in pictures
There Will Be Blood
Loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s muckraking 1927 novel Oil!, There Will Be Blood takes place during California’s petroleum boom of the early 1900s. It was a time when the environment was as harsh and unyielding as some of the people trying to mine it for black gold.
The movie follows the fictional character Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who’s lured to the West Coast town of Little Boston to make his fortune, but who’s quickly overcome by his own greed. Only the town’s young preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), stands in his way.
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1. Edward Doheny, a gold prospector who decided to switch to oil, inspired
Daniel Day-Lewis’s character. Doheny founded the Pan American Petroleum
and Transport Company, and became a very rich man.
2. Another
young actor was originally cast to play preacher Eli Sunday, but when
he couldn’t rise to Day-Lewis’s in-your-face acting style, Paul Dano —
who co-starred with Day-Lewis in 2005’s The Ballad of Jack and Rose — was brought in to replace him.
3. The only
person Daniel Plainview really cares about is his son, H.W, played by
Dillon Freasier in his very first movie role. But even that
relationship may be destroyed by Plainview’s greed.
4. This
is writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s first film in five years, and
only his fifth movie in the director’s chair, after Punch-Drunk Love, Magnolia, Boogie Nights and Hard Eight. This is his first period piece.
5. Filming took place in New Mexico, California, Texas
and Mexico in the summer of 2006 for a reported $25-million (U.S.), not
a lot by today’s standards.
6. Anderson was in London, England, when he bought a copy of Oil!
The book appealed to him because it had a picture of California on the
cover and the filmmaker — who was born in Studio City, California — was
homesick.
7. The movie was released in a few
theatres last month so that it would be eligible for this year’s
Academy Awards. Daniel Day-Lewis has already won one Best Actor Oscar,
for My Left Foot, and been nominated for two more, for In the Name of the Father and Gangs of New York.
8. Jonny Greenwood, the guitarist for Radiohead, wrote the film’s twangy and foreboding score.
9. As
he does with all of his characters, Day-Lewis spent years preparing to
play this role and, for the most part, remained in character while on
set. |