Friday, December 19, 2025

I Gotta Know What a Five Dollar Milkshake Tastes Like

Recently, Quentin Tarantino faced some backlash regarding his criticism of actor Paul Dano, whom he called, among other things, "weak sauce". It's part of a criticism he has for Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood, which starred Dano alongside Daniel Day Lewis. Tarantino says the film is supposed to be a two-hander but it's not because Dano's performance is nowhere near the level of Daniel Day Lewis. You can hear the quotes in this video starting at around the two minute mark:

Since then, various actors and directors and other Hollywood professionals have publicly defended Dano's acting chops. I find this to be another amusing example of Hollywood's adoration of itself which cannot abide even the tiniest crack in the mirror.

I disagree with Tarantino on a lot of things. I don't agree with him on Matthew Lillard, who gave a very good performance on Twin Peaks. Naturally I don't agree with him on Vertigo, which he dislikes (despite idolising all of Brian DePalma's remakes of it). But he's 100% right about Paul Dano and There Will Be Blood and I don't think everyone would be defending Dano so vociferously if his work spoke for itself. There's a reason that Daniel Day Lewis is a living legend in the acting world while the best role Dano's had in the past twenty years was as the Riddler in Matt Reeve's Batman.

I tend to think Paul Thomas Anderson movies are overrated. On the other hand, maybe Tarantino's wrong that the movie was meant to be a two-hander. The posters generally more prominently feature Daniel Day Lewis but maybe the marketing team just knew what they had better than Paul Thomas Anderson. Dano is playing a morally weak man, a hypocrite, so maybe a bad performance even makes sense. Maybe he was deliberately playing false notes that Tarantino interpreted as accidental. All I know is I remember appreciating Daniel Day Lewis' performance a whole lot more when I saw the movie.

Ethan Hawke talked about Tarantino's comments on Joe Rogan and he had kind of an interesting take:

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