Real-life landman, attorney, and founder of Grammer Land & Exploration Corp., Jonathan Grammer weighs in on the accuracy of the popular show. Plus, a look at the new Jurassic Park movie.
July is hot in Virginia, so to beat the heat, we head to the local cinema or the cool dungeon of our TV room. This week, we experienced the new summer blockbuster, Jurassic World Rebirth, and finished Season 1 of the TV series Landman. Here’s my take on both.
🚨Spoiler alert! If you haven’t finished either, I’d hold off on reading.
Sharon Lyon
Editor, GeoLifestyle
Jurassic World Rebirth
Estonia Photography/ Shutterstock.com
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the eighth installment of the Jurassic Park/World franchise hit theaters over the July 4th weekend.
The plot: Living dinosaurs have now been with us for years and have become passé. Other than in zoos, a few survive in limited zones near the equator.
Pharma rep Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend, who we loved to despise as Mr. Wickham in Pride and Prejudice) needs blood samples from three of the largest “dinosaurs”—Mosasaurus, Titanosaurus, and Quetzalcoatlus—to develop proprietary heart medication. The samples will (gasp!) not be shared with other companies.
Martin hires a mercenary, Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), to lead a crew to harvest these samples. She is mourning the loss of a friend/lover (?) from a previous job. We aren’t sure why this is important.
Martin and Zora convince paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey, a.k.a. Anthony, the 9th Viscount Bridgerton) to accompany them to an island to help. He agrees after one whole minute of deep pondering.
Zora hires an old friend as a boat captain, Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), who brings along a crew. Off they go, toward yet another island where InGen experimented with DNA manipulation and mutated dinosaurs.
Since we learn nothing about the crew, we know that they will soon be eaten by dinosaurs.
Meanwhile: A family, including the dad (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo from The Lincoln Lawyer), his two daughters, and the elder daughter’s slacker boyfriend, is sailing in the vicinity. They are attacked by the mosasaur, but survive, afloat in a rubber raft.
Question: Will the dinosaur-blood-seeking crew save the shipwrecked family?
Answer: Of course they do, but after much debate since they are almost at the island and have to make a detour to do it.
And then: After retrieving the family, the whole lot of them are shipwrecked on the island, because the mosasaur hunts them with the help of two Spinosauruses. Those darn Spinosauruses can walk on land!
Question: Do the remaining crew and the family get separated from each other?
Answer: Of course they do! The two groups must separately navigate the island to reach the old InGen facility.
There is much slogging through swamps, waking a napping T. rex, and strolling through a chest-high, grassy field (cue the Velociraptors?) to get there. Screaming ensues, mostly by the youngest daughter.
At the same time, the crew is busy collecting the DNA, much too easily in my opinion, although their rappelling down the steep cliff to the Quetzalcoatlus nest did give me a few shudders of dread.
Finale: Will the remaining crew members and the family reunite? Will the evil pharma rep get his comeuppance? Was that last critter a mutant between a dinosaur and a sand worm from the planet Dune?
Go see for yourself, if you haven’t already, because who can resist dinosaurs? 🦖
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Landman, Season 1, is available on Paramount+ and DVD. The show is a gritty drama about working in the oil business in ‘The Patch,’ the Permian Basin of West Texas.
The premise: Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) is the landman for M-Tex Oil. He negotiates deals and oversees operations.
His job includes juggling the Mexican drug cartel, the Sheriff, and the National Guard. He’s the go-to person to call after fires at oil pump jacks, other tragic accidents at well sites, and vehicle collisions on company-owned roads.
Tommy has been in the oil business for a long time, riding the booms and busts. He is now $500,000 in debt and rents a house with two other oilmen—an attorney and a petroleum engineer. When his ex-wife and daughter move in, mayhem ensues.
Supporting characters: His beautiful, yet deeply flawed, ex-wife, Angela (Ali Larter), proud to be arm-candy, wants to reconcile with Tommy, despite his misgivings.
Angela is training their high school-age daughter, Ainsley (Michelle Randolph), to be her carbon copy, complete with joint workout sessions, and trips to bars and a strip club.
Tommy’s son, Cooper (Jacob Lofland), dropped out of college one semester short of earning his petroleum engineering degree. On his second day as the ‘worm’ on an oil crew, a terrible accident kills the other three crew members. Cooper takes up with one of the widows, which sparks a violent response from the dead husband’s relatives.
On a different financial and social stratum, the smart and savvy owner of M-Tex, Monty Miller (Jon Hamm), approves deals and curries political favors while playing golf and ignoring his health issues. His glamorous wife, Cami (Demi Moore), ultimately makes critical decisions for the company.
One of many thorns in Tommy’s side, the Gen Z attorney for M-Tex, Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace), is conflicted about oil company practices, but likes the challenge and the financial gain.
What’s next? Now that Monty has passed away and Tommy is president of M-Tex, will the company survive or be sold? Can peace be maintained with the drug cartel? Will there be harmony in the messy relationships? Will Cooper’s gamble to acquire mineral leases pan out?
Stay tuned for Season 2, filming now.
Is it True to Life?
Ground Picture/Shutterstock.com
I asked Jonathan Grammer, trial attorney, landman, and founder of Grammer Land & Exploration Corp. to tell us how realistic some of the plot pieces in Landman truly are.
Jonathan, as a landman, have you ever found yourself kidnapped by a drug cartel, blindfolded, threatened, stabbed, or beaten?
Grammer: “No. I have encountered a border patrol checkpoint and had a gun pointed at me twice. I have an old landman colleague who stumbled upon a marijuana field in southeast Oklahoma years ago. Back in the days when landmen were doing a lot more field work, which is now done by technology, it was common to be checking wells visually on potential acreage to confirm production was holding leases.
Even after the leases were taken and wells drilled, it was also common to maintain a relationship with the properties for years after. It was a common situation to get off of lease roads, venture off property, or be on a private ranch road that appeared to be a county road and find yourself meeting a rancher with a .30-06 and a series of questions.”
Tommy Norris’ job seems like a combination of landman and general manager. Does a landman perform all of these functions?
Grammer: “As the years have gone by and technology has assumed such a large position in the land business, I’ve seen the profession become more departmentalized: Multiple landmen are performing a select few tasks rather than the cradle-to-grave scenarios that used to be common. The most authentic part of this character is that the true landman is really a jack of all trades.”
Since you are a lawyer, can you comment on Rebecca Falcone’s aggressive style? Is this normal in petroleum negotiations?
Grammer: “I think most lawyers at some point in their careers have tried out the ‘bull in a china cabinet’ approach. I’ve rarely seen it work effectively like it does on-screen. Because so many negotiations, certainly in civil cases, end up lasting sometimes for years, the most effective lawyers ultimately are those who can negotiate tactfully rather than abrasively. At some point, in most negotiations, you’re going to need favors from the other side. Elevating the volume can be effective, but it’s best done selectively and carefully rather than as a perpetual approach.”
Cooper has a plan to acquire mineral leases from landowners to compile them into acreage for drilling and fracking. He offers the landowners 25 percent. Does this sound realistic?
Grammer: “What is known as a ‘quarter royalty’ has been standard in years past, but given the rise in drilling costs lately, it is more and more rare. In the past 15 years, I have offered a 25 percent royalty to one mineral owner, predicated upon the agreement to take no bonus per acre up front. That is a very heavy lease burden for an operator, given the overhead costs of drilling.”
Many thanks to Jonathan Grammer for contributing to this newsletter!
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