Six Degrees of Billy the Kid
Categories: Westerns
By: TW Editors 03/01/2008
You may recall reading in our last issue about the new catch phrase spawned from There Will Be Blood—"I drink your milkshake. I drink it all up!" We told you to check out idrinkyourmilkshake.com to see what all the buzz was about.
Basically, the line is heard in the last scene when Daniel-Day Lewis describes his ability to take oil from an adversary (i.e. using a long straw).
The writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson admits he took it straight from a transcript of the 1924 congressional hearings on oil-drilling, which became known as the Teapot Dome Scandal.
What most don't know is that the person who testified using the milkshake metaphor was none other than Albert B. Fall from New Mexico (and, who, because of the scandal, ended up popularizing the term "fall guy;" the term actually has been traced by New York Times language expert William Safire to a 1904 citation).
Anyway, Fall had a life before he fell, and that was as a lawyer in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he successfully defended powerful rancher Oliver Lee and his ranch hand Jim Gilliland on murder charges.
The two cowboys had been arrested for the murder of Albert Jennings Fountain and his young son, by the legendary lawman and killer of Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett. In the subsequent trial, attorney Fall and Garrett sparred on the witness stand.
In turn, when Garrett was murdered in 1908, Fall was retained to defend Pat's killer, Wayne Brazel, who Fall also helped set free.
So, you see, there is a direct line from Daniel Plainview to Albert Fall to Pat Garrett to Billy the Kid. Kevin Bacon ain't got nothin' on the Kid.
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