One Plot Line After Another Trivia Quiz

Answer: French 75

We open on explosive expert Pat "Rocketman" Calhoun's first association with the French 75. Lead by Perfidia, they break into a U.S. Border Patrol base and zip-tie the officers at gunpoint. Perfidia is sure to make an example out of their leader, Sergeant Steven J. Lockjaw. The French 75, in Calhoun's words, are: "a political organization that is free from the eyes, the ears, - and most important, of the weapons - of the imperialist state and this fascist regime." They are terrorists in the true sense, causing havoc and property damage but not actually intending any human casualties. In the getaway car, Perfidia starts making out with Calhoun. She likes a man who can blow stuff up.

Calhoun is played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Perfidia by Teyana Taylor, and Sgt. Lockjaw by Sean Penn. French 75 is a champagne and gin cocktail that's in turn named for a WW1 artillery gun. One of the members goes by the codename "Lady Champagne."

For a long time, director Paul Thomas Anderson wanted to write an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland", having already adapted "Inherent Vice". He settled on using it for loose inspiration. The various character and faction names, to my ear, sound very much like Pynchon's quirky monikers.

Answer: His hat and his gun

Yeah, the break-in at the border did some serious psychological damage to Lockjaw. He claims to just want his hat and his gun back, but when he and Perfidia meet in a seedy motel, they... do what makes motels seedy. Lockjaw doesn't care about stopping the French 75 - he tells her she can blow up "whatever you want." Of course, this is all behind Pat's back.

Some of the controversy surrounding the movie has centered around Perfidia's sexualization by both Pat and Sgt. Lockjaw. I think scenes like the bathroom scene show she sexualizes herself to her advantage: Perfidia knows she can use sex to control these men. Actress Teyana Taylor described her character's attitude as, "Oh, you think I'm hot? [...] Cool if I get to still do what I'm doing."

Answer: She's pregnant

Sitting around the campfire, Pat thinks out loud: "It's like she doesn't even realize she's pregnant." Indeed, after she does give birth to baby Charlene, Perfidia shows signs of serious postpartum depression, overwhelmed by a responsibility that's incompatible with her radical individualism. Pat's desire to settle down only agitates Perfidia into being *more* reckless. Neither does Perfidia's mother approve: "My child comes from a whole line of revolutionaries. And you look so lost. She's a runner. And you a stone."

None of this does anything to stop Perfidia's relationship with Lockjaw - in fact, an attentive viewer might stop to wonder if the baby is Pat's to begin with...

Answer: Robbing a bank

The bank heist is the first where a bystander is injured. It's not out of malice - Perfidia begs the bystander not to reach for his gun. Killing the guard puts serious police heat on the French 75. Pat escapes, but Perfidia and several others are arrested.

Not long after she's processed, Sergeant Lockjaw is at Perfidia's side, offering her the help of someone with (his word) "sway." Perfidia rats, enters witness protection - and Lockjaw single-handedly kills all the French 75ers she names. Perfidia doesn't disappear into suburbia, however. She betrays the feds and goes into hiding on her own in Mexico.

On the other side of the chaos, another member of the French 75, "Billy Goat" Somerville, gives Pat a geolocating device and a packet full of critical passwords to maintain trust among the group. Surely this mission-critical information will be etched in granite in Pat's mind. Billy Goat also gives them new identities. Father and daughter leave for Baktan Cross, Colorado, as Bob and Willa Ferguson.

The incorrect answers are acts of violence committed by the group that go horribly right.

Answer: Little House on the Prairie

Codenames and secret phrases are key throughout "One Battle After Another". "The Billy Goat is in the wind" - or so say some anonymous children on Billy's radio frequency, sparking emergency measures from the remnants of the French 75.

The 75 quickly apprehend Willa, but Bob - who, by his admission, has "fried his brain" and "abused drugs and alcohol for the past 30 years" - hardly remembers any of the dozens of passwords. He spends much of the middle third of the movie on payphones and nearly-dead cell phones, pleading with various phone operators to tell him where he's supposed to go. Relatably, he finally gets through when he demands to speak to a supervisor.

The French 75ers use "Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Hooterville Junction" to identify one another. The line comes from Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised": "Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so [darn] relevant."

Answer: A nunnery

Baktan Cross is a sanctuary city, and Lockjaw - now promoted to Colonel Lockjaw - has sufficient "sway" to initiate a raid on the city. The pretence is that they are cracking down on a factory that's distributing heroin. In truth, it's one big ruse so the Colonel can find Willa.

"Lady Champagne" gets to Willa before the military. She takes Willa to the Sisters of the Great Beaver, a group of vegetarian, marijuana-growing nuns, at least a few of whom have been involved with revolutionary groups in the past. It's too bad we learn fairly little about the Sisters. Lockjaw's interrogators find out Willa's cell phone number and trace it. It leads the military directly to the convent. There, the Colonel confirms that, indeed, Willa is *his* biological daughter, not Bob's. So why is Lockjaw suddenly so concerned about his paternity? I'm glad you asked...

Answer: Hail Saint Nick

There's nothing subtle about the Virgil Throckmorton and his "Christmas Adventurer's Club." The group is made up of extremely wealthy white men, guys who don't feel silly saying "Hail Saint Nick." Throckmorton asks the Colonel: "What would you say to someone who believes that you have been soft in your duty to racial purification?" Lockjaw answers, "I would say they are a liar who has no business in society or on the planet for that matter."

You may detect some subtle hypocrisy in Lockjaw's response. He's committed to erasing any trace of his past, and that means Willa. The father of the year screams at her: "I have a higher calling! It is a higher honor than having you."

But the Adventurers are shrewd: they find out about his past (as part of a "double Yankee white inquisition completum" - more ridiculous code talk), and they don't like being made fools of. They dispatch their own assassin to deal with the Colonel...

Answer: Her karate sensei

In a film full of great characters, Sergio proved to be one of the most endearing (I wonder if there's a Benicio del Toro movie where he isn't one of the most endearing characters). Wholly apart from the raging battle of deadbeat, paranoid dad vs. absent, resentful dad, Sergio is a poised, prepared, and proud father, literally (he calmly introduces his entire - large - family to Bob in the middle of the chaos) and figuratively (guiding as many illegal immigrants out of town).

Sadly, Sergio ends up being collateral damage. While cruising with Bob enjoying a celebratory road beer, the cops catch him speeding. Bob jumps out of the car while Sergio stays to take the heat. "No fear. Just like Tom [bleeping] Cruise." Drinking and driving is always a bad idea, but especially when you're harboring fugitives.

Answer: By stopping her own car in the middle of the road

It seems like those karate classes paid off. Keeping cool under pressure, Willa notices an assassin from the Christmas Adventurers following him - the same one who took out Lockjaw moments earlier. She brakes dead in the middle of the road right after a hillcrest and flees the car. The assassin, speeding along in his Mustang, can't react in time.

It's not actually the crash that kills him, though. So much of the movie pokes fun at "security theater" - their silliness underscore some of the surprising similarities between the French 75 and the Adventurers. But in the end, the code phrases do save Willa's life. She greets the assassin with a "Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Hooterville Junction!" Of course, he has no clue how to respond. Knowing to trust no one, she shoots him then and there.

Shortly afterwards, her true father arrives and comforts her. As far as we know, she never tells him the truth of her parentage. The movie ends with Willa reading a letter Perfidia wrote "from the other side of the shadows." It fills Willa with a desire to continue her mother's line of revolutionaries. But there's one other epilogue we ought to go over...

Answer: Yes

The Christmas Adventurers catch up to the clueless Lockjaw. But when the dust has settled on the main story and the Fergusons are reunited, amazingly, Lockjaw comes running over the hill, his face completely covered in blood.

We cut to some time later. The Adventurers seem to be conducting a final interview with Lockjaw. The birdshot has left him badly disfigured. They ask about Perfidia: Lockjaw "confesses" that he believes she drugged him. Somehow that excuse works - and just like that, he's inducted, congratulated, and given his own office in the Adventurers' high-rise. The victorious Colonel kicks back in his swivel chair. A gas begins to pour into the room... and we see that the Adventurers weren't so easily fooled after all.