Paul Thomas Anderson directed a video for Radiohead’s “We Suck Young Blood,” from 2003’s Hail To The Thief? Jigga what? This we’d never heard, but doing random research for the Michel Gondry video piece we fell upon this nugget and quote from Thom Yorke. Did this pave the way for Jonny Greenwood’s “There Will Be Blood,” score four years before the fact?
“Paul Thomas Anderson came into the studio and he brought this camera with him, it was exactly the same camera model that they shot the Nosferatu in, basically this camera is a box and you wind it, and you have to have a tempo to wind it to and if you wind it fast or slow you get this extraordinary movement, and we wanted to shoot this really over the top vaudeville b-movie thing with it, because that to me is partly where it was coming from, and also it was really sick and sexual in a really perverse way, very L.A. as far as I’m concerned. I think that was the reason why we went to L.A., because ‘We Suck Young Blood’ was our take on Hollywood really. In fact, we went out to a party that night everyone was dressed as mad hatters, it just fit completely. we went to this place, it was just… [whispers] you people are so silly. and it was like that’s how they dressed every day to create an impression. it was brilliant. we felt like old people, maybe we’d missed something.”
Ok, and this video was never released, why? While the video doesn’t appear to be online some kid, probably unaware of the whole back story, made a mash up of “There Will Be Blood” footage with the song. Anderson also once shot random footage of Elliott Smith that’s never been released either. Sounds like he’s got a lot of great stuff in his vaults.
Watch: “We Suck Young Blood” mashed with “There Will Be Blood
Watch: Jon Brion – “Here We Go” (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)