Guillermo del Toro

27:52Like if I wanted a toy, he said, save. My older brother once said, oh, but that shouldn't happen because we're rich. And my father said, I'm rich. You're not. And neither are your brothers. It's like back to Buñuel. I want to know why Louis Buñuel was in Mexico. Did he shoot a movie in Mexico? Buñuel escaped right around the Franco era. He went to, I believe he went to New York first. I think he came into a really bad situation with Dali. I think Dali was very pro-Franco, very pro-fascist. And he hated Buñuel. They started together, but he hated him. He was fired from his position in New York because of Dali.

28:38And I think years later, he encountered Dali on the street and he punched him. Good. And Buñuel had said, very famously, he said to his friends, he said, if I disappear, look everywhere for me except Mexico. And he ended up in Mexico because there was a very strong colony of intellectuals, you know, left-wing Marxist intellectuals. And when Buñuel landed, he started making movies there, and he stayed there the rest of his life. I love that. And he ran a very conservative household. He was very wild in his mind, but in his everyday, he was Don Luis. He was a very, he ran a very Catholic home. He lived in Mexico City.

29:24Yeah, the kids needed to be home at nine. He was a very jealous man. He wanted traditional roles in his family. The wife stayed at home. He went and earned the bread. It was a very interesting paradox. Such a great filmmaker. Incredible filmmaker. I mean, I think that the thing with filmmaking is your paradox is what gives you your vocabulary. People have this word vision. and I think it's a hostage negotiation with reality. Filmmaking is not dictating. Filmmaking is negotiating an image or a moment with the actors, with reality, with the sun, with the light, with the color, you know, and it's a complete dialogue with what is happening in front of you.

30:09It's an active, it's not a dictatorial position. To me, the dialogue with reality produces art. And the collaboration with other people. Yeah, I think that film is very social. I think that for people, you have a filmography for you. It's part of your biography. You neglect family, you neglect friends, you neglect everything. And in exchange, you get a family of 120 people for 20 weeks. And you have to treat those people like family. And then you say goodbye to them, yeah? Yeah, but it's carnival. It's a carnival. You will meet them in another town down the road in another season, and you have to accept it like that.

30:58Carnies, the tradition in a carnival, most of the people were outlaws because they were running from justice. They were running. So they would say, look, I cannot go to that town. I'll see you three towns down because I'm wanted in that town because I was a burglar or a shoplifter or whatever. They would skip a town. Interesting. The Carnies called each other Moe. How are you, Moe? I'm good, Moe. They didn't want anyone to hear their real names. And what is it like on a film? Yeah. You know, William Friedkin used to call everybody on the set Moe. Yeah. I know somebody who, was it another film director?

31:37Oh, he's called everybody Darling. Yeah. That was very common. It's like Darling. Darling. Oh, my Darling. What's my name? I don't know, Darling. But you're darling to me. It was Richard Attenborough, apparently. He always called everyone darling. It's very theater. Yeah. It's very theater. Well, you meet a lot of people. You're with a lot of people. You have to... When you're writing your films, when you're alone in a room, if you are writing, do you write by yourself? I try to. I mean, the reality is sometimes I like association because it takes care of... Even if you don't like what is being written, you know how you correct it and it becomes active.

32:19The loneliness of the empty page is very, very difficult. But there are movies, for example, this Frankenstein, I could not co-write with anyone. Can we talk about Frankenstein? It's like Pan's Labyrinth. I couldn't co-write it with anyone. I couldn't explain what I wanted. Pan's Labyrinth, it took me six months to find the opening image. And once I found the opening image, I understood the whole movie and I wrote it in six weeks or nine weeks. Something really quick. With Frankenstein, I wrote the opening 15 pages, and the studio said, how is it going? I said, fantastic, because I started writing that movie, the idea, for more than 20 years ago.

32:59Oh, 20 years ago? Yeah, I thought, this is what I'm going to do, and you laid the plan, and then I wrote those 15 pages, and I stopped until I collected, I put the novel on the computer, the entire novel, and I started taking every paragraph that I liked and then discarding the ones that I thought I had absorbed until I had nothing on the page again. So I went through the novel that way, and then I wrote. But it took a while. It took a while, too. And that brings us to Monster. I know it's probably an anathema for you to mention, but you know Mel Brooks' Frankenstein? It's a masterpiece. I love it.

33:39It's a masterpiece. And one thing I think... It's one of the great movies. Do you think so? I'm so pleased you say that. Because I did a podcast with Mel. Oh, my Lord. And he's 98 now. And for me, one of the beautiful things about young Frankenstein was, of course, the songs and the humor. But it was also there was nobody in that whole trajectory that was a bad person. No. You know, everyone... There's no villain. There's no villain. No. You know, and the loneliness of Frankenstein... and the creature when he just sits on that rock. So I'm glad you like that. So tell me about your... I think it's a masterpiece.

34:17Why do you think it's a masterpiece? First of all, it is not a pastiche. It was something that was very dear to Gene Wilder first, and then to Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks second. It's not based so much on Bride or the original Frankenstein. It's based much more on Son of Frankenstein, which in my opinion is one of the great movies. I don't know it. What is it? It's a very, very good movie that few people know. That's the origin of the assistant's name being Igor. Yeah, Igor. And the original Frankenstein is called Fritz. Yeah. You know? But Son of Frankenstein is a really interesting movie. It was done by a director that was an improvisational director.

35:01He didn't want to stick to the screenplay. What year would that be? I don't want to lie. Okay, we'll find out. Yeah, it's the last movie where Karloff plays the monster. And the director would come in the morning and say, well, what are we going to do? Let's try this, let's try that. The movie went over budget, over schedule, but the result is very creative, incredibly visual. Vela Lugosi, who was down on his luck, he was out of money and Universal didn't want to pay him well at all. and the director said, don't worry, I'll keep you around. And he kept him around for months. And the movie is one of the three masterpieces.

35:46That includes many of the parts, the wardrobe that Jim Wilder has is from that movie. The man with the wooden arm, the constable is from that movie. Many, many of the things are from that movie. And the score of Young Frankenstein is one of the great, most melancholic. Yeah, exactly. The composer, Maurice, he composed two of the most melancholic, longing scores in the history of movies, The Elephant Man and Young Frankenstein. Incredible. They had it here in the West End in London, and I know Mel, so we went together. But I think I took almost everyone who worked here. I just wanted to take everyone to see it.

36:30It's funny, but it's so affectionate. Affectionate. So tell me about your Frankenstein. Well, you know, there are certain tales that grow with you and they become you and then you can, you know, it's like a great song. You know, you sing on your range. Nobody wants to sing out of their range. And there are two or three, you know, everybody gets up and you don't want to do karaoke. Yeah. You know, and that's why I love John Frankenstein. It's not karaoke. Okay. It's a new song by a voice you haven't heard. about a thing that is universal. And I can say that that's what I want to do. What is universal?

37:14Well, there are certain characters, there are about 10, 20 characters in the history of mankind's narrative that are universal. Okay, tell me some. I'll tell you. For example, these are characters that even if you haven't read the book, you know what they mean. Dracula, instantly. Sherlock Holmes, instantly. Tarzan, Pinocchio, Frankenstein. There are very few. The Count of Monte Cristo. You know the basics. No matter if you haven't read it, you know Monte Cristo is about revenge. You know Pinocchio wants to be human, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So these few characters become the vocabulary of humanity in the same way that certain symbols are common to all humanity.

37:54Dragons. All cultures have dragons. The theory behind it anthropologically is that people combine the predators, the mammals fear the most. an eagle and a lizard like a large alligator and they combined them and they became an object of fear vampirism not every culture but most of them have it ghosts so these are the vocabulary of humanity and when that character is that big it can be rephrased and it changes value What do I mean by that? Romeo and Juliet, right? There's a huge premise. I tell you, Romeo and Juliet, you say, I've seen it. I said, no, no, no, no, no. Wait. It's in a favela in Brazil.

38:41I haven't seen it. In 1965, the year that the, you know, and then the specifics bring down the register of the song and change the modulation of the song. And all of a sudden, the song is new. That happens if a thing is that personal to you. And it's the same. For example, most people say, I love Singing in the Rain. And I love that song. And you sing it. I'm singing in the rain. And they know it. They don't know that this was the third or fourth time that song had been in a movie. I didn't know that. Since the 30s. I didn't know that. And it had never quite catched on the way it covered Gene Kelly.

39:24so in creating something like Pinocchio or Frankenstein these are things that have been absorbed molecularly by me and when I sing them I hope you haven't heard that song you know that's the way you go at it if you didn't have anything to add don't get up yeah because we can as a person in the audience we long as you say to hear the different you know your Frankenstein your Pinocchio that's what you hope yeah

39:55If you like listening to Ruthie's Table 4, would you please make sure to rate and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.

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40:55Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home. Right now, you can shop up to 60 % off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washablesofas.com. Add a little... to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50 % and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. But when you wake up in the morning, do you think about what you're going to eat that day or when you go to bed at night?

41:36One of the things I adore, but it's very, very hard to find truly, truly expressive, is eggs. I think eggs are one of the things that tell you the culture of the country. In what way? The French eggs are amazing. The best eggs, my opinion, Spanish. Japanese eggs are Japanese eggs. Okay, so you're talking about the way they cook the eggs. No. You're talking about the quality of the egg itself. and the yoke is either musical and beautiful or dour. And I must say, and you have to guide me in here, I haven't had an interesting dialogue with UK eggs. Maybe. It's been very, very, very... We could try and set up that dialogue, but it is, you know, it's very dour.

42:24I think, yeah, we'll try it. The only place where it's worse is... Carry on eggs. What about the United States? I mean, you know, that's really... No, no. If we're going to go for culture and eggs, we'd have to stay. Not good. Have you had an omelet in New York? No, not good. You know, that's it. No. Because, look, it's one of the most intimate foods, right? An egg. An egg. Well, let's talk about... It comes from the chicken. It does look the whole being of the chicken going into it. Here we go. And if the chicken is unhappy and sad and, you know, whatever it is, the egg is a really depressing egg.

42:59So what do you do for eggs? I go to France or wait to get lucky and go to Spain. Go to Spain. I had really good eggs in Mexico. You know, there's the huevos divorciados, there's huevos rancheros, there's huevo mexicana. There's so many ways. I tell you, chilaquiles. And chilaquiles. It's a poem. Chilaquiles, yeah. Chilaquiles with a fire. Can you tell the audience what it is? Chilaquiles, what you do is you chop a tortilla. it can be either dry or fresh and then you soak it in a really good salsa with onion, garlic tomato, salt, blah blah blah and you soak it until the chilaquiles are soggy the tortilla gets soggy again but it has to be the perfect balance can be too soggy, can be too dry I don't like crisp chilaquiles they have to be slightly soggy and then you put them on a plate, you put cream, cheese and a fried egg on top and a side of fried beans.

44:03We have them. And that's for me, to me, I agree with you. That's what I miss the most. Yeah. Can you make that? Where do you live? Mostly Los Angeles and part of the time in Toronto and you cannot get chilaquiles in Toronto if you held the prime minister for ransom. You can't. Yeah. LA. LA, you must be. Oh, my Lord, yes. Yeah. And you can have really good Mexican. Always with the green chili sauce, isn't it? No, no, no. Or do you do it with red chili? The tomatillo sauce, you can have tomatillo sauce, or you can have red tomato sauce. But in LA, I can have every great Mexican food I need every day if I want to, and I often do.

44:49When we think about food, we think about, you know, what we were saying about sharing about your parents, the way you cooked at home, about the power of deciding. And it's also seduction. And I think in The Shape of Water, what really moved me was the scene with the egg. Yeah. You know, when the beautiful woman is holding the, it's just a simple boiled egg, isn't it? It's just an egg. Tell me about that scene. Can you describe that scene? Because it is an almost, it's saying, come to me, isn't it? It's saying, I will get this creature from the water that could be frightening, that could be scary with an egg.

45:26And you can see that the creature is coming out of the water and is perplexed. That's entirely autobiographical. What? That's entirely autobiographical. Tell me that. The one thing I do every week is hard-boiled eggs. That's my dietary supplement. And the only thing I cook is hard-boiled eggs. And I do it perfectly. Okay, tell me, how do you cook a hard-boiled egg? Well, the way I like them is you boil the water for 15 minutes until it's really, really, really hot. And then you put the eggs and you let it simmer. Do you turn off then the heat? Oh, you keep it simmering. You keep it simmering for another 15.

46:03And then you turn it off but leave them there. Yeah. And then you grab one and you roll it. And if you can take the shell out in one single move, then they're good. Yeah. You know, and I do it every week with 20, 30, every week. and the first two days you don't want to open the fridge because it smells like a boil day. And Kim hates it. She goes, oh my God, you're boiling it. I go, yeah, sorry. But that's my favorite sort of pocket food, so to speak. And so when you did that scene, what were you thinking? I'm the fish. You're the fish. First of all, I belong in water. I'm a great swimmer, good scuba diver.

46:41If I am in water all day long, I'm happy. But also, the egg is a symbol of two things, fertility and immortality. And I think there was a beautiful courtship, a very succinct thing with her being represented by the egg. The movie opens with her putting a timer in the shape of an egg, and she has three minutes to find pleasure in the bathtub before going to work. And it's a symbol of what is eternal. And for me in the movie is you find people of relative values except her that are social values. The guy wants power. The bad guy wants power. The Americans want to win the space race, this and that.

47:29And you find a creature that is a god. And then they chain it. And they want to operate upon it. They want to kill it. They want to make it submissive. They want to make it a thing. and then at the end it's revealed he is a god. So the eternal of the egg was at play. There's a many, the way I try to layer the movies is you don't have to read them the way I write them, but I write them very carefully in terms of symbols or organizing the colors and the things to mean something. That doesn't mean you have the obligation of reading it that way. And that is very much like cooking and eating. When you are an audience member in a movie theater, or in a museum with a piece of painting.

48:14You can see the piece of painting and say, I like it or I don't like it, and then you move on to the next one. If you have an educated palette, you learn to see the composition, the brush strokes, the color balance, the point of view, the thematic elements, the rendition, etc., etc. You can have a dialogue with a painting for an hour, two hours, depending on your level of sort of palette sophistication. Same is true with a movie. But I say that, you know, my husband was an architect and many of my friends are filmmakers. And I say, you create a work of art and it lasts forever. You know, if somebody doesn't like your building today, they might understand it in a week's time or a year's time or 10 years' time.

49:03Or if you make a movie and it got bad reviews, then we might all understand it. I make a work of art and it's eaten, like in five minutes and it's gone. Yeah, but I don't think it's ever gone. I don't think it's ever gone. It's a memory. Especially if it has heavy cheese. It never leaves. No, but let's talk about that because I do think I have had a few meals in my lifetime that are as cherished for me as family memories. And I'm not exaggerating. I'm not being hyperbolic. I mean it. I remember very particularly there was a soup in El Bouye, north of Barcelona, that was for many years the most famous restaurant in the world.

49:48El Bouye, yeah, I've been there. One time we went, and last night they were open for the season, and one of the dishes which made me cry was a soup of potato three ways. that was like you were eating a soup or potato that was your grandma's if she was a chemical engineer, a molecular engineer. So there was a molecular density to it that was completely, it filled you, it moved you, it caressed you, it comforted you. And I cried. I'm not making this up. I'm not trying to be interesting for the podcast. I cried. And it reminded me of my childhood. It was a full Ratatouille moment. And at the end of the night, they said, well, they served the dessert once, a crepe of creme, which means that they made a film.

50:43You know how the milk creates that film on top that is just cream, like a skin of cream? They would use that to make a crepe that was filled with another cream. And they were closer, and I said, did any of those get left behind? And they said, about 20. and they brought them to the table and we disposed of the cream. Brilliant restaurant, brilliant genius, and wonderful, wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah, food is memory. Food is memory. And so when you make a movie, and I do want to talk for a few minutes just about lovable monsters because that is something that is very important to me because it tells the lesson of life about how you love something as you say the other.

51:26But let's just get to the process of making a film and food. Do you care about what you feed the people who work on your set? And do you mind stopping at lunchtime for stopping work? I don't like it. Like when you do it in Spain, for example, if you shoot a movie in Spain, there will be wine involved. Oh, really? Yeah, and that means that the hour after the lunch is going to start really, really slow. Right. And then you never quite recuperate. Yeah. You know? But if you do it, my favorite is what they call French hours. French hours. I've learned about French hours. It's 10 hours. 10 hours of work and that's it.

52:02You concentrate. There's food on the set, but that's it. Where are you on it? Have you finished filming it now? I finished Friday. I finished shooting. That's what I thought. Yeah. Are you going home then? Yeah, yeah, tomorrow. That's terrible. I just stayed for this. No. And so when will you be back? I don't know. Depends on the tequila. Okay. No, but I am in post-production. I cut every day. Where will you edit it? I will finish editing in L.A. In L.A.? Yeah. And do you eat when you're editing? You know, yes and no. I mean, I have a coffee with whatever is there. Yeah. And I have bowls and bowls of tangerines.

52:39Yeah. Tangerines. I eat the tangerines with the peel. And the butterscotch. With the peel. With the peel. Interesting. I wash them. And the peel is so good. It is good. I sometimes eat the fruit and then I go back to the peel. Yeah, yeah, you do that. I've never kind of crunched into it. In Mexico, we eat the caramelized fruit. I'm so good. And I love lemons in Mexico. How often do you go back to Mexico? I used to go a lot, and now all my parents are dead. And I don't like, every time I land, I feel really lonely. Yeah. I mean, it's really difficult for me. Even knowing that they took the train and they went off.

53:18It doesn't matter, because to me, the parents and the kids leave a hole in the universe. basically part of the universe just ceases to exist and there's no way you can process that it's totemic to the point where if you lose a kid there's no word for you if you lose a husband or a wife you're a widow if you lose a parent or an orphan if you lose a kid you're indescribably destroyed so the thing with my parents is I didn't know my father died and I processed it reasonably well and then when my mother died I couldn't I want to but I can't but Mexico City is on fire it's amazing now the food is incredible the art is amazing it's one of the great cities of the world I think so people sometimes ask me where you'd like to live other than London they expect me to say an Italian city for me Mexico was really powerful.

54:25To me it is, to this day. As a kid from a provincial city, which my city was a provincial city, I still get a thrill going to Mexico City. And the mornings, the smell of the mornings in Mexico City with the wet streets is incredible. I don't think people realize how green Mexico City is. Oh, very. That's the thing that really hit me, was how green a city was. the trees, I couldn't see the sky sometimes and it's a city that is patterned after Paris I didn't know that during the Porfirio Diaz period the model was Paris the Heisman's Paris with the large boulevards and the big buildings and the Bellas Artes and the Reforma and all that if you had to think of a food that when you were needing comfort, not when you're hungry, not when you want to celebrate, not when you want something to eat for your kids.

55:27Is there something that gives you comfort? Yes, but it's such a cliche. Refried beans. Refried beans, yeah. Is it a cliche? It is a cliche a little bit. I like it. I mean, it's, to me, and they are not one thing. Like, there are at least 10 ways of having a refried bean. Tell me one of the ways. One way that I like that I've only tried once in a little stand in Mexico City is they mix them with lentils. They have lentils and refried beans together, and it was so fantastic. If you try it in the restaurant, you can call them Guillermo beans. Okay, we will. We'll call them Guillermo beans. Thank you.

56:08It was a beautiful interview.

56:12Well, darling. Well, it did, darling. Thank you. That was good. You're getting butter. Yeah. Do you want to go? No, I'll have a lunch. What, are you kidding me? Do we have more glasses? Yes. Can we have some more? Do you all guys want any tequila?

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