The Bowling Alley: Eating in TWBB

So I was listening to the NPR Fresh Air interview PTA did back in December. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1740167 Terry Gross was interviewing him and made a comment along the lines of there being very little sensual pleasure in TWBB, that the characters weren't even seen eating. She was making a comment about how rough and hard life in a developing little oil town must have been, so plain and bare bones they didn't even really eat or eat well.

It wouldn't have been a particularily noteworthy comment except it was wrong. Food and consumption is everywhere in TWBB, and I was wondering if anyone has thought about why it is that way.

For instance: "potatoes" and "goat's milk" are repeated throughout the movie. "Bread" is this amazing grain-- a "luxury"-- that Plainview can bring to the town of Little Boston. Plainview insists that HW gets a "strong" steak in him when he returns from his deaf school, and in the bowling alley scene Plainview is constantly gnawing on some old steak (or a small plank of wood, from the looks of it).

Most notably, Plainview is almost always-- I mean literally in practically every scene-- eating or drinking or smoking (in another word, consuming) something. When the DVD comes out I can better pay attention to how many times. But if you're going to see the movie again soon, you might want to note how Plainview is constantly either drinking alcohol, or tea (I noticed the frequent tea drinking because I found it absurd how a tough oilman with sooty hands was shown three or four times sipping from a dainty china cup) or chugging a cigarette. In very few scenes is he without something to drink or smoke or eat. Smoking and drinking and eating steaks sounds like an oil man type thing to do, except no other characters are shown having such a constant access or need for it.

It reminded me of his comment to Tilford when Tilford suggests he sell out his land so he can have time to take care of his son. Plainview asks something like, "What will I do with myself?" And that's Plainview-- he needs to always be doing something, always planning and thinking something, you look at him and you can see the gears constantly whirring in his head. And he manifests that physically-- he's always drinking something, eating something, smoking something. He needs something to do with his hands. After being woken by Bandy in the woods, he immediately reaches for his whiskey flask. The scene near the end in his cavernous office-- he drinks tea while he disowns HW, he simultaneously downs whiskey and smokes as HW walks out. In the bowling alley, he's drunk off his feet in the presence of his oldest enemy and he still drinks like a champ and chews through his little plank of wood. He's always consuming something. Count the teacups.

It might be reaching, but to me its a physical manifestation of his internal greed, the need to swallow up and ingest as soon as possible, as much as possible, whether its oil or bread or whatever. If he can get his hands on it and take it for himself, he will and does. He takes the land and extracts the oil from it like you take food and drink and extract subsistence from it. What does he tell Eli at the end (some wonderful sweet dairy creation that currently escapes my memory)? And before that, he also said "I drink your water... I drink the blood of lamb..." See, drinking again. Drinking up. Even he gets the eating/greed metaphor. Oh, and DDL also is constantly chewing the scenery, so that counts too.

Sorry for being long winded, but did anyone else take note of all the eating in the movie? Does it have meaning? Should I drop my English major?

But if you notice the first time he is seen smoking is after he gives HW away. I guess it's too make the character less likeable at that point...and yeah that is probably supposed to ne steak he's eating in the bowling alley but does look a piece of wood or a chocolate bar. it's too uniformly shaped to be meat

DP is first seen smoking a cigarette, I think, when Eli approaches carrying the wood that Abel has directed him to bring to the campsite where DP and HW have set up their tent.  The look of complete surprise on DP's face,and the look he gives HW when he first sees Eli, and his resemblance to Paul, is brilliant.  He's totally caught off guard for a moment.  I think we see DP with his pipe though earlier in the film.

People with Academy screeners capped the film and put up zip files of the pics on a TWBB fansite.

First time we see Plainview drinking (hilarity ensues):

He drinks Tilford's whiskey, he drinks it up.

Notice the empty gold-rimmed drinking glass to the left. (PLUS: Why is a copper pot with a handle there (behind his head)? Is it soup? Is it a piss pot? He does knock it over with a bowling ball and it sprays the camera later on.):

Goes for a drink right after being woken up from an already-drunken stupor by Eli Sunday:

Whatever this is (water?):

The coffee or tea cups (PS: hiding behind his hat, that glass bottle totally has to have some sort of alcohol in it):

OH THANK YOU!!!!

What's the consensus: is DP drinking tea or coffee?  I'm going with coffee, because that tin contraption looks like some type of coffee making device.  Oh, and he also had a cigarette in his mouth when drives the stake in the table, making the deal with Union.  I LOVE it that DP has the balls to drink out of that flask around Abel, who is some probably some sort of "elder" in the church.  I'm guessing Eli developed his taste for whiskey after he left Little Boston.

I got the impression that his funny little dance after being woken up by Eli was simply a reaction to a very full bladder. I assume he took a leak into the pot offscreen while Eli was pouring the drinks. That, in turn, would mean that when the pot is knocked over later on and and it sprays the camera, it counts as the first time in movie history that a camera has been sprayed with... well, you know.

PTA sure is one weird dude.

Assuming the pot would have been filled with the real thing.   However, I've got to say, even if that's what it *was*, I think DP would have moved it away from his dried out, cold steak.  Remember, he's got a lifetime of drinking in him, so he might be a higher functioning drunk.  Meaning he still posses the logic, "if I piss in the copper kettle, I'm moving it away from my plate of food, which I'll finish eating right before I kill Eli."

Look what I found:

Whatever it is-- water? broth/soup? urine?-- there was quite a lot of it in the pot to make a big splash, so to speak. I wonder whether Day-Lewis missed the pot a couple of times and how many takes they had to do to get the ball to hit and the liquid to splash the camera exactly right.

Because of all the drinking Plainview does throughout the film, I wonder what Day-Lewis was really drinking. Also, I wonder how many times they shot the scene where Plainview forces HW to drink the whiskey milk and whether it was really milk (I doubt it-- multiple glasses of milk drunk straight down, its just too heavy for the body, especially a kid).  

Sues: like you said, the contraption looks like a coffee pitcher of some sort. The cups look like big coffee cups. Except the last non-alcoholic drinking scene, in which crazy 1927 Plainview actually is drinking from a fine dainty china tea cup.

E. W. Marland: I've never seen goat's milk anywhere before, LOL. Goat's cheese is way more common but milk... I saw PTA's "Magnolia" a couple days ago and one of the characters (played by Luis Guzman) actually mentions "goat's milk" for whatever reason. I cracked up.

sues: Intact: http://youtube.com/watch?v=xncvvHM_NU8

Back in the golden age, eh? There's dozens of clips of TWBB floating around YouTube that one can find. The whole movie's there, actually, last I checked it hadn't been taken down yet.

To be honest I wonder if Paramount Vantage even cares, ten minute clips of the film are up all over the place and haven't been taken down for months, really.