Spoiler Warning: This posting reveals several plot elements of “There Will Be Blood,” the new film written and directed by P.T. Anderson. Please go see the movie, then come back here. We’ll wait.

Thank you. Welcome back.

On New Year’s night, I invited a couple of friends, Mark and Trey, to join me in seeing an 11 p.m. showing of “There Will Be Blood” at the Arclight in Hollywood. 2007 was a good year; I want to make 2008 even better by spending more time with friends.

For the first two-thirds of “There Will Be Blood” I debated whether this was the best film I’d seen in years, or perhaps the best film I’d ever seen. The first twenty minutes in particular are an object lesson in strong visual storytelling, with nary a word of dialogue. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, a prospector in late 1800’s California whose prospects grow as he strikes first mineral deposits, then oil. Plainview and his little boy are visited by a young man who promises them the location of a rich underground oil field in exchange for $500. Most of the rest of the film details Plainview’s struggle to buy up the land necessary, convert the few people living on these barren lands to his cause, drill, erect derricks, and generally strike it rich, while staving off the predations of a tenderfoot preacher who is a charlatan determined to swindle the swindler. At various times, each outdoes the other or one-ups the other, the preacher winning converts and threatening Plainview’s enterprises, Plainview physically overpowering and bullying the evangelist, and so forth. At some point with these two, the movie seems to assure us, there will be blood.

All of this is set against a backdrop of immense physical exertion and danger. Drilling for oil was, apparently, not something to be taken lightly. There was most definitely blood there, and for sudden and horrifying reasons. The bold visuals are supported by music composed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood that alternately evokes the time and place and sends shivers down your spine. One scene after another left me with my mouth open, completely enrapt and shocked by the story of people striving under the dirt at great personal risk and, often, at great personal sacrifice.

Then, unfortunately, the movie seems to end — before it has actually ended. The antagonist leaves town — we learn this in passing as Plainview overhears him telling a parishioner that he’s going off preaching around the country — and with him goes the movie. Suddenly, Plainview seems to have an overriding passion for family, something we’d never heard before and something that informs every action, right or wrong, he takes in the final act. Whereas the beginning of the movie was so charged it required no words, the last third languishes with long scenes of two people talking, especially one between Plainview and his brother. The movie then ends on what I can only call a camp note. The preacher returns after more than 10 years away because the Depression has hit and he seeks money from the fantastically wealthy Plainview. A besotted and bereft Plainview forces him to admit he is a charlatan in exchange for the money, acquires that confession, then bludgeons him to death with a bowling pin. When the butler returns to check on his master, Plainview looks up, the bloody bowling pin in his hand, the battered body at his side, and his now-empty serving plate on the floor, and says, “I’m done now.” This wan joke has the effect of transforming the film into a shaggy dog story.

As we three stood on the plaza, we wondered what it was all about. Trey ventured that it was about greed, but that didn’t strike me as right. We also wondered how a movie that had started with such promise could end so badly. Everyone had opening opinions, but I wanted to think further. And it was now 2 a.m. and I wanted to get home and write.

The next morning, Mark emailed me (which I’m posting here with his permission):

I thought it was interesting that all 3 of us had similar reactions/opinions about the film. How often does THAT happen?

Something that occurred to me later: While Daniel is sitting with his brother, he tells him that he doesn’t care for people. There isn’t really a lot of behavior in the film that puts this across. He doesn’t like Eli Sunday, that’s plain, and he doesn’t like that one guy from Standard Oil, but otherwise he doesn’t seem any more or a people hating grump than the next guy. This telling versus showing goes for his greed as well. He doesn’t finger his gold like Silas Marner (have I got that right?). He lives frugally ’til near the end of the film, but we don’t see him chuckling over his bank balance. The Hearst character in “Deadwood” seemed more obsessed with gold than Daniel does with oil. He obviously dotes on the boy, and he makes it a point to protect the little girl from her father in the slightly creepy scene at the picnic table, when it almost seemed as though he was sexually pawing the girl. Other than the creep factor, these are hardly the behaviors of someone who particularly hates everyone.

I think the principle problem with the film is a weak story line. It’s not that far from the sort of standard indie film “day in the life” type of story, where there really isn’t much plot, we just go along with the main character through the normal travails of their day.

Yet somehow, it’s still a really good movie. Weird.

I responded:

As I was driving home it hit me that I disagree with Trey’s thesis that the film is “about greed.” Daniel is not motivated by greed — as that scene you mention makes clear, and as his lack of interest in money makes clear. No, he’s motivated by an ambition, a seemingly self-destructive ambition. He wants to succeed — and he wants others to fail. What this has to do with his late-developing interest in family I have no idea.

The early part of the movie is about his rise to the top. That’s interesting and well-told. Complications arrive in the form of Eli — also good. It’s when Eli blithely leaves town (he’s “going on a mission,” we learn) that the movie ends: there’s no opposition. I first tipped off to this during those scenes with the fake brother, most of which work like this: two people sitting around talking. Bad storytelling. By the end, with our protagonist having bludgeoned the seemingly ageless Eli, we’ve descended into camp with the (un?)intentionally funny line “I’m done now.” I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie this promising end this badly.

Still, I had a great time. That’s because I got to go out on the spur of the moment with two good friends and just flat-out enjoy myself, uncomfortable seat and all.

(On a side note, I should mention that the Arclight is a premiere movie house with assigned seating, a restaurant and bar, stadium seating with expansive leg room, and a strict no-talking, no-child policy. Which made it all the more surprising that none of us could get comfortable in these seemingly ergonomic seats. I thought it was just me twisting and turning in my seat, but no, it was all of us.)

One of the reasons I’ve been friends with Mark for 15 years is that I appreciate his shrewd intelligence and his directness. You also have to love someone with enough security to respond that in retrospect perhaps he had fallen for the press releases:

I’m not sure it was Trey who said the film was about greed. It might have been me, and it would have been me mindlessly parroting something I read about the film. I think your notion that it’s about ambition, or at any rate it is ambition that is Daniel’s motivator, is correct. And this leads me to think that PT Anderson should have given us more information about what formed Daniel. If his prime focus is on succeeding, and equally important that others fail – what caused this? That should have been part of the story if this ambition is the central theme of Daniel’s life. I agree that Dano’s unagingness (ooo, I just invented a word) sticks out badly. And I agree that the early part of the film, covering his rise, is eminently watchable, and something like Welles’ Citizen Kane. Unlike Kane, however, there isn’t much more story after he gets there. If we’d learned more about his need not only to succeed but for others to fail, if we’d seen that come up a couple of times more, perhaps the scene with his grownup son announcing he’s setting up on his own, would have resonated better. I really like PT Anderson. And he’s an obviously gifted filmmaker. I hope he finds his way back to the quality of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia.” Although I think I’ll get “Punchdrunk Love” and take another look at that.

So why spend all this time — in discussion, in those emails, posting it to this blog — to analyze why a wonderful movie winds up un-wonderful? Let me count the ways:

1. Because it was a wonderful movie for so very long and I’m glad for that and I’m disappointed how wrong it goes.
2. Because my friend and colleague Chris Meeks spent an evening last semester screening scenes that work and don’t work, and why the ones that work work and why the ones that don’t work don’t, and he wrapped up the evening with, appropriately, movies that end badly. For this semester, he should add this one.
3. Because there are lessons to learn. And the three lessons here for writers are:
   1. Don’t have the antagonist blithely leave — have him grow more powerful;
   2. Don’t introduce new elements too late (as with Plainview’s sudden interest in family) — it just seems desperate, and confuses the issues
   3. Remember your theme; identify it early and follow it through.

What was “There Will Be Blood” about? I don’t know. For much of the film, I thought it was about how a man’s ascension from the literal dirt to the echelon of success is driven by the same ambition that strips him bare. But maybe it was about family. Or greed. Or, unfortunately, nothing. But when it was good, it was great.

We’ve got more polls and surveys and pop quizzes than ever, and though the results seem more widely reported than ever, they have never been more meaningless. That’s partly because of the way these polls and surveys and pop quizzes are constructed: with variations on the “when did you stop beating your wife?” question.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you already know how I feel about political polls. They exist to build interest — and therefore viewership, and therefore advertising dollars — for the 24/7 round-the-calendar presidential race (with state and local races serving as junior versions of this dynamic). (Or, perhaps more insidiously, for the fundraising machines.)

Last night (well, early this morning), I finished watching my Netflix rental of the Jane Campion film “Holy Smoke” starring Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel. I don’t know why the system recommended the film to me, but I do really enjoy Harvey Keitel, partly because I can’t decide whether he’s really good or really bad. (I think the latter, and so every time I see him with his stilted delivery and oafish physicality and average looks, I imagine that maybe I’ll jump into movie stardom late in life. Except, for all that, he has a weird charisma I can’t fully identify, and he has turned up in a large number of offbeat films I love, such as “Smoke” and “City of Industry” — which is a further reason I keep watching him.) “Holy Smoke” is not a good movie. It is ostensibly about cult deprogramming, Keitel’s character being hired by the family of Kate Winslet’s character to deprogram her after she falls aswoon of an Indian guru, but it isn’t really about that at all. I have great difficulty telling you what it’s about, or even how it’s about that. The supporting characters are flown in from some far zanier outback comedy (Campion is an Aussie), while the leads play an admixture of straight-on high-drama desperate need or something even further — something out of “Mommie Dearest,” with metaphoric ax and all. The movie is a mess. Early in it there are antic speedups, a la the Keystone Kops (I’m not making this up), while toward the end we get a slo-mo scene of Keitel striking Winslet. Later, when we find her in the trunk of his car I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be funny or dramatic. I don’t think the director or writers are sure, either. In fact, I’m not sure they’re sure about anything.

While slipping this disc into its sleeve to return to Netflix, I wondered what I was going to rate this in their system of one to five stars. After all, getting these ratings right is essential to their disc-recommendation system. It was that system that suggested this film — rightly so — and it is that system that will analyze my score on this and then suggest other discs. The system does a good job. On Day One of my Netflix account it suggested a Jim Carrey film, but once I entered my reaction to that and some other similar recommendations, such an outrage never recurred. I will say, though, that if there is some documentary somewhere about the horrors of the world that I haven’t seen, it’s probably waiting in my queue along with strange cinema from around the world: Korean films with one guy beating up 29 other guys in a hallway, Brazilian films about old ladies who are police informants and so forth. As my son said, “Does Netflix just keep recommending all this weird foreign shit?” Well, buddy, it beats the Cineplex.

The problem with my rating “Holy Smoke” is this: I really liked the movie. Oh, it’s undeniably bad, but in a puzzling and entertaining way. The scenes of driving through the Australian brush — of kangaroos hopping across the road at night — brought to mind the many times my truck or car was almost hit by deer where I grew up. I love the isolated halfway hut where Keitel is trying to deprogram Winslet. I like the early deprogramming scenes where he cuts away the fabric of her illusions. (If they’re illusions — I also remain unclear whether we’re supposed to believe that her “cult” is a good thing or a bad thing.) I certainly like the many shots of Kate Winslet full-bodied and naked cavorting around in the dirt, weeping, or laughing, and trying to seduce Keitel (either because she genuinely falls for him, or because she’s trying to reprogram him himself — another confusing point). Given all the enjoyment the film renders, it seems churlish to give it a bad rating. But I don’t want to confuse “Liked it” or “Really liked it” with “good.” No, it’s BAD — and I really liked it. Like The Three Stooges.

I’m not the only one with this dilemma. Here are two sample reviews from Netflix:

3.0 Stars
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“The film isn’t really about cults at all, but about the struggle between men and women, and it’s a little surprising, although not boring, when it turns from a mystic travelogue into a feminist parable.”

3.0 Stars
Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“As Holy Smoke moves from its early mix of rapture and humor into this more serious, confrontational stage, it runs into trouble.”

I looked at those reviews and, abetted by their both giving three stars, I followed suit. It seemed to make sense. But I do wish Netflix had options that clarified that one might Really Like a movie and believe it’s Utter Shit at the same time.

Then this morning I came across the following poll on MSNBC.com. Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary details his personal search for Osama bin Laden. The Weinstein Company snapped up the distribution rights to the film, and there have been news reports around the web strongly suggesting that Spurlock did what Bush and company have been unable to do: find bin Laden. Now, I don’t believe that Bush and company are looking all that hard for bin Laden, because most of us know where he is: in the mountains of Pakistan, well within reach of our good ally Pervez Musharraf. (And a hearty thanks to him, and here’s another $4 billion for all your help.) Finding bin Laden is akin to trying to find the last strawberry yogurt in the dairy case — it’s right there. Given what I know of the Weinsteins, I believe less that Spurlock has “found” him than that I believe their publicity machine is doing another fine job of conjuring controversy and rumor to drive box-office sales. So, hats off to them. So my inclination on the survey would be to respond that this is a publicity scheme. But here are my radio-button choices — and you’ll note that not one of them is a fair choice:

Are you intrigued enough by the possibility that bin Laden may have been found to see the documentary?

1. Absolutely. It would be a fascinating watch, regardless of whether Spurlock really finds Osama.
2. No way. This is just hype. The Bush Administration is doing all that it can to find the man.
3. It sounds interesting, but I’ll wait until the reviews are out to decide whether or not to see it.

Although I studied Logic in college, I didn’t need that training to cut these syllogisms in half. Number 1 is not true because I have no way of knowing whether or not it will be a “fascinating watch” (or even an interesting timepiece) without seeing it first. Number 2 is not true because while it IS hype, the Bush Administration is NOT doing all it can. Number 3 is not true because whether or not I see the film has nothing to do with reviews. So for me there is no good way to answer this poll. But because I wanted to see what others had said, I finally chose Number 3 because it seemed less offensive (with saying the “The Bush Administration is doing all that it can…” being most offensive). Here are the results:

Absolutely. It would be a fascinating watch, regardless of whether Spurlock really finds Osama.
48%
No way. This is just hype. The Bush Administration is doing all that it can to find the man.
21%
It sounds interesting, but I’ll wait until the reviews are out to decide whether or not to see it.
31%

Does this poll tell us anything? No.

Does the Netflix poll tell us anything? No. Not even about my preferences, in this particular case.

Do the polls popping up every day about the presidential race mean anything? No — except to the people putting them out and profiting from the system.

Mike Gravel is not leading in the polls. But then, I’m not sure who is “leading in the polls,” nor why it matters, polls being a mass-media creation designed to fuel a 24/7 two-year presidential race in the hopes of filling airspace and webspace for Fox, CNN, MSNBC and everyone else. This time last month Hillary and Giuliani were unstoppable; now she’s falling down a hill that Obama is ascending, while Huckabee will soon be able to say he has indeed been to the mountain. Toiling away in the scrub at the bottom of these crests is Mike Gravel, who, if he isn’t gaining any ground, has at the least proved himself to be the most entertaining major presidential candidate since Pat Paulsen. I don’t want him running the country, but I love having him running around the country saying and doing these things.

In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Book Review, editor David Ulin picks apart Charles Bukowski’s poetry and finds not much there. It’s a good analysis, with several typical Bukowski poems providing corroborating evidence. Why then the reverence by so many (a reverence I share) for Bukowski?

Bukowski’s enormous impact, especially in Los Angeles, outweighs the limitations in his poetry. As Ulin notes, Bukowski was an active part of the burgeoning coffeehouse (and bar) literary scene here and a frequent contributor to even the smallest rags. He was also giving voice to a gritty Los Angeles underside unexamined by anyone else, and as such directly challenged the New York powers-that-be view of Los Angeles as all tinsel and no truth. His poetry may be weak — and I think it is — but the legacy of what one might call his “community work” is huge.

Bukowski is not alone in this. Mary Shelley is a particularly rotten writer, but “Frankenstein” spawned an entire industry (or two). Philip K. Dick is a writer I enjoy reading whose prose gets stuck between my teeth; nevertheless, I’m confident his legacy will prove him one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. The poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, who birthed the detective genre and whose gothic horror remains burned into our collective consciousness (most memorably, for me, with “The Fall of the House of Usher”) is frightfully overwritten and carries the adolescent skip of a jump-rope competition. To wit:

from The Bells

Hear the tolling of the bells-
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people–ah, the people-
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All Alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone-
They are neither man nor woman-
They are neither brute nor human-
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!

And so forth, until it’s your head that is ringing like the bells, bells, bells.

Or this:

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
” ‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore,.
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,
Nameless here forevermore.

The cadence may be memorable, but so are all those songs by Abba. Someone, please, help me to forget.

While Bukowski’s poems bemoan the poet’s inability to offer insight, his novels are another thing entirely. “Ham on Rye” is a shattering portrayal of growing up tormented, clueless, ugly, and lower class in the shadow of Los Angeles, the land of the pretty and gifted and well-off. “Post Office” is requisite reading for anyone who wants to understand the torture of smart people trapped in a deadening circumstance; its revolutionary message is that to embrace freedom is, sometimes, to embrace the decision to be a complete fuck-up.

Bukowski was smart about the sham of Los Angeles, the citywide put-on he himself refused to don. And in print and in his readings he was funny. When he had nothing to lose, which was most of his life, he was fearlessly funny and filthy. Every Bukowski piece, however exaggerated and at times badly written, carries the comic stench of real life. There will always be a place for that.

Check out this new rap music video, “directed” by my Orlando’s Joint cartoon alter ego. Click here to see it.

(I swear to you I could deliver these lines better, but writer-director Terence Anthony continues to insist on “bad” acting.)

The Edward Albee resurgence first begun with “Three Tall Women” continues, as recounted in this fine piece recently in the New York Times. If I do go back east to go duck hunting in January, I can try to catch “Me, Myself, and I” at the McCarter; while in Philadelphia around May for the aforementioned Bill Irwin show, I can try to add in “Occupant” at the Signature in New York. (I’m afraid to see “Peter and Jerry,” the prequel/sequel to “The Zoo Story,” afraid because I don’t want “The Zoo Story” ruined for me — it’s played too large a role in my life.)

Albee is an ongoing inspiration and I’m glad the theatre and its patrons have embraced him back. In the 1980’s he was decidedly out of fashion. I will never forget the infamous cover of New York magazine with a photo of Albee emblazoned with the legend “Edward Albee:  Should he quit?” I don’t think the Nazis treated Brecht this badly.

Bill Irwin’s upcoming new show, The Happiness Lecture, premieres this spring at Philadelphia Theatre Company in, well, Philadelphia. Click here for information and tickets. Not only must I see this, I must round up appropriate friends (Rich? Joe? Paul?) who will appreciate the show with me. Yes, this will entail going from Los Angeles to Philadelphia expressly to see the show, as well as returning thereafter, but some things should not be missed. If I can’t see Buster Keaton live (although I hope to see him some day while dead), at least I can see Bill Irwin.

I have seen Mr. Irwin perform live twice before, in the delightful “Fool Moon” last decade at the Doolittle in Hollywood, and early this year in the decidedly undelightful and unforgettable “Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf” at the Ahmanson, which I complained about here. (I continue to believe that production may have forever ruined the play for me, so no, I’m not going to forget it.) It will be a pleasure to see Mr. Irwin back in his element: comically deconstructing existence. At least, I hope that’s what it’s going to be, especially given that it’s going to cost me a cross-country trip to find out.

—————-
Now playing: Pere Ubu – My Theory Of Spontaneous Simultude
via FoxyTunes

Buster Keaton didn’t like them (although he wound up working for them), but I love The Three Stooges. No, they do not deliver the comic existentialism of the master or of his disciple (Samuel Beckett). But for comic menace and anarchy, no one tops the Stooges. (And surely, anyone who has had to deal with an unruly child can sympathize with Moe’s handling of Curly.)

If you’re in LA, next weekend’s your opportunity to see the Stooges at their biggest: on a big screen. Their act was built on the stage, which means their malevolence was delivered the old-fashioned way: in person, and minus special effects. Technology has given the film industry innumerable new toys, but it has also taken away the pleasure of knowing that Keaton could break his neck (as he once did), that Harold Lloyd was indeed hanging from a clock (and lost part of his hand in a filmed explosion), and that when Moe misjudged, Larry did get his eyes poked. Comedy is attached to pain; visceral thrills are associated with danger. I don’t want performers getting hurt, but it’s hard to muster much concern or astonishment when CGI replaces human beings.

From the guy who previously blamed it all on the gays, we now present a look into the difficulties of trying to fit in with the Klan.

I guess I’m glad that my good friend Doug Hackney had corrective surgery to his eyes. Doug’s always been a visionary, and we wouldn’t want to lose that.

But describing the procedure at length — and including photos of every gruesome up-close eye-scraping and incision, as you can read here if you’re of strong stomach — brought to mind what we in comics fandom call “injury to eye motif.” Here are some sterling examples:

These comics are highly collectible, and I think we can see why: They prey on one of our deepest fears. And although Doug sadly knows little or nothing about comic books, I think he understands the collective subconscious as well as anyone. Why else tease us with a close-up of his visage looking like something straight out of “X, the Man with X-Ray Eyes?” And who could possibly read his story and look at the photos without flinching? No one. Because seeing is believing.