“Landman” Not Always Realistic, But New Hit Taylor Sheridan Show Gets A Lot Right

Parts may be a bit sensationalized and a tad over-romanticized, but Wyoming landmen by and large feel that the overall narrative behind the new Taylor Sheridan hit TV series “Landman” has a ring of truth behind it. 

That’s how Steve Degenfelder, a landman of 45 or so years mostly in Wyoming, feels about the show. He started out in Midland, Texas, which is part of the Permian Basin where “Landman” is set.

Degenfelder, who works for Kirkwood Oil and Gas, hasn’t watched all the episodes out yet — though he is planning to soon — but has been sent numerous clips from the show by people asking him how realistic they are. 

“The narratives are a whole lot more accurate than a person might think,” Degenfelder said. “They must have some knowledgeable people consulting with Taylor, because the overall background narrative is often quite true.”

Among the clips is one where a young lady looks out at several oil field pump jacks and suggests it would be better to get rid of them and replace them all with wind turbines.

The landman, Tommy Norris, played by Billy Bob Thornton, stops everything to explain that it’s not actually true that the carbon footprint of wind towers is close to zero, as is often claimed by green energy advocates. Not when the emissions caused by the wind turbines’ manufacturing, transportation, construction, ongoing maintenance, and eventual decommissioning are fully taken into account.

“That is extremely accurate,” Degenfelder said. “And I hope the public can distinguish some of the sensational things from the accurate things.”

Things Go Boom A Lot

Of course, as with any Taylor Sheridan show, the sensational is always right up front and center, and that’s true from the very first scene of “Landman” to its last.

Guns go bang, planes go boom and oil wells go up in flames. It all starts from the very first scene in the first episode of the first season, now available on Paramount+. 

Norris is shown sitting in a chair with his hands tied behind his back, doing the seemingly impossible — negotiating with a very unhappy member of an unidentified Mexican drug cartel, who appears to hold all the cards, along with a gun he’s not afraid to use.

When the Mexican cartel leader strides into the darkened space where Norris is being kept, he opens the negotiations in a very dramatic way — by shooting one of his colleagues in the head when he doesn’t like what he hears. 

That message sent, he then sits down to tell Norris in no uncertain terms that the cartel doesn’t want his oil, and that if Norris persists, he’ll “slice him from his wells to his throat” and hang him from a bridge as an example.

Norris isn’t fazed by any of this, though. 

He tells the man that the oil company is coming, whether the cartel likes it or not, and that they have billions of dollars to spend on making the cartel miserable. 

Halliburton will build files on all of them that the “FBI only dreams about” and then they’ll get a DEA office set up right across the street from the cartel’s operations. 

Our business, Norris tells the man, is the same as yours.

“You sell a product that your customers are dependent on,” he says. “Ours is just bigger.”

Drug Cartels Over The Top

It’s that very mixture of the drug cartel into the oil field that feels less than realistic to Degenfelder and other landmen, particularly when it comes to Wyoming.

“In Wyoming, we really don’t have like drug cartels stealing equipment and stealing planes to deliver drugs or threatening workers and shaking them down for money and stuff,” said Joseph Tessaro, co-owner of Pacer Energy, which operates a brokerage of landmen in the Rockies. “Unfortunately, I can’t say I’ve ever worked at Midland, and I’ve never worked in Texas where some of this stuff could actually go on.”

But Degenfelder has worked in Midland, and said that, to him, the cartel part of the plot does seem a bit fantastical. 

“Hollywood tries to sensationalize any show,” Degenfelder said. “And it was kind of like that in the Yellowstone series too. They had this kind of romanticized ranching in a real shoot-em-up manner, which doesn’t happen. But a lot of things that are occurring with ranches, by people who want lands in certain areas, is somewhat accurate.”

Tessaro felt that Jon Hamm and Billy Bob Thornton did do a good job portraying their roles in the oil field, even if Thornton’s character, Norris, is doing a few more things than would probably be the case in real life. 

“And some of the stuff that he talks about, like oil prices and how everything’s made of plastic, that’s all true,” Tessaro said.

Another thing that’s very true, Tessaro added, is how, when the oil field needs something yesterday, it doesn’t matter that there’s a holiday the very next day. Millions of dollars are being lost every hour there’s a delay, so someone has to take immediate action, no matter what.

“I just got an email today saying, like, “Sorry I didn’t get back to you last week on this, but I need this done by Friday,’” Tessaro said. “So, it’s like New Year’s Eve and I’ve jumped on a jet airplane and I’m up on Whidbey Island in Washington right now. Tomorrow is New Year, so nobody’s gonna be in the office, but that’s how it is in the oil field. Everybody needs everything done like immediately, so a lot of that kind of stuff is really true. I can definitely attest to it.” 

It's The Little Things

Landman also gets a lot of the little things right when it comes to setting, and the kinds of realities that exist in the oil field. 

There are a lot of recovering, divorced landmen, for example, Tessaro said. 

“Being a landman, you’re always out on the road,” he said. “You’re not home with your family, so there’s a lot of drug use and a lot of alcohol, and a lot of people do get divorced.”

In fact, Tessaro once joked his way into a job by saying just that. 

“They were telling me how there’s an extremely high rate of alcoholism and drug use because of being on the road all the time, away from family, and so I jokingly said, ‘Well I’m already a drug addict, I’m already an alcoholic, and I’m on my way out with my wife, so I guess this is a perfect job for me!’”

He quickly followed that up by saying that he was only joking. 

“They started laughing, and then I got hired right after that,” he said. “That was about 20 years ago now. But it’s true. When I first started out in the business, I was literally on the road, I would not come home for a month at a time sometimes. There were times where I actually would fly my wife up to Montana, or fly her up to North Dakota, just to see her for a long weekend, so we could just hang out.”

It also didn’t surprise Tessaro at all to see bikini-clad women serving up coffee, which happens quite memorably in the first episode. Other oil patches have similar types of coffee service. Boomtown Babes Espresso in Williston, North Dakota, for example, has made the bikini barista a signature part of its espresso experience — although most oil field workers would probably have a little more patience with coworkers ordering a latte.

Poor Manners Don’t Fly

One of the little details Landman does completely miss though, is how workers in the oil field really park. 

Even if they are just going to a pizza joint or a grocery store, most oil field workers do not park the way everyone else does. Their habit is to back into all of their parking spots, just like they’re required to do on a job site, even if they are not on duty at the time.

It’s a safety thing in the oil field, one that quickly becomes a habit. On site, everyone parks with their front end pointed outward. That way it’s easier to book it out of a place if there’s something like a toxic release of hydrogen sulfide gas, which means everyone has to get out fast. 

One other thing about Norris’ performance that is fun, but isn’t all that realistic? 

It’s his manners, says Lindsay Stinson, also a co-owner of Pacer Energy. 

In real life, people in the oil field don’t talk to mineral rights owners the way Norris does.  

“There’s this one scene where Billy Bob Thornton leans across the table and he’s telling the surface owner kind of how it is,” she said. “We’d probably get fired if we talked that way.”

Stinson enjoys the show overall, but said that’s one of the areas where the show doesn’t portray landmen realistically.

While there might be “some thoughts” now and then while negotiating with landowners who are being particularly difficult, Stinson said those meetings in real life are always more about trying to build relations, and making things work for everyone.

“I’ve been a landman for about 24 years now,” she said. “And here in Wyoming, you always have to put that best foot forward, because you’re going to approach these people again and again. You can’t muck the waters up that way.”

But other aspects of the characters’ jobs do ring true to Stinson, she added.

“Billy Bob Thornton’s character is constantly working,” she said. “And that is what our lives are like. We do work pretty hard out here, trying to make everything go for the industry, for our state, and for our careers.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.