Paul Thomas Anderson’s oil epic “There Will Be Blood” is eating up accolades like a starving kid at fat camp.
The film just won the Village Voice/L.A. Weekly annual critics poll (thanks for inviting us, guys; analysis by esteemed VV critic J. Hoberman) and it just broke the record for per screen average of 2007.
Daniel Day-Lewis: Furiously Impotent?
The film also topped the Lesbian Gay, Bi and Transgendered Community list. However, Cinematical are positing that the Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) has an impotence problem, which might have something to do why the character is so wretched and miserable? That’s their guess, not ours.
Apparently it’s in the original script (which we have, but haven’t yet read), but was cut out of the final movie (we won’t post the excerpt for fear of spoiling the film, the link is above or here).
Shooting Difficulties and The Replaced ‘Blood’ Actor
A detail that passed us by when we originally wrote about the actor (Kel O’Neil) who was replaced in the film by Paul Dano, has come to light. To briefly recap: O’Neil was originally cast as the fervent preacher Eli Sunday, but was too intimidated by Daniel Day-Lewis furious method acting to keep up. Anderson has address this explicitly and implicitly most recently in an Onion A/V Club interview where he mentions the first few weeks of shooting being a waste (though he doesn’t mention O’Neil by name and to be fair, the implication is everyone was off their game).
We had the most horrendous beginning of a film, for two weeks, just completely off of the mark. We got it together finally, but it was hilarious. We had been cooped up for too long.
AVC: So did you have two weeks of wasted film?
PTA: A little bit. There was some stuff that was salvageable. There was some stuff that we got that was good, really good, actually. But mixed in was some stuff that I wouldn’t show to anyone—the most embarrassing, off-the-mark kind of stuff.
What we didn’t note in our original Replaced ‘Blood’ Actor piece was Paul Dano had already been cast as Paul Sunday (the brother who originally hipped DDL’s character to the fact there was oil on his father’s ranch; see our review). When O’Neil didn’t work out, PTA asked Dano to take both Sunday brother roles and decided to make the characters identical twins (which if you’ve seen the movie is an accidental/serendipitous masterstroke of genius as it adds a amazing level of effective confusion and mystery to the story that’s never really explained and better for it).
Magnolia Too Long?
An interesting admittal that PTA recently made was conceding to the fact that the masterful, but very flawed “Magnolia” was too long. “‘ ‘Magnolia’ needed it, and I certainly wish I could take 15 or 20 minutes out of that film,” he told the Associated Press. “I don’t miss scenes at all the way that I used to miss them when I was younger making a film. It’s actually quite fun to get rid of them now.”
Studio Pissed At PTA’s Initially ‘Blood’ YouTube Leak
Dude’s finally growing up and it shows with the expertly executed ‘Blood.’ The other funny thing about the AP interview was the discovery that the studio shit their pants when PTA himself uploaded the first, unofficial ‘Blood’ trailer back in the day (it was mid-summer).
“The studio went nuts,” he said. “We put it up on Friday and I remember they called on Saturday morning at 6 a.m.: ‘Do you know there’s this thing on YouTube?’ I said, ‘Yeah, we put it there.’ They were like, ‘What the hell are you doing? Are you mad?'”
Of course this clip went majorally viral and set the ravenous thirst and buzz for ‘Blood’ in first gear. Never listen to the suits.