Cashing In

"It quite honestly never occurred to me. Somebody said, 'Is making a film like silver prospecting?' and I thought, It's exactly like that. You hack away. You hack away. You're not sure what it's going to be worth or if you're going to find anything. And then maybe you find something that you like that gives you an indication that something else might be there. So you figure, Well, I could just take this stuff and crawl back up to the top of the hole and go to the assay office and maybe that'll be it. But instead, you think, Maybe there's even more underneath there. So you light a stick of dynamite. You stick it in. You blow it up and you just keep after it. I mean, I know that's how I feel -- sure -- in approaching a film or writing it and making it, whatever it is. And then cashing the silver in and finding out what it's worth never really ends up being as satisfying or as fun as it was to be down in that hole."

-- Paul Thomas Anderson discussing his film, There Will Be Blood, with Elvis Mitchell on KCRW's The Treatment (1/30/08)