 --> 00:05:56.860 business matters to government. Take business away from the politicians and turn it over 77 00:05:56.860 --> 00:06:01.660 to businessmen who would run it without graft. Wasn't that clear? Dad was a patriot, putting 78 00:06:01.660 --> 00:06:07.260 an end to vicious public policy. But did Dad really believe that, asks Bunny. If you laid 79 00:06:07.260 --> 00:06:10.740 hold of him and tore all those lies away, he would not be able to stand in the light 80 00:06:10.740 --> 00:06:15.380 of his nakedness. Well, naturally, a motion picture is going to deal less with the articulation 81 00:06:15.380 --> 00:06:20.180 of Principles than will a novel in the process of actually visualizing the life of a working 82 00:06:20.180 --> 00:06:24.780 oil magnet results in a more understanding portrayal of a life of hard work and reward 83 00:06:24.780 --> 00:06:26.620 for one's labor. 84 00:06:26.620 --> 00:06:30.700 The very first scene shows Plainview undergoing personal hardship to get wealth out of the 85 00:06:30.700 --> 00:06:35.880 ground as he sets a charge and falls down a broken ladder into the oily hole. 86 00:06:35.880 --> 00:06:41.100 It's rugged individualism with a capital I. So is he not entitled to it all since he worked 87 00:06:41.100 --> 00:06:42.260 hard for it? 88 00:06:42.260 --> 00:06:46.660 The picture is one of a lone wolf, an animal that may work as part of a pack, but hardly 89 00:06:46.660 --> 00:06:52.460 a brotherhood, one who ultimately does not rely on outside help from government or neighbor. 90 00:06:52.460 --> 00:06:56.180 The film thus paints a lonelier picture of the man than the book did, where Ross is a 91 00:06:56.180 --> 00:06:59.020 bit more of a social creature. 92 00:06:59.020 --> 00:07:03.420 Talking candidly by the campfire, Daniel reveals, quote, I have a competition in me. 93 00:07:03.420 --> 00:07:04.940 I want no one else to succeed. 94 00:07:04.940 --> 00:07:06.180 I hate most people. 95 00:07:06.180 --> 00:07:08.820 I want to earn enough money to get away from everyone. 96 00:07:08.820 --> 00:07:10.180 I see the worst in people. 97 00:07:10.180 --> 00:07:14.020 I build up my hatred over the years little by little." 98 00:07:14.020 --> 00:07:18.140 But even in the film, Plainview holds forth the familial ideal, explaining to potential 99 00:07:18.140 --> 00:07:23.640 investors, I'm an oil man, I'm a family man, this is my son and partner, H.W. 100 00:07:23.640 --> 00:07:27.420 That the father labors not for private greed is made even more clear in the book, where 101 00:07:27.420 --> 00:07:32.900 we learn that his workaholic habits stem from his bitterness over his wife's abandonment. 102 00:07:32.900 --> 00:07:37.160 Sinclair's novel follows the mental life of the son, an ideological dilettante, a young 103 00:07:37.160 --> 00:07:41.640 Man who never had to do a lick of work in his life. Bunny's life is one of playboy-like 104 00:07:41.640 --> 00:07:46.920 ease giving him plenty of time to consider the plight of the poor and downtrodden, like 105 00:07:46.920 --> 00:07:52.760 many soft ones. He is torn between allegiance to his devoted father, his mentally unstable 106 00:07:52.760 --> 00:07:57.360 mother having left the picture, and the affluent roaring 20s lifestyle which his oil wealth 107 00:07:57.360 --> 00:08:02.040 affords. Swaying him always in the opposite direction are the sincere entreaties of his 108 00:08:02.040 --> 00:08:06.400 commoner socialist school friends and all their latest polemics and persuasions. The 109 00:08:06.400 --> 00:08:10.120 The film covers absolutely none of this, leaving the boy off at age 12, with the exception 110 00:08:10.120 --> 00:08:15.400 of the unforeshadowed and therefore unmotivated penultimate departure scene, Coda. 111 00:08:15.400 --> 00:08:20.000 In the film, Daniel is the protagonist, with Eli as his nemesis. Paul Thomas Anderson seems 112 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:25.960 to reserve special opprobrium for that embodiment of self-serving religiosity, Eli Sunday, maybe 113 00:08:25.960 --> 00:08:31.040 taking the name from the period's famous Billy Sunday. Eli Watkins in the novel is 114 00:08:31.040 --> 00:08:35.540 a megachurch, media-manipulating blowhard as well as in the film version, but not the 115 00:08:35.540 --> 00:08:39.540 is a determined object of Ross's deep hatred and vicious attacks as in the latter. 116 00:08:39.540 --> 00:08:45.540 For instance, in the book, Ross himself invites Eli to come forward and offer a blessing on the new oil well on the Watkins Ranch. 117 00:08:45.540 --> 00:08:52.540 But in the film, he deliberately snubs Eli's request for the sanctifying ceremony, instead choosing the little girl to come up to the front, 118 00:08:52.540 --> 00:08:55.540 a proud daughter of these hills. 119 00:08:55.540 --> 00:08:58.540 Later, after sitting through one of Eli's phony faith-healing performances, 120 00:08:58.540 --> 00:09:03.540 Daniel does the right thing and kindly asks the preacher to conduct a service for a fatally injured worker. 121 00:09:03.540 --> 00:09:08.020 Eli takes the opportunity to criticize Daniel's petroleum operation, whereupon the oil man 122 00:09:08.020 --> 00:09:13.260 interrupts the unappreciative man of God, reminding him that if he shuts down, if it 123 00:09:13.260 --> 00:09:18.700 shuts down, quote, then the well can't produce and blow gold all over the place. 124 00:09:18.700 --> 00:09:23.580 This seesaw rivalry between Daniel and Eli reaches a humiliating climax when Daniel submits 125 00:09:23.580 --> 00:09:28.220 to a rebaptism, he says he's already washed in the blood of Jesus Christ, in order to 126 00:09:28.220 --> 00:09:31.060 get an essential pipeline lease. 127 00:09:31.060 --> 00:09:34.860 Eli publicly degrades Daniel, striking him and forcing him to cry out on his needs, I've 128 00:09:34.860 --> 00:09:39.620 abandoned my child, which is patently false. In fact, the very next scene shows the son's 129 00:09:39.620 --> 00:09:44.580 return from school as the two hug and Daniel affirms, I love you son. The preacher's cruel 130 00:09:44.580 --> 00:09:48.660 debasement sets up the final scene in the motion picture when Daniel returns the parson's 131 00:09:48.660 --> 00:09:53.780 treatment, mockingly explaining the concept of underground drainage to Eli, I drink your 132 00:09:53.780 --> 00:09:58.740 milkshake and makes him proclaim, I am a false prophet and he ultimately clubs him with a 133 00:09:58.740 --> 00:10:05.540 The book's recent jacket luridly proclaims its contents as a gripping tale of avarice, 134 00:10:05.540 --> 00:10:10.900 corruption and class warfare. It seems as if the copywriter of those words was not reading 135 00:10:10.900 --> 00:10:15.300 the same novel as the one where by page 12 the oil baron is already shown to be a simple 136 00:10:15.300 --> 00:10:20.420 and generous man who freely tips a filling station attendant a silver dollar and uses 137 00:10:20.420 --> 00:10:25.260 the occasion as a teaching moment for Bunny. Poor devils, he would say, they don't get 138 00:10:25.260 --> 00:10:44.060 Although the son is not the key player in the film, plain view is equally unselfish 139 00:10:44.060 --> 00:10:49.900 to him from his initial adoption of H.W. as an orphan, including him as an observant partner 140 00:10:49.900 --> 00:10:54.860 in his dealings and extending also himself to others, as seen in his easy gullibility 141 00:10:54.860 --> 00:10:59.960 with a man claiming to be his long-lost brother, his financial support of the local church, 142 00:10:59.960 --> 00:11:04.580 even though he despises its charlatan pastor, his fair treatment of his workers, his care 143 00:11:04.580 --> 00:11:09.060 for the safety of the men, and his concern for the son's health and education. 144 00:11:09.060 --> 00:11:13.800 While he does not tell landowners the whole truth about the value of their oil-rich property, 145 00:11:13.800 --> 00:11:16.420 he does keep his bargain and pay what he promises. 146 00:11:16.420 --> 00:11:20.180 This is not quite the plundering capitalism of the jungle. 147 00:11:20.180 --> 00:11:25.320 Of course, business ethics is in the eye of the beholder. In order to get a road built 148 00:11:25.320 --> 00:11:29.860 expeditiously to his oil wells, Ross offers some emolument to a public official, not as 149 00:11:29.860 --> 00:11:35.760 a bribe, but as a thank you, for good service, long hours, risk taking, and the like. Corruption 150 00:11:35.760 --> 00:11:41.180 or gratuity, you be the judge. And as for Bunny, upon witnessing such things, he commits 151 00:11:41.180 --> 00:11:45.940 himself to the standard of not being a liar, not even in trivial things. 152 00:11:45.940 --> 00:11:51.500 Well the book and the film draw parallel between the material goods of oil capitalism and religious 153 00:11:51.500 --> 00:11:56.140 ones. Eli wants $10,000 for the family property, for my church. Plainview explains to him he 154 00:11:56.140 --> 00:12:01.340 must put in all the capital, equipment and money and do all the risky drilling. He raises 155 00:12:01.340 --> 00:12:06.900 his offer from $3,700 to $5,000 and they agree to the sale. So if Anderson's adaptation 156 00:12:06.900 --> 00:12:11.220 is supposed to show greedy business, it's one where reasons are given and economics 157 00:12:11.220 --> 00:12:15.260 are patiently explained. The real culprits in a father's mind are not the providers 158 00:12:15.260 --> 00:12:19.340 Writers of Employment and Services to America, the entrepreneurs or the captains of industry, 159 00:12:19.340 --> 00:12:25.240 but the bureaucracy of meddling big government. Quoting from Sinclair's book, quote, in your 160 00:12:25.240 --> 00:12:29.080 own business you were boss and you drove ahead and pushed things through, but when you ran 161 00:12:29.080 --> 00:12:33.820 into public authorities you saw graft and waste and inefficiency till it made you sick. 162 00:12:33.820 --> 00:12:38.500 And there were fools always rooting for public ownership, people who called themselves socialists 163 00:12:38.500 --> 00:12:41.380 and wanted to turn everything over to the government to run. And when they had their 164 00:12:41.380 --> 00:12:45.220 way you'd have to fill out a dozen application blanks and await the option of a local board 165 00:12:45.220 --> 00:12:54.980 When the film shows Plainview here, a clear-cut name if there ever was one, making his pitch 166 00:12:54.980 --> 00:12:59.320 to the community, he promises them that they will prosper and flourish under the arrangement. 167 00:12:59.320 --> 00:13:04.460 He will build not only oil wells, but water wells, schools, roads, and provide employment, 168 00:13:04.460 --> 00:13:08.780 donations to the church, and there will be bread for all, he says. 169 00:13:08.780 --> 00:13:14.220 So maybe Anderson's film should have been called There Will Be Bread in honor of capitalist 170 00:13:14.220 --> 00:13:16.220 and its largesse. Thank you.