I was definitely surprised when I got the call to interview Guillermo del Toro for the 10th anniversary DVD release of Cronos. I never thought that since del Toro became a big director with release of Blade 2 and the upcoming release of Hellboy that he would want to talk about his first feature.
But del Toro should be proud of Cronos. It's an excellent film about an older man who discovers an ancient device called the Cronos device. Now the man must use the device to keep himself alive. Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman plays an evil businessman who wants the Cronos for himself.
The first time I saw Cronos I was lucky enough to catch it at the horror festival at Lincoln Center. I was ready to not be impressed because of his oeuvre had not impressed me. I was neither a fan of Blade nor Mimic but I thought Devil's Backbone was fantastic. Luckily enough Cronos has a lot of scares and freakiness in to make anyone happy. Filmmakers like del Toro filter all of the world's horror films through their own unique vision to make something that is at once familiar and also fresh and new.
I got my chance to talk to del Toro while he was editing Hellboy. We talked about being fat, Mike Mignola's artwork and of course pornography.
Check out Guillermo del Toro's Cronos.
Daniel Robert Epstein: I was surprised you had time to talk about Cronos.
Guillermo del Toro: No problem I do. I'm right in the editing room with Hellboy.
DRE: How was it watching Cronos again for the commentary?
GDT: It was the first time I've watched it in a while. Normally it takes a few years for me to watch my own movies with a little more ease. With Cronos enough years have passed that I kind of enjoy it now [laughs].
DRE: Do you enjoy it objectively or just like "That's my first movie"?
GDT: Well that is enjoying it objectively. I find so many things I would do differently. It's like looking at a family album. You can question why you took that trip, why didn't you choose to stay in another hotel, but you can't question is that you were younger and thinner [laughs]. That spirit of youth, innocence and purity are in that movie very much. I think one could question anything about Cronos except how big a heart it has.
DRE: The movie has a lot of religious symbology in it and I read you like to call yourself an ex-Catholic.
GDT: That's true. I'm a lapsed altar boy. I was an altar boy, a spokesperson for the Virgin Mary, I was a choir boy but then at the age of 14 I discovered masturbation and all that went out the window.
DRE: What was your first pornography you saw?
GDT: I was very young. It was of those I found my uncle's magazines experiences. Someone a shot or two of what was going on. I couldn't make head tails of what was going on. It looked kind of surgical to me.
DRE: I did read that you made one of your first Super 8 movies when you were eight.
GDT: That is true I was very young. Back then there weren't any video cameras and Super 8 was the chosen form to record family events. So my father had a Super 8 camera and I would borrow it to do movies with my toys. One of them was filled with exploitation elements.
DRE: I just wondered what would have happened if you discovered your uncle's magazines before you discovered horror movies. You would be making Zalman King type movies now.
GDT: I very well could have. But my earliest thing was horror.
DRE: You started making horror movies right away.
GDT: There are a couple of things on the Cronos DVD that offer hard proof. There is a photo of myself at the age of 8 disguised as a vampire sucking my sister's blood. Then there are a couple of snippets of my Super 8 films. I was into it from the start. I remember when I did Mimic after Cronos some people asked me if I was worried that I might be branded a horror director. I said no that's what I want to be all my life.
DRE: Why did it take 8 years to do Cronos?
GDT: Because it was done in country that should be noted there was no horror tradition except as a commercial type of genre. It was a time when most of the films were being funded by government grants. When I tried to get the screenplay through the industrial channels they would say it's too artistic, too full of high faluting ideas, we don't want to do it. When I tried to get funding from the grants they would say it's a vampire movie and they didn't want to fund it. It was done bit by bit. At one point I went to a producer and he told me there was no one to do the special effects in Mexico. I told him I would do them, I founded my own special effects company all in order to provide effects of the movie. For eight years I did effects for other movies until I got my movie made.
DRE: What made you think of Ron Perlman for Cronos? Were you always a fan of his?
GDT: I was a big fan of his because of the roles he did foremost because of Quest for Fire and The Name of the Rose. His character in Name of the Rose remains one of his great performances. I like actors that are good with pantomime and that can transmit a lot by their presence and attitude more than through their dialogue. Ron is one of them and I really enjoy working with him.
DRE: For a self proclaimed horror geek you actually make very good horror movies. It's very unusual.
GDT: What happens to me is that I am first and foremost a film geek. When I was a teenager there was no video in my country. Betamax came to Mexico very slowly. I was part of a group that had a cinema club so every week we would project two or three movies on 16 or 35mm. I was the projectionist of the group and then we would have discussions. I was exposed to world cinema for seven years during my tenure there. I see horror as part of legitimate film. I don't see it as an independent genre that has nothing to do with the rest of cinema. Luis Bunuel, David Lynch or Jean Cocteau have done stuff that have used the genre. My frame of reference goes beyond Romero, Fulci and the usual suspects but I can of course see their place in film.
DRE: What was more personal Devil's Backbone or Cronos?
GDT: Both very much so. I like Devil's Backbone much more in the sense
DRE: You knew what you were doing more.
GDT: That is exactly it. There is a level of craftsmanship and assuredness that is much higher than Cronos.
DRE: If I was to say that Devil's Backbone is very personal and Blade 2 was on the other end of that spectrum where does Hellboy fall?
GDT: Hellboy is the first movie where both ends of the spectrum are combined. I think it's as big a spectacle as Blade 2 and at the same time is a very personal movie I've wanted to do for many years. I was lucky enough to do it on my own terms with Ron Perlman as the star of a $60 million movie [laughs]. Some people ask me how I did it and I say I don't know. I just stuck by my guns until it got made. It was a miracle. It has a lot to do with the studio that is financing it. They have not only shown tolerance but enjoyment of the stuff I am doing.
DRE: Did you have a chance to see Ron in Star Trek Nemesis?
GDT: No we were shooting when the movie came out.
DRE: How did the Hellboy shoot go?
GDT: It went incredibly smooth. It is actually the best shooting experience I have ever had. It is the first time I found myself fully enjoying a set. For Devil's Backbone I loved it but I felt very pressured but so I was neurotic on the shoot. I was incredibly tense because I felt the movie was such a difficult film to deliver tonally with the war and horror. Blade 2 was great but I was not as personally invested. With Hellboy it was the best of both worlds.
DRE: I just watched the Pang Brothers movie The Eye last night. It seems like more and more foreign horror films are being influenced by mainstream American horror movies. I felt Devil's Backbone was a twist on a lot of American horror films coming out.
GDT: I think that The Eye is a particularly Americanized take on horror. I think other things like Audition are different. Even the original The Ring still resonate more as a Japanese culture movie. Also Versus. What was unique about Devil's Backbone's release in America is that the US was the only country where it came out six moths later than in foreign countries. Devil's Backbone was seen as a take on the same ghost story only in the US.
But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.
DRE: Mike Mignola wouldn't tell me if Hellboy has sex in the movie. Will you tell me?
GDT: Not in the movie. Maybe during breaks [laughs].
DRE: Mignola also said that when the two of you first sat down together you both said Ron Perlman would be perfect as Hellboy at the same time.
GDT: Yes at the same time. We actually said lets say it together, 1, 2, 3 and we both said Ron Perlman. I was afraid he would say someone unattainable like Bruce Willis. To me Ron is as star don't get me wrong. But if he had chosen Bruce Willis or Jim Carrey to play Hellboy ultimately the concern becomes the star and not the character.
DRE: When the Wachowski brothers put out Bound they handed their cinematographer Frank Miller's Sin City and said can you make our movie look like this and he said not with today's technology. You took on the very difficult challenge of trying to do Mignola's art in live action. How tough was it?
GDT: I issued a style guide on the colors and shapes in the movie. But the main thing with it is that you have to realize that Mignola cheats a lot. He cheats shadows and light where there shouldn't be any. He himself is the first one to admit it; he says if I don't like something I make it black. From the moment you realize it's impossible to make a literal translation you stop worrying about it and enjoy it. The movie is not the comic but it is the best movie I could make out of that comic. The comic is fantastic but it's totally dependent on comic book storytelling. You can juxtapose, freeze frame a whole page. It's a completely different ball of wax. The comic is a masterpiece and the movie is definitely reverential of that.
DRE: Are you a touch worried after The Hulk and League of Extraordinary Gentleman didn't do as well as anyone wanted?
GDT: I really am not because I don't think in commercial terms whether that's fortunate or not. I am going to mind the grosses, the opening box offices but why I am concerned with mostly is for the movie to be what I want it to be. There is no way to control that. It's totally serendipitous. Those two movies play the comic book game the way they saw it fit. I think it's very different from what I am doing. I'm not changing the comic as much as they did. They were huge departures.
DRE: Are you still friends with the monsters?
GDT: Yes I am now they all live inside me. I'm big enough now that I'm a housing project for the monsters.
DRE: Is it true you have a photographic memory?
GDT: I would say so.
DRE: How does that help when you're making a movie? Sometimes in movies you want to recreate a feeling rather than a scene exactly.
GDT: It has proved very useful especially in this stage where I am editing. For example I spend 30 or 40 minutes with my editor looking for a take only I remember. I find it very useful.
DRE: Do you have any tattoos?
GDT: [laughs] No. I would never do that. I'm already screwed up enough.
DRE: But you're such a great artist. You could put one of your drawings on your arm.
GDT: Only on my soul. That is heavily tattooed.
DRE: Have you met many of your Goth fans?
GDT: I have and I enjoy interacting with them very much. I have been lucky that only a few have turned out to be not so nice.
DRE: What do the not so nice ones do?
GDT: They linger around and touch themselves.
DRE: I thought you might like that though.
GDT: Not in public.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
But del Toro should be proud of Cronos. It's an excellent film about an older man who discovers an ancient device called the Cronos device. Now the man must use the device to keep himself alive. Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman plays an evil businessman who wants the Cronos for himself.
The first time I saw Cronos I was lucky enough to catch it at the horror festival at Lincoln Center. I was ready to not be impressed because of his oeuvre had not impressed me. I was neither a fan of Blade nor Mimic but I thought Devil's Backbone was fantastic. Luckily enough Cronos has a lot of scares and freakiness in to make anyone happy. Filmmakers like del Toro filter all of the world's horror films through their own unique vision to make something that is at once familiar and also fresh and new.
I got my chance to talk to del Toro while he was editing Hellboy. We talked about being fat, Mike Mignola's artwork and of course pornography.
Check out Guillermo del Toro's Cronos.
Daniel Robert Epstein: I was surprised you had time to talk about Cronos.
Guillermo del Toro: No problem I do. I'm right in the editing room with Hellboy.
DRE: How was it watching Cronos again for the commentary?
GDT: It was the first time I've watched it in a while. Normally it takes a few years for me to watch my own movies with a little more ease. With Cronos enough years have passed that I kind of enjoy it now [laughs].
DRE: Do you enjoy it objectively or just like "That's my first movie"?
GDT: Well that is enjoying it objectively. I find so many things I would do differently. It's like looking at a family album. You can question why you took that trip, why didn't you choose to stay in another hotel, but you can't question is that you were younger and thinner [laughs]. That spirit of youth, innocence and purity are in that movie very much. I think one could question anything about Cronos except how big a heart it has.
DRE: The movie has a lot of religious symbology in it and I read you like to call yourself an ex-Catholic.
GDT: That's true. I'm a lapsed altar boy. I was an altar boy, a spokesperson for the Virgin Mary, I was a choir boy but then at the age of 14 I discovered masturbation and all that went out the window.
DRE: What was your first pornography you saw?
GDT: I was very young. It was of those I found my uncle's magazines experiences. Someone a shot or two of what was going on. I couldn't make head tails of what was going on. It looked kind of surgical to me.
DRE: I did read that you made one of your first Super 8 movies when you were eight.
GDT: That is true I was very young. Back then there weren't any video cameras and Super 8 was the chosen form to record family events. So my father had a Super 8 camera and I would borrow it to do movies with my toys. One of them was filled with exploitation elements.
DRE: I just wondered what would have happened if you discovered your uncle's magazines before you discovered horror movies. You would be making Zalman King type movies now.
GDT: I very well could have. But my earliest thing was horror.
DRE: You started making horror movies right away.
GDT: There are a couple of things on the Cronos DVD that offer hard proof. There is a photo of myself at the age of 8 disguised as a vampire sucking my sister's blood. Then there are a couple of snippets of my Super 8 films. I was into it from the start. I remember when I did Mimic after Cronos some people asked me if I was worried that I might be branded a horror director. I said no that's what I want to be all my life.
DRE: Why did it take 8 years to do Cronos?
GDT: Because it was done in country that should be noted there was no horror tradition except as a commercial type of genre. It was a time when most of the films were being funded by government grants. When I tried to get the screenplay through the industrial channels they would say it's too artistic, too full of high faluting ideas, we don't want to do it. When I tried to get funding from the grants they would say it's a vampire movie and they didn't want to fund it. It was done bit by bit. At one point I went to a producer and he told me there was no one to do the special effects in Mexico. I told him I would do them, I founded my own special effects company all in order to provide effects of the movie. For eight years I did effects for other movies until I got my movie made.
DRE: What made you think of Ron Perlman for Cronos? Were you always a fan of his?
GDT: I was a big fan of his because of the roles he did foremost because of Quest for Fire and The Name of the Rose. His character in Name of the Rose remains one of his great performances. I like actors that are good with pantomime and that can transmit a lot by their presence and attitude more than through their dialogue. Ron is one of them and I really enjoy working with him.
DRE: For a self proclaimed horror geek you actually make very good horror movies. It's very unusual.
GDT: What happens to me is that I am first and foremost a film geek. When I was a teenager there was no video in my country. Betamax came to Mexico very slowly. I was part of a group that had a cinema club so every week we would project two or three movies on 16 or 35mm. I was the projectionist of the group and then we would have discussions. I was exposed to world cinema for seven years during my tenure there. I see horror as part of legitimate film. I don't see it as an independent genre that has nothing to do with the rest of cinema. Luis Bunuel, David Lynch or Jean Cocteau have done stuff that have used the genre. My frame of reference goes beyond Romero, Fulci and the usual suspects but I can of course see their place in film.
DRE: What was more personal Devil's Backbone or Cronos?
GDT: Both very much so. I like Devil's Backbone much more in the sense
DRE: You knew what you were doing more.
GDT: That is exactly it. There is a level of craftsmanship and assuredness that is much higher than Cronos.
DRE: If I was to say that Devil's Backbone is very personal and Blade 2 was on the other end of that spectrum where does Hellboy fall?
GDT: Hellboy is the first movie where both ends of the spectrum are combined. I think it's as big a spectacle as Blade 2 and at the same time is a very personal movie I've wanted to do for many years. I was lucky enough to do it on my own terms with Ron Perlman as the star of a $60 million movie [laughs]. Some people ask me how I did it and I say I don't know. I just stuck by my guns until it got made. It was a miracle. It has a lot to do with the studio that is financing it. They have not only shown tolerance but enjoyment of the stuff I am doing.
DRE: Did you have a chance to see Ron in Star Trek Nemesis?
GDT: No we were shooting when the movie came out.
DRE: How did the Hellboy shoot go?
GDT: It went incredibly smooth. It is actually the best shooting experience I have ever had. It is the first time I found myself fully enjoying a set. For Devil's Backbone I loved it but I felt very pressured but so I was neurotic on the shoot. I was incredibly tense because I felt the movie was such a difficult film to deliver tonally with the war and horror. Blade 2 was great but I was not as personally invested. With Hellboy it was the best of both worlds.
DRE: I just watched the Pang Brothers movie The Eye last night. It seems like more and more foreign horror films are being influenced by mainstream American horror movies. I felt Devil's Backbone was a twist on a lot of American horror films coming out.
GDT: I think that The Eye is a particularly Americanized take on horror. I think other things like Audition are different. Even the original The Ring still resonate more as a Japanese culture movie. Also Versus. What was unique about Devil's Backbone's release in America is that the US was the only country where it came out six moths later than in foreign countries. Devil's Backbone was seen as a take on the same ghost story only in the US.
But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.
DRE: Mike Mignola wouldn't tell me if Hellboy has sex in the movie. Will you tell me?
GDT: Not in the movie. Maybe during breaks [laughs].
DRE: Mignola also said that when the two of you first sat down together you both said Ron Perlman would be perfect as Hellboy at the same time.
GDT: Yes at the same time. We actually said lets say it together, 1, 2, 3 and we both said Ron Perlman. I was afraid he would say someone unattainable like Bruce Willis. To me Ron is as star don't get me wrong. But if he had chosen Bruce Willis or Jim Carrey to play Hellboy ultimately the concern becomes the star and not the character.
DRE: When the Wachowski brothers put out Bound they handed their cinematographer Frank Miller's Sin City and said can you make our movie look like this and he said not with today's technology. You took on the very difficult challenge of trying to do Mignola's art in live action. How tough was it?
GDT: I issued a style guide on the colors and shapes in the movie. But the main thing with it is that you have to realize that Mignola cheats a lot. He cheats shadows and light where there shouldn't be any. He himself is the first one to admit it; he says if I don't like something I make it black. From the moment you realize it's impossible to make a literal translation you stop worrying about it and enjoy it. The movie is not the comic but it is the best movie I could make out of that comic. The comic is fantastic but it's totally dependent on comic book storytelling. You can juxtapose, freeze frame a whole page. It's a completely different ball of wax. The comic is a masterpiece and the movie is definitely reverential of that.
DRE: Are you a touch worried after The Hulk and League of Extraordinary Gentleman didn't do as well as anyone wanted?
GDT: I really am not because I don't think in commercial terms whether that's fortunate or not. I am going to mind the grosses, the opening box offices but why I am concerned with mostly is for the movie to be what I want it to be. There is no way to control that. It's totally serendipitous. Those two movies play the comic book game the way they saw it fit. I think it's very different from what I am doing. I'm not changing the comic as much as they did. They were huge departures.
DRE: Are you still friends with the monsters?
GDT: Yes I am now they all live inside me. I'm big enough now that I'm a housing project for the monsters.
DRE: Is it true you have a photographic memory?
GDT: I would say so.
DRE: How does that help when you're making a movie? Sometimes in movies you want to recreate a feeling rather than a scene exactly.
GDT: It has proved very useful especially in this stage where I am editing. For example I spend 30 or 40 minutes with my editor looking for a take only I remember. I find it very useful.
DRE: Do you have any tattoos?
GDT: [laughs] No. I would never do that. I'm already screwed up enough.
DRE: But you're such a great artist. You could put one of your drawings on your arm.
GDT: Only on my soul. That is heavily tattooed.
DRE: Have you met many of your Goth fans?
GDT: I have and I enjoy interacting with them very much. I have been lucky that only a few have turned out to be not so nice.
DRE: What do the not so nice ones do?
GDT: They linger around and touch themselves.
DRE: I thought you might like that though.
GDT: Not in public.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
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he is the number one influence of my art!