Oil

Daniel Yergin’s acclaimed 1992 Pulitzer winning book - The Prize
- told the story of the petroleum industry from 1850 to 1990.
With enough insight to satisfy the scholar, it was his narratives on
the colourful personalities in the history of oil that captured the
interest of the public. The early days of oil were a treasure trove for
storytellers. Film makers such as Paul Anderson with There will be
Blood and Martin Scorsese with Killers of the Flower Moon homed
in on the nascent US oil production industry before and after the
First World War. Both films focus on the dangers of avarice and the
pursuit of wealth in thinly governed frontier towns. Scorsese used
my Texas buddy, Ty Mitchell, as a bad guy in Killers of the Flower
Moon, and I knew I wanted him on set. My plan was to use the base
of the derrick in West Texas as a platform on which to parody those
early days of wildcatting. I asked Texas local Roxanna Redfoot if she
minded getting soaked in oil, partly because I knew she would say
“bring it on”. A huge credit goes to the four Texans for what they
went through for this photograph. It certainly has the wow factor