Interviews With 'There Will Be Blood's Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano and Paul Thomas Anderson

By Katey Rich

It's tempting to think of There Will Be Blood as something that simply fell to the earth as-is, too strange and measured and complex to have been put together by a team that required craft services, power generators, on-set trailers and the like. The temptation is especially prevalent when it comes to the character of Daniel Plainview. How can that be an actor under there, a man with a family and modern-day clothes who doesn't even have an American accent?

Yet at a press conference before the film's premiere in New York on Monday, there was Daniel Day-Lewis, wearing a sharp fedora and a gold earring , and Paul Thomas Anderson, the man who created it all, mild-mannered and occasionally stumbling over his words. Paul Dano and Ciaran Hinds were there as well, chiming in occasionally on what was essentially the Paul and Daniel show. The four laughed and told stories about the set and their work with 10-year-old Dillon Freasier, who plays Plainview's son H.W., but were also reticent about the Big Meaning behind it all. When pressed about social or political commentary, or even the complex relationships among the characters, all four would fall silent for up to a minute. Clearly this is a movie that its makers want to stand on its own.

Anderson, a native Californian, admitted, "I suppose I've always wondered what the stuff [oil] is, how we get it out of the ground, why we like it so much and what the story was." He chose to adapt Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! for its description of the California oil boom within its first 100 pages, after Sinclair visited a town struck by oil fever. "When Sinclair witnessed this community trying to get this lease together [for oil drilling], he said he witnessed human greed laid bare. He saw these people go absolutely crazy."

He wrote the part of Daniel Plainview with Daniel Day-Lewis particularly in mind, but Paul Dano originally joined the cast as Paul Sunday, the brother of main character Eli Sunday who appears only early on in the film. The actor originally cast as Eli, whom everyone declines to name, didn't work out for unknown reasons, but Day-Lewis specifically refuted a recent New York Times profile that suggested the actor was intimidated by Day-Lewis: "I was quite surprised when I read that comment. Whatever the problem was during that time with that particular person, I absolutely don't believe that it was because he was intimidated by me."

Dano jumped into the role with only a few days to prepare, and though he deadpanned that the biggest perk of the dual role was "Double the pay," he said he didn't really have the time to consider it at all. "I certainly didn't relish the idea of getting a bigger part in this film because of trying to throw myself into the character, and that was the priority. I have to say in retrospect, yeah, it was wonderful to get to spend some more time in Texas with these guys here. I feel very lucky, and hopefully I was able to contribute to it in so short amount of time."

Day-Lewis, famous for his method acting techniques, said no training was required to become Plainview because, at the beginning of the film, he knew as little about oil drilling as Day-Lewis himself does. "In terms of the physical preparation there wasn't really anything to do except just stay fit and then just start digging holes. They kind of made it up as they went along. As you see in the story, before even cable drilling, rotary drilling, came into common use, they began by scooping this muck as it erupted naturally out of the earth, scooping it up in saucepans and buckets and stuff. [...] As the story progresses there's something to learn about, because the drilling procedure is a fairly complicated thing, but at the beginning it's sheer blood and sweat, really."

Appropriately enough for a movie about the American power of self-invention, Dano didn't do too much research to become Eli either. "I sort of had a privilege with Eli. He didn't have radio or television, and I don't think he had the opportunity to see a tremendous amount of preachers, except when somebody traveled through his town or a town close by. He didn't have a lot of books either, so I think he sort of made himself up once he found what his gifts and his savviness and charisma could bring him. [...] It was a way for me to run with the material that Paul gave me and not have to base it on one person or a group of people in particular."

Day-Lewis and Dano spent several shooting days locked in tense battle against each other, including in one notable fight scene that's done entirely in one tracking shot. "Time was very tight. Essentially, out of the necessity often something interesting is born, and of course the tracking shot which covered the whole scene," Day-Lewis explained. "There was nothing you could do to get ready for that except just try it and try again." "And the next day we got to shoot the baptism scene, so Paul got to have his way," Anderson chimed in, talking about a scene later in the film in which Eli baptizes Daniel with both water and some hard knocks. "We decided to get the scene before the slapping starts, and then we would start slapping. But Paul either forgot or decided to take his own initiative and slap Daniel across the face."

Even young Freasier had to participate in the violence at some points. "He had to struggle with Ciaran and he had to slap Daniel. He didn't like to do it initially," Anderson said, to which Day-Lewis replied, "He developed a taste for it, though."

Day-Lewis spent time with Freasier for several weeks before shooting, and sat him down before filming began to warn him of what would take place once he was in character. "I said, �Dillon, you know how I feel about you. There are going to be moments in the next months to come when I'm going to speak harshly to you, I'm not going to treat you nicely. I hope you understand that I love you and so on�' And he looked at me like I was insane, like �Of course I know that.' He was just one step ahead of us, pretty much most of the time."

Freasier's mother, a Texas state trooper, took a step ahead too, renting one of Day-Lewis' earlier films to get a sense of who he was; unfortunately that film was <I>Gangs of New York</I>, in which he played a character nicknamed "The Butcher." "She was absolutely appalled. She thought she was releasing her dear child into the hands of a monster. There was a flurry of phone calls, and somebody sent a copy of The Age of Innocence to her. Apparently that did the trick."

With this film Anderson has stepped away from the large ensembles and fluid camera that earned him comparisons to the late Robert Altman, but he has dedicated the film to the director regardless. Anderson becomes visibly emotional when discussing Altman, for whom he served as a back-up director on the set of A Prairie Home Companion in 2005 and befriended in the process. "Bob was very good at relaxing; he was a very relaxed director. . I would find myself getting uptight about things, and he just sort of looked at me like �What are you worried about? It's all going to be fine.' Maybe I learned that from him, to relax a little bit more. He died while we were cutting [There Will Be Blood]. I was in Ireland with Daniel working on the film, and I was planning to come back and show it to him and never got a chance to. That's really a drag that he didn't get to see it. So, yeah, we dedicated the film to him."

And how about that ominous, threatening title, so different from that of Sinclair's book? As with many of his answers at this short but remarkably insightful press conference, Anderson is evasive. "I'm probably selfish�I wrote the title down and it looked really good. I thought, 'We should call the movie that."