Wednesday, November 25, 2009

When Ambition Meets Meat: There Will Be Gravy

I'm not sure what the story is behind this photo...but I'm fervently hoping that it's a promotional still for an upcoming sequel to 2007's fascinating drama, There Will Be Blood. Is that not Daniel Plainview (compare to below) ecstatically bathing himself in his latest gusher—a mushroom-gravy well? I can only imagine how There Will Be Gravy takes up the story...

...After beating Eli to death with a bowling pin, the unstable and reclusive Daniel Plainview craves a new endeavor to satisfy his greed. With the Roaring Twenties in full boom and the American standard of living higher than at any point in its history, Plainview realizes that people can afford to eat better than ever before. And eating better means eating wetter—why have turkey dry when they can afford succulent gravy? Why gag on leathery beef when they can soak it in broth?

As unscrupulous and relentless as ever, Plainview devises a piping system to siphon off gravy boats and corner the California gravy market. And now even the Golden State's richest families must come to him, lest they endure the unpalatability and indignity of dry meals.

"I drink your gravy. I drink it up!" he mocks a Los Angeles magnate before beating him to death with a drumstick.*

* This idea based loosely on Upton Sinclair's 1929 novel Gravy!

Let's hope that I'm right and that, just in time for Thanksgiving...There Will Be Gravy!

(Gravy photo copyright Picture It Now; photo of Daniel Plainview copyright Paramount Pictures.)

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