It’s been five years since Paul Thomas Anderson’s last film (2002’s “Punch Drunk Love”) and it looks like his long-awaited and completed, turn of the century, oil-as-greed drama, “There Will Be Blood,” will finally see release later this year. Starring Daniel Day Lewis as a ruthless, avaricious tycoon and Paul Dano as a young preacher, the film is based on the 1927 Upton Sinclair novel, “Oil.”
The trailer looks bleak, raw and dark with Day Lewis’ character intoning in a contemptuous monologue, “I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people. There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I’ve built up my hatred over the years little by little. I see the worst in people, I don’t need to look past seeing them to get all I need.”
On the “Henry Rollins Show” in August 2006, Anderson spoke, somewhat flatly, about his creative writing process as it applied to ‘Blood.’
“Out of boredom one day I started taking pieces from the [Oill novel] and writing them as my own, writing them as a script. I didn’t think I was going to adapt it. and they just started to stick, they looked really good, they looked really really good, and it was really inspiring, and one thing led to another. And you turn around and it’s a year later and it’s become a year later and you wonder where half the shit came from.”
The entire interview (with Rollins characteristically crawling up his subjects ass) can be viewed here. A New York Times article in August 2006 said that aside from principal leads (Day Lewis and Dano), most of the cast will be non-actors. Excerpts of said article can be read here.
Watch: “There Will be Blood” trailer.
