Blog by Brett Johnson

Interview with Paul Thomas Anderson from The Village Voice

“I don’t think they do dailies much anymore because it costs money to print and project them, so now people just watch them on DVD in their hotels,” Anderson says. “But ultimately, there’s a real sense of satisfaction when you watch something that you got right, and everybody’s there in the room—you can feel it. And on the other hand, that fucking pin drops when everybody spent all that effort, and you’re there watching dailies, and everyone is collectively feeling that it’s not very good. Whether it’s performance or lighting or where the camera is—you know, there are definitely moments when people walk out of dailies with their heads really low; and that can be great, too, because inevitably, you come back really strong the next day and get a great day’s worth of work. Then you go for three days, and suddenly, there’s another bad day of dailies. It happens. On 60 days of shooting, you’re going to get some stinkers along the way. It’s just way too hard to get good stuff all the time.”

It’s refreshing to hear a director of Anderson’s stature—any director, really—speak so candidly about the difficulties of making a good movie and the doubts that can creep into even a seasoned professional’s head. “Sometimes you get cold feet as a director,” he elaborates, citing the nervousness he felt about Phoenix’s go-for-broke performance at certain times during the shoot. “Sometimes he’d do something so outlandish, and I’d think, ‘Hmm, I’m not so sure.’ And then lo and behold, six months later, you’re in the editing room, and you say: ‘Thank God. What was I thinking? How could I have possibly second-guessed that?’”

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Source: cigsandredvines.blogspot.com