There Will Be Blood - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of There Will Be Blood or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to There Will Be Blood

[nora]

During the 1927 wedding scene of H. W. Plainview and Mary Sunday, the Priest is heard reciting the Biblical story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. His quotations are from the book of John, chapter four, verses 14-15, "But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. The woman saith unto him, 'Sir, give me this water, that I [shall] thirst not, neither come hither to draw.'"

[nicholas]

Several characters seen or mentioned in 'There Will Be Blood' seem to have been based on historical figures. Though his name is never spoken during the film, Plainview's business partner H. B. Ailman shares the name of an actual prospector and oil man who was active during the turn of the century and associates with oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny, on whom Daniel Plainview seems to have been partly based. The two Standard Oil representatives "H. M. Tilford" and "J. J. Carter" who meet with Plainview are based on historical oil men: Henry Morgan Tilford was once vice-president of the Standard Oil Company during the turn of the century, while John Joyce Carter's Carter Oil Company was incorporated and subsidized by Standard Oil (New Jersey) in the 1890s. At one point in the film, the name "A. C. Maude" is stated as a property holder in Little Boston; the actual A. C. Maude was a prominent community member of Bakersfield, California during the late 1800s; Bakersfield is located in Kern County, where over 80% of California's oil wells are found. The name "Redlick" is also stated as a Little Boston property holder; Joseph Redlick was also a prominent community member of Bakersfield during the early 1900s.

[veronica]

The $500 given to Paul Sunday by Daniel Plainview are 1882 series $100 gold certificates, which is appropriate because they contain a picture of Thomas Heart Benton. Benton was a senator from Missouri from 1821 to 1851 who was a staunch advocate of westward expansion.

[dustin]

According to Paul Thomas Anderson, the director and crew were "pretty loose about where scenes would take place." This sometimes meant filming scenes three or four different times in different locations, and evaluating the result each time.

[frederick]

Dillon Freasier (who plays H.W. Plainview, the son of the character played by Daniel Day-Lewis) was not an actor; he was an elementary student near the film's West Texas shooting location. On the radio program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," Paul Thomas Anderson told Gross that when the production was trying to convince Dillon's mother to allow Dillon to be in the movie, his mother wanted to figure out who Day-Lewis was, so she rented a copy of Gangs of New York (2002) (in which Day-Lewis plays a murderous gang leader nicknamed "The Butcher"). She panicked at the idea of her son spending time with the man she saw in that movie, so the 'There Will Be Blood' casting department rushed to her a copy of The Age of Innocence (1993), in which Day-Lewis plays a civilized and gentle man.

[jesse]

Daniel Day-Lewis based his voice for and characterization of Daniel Plainview in part on old recordings of the director, writer, and actor John Huston. An article by Christopher Goodwin in the Sunday Times (of London) revealed Paul Thomas Anderson sent Day-Lewis documentaries about Huston while Day-Lewis was preparing to play the role.

[kristina]

The film was originally given a 12A rating in the U.K. for cinema exhibition, meaning that children of any age could see it, with adult supervision if they were younger than twelve years. In a curious move, the distributors subsequently appealed to the British Board of Film Classification to consider raising the certificate. The B.B.F.C. agreed, and the film was subsequently uprated to a more restrictive 15, preventing those younger than fifteen years from being admitted to screenings regardless of parental supervision.

[kylie]

According to the script, Daniel's full name is Daniel Caldecot Plainview

[aaron]

The first line of dialogue ("NO!") doesn't occur until around 5 mins into the film. However, this is not part of the script so, assuming "NO!" doesn't count as the first line of dialogue, the actual first line is when Daniel is giving his speech to the small town. This occurs at about 14 and a half minutes into the film.

[kylie]

Phillip Seymour Hoffman was the original actor in mind when PTA wrote the role of HM Tillford, but Anderson decided to cast someone else as a means of distancing himself from his past works & have a sort of rebirth in his career without any loose ends connecting him to other, more lighthearted films such as Boogie Nights (1997) or Punch Drunk Love (2002). Hoffman was also busy filming Synecdoche, New York (2008) at the time Tillford's scenes were being shot anyway.

[nicholas]

In an interview on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," Paul Dano told Gross that he had originally been cast in the much smaller role of Paul Sunday, Eli's brother, and another actor had been cast as Eli. However, after Dano had already started filming his one scene as Paul Sunday, Paul Thomas Anderson decided to replace the actor playing Eli. Anderson then asked Dano to play Eli Sunday (a much bigger role) as well as Paul Sunday, and they decided to change the film to make the brothers identical twins. Anderson asked Dano to play Eli on a Thursday, and filming for the role began four days later, on the next Monday. Daniel Day-Lewis, by contrast, had a whole year to prepare to play Daniel Plainview.

[janice]

The script originally ended with Plainview bludgeoning Eli to death with a tumbler, instead of a bowling pin, and then throwing his body through the bowling pins into the cellar beyond. Once on set, it was changed to the slightly less graphic version seen in the film.

[tom]

Paul F. Tompkins, who plays Prescott, is the only member of the cast to have appeared in a previous film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. He had a small role in Magnolia (1999) that was cut from the finished film. The rest of the cast had never worked with Anderson before.

[ronnie]

This is the first film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson not to feature Philip Seymour Hoffman, the only one before the latter's death.

[willard]

Although the script is based on the Upton Sinclair novel, Paul Thomas Anderson used only the first hundred and fifty pages for a big portion of the material. The rest was contrived. The novel's setting was in 1920s but it was moved to the beginning of the oil boom in California.

[ray]

According to a 2007 interview with Paul Dano on the N.P.R. show "Fresh Air with Terry Gross", the scene where Plainview is baptized by Eli (where Eli slaps him several times) was shot the day after the scene in which Plainview threatens to bury Eli (and slaps him around).

[albert]

Body Count: four.

[jessica]

Director Paul Thomas Anderson owns a vintage 1910 Pathe camera which contains a special forty-three millimetre lens. The lens was specially modified to be used in the film as it has very low resolution and can shift colors at corners. Only certain shots of the film used this lens; for example a shot of Plainview sleeping in the train with an infant H.W.

[violet]

The piece "Convergence" during the oil derrick fire was originally composed by Jonny Greenwood for the film Bodysong (2003), and is available on the sound-track for that film, but not 'There Will Be Blood'.