Rouge Wave Pinch Hitter

Hello Wavers. My good friend Bob Schultz of The Great American Pitch Fest is filling in for the Wave-inatrix today so we can keep good content on the Rouge Wave while I recover from and deal with my family emergency. God bless his cotton socks. So, here's Bob -


(WARNING: The following contains possible spoilers for “There Will Be Blood.” If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for? Go! Now! We’ll wait.)

It’s my choice for the best film of 2007, but Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” has only made around $31 million at the box office, far from a blockbuster. Yet somehow, the dialogue from Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) to poor, devastated Eli (Paul Dano) at the end of the movie has launched itself into the zeitgeist. T-shirts, websites, articles, and blogs have all been created to pay tribute to this line:

DANIEL PLAINVIEW
I drink your milkshake.

On the page, it doesn’t look like much. Taken on its own, who among us would rank it on the same level as “Live long and prosper,” or “Here’s looking at you, Kid,” or “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night?” Who among us at The Script Department would have given note on this script, seen this line, and written, “Amazing. This is going to blow up all over the place!”?

And yet it has.

On Super Tuesday, political supporters of all stripes were electrified, advocating for their candidates, getting out the word, pounding the pavement to get out the vote. As clichéd as it sounds, this was America at its best. Millions of people, proud believers of what they could accomplish, focusing on potentially the most important and historic time of their lives.

As the results started to roll in, with Senator Barack Obama winning and winning and winning again, an electric charge crackled through the hotel bar where I was watching results come in. The crowd kept getting louder and louder, more excited to hear about the latest upset victory. Then, from a horseshoe booth at the back of the room, lubricated by several beers, a man’s baritone boomed out:

“I drink your delegates, Hillary!” After a long sluuurping noise, he belted out, “I drink them up!”

The whole room – old, young, Republican, Democrat, you name it – burst out laughing, despite the fair (but not amazing) box office numbers.

Had I written that script, that moment would have been the zenith in my career. Regardless of box office success, overhearing my own dialogue quoted by a stranger would be the ultimate measuring stick of my success: My words affected people to such a degree that they spread into parts of the culture unrelated to my movie. In essence, like Plainview’s straw, Paul Thomas Anderson’s words reached all the way across the room and took over. DRAINAGE!

How about you? Would you be satisfied with modest success from the perspective of audience size, if it meant a place in the national lexicon? Would you be willing to trade the dream of box office treasure for a place in etymological history?

Bob Schultz is a screenwriter, and Executive Director of The Great American Pitchfest. Click hereto learn more about the Pitchfest or email Bob.

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