Hollywood Betrays Oil!, Upton Sinclair, Workers

David Bacon:

I was disappointed that Daniel Day- Lewis won an Oscar for There Will Be Blood, not because he’s not a great actor (he is), but because the movie was such a betrayal of the book on which it was based. Movies don‘t have to follow books. Many don‘t. But in this case, what we missed were the things that made Upton Sinclair’s Oil! a politically courageous book for its time. For our time, it unearths a crucial part of the hidden history of our own working class movement.