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Kristin here–<\/p>\n
A week or so ago, David and I were watching Keith Olbermann\u2019s \u201cCountdown\u201d on MSNBC. As the tagline to one of the stories, Keith quoted, \u201cI drink your milkshake!\u201d David was puzzled and asked why that sentence was suddenly popping up all over the place. I reminded him that Daniel Plainview says that line in the final scene of There Will Be Blood<\/em>\u2014a film that both of us like very much. That was when I learned that \u201cI drink your milkshake\u201d had entered the buzz of pop culture.<\/p>\n On Saturday, February 9, the new Entertainment Weekly<\/em> arrived, with a half-page story, \u201cShake, Shake, Shake,\u201d by Gregory Kirschling, dealing with the milkshake-line phenomenon. (The piece doesn\u2019t seem to be online yet.) Kirschling calls it \u201cone of the strangest exclamations of film history.\u201d<\/p>\n Why so very strange? Odd, maybe, but it makes perfect sense in context. It comes in the film’s final scene, set in the bowling alley of Daniel’s mansion. Naive preacher Eli Sunday has just told Daniel that he should buy a last bit of oil-rich land, whose owner had earlier refused to sell. Daniel replies that he has already extracted the oil from that plot.<\/p>\n The Milkshake Dialogue [Spoilers Ahead!]<\/strong><\/p>\n Eli brings drinks and sits with Daniel near the bowling lanes, saying, \u201cMr. Bandy has passed on to the Lord.\u201d He adds that William, Bandy\u2019s grandson, wants to be an actor in Hollywood. Eli offers to help Daniel negotiate with William concerning the land: \u201cDaniel, I\u2019m asking if you\u2019d like to have business with the Church of the Third Revelation in developing this lease on young Bandy\u2019s thousand-acre tract. I\u2019m offering you to drill on one of the great undeveloped fields of Little Boston.\u201d<\/p>\n Daniel replies, \u201cI\u2019d be happy to work with you.\u201d But he adds a condition: Eli must state that he is a false prophet and that God is a superstition. After receiving Daniel\u2019s apparent agreement to financial terms, Eli reluctantly makes these statements over and over as Daniel insists that he speak more forcefully.<\/p>\n After Eli\u2019s declaration, Daniel declares abruptly, \u201cThose areas have been drilled.\u201d<\/p>\n Eli, baffled, murmurs, \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n Daniel repeats, \u201cThose areas have been drilled.\u201d<\/p>\n Eli, as before: \u201cNo, they haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Daniel: \u201cYes. It\u2019s called drainage, Eli. See, I own everything around it, so, of course, I get what\u2019s underneath it.\u201d<\/p>\n Eli: \u201cBut there are no derricks there. This is the Bandy tract. Do you understand?\u201d<\/p>\n Daniel: \u201cDo you<\/em> understand, Eli? That\u2019s more to the point. Do you <\/em>understand? I drink you water. I drink it up. Every day, I drink the blood of lamb [or land?] from Bandy\u2019s tract.\u201d<\/p>\n At this point Eli confesses how desperate he is, having sinned and lost his investments. Daniel taunts him viciously, saying that Eli\u2019s twin brother Paul was the chosen one, having taken the $10,000 that Daniel had given him and started a small but successful oil company as a result. (The actual amount handed over in the one scene in which Paul appears was $500.)<\/p>\n Reverting to the subject of the Bandy tract, Daniel continues, \u201cThat land has been had. There\u2019s nothing you can do about it. It\u2019s gone. It\u2019s had.\u201d<\/p>\n Eli: \u201cIf you would just\u2014\u201c<\/p>\n Daniel, loudly, drooling: \u201cDrainage! Drainage! Eli, you boy<\/em>. Drained dry. I\u2019m so sorry. If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake\u2014there it is. [He holds up his index finger]. That\u2019s the straw, you see. [He turns and walks away from Eli] And my straw reaches acrooooooossssss [walking back toward Eli] the room … I … drink … your … milkshake<\/em>. [He makes a sucking noise] I drink it up!\u201d<\/p>\n Eli: \u201cDon\u2019t bully me, Daniel.\u201d<\/p>\n At this point Daniel throws Eli down, begins hurling bowling balls and pins at him, and finally beats him to death.<\/p>\n The milkshake analogy isn’t all that bizarre. Daniel choses a metaphor for drainage that he thinks Eli can understand.<\/p>\n Beyond that, the milkshake speech is a way of emphasizing Daniel\u2019s delight, not just in making a fortune in the oil business, but in doing so by paying little, or in this case no, money to those whose land he exploits. Stealing someone’s milkshake is a petty form of theft, so Daniel is able to trivialize the removal of oil that Eli has been counting on as his last chance for financial and spiritual salvation. The taunting also allows Daniel to revenge himself for the parallel earlier scene in the church where Eli had forced him repeatedly to confess how he had betrayed his own son. In this final portion of the film, Daniel no longer has any need to put on a friendly face, to pretend to have empathy with others.<\/p>\n Daniel mentions drinking water as well. He’s eating a cold, leftover piece of meat during much of this, and Eli is drinking whiskey. Eating and drinking are common motifs in the film, with elaborate discussions of how the rocky land of the Sundays’ ranch produces no grain but only supports goats. Upon Daniel’s arrival there, the family can offer him no bread but only milk and potatoes.<\/p>\n Thus I don’t think the milkshake line is out of place. That portion of the scene is, however, as Kirschling says, “weird, vaguely hilarious, and unsettling.”<\/p>\n By the way, according to a story in USA Today<\/em><\/a>, director Paul Thomas Anderson derived the dialogue from “a transcript he found of the 1924 congressional hearings over the Teapot Dome scandal.” Sen. Albert Fall described oil drainage thus: “Sir, if you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and my straw reaches across the room, I’ll end up drinking your milkshake.” He was convicted of taking bribes for oil rights on public lands.<\/p>\n Blenderized by the Internet?<\/strong><\/p>\n Kirschling points out that the speech has spread far indeed. There\u2019s a YouTube video, \u201cThere Will Be Milkshakes,\u201d<\/a> by Kevin Koonz (spelled Kunze in the EW<\/em> and USA Today<\/em> stories). There\u2019s a website, \u201cI Drink Your Milkshake.com,\u201d<\/a> which started as just a posting of the line and became a forum for discussing the film. The USA Today<\/em> article declares the line \u201cHollywood\u2019s Hottest Catchphrase.\u201d There are various designs of T-shirts available<\/a> on Cafepress and eBay.<\/p>\n It does seem odd that a line from a film that is an art-house favorite, with under $25 million grossed in the U.S. to date, should spread so widely. But these things happen.<\/p>\n
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