Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood) There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood marked the moment Paul Thomas Anderson abandoned the sprawling ensemble format of Boogie Nights and Magnolia and built a film around a single character's consuming drive. The result won him a Best Director nomination at the 80th Academy Awards and reshaped his career permanently.
Anderson wrote the screenplay from the first 150 pages of Upton Sinclair's novel
Anderson picked up Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! in a London bookshop, drawn to the cover illustration of a California oilfield. He adapted roughly the first 150 pages — the prospector's early years, the land deals, the clash with a preacher — and discarded the novel's later sections on socialism, labor organizing, and the Red Scare. He changed the title because he felt "there's not enough of the book to feel like it's a proper adaptation." (wikipedia, cinephiliabeyond)
"I was trying to find something that was 100 percent straightforward, old-fashioned storytelling." — Paul Thomas Anderson, IndieWire (2017)
While writing, Anderson watched John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre every night before bed, calling it a "lifesaver" that provided a structural model for tracking a prospector's moral collapse. He described the process bluntly to Terry Gross on Fresh Air.
"I put on Sierra Madre before going to sleep at night for a week, just trying to get it to soak into my head." — Paul Thomas Anderson, Fresh Air (2008)
The shift from ensemble films to a single protagonist changed everything
Anderson's first four features — Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love — all worked with large or moderate ensemble casts drawn from a regular company of actors. There Will Be Blood broke from that pattern completely. Except for Paul F. Tompkins and two actors with minor roles in Magnolia, the cast was entirely new to Anderson's world. The film had no ensemble — it had Daniel Plainview, and everyone else existed in relation to him. (wikipedia)
Anderson described the film as "a great boxing match" between Plainview and Eli Sunday, but the structural reality is more extreme: the film spends its first fifteen minutes with a single figure in a mine shaft, and never truly leaves his perspective.
"You know, it says something about the men of this period — that were kind of on the tail end of the wild, wild West — who started as silver miners and kind of got into the oil business because that's what was happening, you know, that was what was in front of them." — Paul Thomas Anderson, Fresh Air (2008)
Anderson wrote the role for Day-Lewis and would not have made the film without him
Anderson considered Daniel Day-Lewis "the holy grail of actors" and wrote the part of Plainview specifically for him. Producer JoAnne Sellar suggested the film might not have been made if Day-Lewis had declined. Day-Lewis had admired Punch-Drunk Love and joined the project after receiving an incomplete script. (cinephiliabeyond)
"Well, in my eyes, Daniel's the holy grail of actors, you know, that to work with somebody that is going to be that focused and dedicated without question to what he's doing." — Paul Thomas Anderson, Fresh Air (2008)
When Day-Lewis sent Anderson a tape of his character work before production, Anderson found it unsettling rather than reassuring.
"It was terrifying, even as much as I looked forward to working with Daniel and trust him..." — Paul Thomas Anderson, IndieWire (2017)
Anderson's on-set method favors accidents over planning
Anderson does not use conventional rehearsals or extensive storyboarding. The derrick fire was the only fully storyboarded sequence in the film. Everything else followed an organic process where blocking and camera positions evolved through repeated takes that blurred the line between rehearsal and shooting.
"The writer really gets left at the door." — Paul Thomas Anderson, IndieWire (2017)
Robert Elswit described the working method from the cinematographer's perspective: "There are no marks on the ground... It's a very organic approach, and you have to be ready." Anderson wanted to let accidents happen rather than force everything to be a certain way — a philosophy that produced Day-Lewis's improvised oil pitch in the community meeting, which Anderson called "delicious. It was Plainview on a platter." (cinephiliabeyond, alltherightmovies)
Anderson described the film as a mixture of western and horror
The genre designation shaped every department's approach. Editor Dylan Tichenor and Anderson treated the editing like a horror film. Jonny Greenwood composed the score as a horror soundtrack. The nearly wordless opening, the dissonant strings, the claustrophobic mine shaft — all draw from horror conventions applied to a period drama.
"They could never really shake that ambition and that drive to work, that what they enjoyed the most was the fever and the insanity, just the process — that actually getting the stuff or the riches from it somehow was really unsatisfactory to them." — Paul Thomas Anderson, Fresh Air (2008)
Anderson's observation about early oilmen — that the process consumed them more than the wealth — doubles as a description of his own protagonist. Plainview refuses Standard Oil's million-dollar offer not because he needs more money but because the competition itself is the point.