‘Landman’ is a “ten-hour movie” starring a stellar cast and featuring a story we may think we know, but really don’t — Big Oil, seen from the viewpoint of the proverbial little man.
From the Robert Baer inspired Syriana to Giant starring James Dean, Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor, from Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood to George Miller’s Mad Max series, we have seen all about the evils and gains that oil can bring to mankind. Yet it has never been brought to the screen quite like Landman, starring the wondrous Bill Bob Thornton.
I call him wondrous because it is rare that an actor can fill up so much space on a screen — be it the big screen or our TVs. Even in a film like Love Actually, where the audience is meant to be rooting for Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister to get the girl, I couldn’t help but think that, had it been me, I would have gone with the US president, played by Thornton. He is a rockstar, the consummate movie star, one southern drawl talking smooth man who also manages to be really kind to his fans, as I personally found out at the premiere of Paramount+’s new series Landman, in London.
Landman is a “10 hour movie,” divided into episodes, as actor James Jordan, who plays Dale Bradley pointed out, during the preview screening of the first episode at the Paramount + series premiere in London. In fact, the show’s creator, Texas born writer and director Taylor Sheridan has become a master at making long movies, meant to be streamed as episodic stories in the comfort of our own homes. Recently, the NY Times published an OpEd piece about how Yellowstone, the ongoing Sheridan series debuted in 2018 and starring Kevin Costner, is changing the landscape of America’s national treasure. It turns out, watching something cool makes us want to be a part of that story. I mean, who knew it, right?!
And Landman will see you wanting to dress, feel, walk around and talk like Thornton — both his tough yet warm character Tommy Norris and the star himself.
The series dives through the personal and work adventure of Thornton’s Tommy as he manages the perilous landscape of the modern-day oil industry in the US. As a “landman” he is the go-between, the only thread connecting the billionaire owners of the fields from where the oil is harvested for our consumption, with the workers in those fields. So why would anyone do such dangerous work, the series also seems to ask? For the same reason the oil barons do what they do — money. “Roughnecks,” as those workers are called, typically earn between $50,000 and $80,000 per year, without the need for a college degree and a clean record. As one of the major industries turning in some of the biggest world’s profits, Big Oil is something we will continue to live with, until a substitute is found, and learning about it from Landman proved a sobering experience for me.
At the London premiere — looking every bit the rockstar who had just days earlier come off his ‘Love & Hate’ North American tour with his bandmates The Boxmasters — Thornton was joined by co-star Ali Larter, in a sultry sexy leave-little-to-the-imagination gown. But also Jon Hamm, who plays his corporate counterpart Monty Hill and Demi Moore, who plays Hamm’s on-screen wife Cami. Larter plays Tommy’s wife Angela, while Jordan plays petroleum engineer Dale Bradley. Rounding out the cast, but absent from the big do organized inside London’s TATE Modern museum, were cast members Michelle Randolph and all grown up from his Mud role Jacob Lofland, as Angela’s and Tommy’s kids.
So what is it about Landman that left me wanting for more? I mean, I’m hardly someone who loves westerns and this has a bit of that within it. I didn’t completely go for Succession either and there is a sprinkle of that within this series. But what I always do go for is credible acting and human stories and the kind of mind blowing special effects, dives and turns and complicated plot twists that seem not-so-far-off in, once again, Trump America.
The series could never exist if Thornton didn’t exist as an actor. There is something intrinsically cool about the smooth-voiced thespian. I mean, just check out those cowboy boots he wore at the premiere and the ASHBA beanie with the pirate ring on the side. It looked like he had a piercing when he was sitting on the stage, yet up close it was a “Trompe-l'œil,” an illusion. Very movie star, slash rockstar.
“The way this happened,” Thornton explained during a Q&A following the presentation of the first episode, “was I did a cameo in 1883 because Taylor called me.” Thornton appeared in the Sheridan series 1883 as the real life gunslinger Jim Courtright. “He said, I just wrote a small part, then I realized it was a cameo, and all you gotta do is shoot six people in about seven seconds in a saloon.” And Thornton said OK, he would do it and “I know what that means.” Once they got to know each other a little better, Sheridan also told him he would write a series for the American actor called Landman, “it’s about the oil business, and you’re the landman.” Thornton also gave a simple explanation on what we can expect from the whole series. “It’s about the business of oil and a landman is the person who is in between the billionaire oil guy,” pointing to co-star Hamm, “and the people who work in the field,” the actor explained.
“This is not a political show at all,” Thornton assured, “it just simply shows you how this works and it shows you what and how it affects all these people around it — families, the people who work in the field, the person who owns the company, it’s really a human story, it’s about people.”
While elaborating, Thornton turned to the evening’s moderator, film critic and broadcaster Mark Kermode, who is also a fellow musician. “Are you getting impatient with me, Mark,” the actor joked, implying his long, insightful answers might be cutting into time restraints. “You just remember we met thirty years ago,” Kermode chimed back, without hesitation, “I’m never going to be impatient with you!”
“I’m very superstitious and normally I don’t say before it comes out that I like something, but this one I’m gambling on,” Thornton gushed. Putting money on Landman’s success might not be a bad idea.
Ali Larter and Billy Bob Thornton at the ‘Landman’ premiere
About her firecracker of a character Angela, Larter said “you see her all bright and shiny that’s how she presents herself to the world,” but the dark times she’s experienced with her family, “impact her choices going forward… What is interesting about the way that Taylor writes, he’s able to write these characters that are really fun but then you really get to see them when they’re vulnerable and you get to see their flaws.”
The American actress also elaborated on her idea, a statement circulating in the press, that Taylor Sheridan as a filmmaker has “re-romanticized the American West.”
“I just think he has a way of showing the cowboys and the women and the love stories in a way that people like to dream about — I think there is an endless kind of hope and endless love story we are all wishing for.”
Jordan, who has been a frequent Sheridan collaborator said about him, “I’m very thankful, Taylor is the best out there.”
Jon Hamm and Demi Moore, who play on-screen husband and wife in ‘Landman’
Moore’s character, the actress joked with Kermode, is a bit like the “Where’s Waldo” of the series, meaning that in the first episode we watched at the premiere she didn’t appear at all. “That’s one of the really interesting ways Taylor works, at creating not just a season but a world,” the actress said. “I read this in the beginning and said, this is really great, but there is not a lot for me to do,” she continued, “and he said “trust me” and I did.” Moore also disclosed during a Cannes interview back in May, where she was promoting her awards-worthy performance in body horror film The Substance, that Landman will be coming back for season 2.
Jon Hamm, who plays the billionaire to Thornton’s landman admitted that “Tommy and Monty started in the same place at the same time, they’ve been friends a long time.” The beloved Mad Men actor explained, “and because of decisions, and gambles and risks that either paid off or not, they ended up in two widely different places but that’s the nature of this business,” oil that is, “you make one wrong turn and maybe you can course correct, you make three wrong turns and you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
That pretty much sums up the action and adventures that Landman took us all on, in that first episode, and personally, I can’t wait for more. It is deliciously good and with a star cast like that, who can say no.
Speaking of being unable to say no, I have a little anecdote to tell you. Once the screening and Q&A were done with, we were still treated to an afterparty, complete with vegan hotdogs and mini sliders. But for a while there, none of the cast were in sight, with a small “VIP area” kept roped off in the darkness of a large underground hall of the TATE Modern.
Sometimes it’s good to break one’s own rules…
Then, magically, Thornton appeared, stopping with all the influencers and invitees. Once he had worked the room, and had been captured next to everyone and anyone who asked for a picture, I approached him to say hello. “I won’t ask you for a photo, I just want to tell you how much I loved this episode, and how great you look” I told him. The actor smiled, thanked me and spent a few minutes chatting with me, about his cool beanie plus hat combo and being a rockstar — a real, working one. He also explained that while his fellow cast members had all gone to dinner, he had asked to be brought back the party, to say hello to everyone. In fact, at the Q&A he whispered something to Kermode and later let the audience in on the secret, “I just told him in his ear if we could take a few questions from you guys.” A gesture both super classy and very unusual in this age of publicists and managers trying to put distance between stars and the audience, but also journalists, and there were quite a few of us present.
“I’d like to take a photo,” Thornton then said, turning to me, “let’s take a photo,” asking his manager to take the shot. And that’s how I broke the first and most important rule I have about celebrity meetings. That’s how the above photo came to be, and all because of the lovely, kind, handsome Thornton. Because when Billy Bob asks, you say “yes! Sir.” And that’s all folks.
All ‘Landman’ images used with permission.