On the insistence from a friend and a colleague, I watched the movie There Will Be Blood over the weekend. I’m a Daniel Day Lewis fan from his prior works like Gangs of New York, so was excited to watch this odd story. Lewis’s character Daniel Plainview is a silver speculator turned oilman who comes across an oil opportunity in Little Boston, CA. He takes his son (HW) to a property, owned by the Sunday family, that they are told contains oil. He tells the owner that they are going quail hunting, which wasn’t true. While hunting, HW stumbles upon an oil seepage confirming the oil is present on the land. They are both excited and the following scene ensues with his son:
HW (son): How much we gonna pay them?
Daniel (father): Who’s that?
HW (son): The Sunday Family
Daniel (father): We’re not going to give them oil prices. We’ll give them quail prices.
While we are not claiming to be getting our oil companies for birdfeed, it brings up the idea of distraction for the Sunday family in the movie and investors now. The Sundays had strangers show up looking to hunt quail, not knowing they were looking for oil. Outside of one family member believing there was a ruse, they were willing parties when the sale price was negotiated at what looked like low prices in the movie. These people had never seen oil drilled on their land, thus didn’t understand the opportunity that lied ahead.
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