Hollywood has its share of gushers

Before anyone says there's nothing funny about what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico with that massive oil slick, let me say: You're right.

But that doesn't mean we should face environmental and economic destruction without a smile.

Capping those underwater gushers and cleaning up the mess will take a long, long time. The least we can do is fill some of that time with movies that don't whisk us too far away from reality.

These movies with oil drilling themes and scenes are appropriate time wasters before beaches are covered with SPF 1 billion, and a gallon of gas becomes more expensive than a multiplex ticket. The only thing they have in common is that people wind up covered in crude oil at some point. Some of them actually look happy about it. Only in the movies …

m GIANT (1956): The Oscar-winning soap opera features James Dean's final, posthumous performance as Texas cowboy Jett Rink who becomes an oil tycoon after his well starts gushing. Bathed by a shower of liquid gold, Jett can't wait to brag to his rival (Rock Hudson) in affairs of the heart and wallet.

. HELLFIGHTERS (1968): If an oil well blows and you're in a jam, who ya' gonna call? Hellfighters, led by none other than John Wayne. Based on the real-life disaster blaster Red Adair, the Duke leaves most of the roughneck stuff to younger co-stars but looks tough with an oily sheen. He'd light a petroleum fire under someone today in the gulf.

, OKLAHOMA CRUDE (1973): Faye Dunaway stars as a wildcatter being pressured by Big Oil, so she enlists her grumpy father (George C. Scott) to work and protect her claim. Good combo of mercurial talent in an overlooked movie.

m JARHEAD (2005): Sam Mendes' erratically effective 1991 Iraq War movie has one memorable sequence, when its U.S. Marines hero (Jake Gyllenhaal, right, with Jamie Foxx) is caught on a desert storm of oil from flaming derricks and observes a horse coated with the sticky substance.

m THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007): Daniel Day-Lewis, right, was a best actor Oscar winner as Daniel Plainview, an unscrupulous oil baron scamming all the land he can while making people think he's doing them a favor. So much viscous fluid on the screen that Quaker State could buy a product placement.

Honorable mention: What a Way to Go! (1964) — Shirley MacLaine plays a jinxed woman marrying poor men (including Paul Newman, Gene Kelly and Dick Van Dyke) who always become wealthy and die. Dean Martin plays her final husband, a janitor who strikes oil in their front yard. Happy ending , though; it's only a broken underground pipe, so he'll live. They celebrate with a fade-out kiss in a shower of someone else's oil.

Steve Persall can be reached at persall@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8365. Read his blog, Reeling in the Years, at blogs.tampabay.com/movies.