Awards Features

But real oil is flammable and toxic. By law, even a tiny spill must be cleaned up by a hazmat squad. Thanks to special effects coordinator Steve Cremin, however, the onscreen oil was so clean you could eat it.

Cremin had faked oil before, on "Jarhead," but says that "the sheer volume of it was pretty unique to this (film)."

His recipe calls for food-grade methyl cellulose, caramel color and various dyes. It wasn't just one recipe, either.

"You can take the same substance that looks perfect in a pool," he says, "but when you squirt it out a tube, it may take on a brownish tinge. We had to adjust viscosity and color."

Creating the recipe was only half the battle. The "oil" had to be mixed with water -- lots of it -- on location in parched Marfa, Texas.

"We had a manufacturer in Santa Fe Springs (Calif.) mix up 200-gallon containers, concentrated," he notes. "Those were transferred to tanks up to 21,000 gallons. We made up to 53,000 gallons at a time."

Cremin's mixture had to not only look good and be tolerable for the actors, it had to wash out of costumes.

"People were literally covered in it," he says. "Sometimes if you make it through the day and nobody complains, the wardrobe people will come to you the next day and say, 'We can't get that out of the clothes.' But I never got any complaints."