Interview: The Guardian UK

The Guardian UK, Written By Ed Pilkington
January 2008

'Tell the story! Tell the story!'
With his "big oil epic" starring Daniel Day Lewis, Paul Thomas Anderson is no longer American cinema's enfant terrible. All he wants to do now is spin a good yarn, he tells Ed Pilkington

It is 10 years since Paul Thomas Anderson first left audiences and critics dumbstruck and confounded with his breakthrough film Boogie Nights, when he was just 27. How could such a pipsqueak of a director, they asked back in 1997, create a masterpiece that wowed right from its opening sequence: an audacious five-minute tracking shot that swoops and swirls through the nightclub of the film's title in joyful synchronisation to the dance music of the 1970s.

He has astonished ever since. Magnolia, the next out of the blocks, was an even bigger, more complex and yet richly evocative film that belied any attempt to categorise it. He was 31 by then, but still people marvelled at how one so young could conjure up such accomplished work. Anderson appeared to have found his style - the repertory film in which a multitude of characters and plot-lines are interwoven. But then in 2002 he bamboozled us again. He threw out the repertory technique and opted instead for a radically scaled-down and linear story in Punch-Drunk Love. It ran at a conventional 90 minutes - half the length of Magnolia - and though the film was anything but conventional, it left many fans delighted, others disappointed.

Interview: Premiere Magazine

Interview Magazine, Written By (??)
January 2008


American Epic 'There Will Be Blood'
Director Paul Thomas Anderson and star Daniel Day-Lewis on blood, oil, and how 'Gangs of New York' probably isn't Day-Lewis's most mom-friendly performance.

Quiet, stoic, and self-reliant Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) rapidly transforms into a wealthy tycoon when he discovers oil in the hard scrub of Southern California and is then driven by an almost demonic desire to extract the riches from the land he has acquired, regardless of the physical and spiritual price to himself and to the people who live there. Plainview eventually meets his match in the supposedly unassuming and deeply religious Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a young yet quietly ambitious preacher in the charismatic tradition. The two recognize the same desire and ambition for power in one another and become locked in a bitter struggle that will bleed from one century into another.

The origins of There Will Be Blood can be traced to a bookstore in London, where homesick Paul Thomas Anderson spotted the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!, which then became an unlikely life raft for the struggling writer/director.

Interview: Associated Press

Associated Press, Written By (??)
January 2008

`Blood' Is Breakthrough for Anderson

In the last conversation Paul Thomas Anderson had with Robert Altman, his friend and mentor told him: "I think this film is something different for you."

Interview: The Onion AV Club

The Onion AV Club, Written by Josh Modell
January 2nd, 2008

Paul Thomas Anderson famously dropped out of NYU film school after just a couple of days, intent on beginning a career making movies. It worked: At 26, the writer-director released a remarkable debut feature, 1996's Hard Eight, which featured several actors that would become part of his troupe, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, and Philip Baker Hall. Anderson's real breakthrough, though, came via 1997's Boogie Nights, a simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking ensemble piece set in the porn industry. His even more sprawling Magnolia—another melancholy love letter to southern California—earned Oscar nominations and high praise; he followed that with the unsentimental, beautifully off-kilter romantic comedy Punch Drunk Love, starring Adam Sandler. Then Anderson seemed to disappear.

It turned out he was working on his magnum opus. The film, loosely based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!, stars Daniel Day Lewis in a remarkable performance as a single-minded 19th-century oil prospector. A departure from Anderson's other films, Blood ditches modern-day L.A. and his regular group of actors and focuses largely on one character—Day Lewis is in nearly every scene of the 158-minute film—and the effect of his dark drive on those around him, particularly a young preacher played by Paul Dano. One of 2007's best films, it renders this seemingly small story huge and powerful. A jovial Anderson recently spoke to The A.V. Club about Day Lewis, the melancholy of finishing work, and "message movies."

Deleted Scene: There Will Be Blood, My Cock Doesn't Work

95 INT. MESS HALL. NIGHT.

Daniel and Henry together, drunk. Sitting and talking.
Daniel is nodding off. So drunk he can't keep his eyes open. 

                    DANIEL            
          He's not my son. He's not even my son.                     
                    HENRY           
           What do you mean?                     
                    DANIEL           
           He's not my son...

He begins to break down, holds his crotch, looks down; 

                    DANIEL           
            ...my cock doesn't even work how'm           
           I gonna make a kid?           
           does yours work Henry?           
           our Father's worked well, look at you.  
HOLD. 

                    DANIEL       
           I asked you a question...

                    HENRY           
           ...when I'm lucky.


Daniel wobbles up and stands and walks off...HOLD ON HENRY

Interview: Mean Magazine

Interview: L.A. Times

Los Angeles Times, Written By Kenneth Turan
December 2007

An intense actor and director make for a fiery combination in 'Blood.'

"THERE Will Be Blood," the joint venture between actor Daniel Day-Lewis and director Paul Thomas Anderson, might be the most incendiary combination since the Molotov cocktail. Though it can be over the top and excessive, this morality play set in the early days of California's oil boom also creates considerable heat and light and does some serious aesthetic damage.

Interview: Indiewire

Indiewire, Written by Eugene Hernandez
December 24, 2007

iW PROFILE | "There Will Be Blood" Director Paul Thomas Anderson

Sitting down with indieWIRE earlier this month in New York City for a one-on-one conversation about "There Will Be Blood," the exceptional new film that dominated iW's 2007 film critics' poll, American auteur Paul Thomas Anderson caught a first glimpse of Upton Sinclair's re-issued 1920s novel, "Oil!" resting on a small table nearby. Examining the book's cover, he groused briefly about the need to place an image of Daniel Day-Lewis on the front of the book, explaining that he had intially hoped the promotional item could be re-released with that same simple cover that first caught his eye in a London bookstore years ago. Picking up the book back in Britain started him on the long journey to making his epic new film.

Sinclair's novel is at the core of "There Will Be Blood," its script loosely adapted by P.T. Anderson from essentially the book's first 150 pages or so. But, to flesh out his story about the emergence of a powerful California oil baron who f inds himself at odds with a skillful young preacher leading a growing congregation, Anderson spent years immersing himself in the history of oil in America, studying photographs and visiting numerous museums dedicated to the subject. He also relied on Margaret Leslie Davis' biography of infamous oil tycoon Edward Doheny, The Dark Side of Fortune. Anderson's rich story -- opening in limited release on Wednesday, Dec. 26th -- examines a dynamic intersection of oil and religion, family and greed, driven by capitalism and corruption. Connections to America one hundred years later are subtle but striking.

Interview: L.A. Times

Los Angeles Times, Written By (??)
December 2007

Prospectors Anderson and Day-Lewis strike black gold

PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON is one of a handful of auteurs who is actively evolving the cinematic language. Known for his nerve-jangling urban stories (set usually in the San Fernando Valley), his new film, "There Will Be Blood," is inspired by "Oil!," an Upton Sinclair novel about the burgeoning petroleum industry in turn-of-the-century California. To star in his first period piece, a dark, propulsive character study, Anderson landed Daniel Day-Lewis.

In a suite at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills to talk about the movie, which opens in Los Angeles on Dec. 26, the two notoriously media-shy artists are disarmingly loose and engaging. Day-Lewis, with shaggy, graying hair, golden hoops in his ears and tattoos covering his right arm, liberally interjects mischievous remarks into the conversation. Anderson is unshaven and rumpled, and radiates the youthful energy of someone who is still very much in love with film.