There is a good deal of classic American cinema in There Will Be Blood, partly perhaps as a result of the fact that Anderson compulsively played and replayed John Huston's 1948 gem, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, as he was writing the script. He set himself the challenge of attempting to make a film as simple and direct as that, saying to me that he felt that in his previous films he had never quite managed to achieve economy in storytelling.
"Tell the story! Tell the story! That's what I saw in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The films that I love are very straightforward stories, like really old-fashioned stuff. I've never been a fan of whimsical or confusing storytelling." With There Will Be Blood, he says, "it was such a great feeling - cutting things out, slashing away. I didn't have any desire I might have had 10 years ago to shoot every single word that I wrote."
That ability - to slash away - comes with experience and growing confidence, I suggest, and he responds eagerly: "I think so, yeah. That's definitely what it is. You feel more comfortable in your own skin and learn that omitting things is the same as writing things."
Before we end I tell him I feel duty bound to ask him who he wants to work with next, because when the Guardian asked him the same question in 2000 he uncannily replied: Adam Sandler and Daniel Day-Lewis. Would he stare into his crystal ball for us one more time? "I'd like to work with Daniel Day-Lewis again," he says, forcing me to tell him that's not allowed. On his second attempt he says: "I'd love to work with Phil [Seymour] Hoffman again, and at some point Robert De Niro. That's as good as they get, right?"
And what kind of film does he have in mind? Has he another itch that he needs to scratch? "I'm already scratching," he replies. "I'm thinking: 'That's enough of that, get back to work! Let's go!'"
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