Guillermo del Toro - 'Frankenstein' [LIVE]

31:14I said, yes. He said, you know, you may lose it. He says, we hear the stories of those that make it, but there are much more stories of those that don't make it. He said, just keep that in mind when you bet that big, and if you keep doing it, then you're a filmmaker. And my father didn't appreciate the quote. But at any rate, this is worth telling. finally I show it to Jim Cameron in the Chaplin Studios the Chaplin screening room in Raleigh Studios he comes in and he says look I may have to leave if I get a phone call in the middle of the screening I have an emergency I may have to leave is that okay?

31:54I go sure no problem so I start projecting it and I have the composer next to him whispering the lines because we have no money for the subtitles and Jim is watching it no phone call comes he comes out and says look it was bullshit I told my secretary if I press a button call me because it's a piece of shit and he said but this is a great movie would you want to have lunch and I said sure I want to have lunch and I don't pay I'm in by the way I'm in if you want to take me to lunch you pay yeah right so we went to lunch and we stayed for four and a half hours just chatting about film and effects and I could tell him how I had done optical effects, animation, set design, glass painting.

32:42I had done all for my movies. So he loved talking shop and he said, come and see me on Lightstorm. And he showed me all the pre-production art for Spider-Man and many other projects, including Avatar. He had already concepts for Avatar. He said, where are you staying? I said, well, I'm staying in the Highland Gardens Hotel on Franklin. in they gave me a monthly rate and he said well next time you come in stay at my home i started staying with him and we started uh he's my brother you know he's really we are that close and i love him so dearly and and we we would stay really really late watching anime that's great and drinking can i can i just uh prompt you that i you had a uh difficult thing happen with your father right yeah yeah was he helpful with that he was kidnapped in 1998 right after doing mimic with the Weinsteins two tragedies in one year right with yeah with yeah yeah I did that and then I survived the Weinsteins and then my father is kidnapped second worst thing that ever happened to me and I and uh and he was kept for 72 days we had to negotiate my my dad raised us very blue caller.

34:00He had the money. One time my brother said, why do we have to do that if we're rich? And my father said, I'm rich. You're not. Clean the cars. But if you wanted something, he would say, oh, you want reels for your Super 8 camera? Good. Go to the spare parts warehouse and clean all the spare parts like that. So none of us had access to any of the money at all. So we didn't I didn't have any money. And they called and they said, first phone call was, we have your father. And they told my brother. My brother called me and said, they have him. That's it. And I knew exactly what he meant. I went, ran to the house.

34:39And the second phone call was, we have your father. Give us three million in three days, five million in five days, or we'll send you his head in a box. That was the second phone call. and then they I called anybody that would have any idea I called Jim and Jim said I'm sending you a negotiator from England which is what he did people say he paid the ransom he didn't but he paid for the negotiator from England because most of the kidnappings are run like franchises people that are controlling one kidnapping are controlling three or four and they run them like sell, buy, call, threaten, send a pinky I'm not joking, Sandanier.

35:20The same guy was running four kidnappings in the city at the same time. And the English run the negotiation. So he was on the way. They called again. They said we were able to talk to friends, and people were willing to loan us$100 ,000. So the phone call comes, and my brother says, we don't have the money. We have$100 ,000 click. And we said, he's dead. And the negotiator arrived from England, and he said, hello, this is my name, and so on and so forth. What did you say on the phone call? And he said, we said$100 ,000. He said, it's going to stay 70 days. Because if you can get$100 ,000 in three days, you can get a million in a month, and they'll try to get more.

36:07But he said exactly what was on. And he said, the next phone call, you're going to say, we have no money. Those$100 ,000 were not real. We have$50. and you're going to say it exactly like that. And I mean, those 72 days, my older brother managed the first third, my younger brother managed the half of the second part and I managed the last third of the kidnapping. I was in charge of the phone calls. So when people tell me, did you have a tough phone call with the student? I go, fuck no. They can't. I have had tough phone calls. So your dad ultimately was released? My dad, we paid two times. There's many stories there.

36:54My brother and I had to photocopy half a million dollars in fives, tens, and ones. Because you have to photocopy to prove to the IRS that you're not evading taxes. We went in with guns on our belts to Office Depot. We bought a photocopier. and I would photocopy 10 ,000, he would photocopy 10 ,000 and one of us would be guarding the door. Then I did the drop, the second drop. We paid half a million first and then we did another one and I did the final drop. It's a long story but quite harrowing but interesting. Crazy. He got out. And you said, you know, the second worst thing, and the joke is that the first worst thing was dealing with the Weinstein's on Mimic because So after Kronos, on the basis of that, Hollywood wants you.

37:47You get$30 million to, is the budget? Yeah, originally Mimic was written as a short. Bob Weinstein loved the short film, the story. And he said, let's make it a feature. I said, it's not enough for a feature. And I tried to resist, but I had many screenplays, but they were not getting made. Big surprise. by the way I call Hollywood the land of the slow no and everybody everybody is about to make a movie next week and it's really impossible so I learned to do two or three things at the same time because one of them may hit but just so the statistics hit I have written or co-written 42 screenplays I have made 13 movies And also, however a career looks from the outside and the inside, it's like a slow motion crash in a car.

38:46For you, it goes, for me, it goes, oh, oh, blood, windshield, teeth in the wheel. Well, so what you learned from the experience with Mimic, it seems, is that you're never going to give up creative control in any way for anybody. The most important word in the English language is no. No. No. Yeah. And if you say it with, and the most important tool you can have is you can walk away. But you can only do it once. If you don't, that's it. You're in and they know you're in. So, but the reality also on over 30 years of career, that's my only bad experience. That's it. So it's also very heartening. People love to lionize the bad aspects of filmmaking, the backstabbing.

39:49In my experience, that happens, but there's a lot of people that are true to their word, and there's a hell of a lot of artists working in this that will band up with you if you have the right call. you know so you know i think glorifying bad behavior creates bad behavior glorifying artistry creates artistry and that's what we we should not lose sight of that both sides exist so and i guess after mimic you're now you're not going to do something for somebody else you're going to do the project that you want to do which ends up being devil's back right yeah during uh and during the Miami Film Festival, I'm by the pool, and I hear a voice say, are you Guillermo del Toro?

40:33And I turn on, it's Pedro Almodovar. And I say, yeah, yeah, I am Guillermo. He says, I like your movie. I would like to produce something for you. I go, what the fuck happened? And I said, I'll bring something to you that is interesting. And when they passed on Devil's Backbone, I kept it on the drawer, but I found two friends of mine sent me a screenplay called The Bomb. along with a pile of six screenplays. Five of them were not very good. The sixth one was not very good, but had a great idea about an unexploded bomb in the center of an orphanage. And I said, if I combine mine with that, I have a movie.

41:14But they situated in Eastern Europe somewhere. I said, no, it has to be... Hitchcock used to say, that which happens somewhere is worth nothing. It has to happen exactly in a place, exactly in a time, he used to say. If vertigo is not San Francisco, it's not vertigo. You know, if by Norwest doesn't have the itinerary of Mount Rushmore and, you know, New York, etc., etc., it's not. So learn from that. And I said it has to be the end of the war or the fall of the republic in Spain's civil war. and ghosts are a metaphor for unfulfilled desires, lost dreams, and the war, right? So Pedro comes during the kidnapping of my dad.

42:02He visits Guadalajara, and I give him the screenplay, and he reads it at my house, and he says, these are three movies. I said, no, it's one movie. He says, well, there's a ghost story and a war story. I said, yeah, but it'll combine. Trust me. He says, can you come? I said, Pedro, you do it in your movies. It's a drama and a melodrama and a comedy. Let me try to combine these things. And he said, absolutely. And I said, the only condition I have, Pedro, is that I have final cut. And he says, what is a final cut? And I said, well, that I cut the movie. And he says, well, you're the director. Who else would cut the movie?

42:37And I cried a little. And then what happens, which is very important, Mike DeLuca offers me Blade II. And he says, look, we want to go. Thank you. Well, this story, I'm giving details that I normally don't get. This is great. So they said, well, they had offered me Blade I when it was just an idea, but Goya and I were very close through a friend, Stuart Kornfeld, who used to work for Mel Brooks, discovered David Lynch for The Elephant Man and carried the torch for David Croninger to do The Fly. That was Stuart Kornfeld, a great producer. They said, well, you've got to meet with Wesley. and I meet with Wesley and I said, look, I'm the most unhip motherfucker in the world.

43:24I don't know anything about music. I can't dance for shit. So you carry the hip, I'll carry the scary. And I'll make it a tragedy, which is the story of Frankenstein. You know, a father creates a son that is a monster. He comes back and says, why did you make me? So blah, blah, blah. So the problem is they said, we want it in such and such date. so you gotta bump devil's backbone and I said no fucking way I said I'm doing that first because I need my sorry balls back I said I need to regain my footing on this world from Mimic and I'm gonna do a movie that I own completely and then I'll come well it's too late I said if it's too late they said we'll pay Almodovar I said that doesn't work like that buddy you wait for me I'm the director for this and Mike, who's a great guy, Mike said, we'll wait for you.

44:21And they waited for me and Blato is one of the most fun, blast, Red Bull-fueled orgies in my life. I was like, Red Bull had just come to the market and I thought, I didn't know how to consume it. So I used to drink 24 Red Bulls a day. I'm not joking, one an hour. And then I'm, action, action. I look at the goddamn can and it says, do not drink more than three a day. I go, oh, too late. Well, and we should say that, so Devil's Backbone, just in a sign of how kind of unpredictable life is and unfair the business is and just how you can never bank on anything. This movie came out on? 9-10 or 9-9 and then 9-11.

45:17happened and everything shifted and you get the sense of, of course cinema is going to take a step back. Of course, the world just ended. A world, a world just ended and that world never came back. That world never came back, but that generated for me the need to do Pan's Labyrinth. I said, I need to talk about war in a different way, you know? So I think the, to me, Devil's Backbone is one of the five best movies I've ever made. It's incredibly delicate and minimal, no pageantry, minimal, terse, almost Japanese design. Very, very beautifully controlled. But there's a nice story here because I was doing a shot and Guillermo Navarro, my DP, said, we cannot do that with the dolly.

46:09you're thinking of a techno crane but you don't shoot commercials so next movie you do get a techno and Blade 2 was shot a lot on the techno and the techno became my tool from Blade all the way to Frankenstein I mastered that and now the next movie I do has no techno so Blade 2 kind of paved the way for Hellboy yeah when I was when I was shooting Mimic The only thing that kept me sane is to go to Silver Snail Comics in Toronto and say, it's the new issue of Hellboy Out. And I would read and I'd say, this is the most exquisite group of images. I followed Mignola when he was in DC. I saw World of Krypton and many of his other comics.

47:00But he was the guy with the small feet and the big mouths. and all of a sudden between Dracula and God on my gaslight he becomes Mike Mignola and then Hellboy comes and changes my world and I thought I want to do this but no one would green light it for eight years and I want you to pay attention to the calendar because from the outside it looks successful right five years of unemployment between Kronos and Mimic four between mimic and devil's backbone all i'm saying to you is the beauty of this industry and this art craft is you can create beauty but the making it is always eating a sandwich of shit you get a lot of bread or a little bit of bread but you always get shit and it's great to to learn to appreciate it but the aftertaste never goes away you know just just so you know that calendar doesn't align with what people define as a career or success.

48:00It doesn't feel like that. It always feels like you're struggling to do something, and it'll feel like it's happening to you in an unfair way. Please believe me, it happens to everyone. Very few people go doing what they want. You're playing strategy. I just wanted to clarify, since you're a student, I can disabuse some notions. and this is even when your movies are being widely seen and well received I mean Hellboy made a lot of money yep the main thing with Hellboy and Hellboy 2 when people say why they didn't make that much money on the box office or this or that back then I mean the reason there's a Hellboy 2 believe me is not because someone said oh let's make another one the other one lose money we made so much money on home video so much that Ben Fangold and Sony said you have to do another one.

48:53It was a monster hit on, same as Austin Powers. For example, these are movies that made their money in ancillary markets. The main thing with Hellboy, for eight years, nobody wanted to do it with Ron Perlman. They said, no, you have to meet with so-and-so, you have to meet with Vin Diesel, you have to meet with this and that. I would meet with them and say, I met with them, can we do it with Ron Perlman? And no, no, no. And a producer, a good producer, friend of mine, very successful, he said, I'll finance the movie, just not Ron Perlman. I said, well, then you finance the movie, but it's not mine.

49:30So no. And right at the moment, at that moment, I had moved. I was broke. I had to declare sort of bankruptcy to pay for my daughter's kidney hospital bills. That was an emergency. It was a lot of money. and I still said no. I said no, I'll wait for Ron because when we were shooting Kronos, we ran out of money and I went to Ron and I said, Ron, we ran out of money. We cannot pay you for next week or next week or next week but I give you my word as a gentleman that we will pay you when we get the money and Ron stayed. And when somebody's like that, you're loyal to that people. So I said, don't worry.

50:15If we don't do Hellboy together, we will not do Hellboy. don't worry that's why Ron is Hellboy that's great in the best sense you are definitely a stubborn person because after Hellboy I know you were offered every superhero movie there is and you refused to do it because because I said those guys I don't understand them I have never made a movie for making a movie you know Blade 2 my agent said look buddy you want Hellboy you gotta do Blade 2 because no one's gonna say he can do Hellboy based on devil's backbone you gotta do something big I took Blade 2 and the weekend it opened I called Mike Mignon and I said if they don't green light Hellboy by Monday we're fucked you know and they green lighted Joe Roth at Revolution immediately but then they offered me one of the really, really, really crowning jewels of one of the two big superhero machines.

51:23I said, I don't understand this guy. I just don't understand it. And you cannot, you can date, but you cannot simulate a honeymoon. And making a movie is a full honeymoon. It's a marriage. It lasts years and years of your life. You can't simulate that. Then the other house offered me about four superheroes. The only thing I was interested in, may I digress? Please. They said, do you want to develop the Hulk? And now, the Hulk is a monster. I like it. I also developed Justice League Dark, but that's a separate story. But the Hulk, I developed, and I developed a really interesting idea. It was Bruce Banner was jealous of the Hulk, and they were both in love with Betty.

52:09And Betty liked one for one reason and the other for another reason. and they kept trying to destroy each other when they were taking turns of being the other one. And I thought that's a really interesting thing for a series. I want to see that. And we pitched the idea and then we went into a meeting that most of you will go through with the studio, with the TV company. And they said, we are terribly excited about, excited by the way means they are not interested. We're terribly excited about this series and we love what you did. but we have a few notes an hour later when after the notes i said and this is real i'm not embellishing this is how it happened i said so let me see if i understand this you are very excited and you love this series but you don't like anything in it is that fair to say well i wouldn't put it like that i would and this is the perfect place to end this conversation thank you and i hung up and this is not embellished that was exactly how it happened because you know honestly when you when you see that the checkmate creatively is against what you think is gonna make it don't make it because it's gonna be filler it's gonna be something nobody noticed and it may happen even if you follow your principles but at least you'll have that well and and with the reason you were passing on the superhero movies was because you had already, aside from not feeling a connection to them, you were already thinking about what would become Pan's Labyrinth?

53:41Yes. Yes. No, in fact, absolutely. In fact, I had accepted one of the superheroes to contemplate it, and I was in London, and I had my notes for Pan's Labyrinth, and I was making notes for that superhero movie, which I still think would have been interesting. And I went into a taxi cab, and I lost my notebook, which is full of drawings. and I prayed and I said there was no way to find it. I went to police I went to the taxi company no one knew and I prayed and I said if you give me, I understand I should have done Pans Labyrinth, I'm going to do Pans Labyrinth, just give me my notebook back and knock on the door and it's the taxi guy with the notebook I said I remember you mentioned this hotel I go thank you, thank you, thank you and I said I'm going to do Pans Labyrinth screw all that and I did it and it was have peculiar experience.

54:34Well, and that's also just to note other pressures you resisted. I know people wanted to do it. They offered you a lot more money to do it in English. Yes. They said, if you can do it in English, we'll finance it. But there's one more condition. The girl shouldn't die at the end. And I said, then what is the movie? Yeah. Well, I mean, how is that? The poignancy of the movie is that she lives forever and dies. Pan's Labyrinth there's two movies I thought were going to be my last movies one was Pan's Labyrinth and the other one is The Shape of Water I thought this is it, after this I'm going to just go fish Why?

55:15Because you had done what Because you feel that it's so hard to get points across and it's so difficult and fraught to go public with them you're always David Croninger said one day when I was interviewing him, he said you have to have two skins, a thick one for the business and a thin one for the art and you cannot wear them at the incorrect time. Well, I'm not good at wearing the right one at the right time. So it's very hard to go publicly with something and then hear things or feel things. It's like you're dancing on stage and then you notice your stretch marks and you go, I shouldn't be dancing with that light but it's too late, you're already on stage that's what it feels to go public with a movie so anyway, Pants Labyrinth was about if you watch it again about you can give your life to an art form and the only difference is a little flower blooming on a dead tree but if you do that it's worth it if you leave one little sign of your so I said, that's my testament movie so we go at it and I said it has to be the way I see it the crew thought I was insane you know the crew would be shooting a Civil War movie and a phone would come in hello hello and a guy with eyes on his palms it was really really but finally the movie comes and it plays the last day in Cannes the last day before the festival wraps press had left the festival but we get historically the longest still to this day the longest standing ovation in the history of Cannes 22 minutes it's now it's 22-23 but let me put it this way it's a commute people applauded since I was coming from West Covina all the way it's a commute and I didn't know what to do the applause went on for the whole credits, kept going and Alfonso was there Alfonso Cuaron, I said let it in Fatso let it in and he says let the love in, come on relax and I let it in and it was so soothing, it was a beautiful beautiful thing well and the really the thing that I think exploded for most people around the world the awareness of you and Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez in Europe, was that at that year's Oscars or the Oscars honoring that year's films, you were there with six nominations for Pan's Labyrinth.

58:03Alfonso had Children of Men and Alejandro had Babel, all major nominations at the same Oscars. This is where people started to realize the three amigos. Yeah, and it was true. It was true. Thank you. It was, I still think, I think, I believe, Dave is the most nominated Spanish language movie in the history of the Academy, too.

58:28But the thing is that we were truly, truly, and we are truly that close. So we work on each other's films. I met Alejandro by editing Amor Sparrows with him. Alfonso and I have been friends since 1987, 88. so you know and we are really oh my god he is the one I dread to call Alejandro is always so cordial and you know he's magical he says no no no no you know I always say the best thing is Alejandro giving you the recipe for guacamole the you split the heart of the avocado and then the lemon gives you its life its juice and then you bring a little salt and Alfonso is like he takes a massive massive shit on my head why are you doing it oh yes that's a nice crane no no no don't cut it leave it complete let the movie last another 20 minutes why don't you is there a dolly you want to complete it's very very hard one of the true highlights of my whole life and career has been, and I don't want to normally push things on people, but if you have a chance to go look up the episode that we did with Guillermo, Alejandro, and Alfonso together, three guys sitting together talking about their history and their movies and going after each other, but having fun and love, it was pretty special.

1:00:07Three brothers. Yeah, it was great. Okay, so coming out of Pan's Labyrinth, there was a period there where it looked like you were going to do The Hobbit? Yeah. For a few years. Yeah, yeah, two years plus. And instead you ended up doing Pacific Rim. Rim, yeah. Yeah. What happened is I was there, we developed, back then it was two movies, and we developed that and developed the threads for what became the third movie. I thought it was a two-parter, and we designed a bunch of, the ideas I had and the designs I had. I never saw the finished movies. I read the screenplays, but I never saw the movies because it's like watching vacation movies from your ex-wife.

1:00:55There's no plus. They're terrible if they're bad and worse if they're good. So you don't watch vacationing with the other guy. It was a great experience. That's where I met Kate Hawley who designed wardrobe in Pacific Rim and in Frankenstein and on Crimson Peak. So that was a big plus for me. And I had the two best years, really great years in New Zealand and with Weta and all that. It was really great. And Peter, the two birthdays, he gave me two of the greatest gifts I've ever received. He gave me the original helmet from Francis Coppola's Dracula from the red suit, and he gave me the original cane with the dragon from Francis Coppola's Dracula, which was one of my favorite films.

1:01:40So I can't complain. Two great props, two great years, and a lot of good coffee, by the way. And Pacific Rim, what came out is Legendary said, we want to launch a new franchise. It was Robots vs. Kaiju. I said, I'm in. But I came up with the idea of two pilots because I said, well, the story has to be about how inside of a giant robot, there is a person and there is a child and it's the fears of the child that control that robot and they have to learn to trust each other to people that normally don't trust anyone and then we it's so much fun to shoot that movie it was so beautiful so many fun stories but we scouted in Hong Kong and photographed Hong Kong ate in Hong Kong every day I didn't have to pay.

1:02:37That's a constant. From there comes one that I think for a lot of people is as loved as any. That doesn't mean more than others, but as much as any. And that is The Shape of Water. Yes. And this one. Crimson Peak in the middle. Yes. Oh, Crimson. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Sure, sure. Which is a dress rehearsal for Frankenstein. Yes. Yes. And yeah, I guess just talk about the headspace you were in here where you've said going into Shape of Water, this doesn't get more personal than that for you. Although maybe with Frankenstein it did. Yeah, it does. But just, you know, again, it's really interesting how with Shape of Water and then we're going to come to it, of course, with Pinocchio and with Frankenstein.

1:03:24These all kind of trace back to experiences you had at a very young age with Shape of Water. It was Creature from Black Lagoon, right? Yeah, it was, first of all, it was another of those Sundays in Mexico. Channel 6 in Guadalajara used to play all Sunday, black and white movies, mostly monster movies. And I saw the creature swimming under Julie Adams and I said, this is pure poetry. This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And then I saw The Seven Year Itch and Marilyn is coming out of the theater saying, the creature was just misunderstood and I fell in love with Marilyn and the creature at the same time.

1:04:01It was a particular moment when I needed to state what I believe love was. And I don't like the idea of love that transforms people in something they're not. I prefer beast and the beast and beauty and the beast. I like to say we're all monsters and perfect. And when somebody says, I love this person, but end of conversation. By the way, not a crime. Go your separate ways. Dick Smith used to say, love them or leave them be. And I agree with that. And Shape of Water was, can it be the recognition of somebody that is extraordinary of her nature in that creature? And the whole point for me was, what if it was a god?

1:04:53If this creature was a god from the Amazon? And you don't realize it until the end, right? I thought I'll shoot it like a musical. I shoot it like a Minnelli. I mean, Minnelli is the master of the crane. If you guys want to watch a great movie, watch The Clock. His style, people didn't take him as seriously as they should have when he was alive. I think his color sense and his work with the crane is astounding. And then he has some strange movies that are really interesting, like The Cobweb, you know. But I admire him. And I said, I'll shoot it sort of in the Minnelli style. and I had this idea of this character that has no voice and all of a sudden starts singing and we're going to Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers between the amphibian man and her and everything seemed to be like, I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want because this is the last movie.

1:05:45Again, I said, this is the last movie and I hit these walls now and then and I said, and then I'll fish. I'm still not fishing. No. Well, I would imagine that one of the things that turned you around was the fact that the movie won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, which is a pretty big deal. And I'll just remind people, there was this unbelievable period of, I believe, five times in seven years when the Best Director Oscar was won. It's a seven-year period. Within that period, five times the Best Director Oscar was won by one of the three amigos. Yes. That's unbelievable. At a time when somebody was saying Mexico isn't sending their vests, apparently they weren't.

1:06:36And by the way, we are. Yeah. We are. Sorry. I think that when people sometimes, I have made it a point to stay active in Mexico. I have two scholarships active there. I have produced a ton of movies in South America and Mexico. I have produced first movies for them. And every time I produce a Mexican or Latin American filmmaker, my salary is exactly zero. I do it because I owe it to do. And in Mexico right now, something really interesting is happening. The last five years or so, the best director awards go to female directors. Completely natural. is not a quota. Nobody said, let's go get a quota.

1:07:30It happened. Being involved in the founding of stop-motion workshops or helping first-time filmmakers to complete their movie is extremely important because Mexico, the creative lifeblood of Mexico, is incredible for the discourse of film. When people say, well, what is Mexican about your movies? I go, me. Me. what else do you fucking need you know and I speak freely about the Mexican melodrama and how it influences me you know the passion, the colors the movement when you have a soul and an origin there's no way you don't have it the impossible thing is for them not to be Mexican films and I think Alejandro and Alfonso feel the same way Yeah.

1:08:22So we're almost up to Frankenstein, but I have to note Nightmare Alley 2021. Thank you. Made during COVID. During COVID. Yeah. When it was tricky and to do it safely. And you guys did. But I guess the thing there is like Frankenstein, you did not go back to the original movie. You went back to the original book book. And in this case, with your wife. Kim Morgan, wrote it with Bradley Cooper producing and starring. I guess the question with this one, which was also nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, working with Bradley, who by this point was already several times a director himself, was that different to be working with an actor who, to some degree, presumably got you on a different level than most actors?

1:09:13Yes, I think Bradley is not only a great partner on the set, but he's a great partner in general. We challenged each other in a great way. I said, well, if you do this movie, why don't we talk about Maestro the whole time? And he used the techno to shoot most of Maestro because of that. And at the same time, he would always say, heresy? And he said, yes. And he would say, a heresy. and he would say, let's make, let's be careful not to have any ideas about the character. Let's make sure they are alive and living, that they're real. So I think it's one of the most beautiful learning curves for both of us, I would say, and a very strong kinship.

1:10:04And that movie, I recommend, if you can get the Criterion Collection, black and white version, and you're curious about it, it really is the way it was originally. hope it would be and and i shot it that way in the hopes that searchlight would allow me to to master it in black and white which they did you know we we came up the weekend of omicron it was the the weekend of the variant omicron and all the adult audiences left stopped going to the theater everything was spider-man uh young audiences so omicron and Spider-Man. It sounds like a Marvel special. This week. Some movies take time to find an audience.

1:10:47Crimson Peak was like that. I said this will be found by its audience and now it's found its audience in a great way. 2022, the year after that, was your version of Pinocchio. Thank you. Which is our second to last. I'm going to bring up before Frankenstein, but it's interesting. You said, quote, and this was years ago, quote, ever since I was a kid, since my first Super 8 movie to now, I've dreamt of making two movies, Pinocchio and Frankenstein. Close quote. So here with Pinocchio, the first of those two, co-directing it with Mark Gustafson using stop-motion animation like you started out doing on your Super 8.

1:11:32Why was that one something you so badly wanted to make and in that format? Well, it was imperative for me to, my next movie after Frankenstein is a stop motion again. So that's what I'm going through. And I think that they are essentially, if you see Pinocchio, they're essentially what I call the prodigal father duology. is fathers that, you know, the original Pinocchio is, Pinocchio has to be a good boy to become a real boy. And I said, no, fuck it. Let the father, let the father learn to be a good father. You know, and Pinocchio doesn't have to change to be a good boy. He can stay made of wood.

1:12:16So it was a declarational principle I had since I was a kid. Both the creature and Pinocchio get crucified, by the way, if you want to see the commonalities. but they're also created sort of wantonly by the fathers and rejected by the fathers. And there's a reconciliation with the fathers. So they are very similar tessatures in those two tales. And as you said, some of the threads that I was watching, and Nightmare Alley talks about this period where somebody was saying we were sending the worst, right? Well, the character of Stan is very much close to that type of chicanery, a guy that sells lies until he cannot tell the difference between lies and truth, which is the most dangerous moment, right?

1:13:13And Pinocchio, to me, was not about the lies that are told innocently, but the large lies of fascism, which is united for God and country. basically. Now, in the name of those ideas, a lot of atrocities are committed. So I wanted a time in which everybody behaves like a puppet except the puppet. And I found that it was going to be poignant. And they said, is it for kids? And I said, no, but kids can't watch it. They're tough motherfuckers. Trust kids. But this came from Ted Sarandos. I worked with Ted on three connecting series, Tales of Arcadia, Trollhunters, Three Below, and Wizards. And Ted said, Ted thought I was going to just lend my name and he saw me working on them every day and guiding the arc of the stories and all that.

1:14:10And he said, you know, why don't you come to Netflix and give me your bucket list? And I said, Pinocchio and Frankenstein. Now, Pinocchio stayed on May for almost, I don't know, 20 years or something like that and it would go like this Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio and they say it's done bring it in I said it's during the Rise of Mussolini go away right and everybody dies at the end and everybody even the fucking cricket dies at the end you know and it was imperative and Ted said done done the way you want them and those two movies were done exactly the way I wanted them well and so with Frankenstein though this is the one that But you've said, again, we've heard through the years that it clearly helps when you have a personal connection, Shape of Water and Pinocchio.

1:14:58But Frankenstein, as much as any, you felt that. Why then? It seems like you ran into some resistance pre-Netflix. Why was there resistance to doing this? And why was that the one that you most wanted to do? Because, well, first of all, all the movies I do have that element of Frankenstein. because it sounds like a good story, but it is real. When I saw Boris Karloff at age seven, I delivered myself to the myth of Frankenstein. I said, this articulates everything I believe about father and son, the Bible, my father and I, eventually my kids and I, the power of forgiveness, the power of acceptance, the fact that the impossibility that we have is to other something in order to exist.

1:15:49And I find that when you are capable of seeing the tale from the other point of view, it's an incredibly moving experience. And that was in the book. And I wanted to honor that double section from the book. And I thought there are many moments and feelings in the book that have never been put on film. For people that worry about the accuracy of an adaptation, 1931 version is based on a 1927 play that has little to do with the book. You know, really just the basic anecdote. And it's not about that. It's about saying, I spent 50 years thinking about this. I have read everything that is there to be written about the romantics and the period which was written and the biographies and the book.

1:16:37I read all three versions of the book. and more importantly, her biography and my biography have melded. I can talk about her the way I think. And I use this example often. I say, I'm Johnny Cash singing Hurt. I don't care that Trent Reznor wrote it. From the moment I sing to the moment I end is mine. It's my song. Because I was born with one song in my heart, and that's the one, Frankenstein. and it took two and a half years to write the final draft of the screenplay the first document was 850 pages of research I can take you through every single decision in that movie we don't have the time, don't worry but I can take you through every decision in the movie and it's the most present movie I've ever been in and it's the summation of three decades of career so in terms of the principal casting you talked about casting Oscar Isaac and bringing a Latino sense to the film?

1:17:39Yeah, look, the romantic movement and the Gothic romance is the English dreaming of warm-blooded countries. When you think about the original novel of Gothic romance is Castle of Otranto, which happens in Otranto, Italy. Anne Radcliffe, the most successful Gothic romance writer of her time writes novels like The Italian, which is a very successful series, novel she does. And the monk, Matthew G. Lewis, is in Spain. And so I said, well, you know, you want Swarthy? I'll give you Swarthy. And that passion comes natural to the material. So, you know, it's what I wanted with Oscar. We had a general and I wrote it for him because of his eyes and because I wanted Victor to be you know the the treat with this movie is you start identifying with one of the characters that is going to do the worst things in the movie and that's the world we're in you know you have to say oh i poor victor the creature is monstrous he killed six sailors and this poor man and then little by little you go what the fuck are you doing victor hold on and and if i then if i make you change your mind in the course of the film.

1:18:56You know? And there's a moment that I had two triggers that I wanted to construct and the screenplay is constructed so carefully. One of them, I said, if I can make the audience jump a little when he says, my creator has told his tale, now I will tell you mine. I said, if I can reactivate the audience there, great win. And I engineered everything for that. the way he talks, how many words, when, blah, blah, blah. And the second one is the hand of Victor grabbing his hand and saying, I'm sorry. You know, because forgiveness comes like this in families. We all want to be forgiven and we all want to forgive.

1:19:35But we have too much pride and too much distance between us. And I wanted to, you know, in a time where we are afraid of emotion, because our culture has made emotion shameful, I wanted to bring emotion back because when people say the size of the screen or the delivery system or movies need to be less about this movies need emotion and if you give emotion you have a movie and you have an audience and I wanted to bring that with this movie in a big way that's great and so that's the left hand the right hand is Jacob Velorti as the creature which I think people should know So I had heard in one of the early attempts to get this movie made years ago, your regular collaborator, Doug Jones, was maybe going to be the creature.

1:20:30The creature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then that evolved into it being Andrew Garfield. Yeah. And then nine weeks before you had to go to work on this, it he. We had we had nine weeks before and after two strikes. Yes. the times didn't align nothing aligned and then Andrew left and we had everybody panicked everybody said we're nine weeks away should we postpone I said no because I'm 60 years old and I've learned that when the movie wants to tell you what it needs it does so through emergencies and accidents so let's wait something better is going to come something miraculous is going to come and that miracle was Jacob Elordi and again the eyes right at you because that's really all of Jacob Elordi that you see.

1:21:16There's a moment that is extraordinary in that regard. When he explodes with the dynamite, all you have from that actor is one eye. And it's one of the most emotional shots in the entire movie. This man looks like Gary Cooper, but he's Marlon Brando, man. This guy is a phenomenal actor. And the trust we developed and the way we developed it and how fast he learned buto, the Japanese language of resurrecting the dead through movements that are dance-like, the way he disassociated his limbs, the way he went at it, the way, you know. You know one of the things he didn't do? He didn't ask how fucking long the makeup was going to take.

1:21:58And that was the only actor that didn't ask that. Of all the ones that I interviewed, that went a long way. Yeah. Because if you think that's an obstacle, You don't know the path. No. And he recently did a thing for The Hollywood Reporter, and he was saying that, you know, you basically said that this is the, you have to look at it as a religious experience. You're taking a monastic thing. It turned out he would be there four to ten or eleven hours, depending on how much of the body was going to be visible. And during that time, you know, you should be spiritually changing into the creature. Well, you know, when I was a very religious boy, the priest would get dressed, and each layer meant something.

1:22:47You know, you put the sole, you put the robe, you put the, you know, every insignia made him into a holy man. And I said to Jacob, that's what you're doing. You start an invocation, and each piece you put takes you away and reveals the creature. And it's exactly what he did. His prep was 10 hours every day of makeup. when he was without clothing and then five to six hours when it was the head and the hands. And he said the thing that was the most amazing, and this is something that you are responsible for, of course, is that you come out of the makeup trailer after all that and you walk onto not a green screen or not, you know, you and Sid.

1:23:29A tennis ball. Right, a tennis ball. You, this doesn't happen really anymore with movies except when you put your foot down. These are 360 degree reel sets. The ship was built. The tower was built. Completely built, yeah. The ship was mechanized. So every time he moves the ship, he's moving the ship for real with all the sailors on top. All the sailors on top. But I think, you know, and this, I don't want to go again about AI, but I'll go for two seconds. Yeah, go, go, go. No, for two seconds. I think people can tell when things are made by humans for humans. And people are moved by the craft.

1:24:06They are really moved by the craft. and I wanted this to feel handcrafted for people. We wove the fabric. So the fabric of the main characters, we wove. We printed. We dyed. We embroidered. We embroidered the circulatory system on the vest. All her transparent veils are x-rays or patterns of nature. And we did all that because I think people can tell the difference. And cinema, when I was a kid and I went to see Ben-Hur or Planet of the Apes, you had the sense that you were in front of something grander than you, not a VFX shot only. Now, I love VFX, and even then I say we have to make them handmade, and I could explain more, but there's always a real element there.

1:24:53Every time there's a VFX, we should or do a real element before. And we did giant miniatures. The tower is a giant miniature. The Lab Explosion is a giant miniature. Him coming out of the birth canal is a giant miniature. And I get all those miniatures after the shoot. That's awesome. Which I like. And yeah, it's really, the costumes, the production design, like always, the cinematography, your regular guy, Dan Leston. And it's just a rare thing to see so much of it at that level. 30 years of collecting these people. Yeah. And the 15 years of shooting in Toronto to hone all the graphs for this movie.

1:25:33Yes. Well, and we talked about the fact that this massive reception, 15-minute standing ovation in Venice, the two weeks and running now as the biggest thing on all of Netflix around the world. Around the world. And what we're going to do now, if it's all right with you, is close with rapid fire. We have some students who have submitted questions. They're going to do a quick question. If it's all right, quick answers, and we'll zoom through. So yeah, oh my god, it's 11. We are gonna start with Tidion Diallo.

1:26:10One sec. They're coming with the camera, I believe. And okay. Thank you again for all the wisdom you've given us in the past. the cursing yeah the cursing was really helpful too um my question for you is how do you keep that childlike sense of imagination that has always made your work stand out you know when i was a child i was melancholic and now that i'm melancholic i tried to be a child so there is i think that you know we were talking uh i was talking to elvis mitchell this morning and he i was saying the difference between what people think is a gothic romance when fabio is carrying somebody in the cover, you know?

1:26:51And the real gothic romance is the superimposition of death. The idea that the romantics had that life is the enemy. So what I do is I, all of my life, career, and personal behavior, I have an incredible sense of dread, but I am moved by beauty. And I'm moved by the ephemeral. I know that innocence of I, you have to keep your I and your heart sort of innocent. But knowing that it all is quite terrible because that's the nature of the world is to be horrible and beautiful at the same time. So you have to have an eye for the beauty and a heart for the terrible. and if you can manage to preserve that marriage not only your childhood innocence it's equally important to preserve your sense of fatality because otherwise then you're pursuing a career or you want a jet or a private fucking island or something that is ulterior but if what you're pursuing is poignancy and humanity those are very important to preserve and try to exist with those two things as intact as you can now.

1:28:10The final moment of the movie comes precisely from the kidnapping of my father. On day 30 something and they were not freeing him. We are already paid one time and they called and said now we can wait. We want another half a million. And the sun was rising and the thing that is most difficult in tragedy is the rhythms of nature. You lose your mother, but the sun rises. You lose a brother, but people are having a party a block down. I felt, well, the sun doesn't care about my pain. And then as the days went by, I realized my pain didn't care about the sun. And that what I needed was to open myself to the fact that the world is a cycle that where I count for little and I have to abandon myself to the grace of that world and that's the ending of the movie.

1:29:08So, you know, if you're not attuned to both the terrible and the beautiful, you miss something. So it's to preserve whatever your core is, preserve it if you can. Thank you.

1:29:24Sidney Sawyers. Popular. hi thank you for coming um in an interview a few years ago you said you still watch three movies a day i try um so i guess if this is true uh how do you go about picking your movies for the day well what i do i mean i i sometimes i watch the complete movie sometimes i watch half there's movies that i you know this is not a good term in australia but it's called one sock movies where you're putting your socks and you're watching a movie and you end up watching it with one sock on your hand the whole time, you know? So it depends on what. What I do is consult movies that, like there are movies that hypnotize me, like Zodiac.

1:30:14If I watch Zodiac, I go, how does this movie work? How did he do it? I cannot tell. Day of the Jackal. Most of Alan Pakula. I go, how does it work? And then you try to study how did it work, try to figure that out. And, you know, three movies is six hours. The day has, in my case, 18 hours. So you have two more, two times more to do what you need to do. I used to be very disciplined before COVID. I would write from six in the morning to 12, you know. Now it's a little more jumbled. But I think that it's important to remember that you're not doing a career, a budget, or a schedule, that you're making the thing that you're watching.

1:31:01So watching movies and loving them is very, very useful to keep the sense that what you're doing is that, is an art form. So what I recommend is watch as many movies of as many periods, try to do it systematically. Like say, I'm going to do this week, I'm going to do a Raul Walsh retrospective or a Michael Curtiz, you name it, whatever you want, and be methodical. Start with the first, go to the second, go in order, and you'll start gaining knowledge. And another thing is try to study, dismantle the staging. You know, for example, a staging that is staggering is Catch Me If You Can or Bridge of Spies, Munich, which are not movies that you can watch without doing it a second, third, fourth time.

1:31:52So try to watch movies more than one time. So when I say I watch movies, sometimes I'm watching that movie for the sixth time. And I'm trying to figure out what is the master, where is the coverage, how did the camera move. Certainly when I was younger, now I can tell a lot faster. Did that answer that? Sorry, sorry. Yeah. Evan Breckman.

1:32:17Hi there. Thank you so much for being here. You are, of course, known first and foremost as someone behind the camera. but recently I've seen you appear as an actor in many amazing projects. That's a generous term. Most notably for me, you were in the TV show Barry and you were in the Death Stranding video games. Yes, and Sonny in Philadelphia, man. Oh, yeah. And Poppy McFoyle. Oh, yeah. So how has working as an actor changed how you approach directing? Well, I joined the theater troupe in high school because there was a girl that I was kind of in love with. so I went I like theater but by the way disaster but I used to be like Dolly Parton I would memorize the whole script in one sitting in one hour and I like that and I am maybe on a series next year I won't tell you which one but they're giving me a part I'm going to try you know and what acting is fun when you're acting horrible when you're waiting horrible but what is great is you have to if you can do any profession on the set if i had been the boom guy i've been a pa i've been an ad i've been a wardrobe guy i've been everything in the course of my apprenticeship of decades uh then it's good and part of that is the actor One of the things you gain in knowledge is the loneliest, other than focus puller, is the loneliest position on a set.

1:33:50The actor in front of the camera. And you've got to make them feel comfortable. You've got to make them, you learn how they feel. There's no barrier. So the more you do, the more you know how to do. Emerald Westlake. What a great name. Thank you. Thanks. Frankenstein has been adapted many times, but your film is very different from previous adaptations, and it's very personal, as you've mentioned. You've also spoken about your passion for Mary Shelley's novel before, and so I'd love to hear more about some specific themes or moments that you feel other adaptations overlooked that you wanted to bring forward in your film.

1:34:31Thank you. I think the main thing is how organic, you know, when you're adapting, you're not doing translation. You're adapting, you're transmuting. It's not chemistry, it's alchemy. Over decades, you come to think, if I can evoke the exact same emotions that I felt when I read the book by mixing, for example, I'll give you things that are oblique. Victor waking up with the creature at the foot of the bed has never been committed to film. And it's my favorite passage in the novel. The scope of the furthest north with the frozen ship had never been communicated at that scale or that crucially, frankly, even on movies that indicated.

1:35:18The fact that I tried to make it feel modern, because it's the modern Prometheus, but most period movies feel like pastel taxidermy. Things that are not alive, but they are revered. So I wanted it to be mobile, full of steam, full of mud, full of color, modern, and so on and so forth. The fact that in the novel, Dracula is completely an epistolary novel, meaning made of letters and documents. Shelley doesn't do quite exactly that on Frankenstein, but it is based on diaries and points of view. So if you see the movie again, each of the chapters is a self-contained point of view in terms of camera, color palette, and delivery.

1:36:08First one is blue, white, and gold, the framing of the movie. Then the childhood is white, black, and red, and the black of the mother, the red of the mother carries through the film as the quest for immortality. Victor in his youth is all the colors and the camera moves like a concert sweeping, following, racing. And then the creature's tale is very pastoral. It becomes a fairy tale. It is moss, wood, straw. You know, the shapes are different. The camera moves like with the same sort of pace than the creature and nature, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, that is translating the epistolary nature or the concealed chapters of the novel.

1:36:52The chronicle of the learning of the creature, very different from the novel, but very similar in how it delivers the innocence and the way he learns the ways of the world. In the novel, it can be people chasing him and so on and so forth, and here is the wolves and the people that shoot him and all that, but learning who he is, losing his innocence, learning them with more words come more complications and more questions and finally obtaining grace so the important thing is the final effect is the emotion you know and I think that's extremely important and then a lot of it is Mary Shelley becomes Elizabeth Elizabeth in the novel is very demure and almost childlike and I think or Elizabeth is by the way an amazing Mia Gotham, if I may say.

1:37:48Amazing. We talk about the boys, but Mia Gotham. One thing I learned, sorry to digress, in Shape of Water is the final, final layer of a great makeup effect is the people that are looking at the creature. If Sally Hawkins doesn't look at the creature like it's a real super fish stud, it doesn't work. If Mia Gotham doesn't look at the creature like it's a mixture of Jesus and nature and that which she has pursued, it doesn't work. We could talk about how the adaptation works. There are passages in the novel where he says, I'm kissing Elizabeth and I remember the rotting face of my mother. I have Mia play the mother and Elizabeth so that we link them.

1:38:36In the novel, they describe Elizabeth like an insect. I give Elizabeth all the insect business, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, it takes two and a half years of decisions to make that novel that is 200 years old hopefully come alive again. So there are an innumerable amount of decisions in adapting that, like the ones I mentioned. Did that answer the question? Thank you. Thank you. Really quick last two. We're going to go to Amanda Romero.

1:39:10Hello. Hi, Amanda. Nice to meet you. As somebody with Mexican roots, my question for you is, how did growing up in Mexico and around that specific heritage influence the characters that you create? You know, for example, the way the passions are played, which are played with fears and a lot of drama, you know, and then there is the drama on top of that. That is very much that. I even think that the way we can approach the beautiful and the brutality at the same time, the assembly of the bodies, is the most detailed assembly of anatomical puzzles ever committed to film on a Frankenstein film, but it's done with a waltz.

1:39:56I would say an Anglo-Saxon sensibility would make this a horror sequence. And Mexican sensibility makes it full of life and full of abandon from Victor. The way he disposes of the heads and the legs out on the chute, the way the love, the belief in love as a force of nature. You know, there's so many things that only come to play like that. And then the budget is sufficient, but, you know,$120 million that you want to make look like 250. Mexican ingenuity does that every day. Every day we find solutions that are invisible to other people that come from different backgrounds. To me they are visible.

1:40:41And finally I think that the will to speak with eloquence without any shame you know that's very important. You cannot sing Jose Alfredo Jimenez and have shame. You cannot to sing Jose Jose and have shame. You have to be sort of, alright, give me a mariachi and I'm on. I love singing. So the movie is a song. And if you like it, great. And if you don't like it, fuck it. I'm going to sing it just as passionately. So that's very Mexican. Thank you. Thank you so much. And lastly, Kylie Edwards. Hi, Guillermo. thank you so much for coming I'm a really big fan of yours you mentioned in a recent interview that the real monsters are men in suits and do the horrors of humanity influence your filmmaking yes unfortunately unfortunately that's true I mean I think that hopefully what you do with art is try to say there is a recourse in vulnerability there is a recourse the way our society is assembled success, love, richness these are notions that exist only in crescendo and accumulation blind accumulation we are in a time where people have more money than entire countries, individuals what is the sense in that?

1:42:16I don't understand the obscenity of that you know who's rich? the person that has enough enough if you need more I'm sorry motherfucker you're not rich if you want more you're not rich you know or get more and share more that's good for any rule but the same thing is true of power and I find it really scary how you know this grab for our souls telling us a lot of crimes are done in the name of convenience You know, oh, this is going to be convenient, and then you lose an impulse. And that is very close to happening with art. You know, and they tell us art is not important. But if it's not important, why the fuck do they want it so bad?

1:43:06Why do they want to control it? Why do they want you to use their whatever, app, extension, whatever the hell it is? Because you should not relinquish that. but we are in times where the words have lost their meaning and the truth has sort of disintegrated. So these are the times where we have to find our own truth and one of the ways we can find it is through art. So the real villainy, unfortunately, is that, but the reaction is I'm going to try to create a work of art that is almost like what they say, the way they used to make them. You know, I find that an act of resistance. Because back when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818, the act of resistance was the existentialism or proto-existentialism of the ending of the novel, where the creature is born away by the current and the mist and gets lost.

1:44:03Now, knowing the world is horrible and beautiful at the same time, but the terrible side of the world, the act of resistance is hope and grace. at the end of the movie. And we have to offer, through art, a resistance to those people in suits that tell us that everybody, everybody is vulgar and debased and miserable and offered the alternative of something being wonderful and something being magical and immune to description by mere words. And that's art. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure. Guillermo, on behalf of all of us, Thank you for your work, for your wisdom, and for coming here today. Thank you so much.

1:44:48It's 11 o 'clock. I'm at my age. We're going to be up.

1:45:03Thanks for listening to Awards Chatter. We really appreciate it and would really appreciate you taking just a minute more to subscribe to the podcast and to leave us a rating and review on your podcast app. And to follow us on Twitter and Instagram, where our handle is at Awards Chatter. On those platforms, we announce upcoming guests and provide details about special live recordings of the podcast that you can attend. Until next time, thanks again for tuning in.

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