DEADLINE: You continue to have a prolific output of high quality work on the screen, the Broadway stage and now in television. I imagine there’s a lot of producers looking at your output and wondering, how the hell does he keep up this pace?
SCOTT RUDIN: One of the things we got good at is how to protect filmmakers and play makers. We’re a very effective force field of resistance to what I would call not productive input. I think we are a good front line for the filmmakers we work with, and we’ve had a lot of success being that. I’m really proud of that. This is our third movie with the Coens, we just made our fifth with Wes Anderson, our seventh with Noah Baumbach. There’s another with Paul Thomas Anderson. We work with the same people over and over and it’s because we put a huge, huge amount of time and energy into making sure that they all get well taken care of.We're trying to keep our suspicions measured, given the limited nature of the comments, but it's exciting to imagine that PTA might already be scrambling to get his first post-Vice project off the ground. More to come, if and/or when the news becomes available.
"I don’t want to repeat what has been said and written by so many others before me, about all the changes in the business, and I’m heartened by the exceptions to the overall trend in moviemaking – Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, David Fincher, Alexander Payne, the Coen Brothers, James Gray and Paul Thomas Anderson are all managing to get pictures made, and Paul not only got The Master made in 70mm, he even got it shown that way in a few cities. Anyone who cares about cinema should be thankful."Couldn't have said it any better ourselves, sir.
In charge of all of it was David Williams, McGuire Ranch manager and the production’s go-to guy for pretty much everything. Need to hose down the roads so they’re passable? Talk to David. Need supplies? Talk to David. Need to cast another part in the film? Hey, David can do it. (Williams appeared in several scenes opposite Daniel Day-Lewis.) Even after production wrapped, his There Will Be Blood duties continued: Once the film came out and quickly earned awards-season buzz, Williams found himself answering questions from reporters and frequently taking them on tours of shooting locations around the ranch. It happens less frequently now, but here it is, six years later, and he’s still doing it.You can read the full write-up which has a good chunk of extra anecdotes about production. There, we distracted you for another 24 hours while we wait patiently for
In 2003, he composed his first film score, for Simon Dummell’s documentary “Bodysong” — some classical stuff, some guitar, some oddball hip-hop beats, even some honking, sideways jazz. It opened up doors and got him the residency at the BBC, during which he wrote pieces like “smear” (2004) and “Popcorn.” Elements of that last piece, which had its premiere in 2005, turned up in the score Greenwood wrote for “There Will Be Blood,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic film about the moral decay of an early-1900s oilman.The pair stay typically mum on 'The Master' which we now know should hit in October. Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates. (Thanks Grant for the heads up!)
Greenwood, who went on to score movies like Tran Anh Hung’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood” and Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” is currently writing music for Anderson’s next film — an untitled period piece about a charismatic, L. Ron Hubbard-esque religious leader played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.
When I ask Greenwood, who’s almost pathologically self-deprecating in conversation, how his initial collaboration with Anderson came about, he says, “Well, that was Paul getting this bootleg recording of the orchestral concert, putting it against the film and deciding to use it, and then asking for more written like that. So, yeah.”
Anderson tells the story a little differently. Even before he saw “Bodysong” at a film festival in Rotterdam, he says: “I knew there were arrangements that he had done within those Radiohead songs that obviously said he could do more than just play guitar in a band. And I thought, If the opportunity arises, I bet he could do something interesting on a film score. I was just sort of waiting for the opportunity.”
As for what Greenwood said about “Blood,” Anderson laughs. “Yeah — he likes to say that. And I like that about him. That’ll never be beaten out of him. It’s a lot of head-scratching and, like, ‘Oh, I really don’t know if I can do this,’ or, ‘No, I can’t do this,’ or even, y’know, ‘I just shouldn’t do this.’ And then the next thing you know, you have an e-mail with like, 45 minutes of music in your in-box, and it’s all amazing and wildly different and terrific. That’s kind of him in a nutshell: ‘No, no. I really can’t. I don’t know how to do this.’ And then you get this huge platter of stuff.”
Although “There Will Be Blood” will probably be remembered by people who never saw it as the source of the goofy Internet meme “I drink your milkshake” — the way pop culture has reduced “The Shining” to “Redrum” and Jack Nicholson saying “Here’s Johnny!” — “Blood” is one of the great movies of the 2000s, a work of historical fiction that presents the lust for petrochemical riches as a kind of American original sin, and a horror movie with a human monster at its center, the prospector-turned-oil-baron Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis). And Greenwood’s music is as crucial to the story as disco and “Sister Christian” were to “Boogie Nights.”
The first 12 minutes of the movie have no dialogue — we watch Day-Lewis digging for silver in a filthy hole while the strings from “Popcorn Superhet” shriek and buzz menacingly, establishing right away that we’re looking at elemental evil. Yet Anderson says that when he screened the sequence for Greenwood without music, “he was jumping up and down, saying, ‘Oh, you’ve got to do it that way.’ ” (The director eventually overruled his composer: “It really became a question of how European we wanted to get,” Anderson says.)
All told, Anderson estimates, Greenwood gave him about 90 minutes of new music for the movie. But because the final version of the score mixed that material with bits and pieces of “Popcorn” and a cut originally written for “Bodysong,” Greenwood’s work was ineligible for the Academy Award for Best Original Score, because of strict bylaws excluding “scores diluted by the use of tracked themes or other pre-existing music.” (The rule was also famously invoked when the Academy was forced to withdraw the composer Nino Rota’s nomination for “The Godfather” in 1972 upon learning that Rota had recycled some music he wrote 15 years earlier for an Italian film called “Fortunella.”)
“Yeah, we got maneuvered out of the big one!” Anderson says. “I just wanted to see Jonny in a tuxedo. I would have paid top dollar for that.”
You can check out the rest of the Dano article by clicking here.Collider: Was there a moment (with Day-Lewis) on There Will Be Blood or (The) Ballad Of Jack And Rose where you go, “Wow, this guy goes where nobody else goes?”Dano: There was definitely some moments where, you know, I was going, “Holy shit.”Collider: Like specifically what—Dano: Because we didn’t really rehearse and so sometimes, I didn’t know how big something that was gonna come out of him was gonna because he’s so powerful. And I don’t really want to say specific instances. I think you can probably imagine hearing some of the lines from that ending scene on the page (from the famous “drink your milkshake” scene of There Will Be Blood) but then, you know, the real deal is just a whole (other) level, you know, from that. I definitely had moments like that. It was cool.Collider: Yeah. (There Will Be Blood’s director) Paul Thomas Anderson, he’s an actor’s dream to work with and-Dano: Yeah.Collider: -he gives you so much room and so much space to explore.Dano: Yeah.Collider: First of all, are you working on the religion film with him? (Reportedly titled The Master, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a man who starts a faith-based organization in the 1950’s and is helped by his wife, played by Reese Witherspoon, and a drifter, played by Jeremy Renner)Dano: No. I don’t think so. We keep in touch. You know, he’s a, he’s a great dude. And he is, he loves actors and you can tell in his movies. He’s a great guy.
PTA was at "Jackie Brown", but as soon as he started getting recognized, he quickly left. He may have returned during the film, but I'm pretty sure he left, and was definitely not at the after-party.
I'm sure he was trying to stay to wait for QT, but QT didn't arrive 'til around 8:45 and PTA was there way before then -- around 7 PM.I'm sure he wanted to leave because people started asking him more about "The Master".
One of the most celebrated releases of the past decade, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is acclaimed auteur Paul Thomas Anderson's most epic film to date. Set in the uncharted Southern California of the turn of the 20th century, the film follows ruthless oil man Daniel Plainview as he toils his way from lowly prospector to cruel magnate and crushes all of the little people along the way.The film's scope is huge, on par with a picture like CITIZEN KANE. It also tells a version of the America myth, a rags to riches story through treachery and backstabbing that acts as a great metaphor for American industrialism. The cinematography of the vast and empty Western landscapes is breathtaking. The unsettling and daring score by Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood is superb. Add to this grand narrative the unbelievable performances by Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano as the ill-fated preacher boy, and THERE WILL BE BLOOD rises to the status of masterpiece.What better place to see this beautiful film than in a boundless field in Bakersfield, California -- where much of the film takes place -- and in eyeshot of an actual oil rig? We'll be enjoying this show at the Kern County Museum.
General Info: Screenings begin at sunset. Please bring your own chair or blanket. Restroom facilities will be available.
Visit/Bookmark this page to purchase tickets to the show, as they are not yet available. If any of you end up attending the event, feel free to pass along your thoughts/reviews to me for potential inclusion on a slow news day.Kid Policy: 18 and up; Children 6 and up will be allowed only with a parent or guardian. No children under the age of 6 will be allowed.
There is often a lack of communication between fathers and sons. And that's quite literally what happens between an ambitious oil man and his adopted son in Paul Thomas Anderson's award-winning 2007 loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair'snovel "Oil!"
A deep rift occurs between oil tycoon Daniel Planview ( Daniel Day-Lewis in his Oscar-wining role) and his young adopted son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) after H.W. loses his hearing in an oil derrick explosion. Instead of comforting H.W., Plainview leaves the hysterical young boy and rushes off to the disaster. After the boy tries to burn the bed in which his father is sleeping, Plainview sends him off to a boarding school for the deaf. The relationship never recovers, especially since Plainview won't learn sign language.
