And The Oscar Goes To...

Brad Balfour Interviews The Winner Of This Year's Academy Award For Best Actor, Daniel Day-Lewis

By Brad Balfour

Though Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film, "There Will Be Blood," is based on a book published in 1927-which dealt with the emerging oil business in Southern California-its underlying themes are just as relevant today. As characters such as burgeoning oil baron Daniel Plainview become richer and richer, stepping on all those around him, the film reveals how the lust for the black gold can and will corrupt anyone. Its obvious pertinence to current events becomes obvious as this simple story reveals itself.

A remarkable film, it is the long-awaited screen return of director Anderson after several years' absence and is further proof that its star, Daniel Day-Lewis, is one of this generation's finest actors. Within this story about family, greed, and religion, other fine actors such as Paul Dano and Ciaran Hinds carefully embellish this world with their complex renditions of their characters.

Having made only a few films so far, Anderson has nonetheless established himself as a respected creator who has made such intense and memorable works as "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia." But with "There Will Be Blood," Anderson has made a film that transcends his reputation for making wry quirky cultish films; he has now made one that should be called an instant classic. And thankfully Daniel Day-Lewis took some time to discuss the genesis of a film that is going to be a magnet for this season's various award nominations.

Q: Your character, Daniel Plainview, goes through an arc of being miserable at the beginning and more so at the end of the movie. What was the challenge in making this work?

Daniel Day-Lewis: No challenge [laughs]. I never really saw him as a miserable prick, but... I don't know what the challenge is. The challenge, I dare say, is the same as it always is, which is to try and discover a life that isn't your own. And Plainview, as he came to me in Paul's beautiful script, was a man whose life I didn't understand at all. It was a life that was mysterious to me, and that unleashed a fatal curiosity which I had no choice but to pursue.

Q: Did you see him as descending into madness?

DDL: He's just a fellow trying to make a living. I'm not really the best person to say this, but I believe you see the seeds of the man you meet at the end in the man you meet in the beginning. It never occurred to me to think that his journey was a short one.

Q: How did you get that voice for Plainview? It sounds so natural... Did you model it on something?

DDL: I did model it... I did this in a number of takes and a few people asked me about... [where it came from... think it's a little like John Huston's.] This [sort of thing] emerged over a period of time [until it felt right.] You do all the work yet these things take care of themselves without any decision being made. I tried to allow the voice to make itself heard and then once I hear it I try to make those sounds.

Q: You do it for a couple of months then it just leaves?

DDL: Uhhh... Yeah [laughs].

Q: Dano's characters has an underlying socio-political commentary imbued in him. How aware were you of the context of class warfare, religious issues, and other concerns of the time?

DDL: I totally understood you asking the question. In a way part of our job is to ignore any... The focus has to be narrower than that or selfish or introspective, to focus on a particular world and a very particular group of people telling a story within that world. Whatever greater significance it may have there's no harm in that... You leave that to the audience.

Q: If you thought about it, you would corrupt the character...

DDL: You immediately then objectify it. which is a fatal error, the one thing you can't do. Going in to that personal experience you take wrong course and therefore you tell the story in a way that people can understand but it's an honest mistake to do that. If you stand outside of the story and have a little guess about what's going to happen, how it's going to be perceived, you stand outside of it; then you might well stay at home [if you do that].

Q: How did you prepare for the physical parts of the role?

DDL: The thing about those lads-when you discover Plainview at the beginning, he's almost learning himself how to do it. Anyone who can swing an ax or a sledge, which almost anyone can do, can dig a hole in the ground. In terms of the physical preparation there wasn't really anything to do except just stay fit and then just start digging holes. They kind of made it up as they went along.

Q: How did you all prepare for the three big confrontation scenes between Daniel and Eli? What went into filming them?

DDL: It was a very difficult day, that day. Things weren't going right, people were doing all kinds of things to try and fix the pipe which needed to be working in the background, filling the reservoir. We lost a lot of a day in this place, which we just couldn't afford to do. Time was very tight. Essentially, out of the necessity often something interesting is born, and of course the tracking shot which covered the whole scene. We didn't know if we could make it work, because obviously with the hits, you have to get each right at the right angle. In a moving shot that covers the whole scene, the chances of getting everything right in that scene were really slim. So we attacked it like that, and there was nothing you could do to get ready for that except just try it and try again.

Q: What about the last scene?

DDL: We actually shot that scene in the Doheny Mansion. Sinclair loosely based the character in his book, "Oil!" on the life of Doheny. So by second remove, there was also a connection there. It was this huge, great, gloomy pile-it was the pyramid that he built to himself with the wealth he accumulated.
It's overseen by the Doheny Trust, and the Trust employs a very large army of people in extremely neat uniforms to watch every goddamn move that you make in the place. I don't know what they thought we were doing in there, but they seemed quite disturbed by the whole thing. We had already entered in a realm, and we didn't know one thing from another. It was very tight time-again, we had very little time to play with.

Q: The score is really interesting like another character in the film. How did the score come to be?

DDL: Paul recorded the music at Abbey Road in London. The astonishing thing about Jonny Greenwood [Radiohead] is that he didn't study composition. I think he was a violinist, and then he went into the band and the band became his life. But somehow along the way he taught himself composition. He is the resident composer for the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He scored the whole thing himself. I don't know how he did it.

Q: What was it like to work with Dillon Freasier, the kid who plays the son, H.W. Plainview?

DDL: I felt very close to Dillon, I'm very fond of him. He's a cowboy, by the way. His father is a rancher. He's got his rodeo buckles, he's won numerous events, he does round-ups, he's the real thing. He has this strange maturity that's very unusual-something that a lot of kids his age might have in common in that part of the world. He's really used to hard work. He's got hands-you could knock out a horse with those hands. He's the most delightful person. He had that curiosity.
Everything that was going on, every department, he was just constantly drinking in all this new information with such excitement.
There was a moment - as we approached the moment when we were going to start shooting - I started to worry a little bit. We were quite close, we had a nice friendship, and I thought, "Man, how's he going to feel when I start treating him harshly?"
So I thought I'd better have a conversation with him about that. I kind of sat him down and created this sort of portentous atmosphere. I said, "Dillon, you know how I feel about you. There are going to be moments in the next months to come when I'm going to speak harshly to you, I'm not going to treat you nicely. I hope you understand that I love you and so on..." And he looked at me like I was insane, like "Of course I know that." He was just one step ahead of us, pretty much most of the time.
His mom just raised him so beautifully. She no longer is, but at the time his mom was a state trooper. She wanted to do things right and she thought she'd better check out this bunch of people that were going to be taking care of her son. She said, 'I'll go rent a movie that fellow did.' And she went and got "Gangs of New York. She was absolutely appalled. She thought she was releasing her dear child into the hands of a monster. There was a flurry of phone calls, and somebody sent a copy of "The Age of Innocence to her. Apparently that did the trick.

Q: This film is being talked about for all sorts of awards.

DDL: We are both in equal measures very excited and very nervous as well. We certainly understand the reactions we had so far that there are people that will go with us and others might not There are a lot really good films out this year with wonderful work in them. So the main thing is to get it out there and hope people see it.

Q: When you do polarize people with a dark grim film like this then know you are having an effect.

DDL: Yes, it's kind of nice; at least we know they're having a discussion [about it].