Paul Thomas Anderson

You're enjoying what's happening.

But I think you keep a half an eye on it, but really you keep the other eye on what are the facts?

What are the facts?

What are the facts of the story?

Why is that?

Because I don't know.

I find films that overindulge in telling me the theme are annoying and boring.

But yes, to your point that once you, and then you get into shooting and you're seeing dailies and you're seeing stuff emerge that is really exciting or stuff that is unexpected and you either embrace it or you say, perhaps this is not going in the right direction, but very more often than not, you can't stop what's coming, nor should you, that you have to kind of be, surrender.

You're guiding a ship, but you're also surrendering a bit to the path that's happening.

And, you know, performances kind of get bigger or smaller, whatever ends up happening.

And then it just keeps on going and you keep refining that through the editing and all that.

Well, it's the great joy of collaboration, particularly when you're doing it with somebody that you love and work with.

Like, for instance, on that film, I had never worked with Jack Fisk, who's one of the great production designers who started his career with Terrence Malick and David Lynch.

They kind of go back to their beginnings together.

Anyway, I contacted Jack Fisk and had written the script and I needed to kind of create... I needed a lot of help with making oil derricks and the recreation of an early California town and there was only one person that helped do that so it started a great collaboration.

Jack Fisk was...

you know, we were kind of trying to learn how to get oil out of the ground and really trying to be really, you know, do our research.

And he said the greatest thing.

He's like, you know, I found that if we can just get a children's book about this, it's really better than trying to really understand how to do it with all these kind of books that are this thick.

And it was one of these great lessons and like, yeah, get the children's book first and don't be, you know, because it'll have drawings, it'll be simple.