BFI Screen Talk: Guillermo del Toro | BFI London Film Festival 2017

so first thing congratulations on the sublime the shape of water it's beautiful when moving and just the really strange things mustn't touch them the feedback is very weird so it's an amazing from and we will get to that in due course but first of all I want to talk to you about monsters because you love monsters you've said monsters are real for me monsters are a religion to me and you found companionship in monsters so can we just sort of start there and obviously lots your films contain monsters so why and what do you mean by them being a religion because you talk about the creature is that the Holy Spirit is Royce true I mean I have there was a very lonely child you know I was very strange and when I was a kid up from the crib I I started I saw my brother and I stayed late and watched a movie a program called the Outer Limits and we shouldn't have stayed late and it was an episode called a mutant with warren oates he would chew it I was it's a house where we lived went from when I was a baby to age 4 and I was leaping on the crib so around - and it's is he appears with giant eyes and a bald head and I started screaming and I couldn't stop and my brother was a bit of an grabbed me and put me in the crib and zip me up zip it closed and then he had the great idea to in in a magic shop they used to sell this rubber eggs as a joke and he put the eggs and he put a stocking on his head so he looked bald on a giant ice and he peeked into the crib and I peed all over Ravana and I was so scared and then from then on I started having lucid nightmares which meant I would wake up and dream that I was waking up in the crib but everything was alive in the room there will be things in the closet there would be my parents have this green shaggy rug and and it was a sea of fingers waving waiting for me to go to the bathroom so I peed in the grave again and my mother got really angry at me and so one night I this is completely true I got up into the career and I said to the monsters in the room if you let me go to the bathroom I'll be your friend forever and you know they let me go to the I already went don't worry but but but it's true and then you know I my my therapist explained to me but sometimes when you have a huge fear you actually revert it into something you like sort of a micro alliance with with your worst side you know like Stockholm Syndrome times then and and what happened is from then on most of the monsters I saw would not scare me and the moment and there was a moment that was very religious for me when Boris Karloff as the creature comes through the threshold in Frankenstein I I was moved to tears I was like I saw the Messiah you know I saw I was st. Paul on the road to Damascus I saw a christ-like figure full of suffering and beatitude you know his eyes were up sort of like a saint or in in Mexico the Mexico and Philippines have the goriest Catholic imagery and and they and for some reason Jesus has like an exponent right exposed wrong bone fracture risk taking out but it looks like he's coming he's like oh no he's like it's like weird combination it's like a is like the excesses of saint arias and by Bernini you know it's like okay so when Karloff came in his eyes were open I was like Jesus and it started a relationship where I felt solace and identification and it was either that or I befriended a nest of ants and I talked to each ant in the garden so pretty sad you know but my mind was always racing imagining things and and I started drawing monsters when I was very very young my I spent a long time with my grandmother living there and she hated that I drew monsters she thought I was abnormal and they took me to I'm the psychologist and and he gave me a cube of clay and said sculpt whatever you want and I sculpted a skeleton that didn't didn't help my case there is a nice anecdote which I've never told anyone but it's funny my mother started reading child psychology and came and came late one night and saw these abnormal drawings in the kitchen and she said I'm afraid Guillermo may be severely damaged she told my father because these drawings indicate and low intelligence and my father says I'd Road [Music] poor dad it is real I think that when I read Mary Shelley's novel it moved me you know it made me think of a melatonin tragedy like you truly express the questions that are basic to mankind why am I here you know the relationship with an uncaring creator it really really moved me and and it was through through those books and those experiences in literature that you end up you know you start with horror you're gonna wander into Mary Shelley for sure any other Allan Poe for sure but then you go into Victor Hugo's called wild Robert Lewis Stevenson Henry James and eventually is the same with art I started collecting you know reading comic books and all that and my parents bought a nice cyclopædia of art and I read the entire encyclopedia and so I could I was talking about Jack Kirby or Bernie Wrightson and I was thinking about the guy money money Chirico I could talk about this when I was seven or eight and so it's a very strange counselor I don't know I don't know if it's good or rather this be useful and we have to thank your brother yeah my brother I owe him 10% so you mentioned you start reading you started drawing you started making super 8 movies you studied at film school you were a critic your own festival yeah I was I was a critic for a few years I there was a Cinema Club that we for about five six years I would sell the tickets design the poster spoiled the movie project the movie under the Q&A but what it was great it was it was a film education you know we have every weekend we have four movies you have to program the cycle so you would have a max of holes you would have William Wyler you would have to do the mattock bearings you know Canadian animation and it was a great education in world cinema and as a critic you know I - you know I was in my early 20s late teens so I was asked you know you think you know I've got more and you you have more certainty than when you age so it was a bit of an you know and but but I was I wrote a book on Hitchcock at age 23 it was the collection was a hundred page books and mine was 541 you know and but it it really it's a filmmaker where I bonded with him we then the cinema club became a school the school got absorbed by the University of Waterloo Hara I taught I was a student the first year and a teacher for the next three years and then we found that the cinema club became a festival and the festival has been running now for more than 30 years and I'm one of the founders it's accidental but it's because I think that we didn't have a festival we didn't have a school so we ended up creating that reality and you also taught yourself special makeup effects and you started your own effects company as a way of kind of preparing for your debut feature yeah what I could sculpt on I could paint no not really really well but I could I was self-taught on both and they apply because I wrote as dick Smith and the famous makeup artist then and I said look I'm a filmmaker I want to make a movie called crow knows about vampires I need to make these effects and no one does them in Mexico can I learn from your course so I can found a company and show the people that I can do is and he said okay and I I did it for ten years we created a really good company that could do stop-motion animation optical effects makeup effects and and then after Cronus I closed it you know because I it had done its purpose yeah it took 10 years effectually to make Cronus so that some point you had to remortgage your house and sell your car it was a real struggle I was yeah well the thing is by this time after before cross I worked in 21 movies for other people I did many many episodes of a TV series called or Americana which Alfonso Cuaron used to call the toilet zone because his head is not like the twilight zone but shitty I actually was very thankful they gave us the opportunity to practice and you know we would practice one thing in every episode like I would say I'm gonna do my whole episode I'm gonna practice the solves and it was a luxury they gave you a dolly so I said I'm gonna do the entire episode on a dolly I'm gonna do it in mediums Alfonzo would do different exercises and I wrote one of the episodes with him I play the seven times I played the monster and one of them was with him he directed me on an episode we call directed we were very very young and and you know so Kronos was very difficult because I first of all nobody wanted to produce it then Breton Amaro Guillermo Navarro's sister he it was my DP he became my DP he won the Oscar for Pan's Labyrinth and I I came to know a movie that maybe no one ever saw but is actually very influential it's called Cabeza de Vaca it was about an explorer that gets lost in in Mexico and we came up with a makeup that was used to create Indian tribes really fast which was mod with different colors and then that was taken by Terry Malick on the new world Lubezki told me yeah we were checking their movie and Terry like that and that was taken by Mel Gibson and Apocalypto and it now people assume that's the way it was but what we did is I had the juice of a plant and some hairspray and colored mod-2 because when you have extras as the Indians they all have tan marks and it was really hard so I said well let's cover them in mud and the movie is beautiful aesthetically beautiful you have blue tribes yellow tribes is really quite powerful but America was producing that movie and I made up about a hundred and twenty-five people every day me and two assistants that was it and she was very impressed right and then I did the the main star and everybody else makeup hair nailed everything and she said you you really are a hard-working guy yes and and she said can I read your screenplay so I showed her Kronos and she said I'll produce it she was one of the most important producers in Mexico and that's why I produce produced D at the end for many years first-time directors so I wanted to pay it forward now I just want to live so so I'm not doing it as much but but I did it and and we went to the authorities in Mexico and basically I said I want to make this middle class Mexican vampire story about a grandpa and a granddaughter and he sucks blood and sleeps in a toy chest and they all my life my pictures have been very unfortunate you know I want to do a post-war Civil War fascist anti-fascist fable I want to do physical thriller drama about a woman that falls in love with an amphibian you know and so they didn't want to do it normally what it takes to do a movie through the government support it would take a year and it took four years and they kept sending any back for more they said do the storyboards I did the story woods fabricate the device that appears in the movie they fabricated the device fabricate the insect I fabricated the insect fabricate and I kept coming and you know finally out of the spare I said one of the guys look you don't approve it next time I'm gonna punch you in the face I said I'm bigger and I don't give a I have nothing to lose you know and he laughed I laughed but he approved it and then then what happens is the movies done and we were very proud of it is the movie some of you may have seen and and we show it to the to the film and I wrote in my diary it's on one page of my there at the date and it says showed it today Institute makes it makes any sense the film and the reply was this is a horrible movie it will never be seen it will go to no festivals nor will it ever collect an award oh my god mmm well let's see a clip from that horrible movie yeah okay well I wanted the man part to be a really sad vampire that was use it as a metaphor for addiction so you know it's very easy to suck blood from Winona Ryder's neck but I wanted it to make it apparent that it was not that easy and I think if we see if complete is one shot or two shot you know if we see it complete and I wanted it to style stylize it so there is no red in the movie no red except for an overcoat and the blood at all it was the rest of them these are direct and in black white blue and Amber's so this is the scene where he gets blood for the first time I forgot to say that it's a nosebleed that he sees in the party and follows the guy to the bathroom so it did win an award he won plenty was it when I prize a can 125 international awards yes still at home they didn't really know it was it was actually one we they didn't show it to the cam from festival they didn't they said we're gonna I said can we show them my movie and they said it was like a fat Cinderella and I was like oh god I got to the ball no yeah I've gotta clean and and and and somebody somebody a critic from Spain showed it to the festival and I got selected for the critics week it was and it won the top prize at critics weekend can it was the first time in 30 years a Mexican movie won a prize in can and and then it won you know nine Academy Awards in Mexico and it won another 1618 prizes all over the world and then I said okay I've established that this weird strike of mine could could mean something and I go with there was back when I they refused to finance it you know they say no and I said why and they said no okay so I waited about seven or eight years to do it it it was never it was not easy and it was it was on the beginning is not it was not easy now it's a little easier but I have refused to do movies that other people do I just want to do the movies I want to do and and I think it didn't it didn't get you know it didn't get shown much in in the sort of hallowed circles in Mexico but it found an audience it was it was really quite a bit of recognition in the States in the art circuit and that led me you know I owed a quarter of a million dollars at age 29 and I I have to pay it and so somebody called me from Universal and an executive called Nina Jacobson and said are you interested in writing anything for us and I go well make Mexican movies and they said well if you write something was we will pay you DGA minimum I said how much is that she said $40,000 ago I'll write something and I wrote a really strange movie called Mephisto's bridge but eventually three years after I have paid my debt you know so mimic was your first American experience which you sort of fought and lost I my first American experience was almost my last experience because it was with the Weinsteins Miramax and I can tell you two horrible things happen in the late 90s my father was kidnapped and I work with the Weinsteins it's and I don't know which one was worse actually the kidnapping made more sense I knew what they wanted you know and I really hated the experience but I learned to fight and do things that happened that were positive on mimick I lost casting battles I lost story battles I lost many battles but the one thing made me get and a hundred percent is visually exactly what I wanted our direction camera moves color palette cinematography and I realized okay I learned that and I learned a lot more and really on meemic I learned to move the camera in a really beautiful choreography with the actors because Bob Weinstein was always saying right on your mobile the camera you never move the camera okay over the camera but I'm gonna move the camera the way I wanted and I devised this idea of counter movements for the overs and that's the way I should now without that experience I would have not progressed much and and the movie is visually gorgeous and it has a couple of sequences I'm very very proud of you know and I remember one of our first meetings they said you know the only role you gotta follow is you cannot harm kids or pets so I have one scene where I killed two kids on one dog and you know I don't know if this is much of an achievement but it felt good and and and then the movie the movie get actually very well reviewed for a giant cockroach movie and after that I have met Pedro almodóvar at the end of the tour of Kronos and petrol Malala has said to me I love your movie if I if you can come to Spain we will produce something for me for you and I found this screenplay a friend of mine did the worst thing you can do to a friend he gave me five screenplays that he wrote to read and and I said okay this is the end of the friendship and four of them were dismal dismal and the fifth one have one amazing image which was a bombed in the middle of a patio in an orphanage and I said okay I can take what I have from Devil's Backbone and I can combine it with this and I can cut right it with these guys and I then during the kidnapping of my dad Pedro Mubarak came to walala Hana and I met with him and I pitched him devil bagua and he said well look it sounds like three movies really but I said no no it's a single movie it really is this is a gothic Western horror God ghost story said in the end of the Civil War it's okay you can try it and he is really the along with Berta the best producer for for somebody starting he was incredibly gentle incredibly respectful and he basically resurrected me he allowed me to believe that you could make movies again and again when I produce Bayona or I produce and a machete with Mama I protect them because of that I really in book of life I tried to protect them very well I tried to shield them from the studio and they have a very good creative experience because I owe it to life you know Almodovar did it for me and I said in many ways there was why one is my first movie because I knew how to do things technically more complex and narrative Lee also quirky and strange and is my favorite always I've done our shape of water Devil's Backbone Pan's Labyrinth crimson peak Hellboy 2 and Pacific Rim the rest they can give or take but but those are I love I love and it kind of gave me a second chance at life go we're gonna skip over Blade 2 which I think you sort of did so you could do Hellboy and I actually I met with Wesley was very bitter because I said oh man with Wesley and I said look I I needed to prove that I could do a big movie because there were still rumors about mimic can he do action is he okay with a bigger and more complex movie and you know back then the Weinsteins have publicly sort of a hallowed aura of patrons of the Arts like The Borgias you know and and you don't want to dine with Lucretia and and then so nobody knew is he a missus so I said this will prove that I can do Hellboy 1 you know and I went and I met with Wesley and I said look I read the screenplay I don't understand blades I'm the most unhip guy on earth but if you think you're a blade I'll take care of the vampires and I wanted to do this vampire that appears in the movie and Wesley said can you shoot me out in three shots or four shots every day oh yeah I can't treated him like a make-up effect because I want to go home early I go that's cool yeah and I don't do overs that's cool and I don't know mediums that's cool I only the close-ups and I said that's fine and it was a lot of fun to make them I invited Ron Perlman and we had a blast so after that apparently you were creatively as something of a kind of crossroads yes Hollywood was often you kind of big movies at that joint and you turned them down because she'd rather do this anti fairytale fairytales Oh Pan's Labyrinth yeah well yes I did Hellboy and then I got offered every superhero on the face of the earth and other other movies very very big movies and I I really wanted to I felt that I've learned a lot technically and I felt that I could do a complicated movie but I felt I needed to do it was exactly the same impulse that happened to me to the shape of water but I felt I need I needed to do something very very very strange because help me did well they did well and I you know I used to say to Alfonso every time the movies do well even if they don't do extraordinarily they do enough bladed super well and I said we eat the cereal of shed but we get the toy at the bottom of the Fox we should go and do something really really but you cannot do in in low times so I went and started pitching Pan's Labyrinth I pitched it everywhere nobody wanted to do it nobody wanted to do it and somebody said we'll do it if you do it in English and I said I'm not gonna do it in English I don't know it's because then you end up with the Euro co-production with Rutger Hauer as an Argentinian bully or some like that and and I didn't want to do it and I said I got a do it in Spanish but so Telecinco in Spain decided to finance it and it was along with mimic and along with shape of water one of the hardest most ungrateful shoots in my life incredibly difficult horribly difficult but and it was I was 42 and when we were shooting the crew most of the crew thought I was insane because a faun would walk into this head in a in a fascist headquarters and they were robbed you know and and then the fun would talk to the girl it was just what is this movie you know and the moment I think were they went oh this is something is the moment we're gonna see because I have I fought with even my close collaborators DDT that makeup effects company them the the makeup of the pavement that you're gonna see it was supposed to be an old man that lost a lot of weight and he saw Berbers that he has a table full of food and he only eats children so he uses the table to attract innocence and devour it and they did the most beautiful sculpture of an old man's face incredibly detailed and and I said to them remove the face let's make it flat like a manta rays belly and then we'll put the eyes in the hands and they hated my guts the sculptures really I don't care it needs to have no face because you know to me it represented the type of power that they Bauer is innocence you know and I said it shouldn't have a face shouldn't be a specific person you know and and and we fought and we fought and we thought we had fought a little on Devil's Backbone because I had told him to do the ghost like a broken personal porcelain doll and they said that makes no sense I said it makes sense to me because it's innocence broken like a porcelain doll or a crack then it tells you he's a fragile creature and I think that needs to there's verisimilitude and then then there's the reality of the tale and I said that's where it needs to make sense I don't care about the real world so the moment the crew the whole crew gasped was the moment dog knows this and opens it and it got a little better after that let's talk about Doug Joe yes who is inside that make it up and you've worked with him on Hellboy Hellboy - I actually started working with him on mimic 1997 he's one of the giant cockroach and I met him and he was so thin and I was so envious no ice he was really really good it was a very simple shot where the creature looks over the roof but we tried with two three people they didn't work and then I said to him you need to lean like like a top-line building it needs to be straight and he did it in one moment and then we shot a trailer for the movie using him and I kept he he had the silliest business card in the world I would I would have like a like a cartoon maybe those cartoonists at the beach draw your hand went in a little car it was like that it was so horrible that I kept it yeah and then years later on Hellboy we had sculpted a Sapien already once over Japanese or Chinese Acrobat and it was short and it was stocky and it didn't look good and then Michael a Zelda said well there's that guy called dog jaws I said I know him he's the super thing I and we I called him and I will risk of the Dave Sabian for him and we rediscovered each other and I mean he's a phenomenal phenomenal actor he's not a performer he's an actor and and he was so absolutely great and when we did this I said to him look I've been four pens I started every fairy tale book I had read all as a kid but then I started studying Victorian fairy manuals a lot of Victorian literature on fairies is taken as serious seriously as anthropology there is a book for example to call British goblins there's one called the science of fairy tales there is hundreds of texts that are done completely seriously about the lore in the northern lands and I studied everything and I studied obviously that tire and popov and you know Bruno Bettelheim and all that but I started class when I said you're gonna have to play an ogre which is this character and you're gonna have to play the fun and he said you're trying to save money and I said no no it's actually the plot is that these tests are the fun in these guys he's testing the world the the fairies that heeds come back at the end so you know they're not really he didn't really eat them he was testing her to see if she could be obedient or disobedient in the right circumstances and he said okay I'll do it and what about the fun I said well you have to do it in Spanish and so he learned all the lines phonetically to play the fun and the suits were tortured I came up with a new way of doing the legs for the fun which has never been done before now people do it but it was to project the legs backwards from the knees and then he raised the front of the actors leg digitally you know and it was a very torturous process sometimes this makeup would take seven hours eight hours to apply and many hours to take so dog would sleep in the makeup and come back the next morning just to be retouched but he's a hero and he's a great friend and he's a really good actor he's in shape of water shape of water his we did Hellboy do with the crimson peak and with the shape of water you know I think that we've get to shape on time but I needed an actor and I think dog is one of the few guys that can do this makeup effects makeup a lot of great actors can wear it and it doesn't work with you know it's a discipline it's in theater there is the thing called mask work you know but you need is like getting into a new car you need to calibrate how you control the car you know it's they need to calibrate then and and it takes hours for an actor to even master this looking good and the thickness of the makeup because I did it for 10 years I really think it helped me into creating truly great monsters that take risks digitally and like the barrier of digital and makeup was beautifully crossed I think in Blade 2 when the reapers opened the mouth that was one of the first times that was done where we took over in the middle of a shot from makeup to digital and with dog I can have the precision that is required to take over in digital and it looks beautiful well let's see another makeup with Doug in which is the Angel of Death from Hellboy 2 yeah which is the worst makeup I've inflicted upon him the the Angel of Death we I wanted to do the wings mechanically I didn't want to make digital wings so it took a long time to figure out the the servomechanisms sequencer to have the eyes blink on the wings and this it was basically as heavy as a motorcycle the this DeRay and we try different materials and you know we tried to use real feathers too heavy then we try to vacuform feathers you know too heavy what ended up being was a super thin wire with the cut out feather from a trash black trash bag they were all trash bags and then we would laminate them and with a hairdryer we would sculpt them like feathers so they weighed nothing they weigh less than a feather you know and still when you put all the things together it was like putting a motorcycle on his back and they dug in and yeah I said one day he was like always blind you know and and he has been there for hours and the wings were on him I said are you okay though he says I'm bleeding but I'm okay sure enough he had two lines of blood on his back so after that we have to devise a really incredibly complex hoisting mechanism that came out of the set and lifted him with the wings and then but I needed to be graceful it took a long long time to solve this little gag so what you're gonna see I'm very proud to say is a hundred percent really so there were five years between the end of that movie and the next film yeah yeah in which you can have worked in Hobbit for two years you were a mobile to New Zealand for two years and I worked a year and a half on at the mountains of madness and we were scouting in a helicopter in Alaska close to the North Pole I was scouting for to shoot the Masters of madness in a real rural environment and I forgot there was a more rural environment which is the studio system and I got a call they said we were opening offices that Monday it was a Friday and I land in a little cabin in the middle of nowhere in the border with the North Pole almost and they say you should call the studio they go bad news I knew I knew I didn't need to make the phone call but I did and they said we're pulling the plug we're not making the movie and by then we were scouted designed storyboarded we had beautiful sculptures we had made a great presentation we had Jim Cameron producer Tom Cruise starting it was I thought it was we were gonna make it and you know so that alone is three and a half years and then I went and did a Pacific Rim is it fair to say that that was a way of kind of exercising your frustrations big robots beating the crap well it it is for sure but it is something that was to me the important thing is with the the metaphor for me was I wanted to make the movie because of the character of my koumori you know I love the idea of a scared girl that lost her parents and has one red shoe in her hand living inside the adult and the adult being inside the robot and you still have to conquer that fear you know normally you can be 25 stories high and you have to trust the guy next to you and the guy next to you has to trust you to survive that was very attractive to me you know and then I thought you know I grew up with Kai Jews and Ultraman and I grew up basically like my childhood programming and TV was exactly the same as a kid would have in Tokyo it was a summer day suka ultraman ultra seven you know tetsujin everything Doraemon you know so I wanted to do a proper cage a movie with a proper maker fighting it and I had a blast I love that movie so much and it was visually such a banquet I wanted to make it visually sumptuous elegant with the grasses eighties dialogue I could you know but you know I had a blast with that but then basically what happened with that movie is there was the release was selling it very much like transformers it was selling it not showing the creatures not showing that they clashed against them blah blah but it was it was in making it was a great experience so another film that was sort of mis-sold is crimson peak yeah which again is another beautiful elegant movies we're going to see it from crimson peak so let me set it up is you know it was sold as a horror Halloween movie it was a very strange gothic romance you know it was completely a different genre I tried to influence the campaign and have them said it like like what it was but it wasn't and that's the one lesson I learned we'll talk about it on the shape of water but again I think is the most beautiful movie I've done very close to my heart is a depression of the camerawork set design wardrobe design being completely in unit and gorgeously mounted and the scene we're going to see is Edith which is called Edith for Edith Wharton you know spending her first night the the Sharps house and encountering her first actually her second ghost so when we talk about what you call I protein and not my candy and the whole kind of visual storytelling and yeah sure costumes and camera there's little things that you may or may not notice by the way they're ghosts some people say oh they're they're digital they're not they're real it's dog Jones in the makeup the translucency of the bones is little but if they're their physical makeup complete at the toe and the reason the ghost is red again the color red is used only for sin regret and the past in the movie and they're all linked by the color red America was color coded in gold and the old world is color coded in science and greens I'm sort of aquamarines and all that is a very cold and then little details that you don't see but they're there the chair where she's sitting we established in the first act and then that chair is three times bigger than the first time you said so she looks tiny and have you seen again the the teacup is this size you know but with the angle of the lens you don't notice until it's in her hands and then she looks like a kid with a giant teacup you know and those are little storytelling devices that are invisible but they they serve to work a little bit into into the visuals being more than just beautiful the the hallway is shaped like a like a human shape with shoulders and head so even when the corridor is empty it looks like somebody's there the wallpaper is shaped like moths the entire movies the motif of moths and butterflies etc etcetera etcetera you know I I just tried to layer the storytelling with the visual cues and not make it just beautiful but otherwise I read somewhere that Sergio Lopez is in Pan's Labyrinth you made him wear shoes and clubs that made him creak yeah when he moves I wanted him I tried to define the characters might sound if I can like Lucille is her keys you huge and silk when she moves and Sergey I gave him this super tight gloves and super tight boots so when he moves he creaked you know like make him really dry and rigid you know so he would it would sound like like he was very tense you know and I'm tight and I think you know use of those resources I think that is nice to point them out in audio commentaries and all that for because I believe that people that are that don't have the money for film school that cannot do it live very far whatever audio commentaries for a long time they were a substitute at me I used to listen to laser discs and listen to the other commentary and it was like a film school and it was great and I tried to do it the first mode where I refused to do it is shape of water because I thought you know it's the first movie where I'm a hundred percent happy first time in my life and I said either the movie works or it doesn't I'm not gonna tell anyone why it should worry you know and I think that that is for me very important is the movie breathes is I think that there's a lot of what I did I did the first nine movies I made were permeated by a sense of loss and a sadness and a nostalgia and the shape of water is the first movie that I do that is hungry for life and his life affirming and I go back to the comedy that I did a little bit on Kronos you know more of a sense of humor and his it's almost like I spend nine movies inhaling and it's the first time I exhale you know perfect clip from the shape would you want to say yeah sure it's a very reasonable premise you know I have you know this is a super secret government facility and she is the cleaning woman you know she cleans the toilets the floors the empties the trash bins and she discovers this amphibian creature and she recognizes something in him that is love you know and we can talk about it after but and then she decides to try and communicate with him she's mute and she decides to try and communicate with him and this is the first time they establish that rapport sally's extraordinary we'll talk about her in a minute and the seed of the movie I think dates back through when you were six years old and you watch Creature from the Black Lagoon for the first time you fell in love with both Judy Adams and the creature and you wish they'd got off together yes yeah I was a kid and I didn't know better and I thought oh gee I hope they end up so you had it and you know and they didn't and I I thought it was a completely unfair movie because it's basically a home invasion you know you have this creature living peacefully in the his river and these come in in a boat invade his house and kill him and you go home this poor bastard was in his slippers having a good time at home and these guys come in and hey we want to study you hey I don't want to be studied you know and and I thought I would rectify that you know and I thought all I knew is I wanted to make the straight guy with the gone and a nice suit and the square jaw the villain and I wanted to have the moment where the creature carries the girl a moment of not a horror movie but a beautiful moment of love that that's what sustained me you know and and you know I felt I needed to find a way to make it be about something that used that and then little by little I the first thing I found was the idea of water being loved you know because water love like water has no shape and you can take the shape of whatever you pour it into you can fall in love with somebody that is twice your age same gender completely opposite religion completely wrong political persuasion it just happens and and it is like water the most powerful and malleable element in the universe and it goes through everything and I felt I felt this was perfectly related to the creature and then in 2011 I was having breakfast with Daniel Krause who I was doing 12 hundreds with and I said what are you what else are you working on and he said well I have this idea about a janitor that falls for a creature in a super super secret government facility and takes him home I thought that's it I said I'll buy that idea and I'll write the screenplay and it's my next movie and you know like Devil's Backbone like Pan's Labyrinth like this there was a complete certainty on my part that everything would work that doesn't happen on the others there is not is this those three movies and Kronos there was complete certainty like I have an unwavering belief then it wavers at the end when after you go through hell but you have this certainty this is my I must make this movie and it's not ego and you don't want it to be liked you don't want it to be accepted you just need to make it and it's a very different sensation than than the other times where you go I want to see this sequence or that sequence but no this is a complete almost like you're listening to a song and it comes to you complete at once you know and you need it the various cast members because you wrote their script yeah I saw Sally Hawkins on a BBC series called fingersmith which was remarkable and she fell in love with a woman in this series in Victorian times and I loved it because the fact that they loved each other and they were the same gender was just a fact it was not the point of the series it was just a fact and I thought this is so beautiful you know he's like the creature and her make love physically but that's not the point of the movie it's just a fact and I thought that that's really beautiful I'm gonna and then I saw her in submarine and happy-go-lucky and I thought she had the most extraordinary beauty you know not Revlon commercial beauty but true beauty like a luminosity Anna and I'm power but at the same time you could see her now in a bus you know she was a normal person just normally beautiful in in a way that was not standard and I I said I'm gonna write for her like I called about three or four years before the movie was made I called her agent and I said tell her I'm writing a movie for her she says ok I go alright and then I didn't see her or talk to her and one night I don't go to parties and Hollywood I hate them because is like they're not even parties is everybody you avoided during the year together in one place you know and and and but Alfonso Alfonso calls me and says Alejandra and I are going to the Golden Globes party and I go okay I'm watching Antiques Roadshow I'd rather stay look get dressed you fat get dressed come on I said look we're gonna get shit-faced I hate drinking and he says and and and we want to do it with you I go look if we're getting a drink he says I'll send a car for you okay so he sends a car for me now I'm big I'm over 300 pounds it's a huge amount of mass it takes a lot of alcohol to get me drunk and it goes away real fast like I can be drunk with it and ten minutes later I'm like I can put together a Rubik's Cube so I arrive and I say okay we're gonna get shit-faced a yeah yeah okay great so I go I'm gonna start and I'll catch up with you and I have 14 shots of tequila I hate this I hate the flavor of alcohol it burns my tongue I like chocolate malt I like Bailey's I'm like the most inoffensive drinker though I wanna I like a wide Russian something with milk so I drink I drink the 14 shots and I go okay now we can start I go on to say my handle okay we're ready he says oh no you know what we're not gonna drink what so I'm I said I'm gonna leave so I'm leaving with my 14 shots of tequila in me and I see Sally and I go hey I'm writing a movie for you where you fall in love with a fish [Music] [Applause] and she says great but but I think I wrote it for Sally I wrote it for Michael Shannon I wrote it for Octavia and very often when Sally Sally was extraordinary and extraordinary actress I said to her look I wanna do a Beauty and the Beast word where Beauty is not a Disney princess where she makes breakfast center shoes and masturbates and and the bees doesn't turn into a prince you know because I I think love is about loving who the other person is exactly if you need change go away please go away you know don't waste anybody's time and I thought it could be about embracing and loving the other nests which my entire career has been about but I could finally phrase it in a way that I felt was magical for lack of a better term it was and I explained all this to her and she said you know I'm writing a story right now for me for myself about a woman that turns into a fish and I didn't know anything about your project and we exchanged documents and I incorporated some of her ideas and we worked over the course of the pre-production early early months and months if not years into shaping whatever was needed for her and many times on the set when she faltered when she doubted I said to her I wrote a song for you this is the song this is your voice you cannot do anything wrong all of this all this world all this wardrobe all these sets are done for you so enjoy it don't think and and it was an extraordinary experience with the actors you know I have a communion with them that was quite unique you know and one of the reasons why I love it is because oftentimes in the other movies in all the nine movies there is one part it can be a postmaster it can be a policeman that is a horrible actor that I made the mistake of casting him quickly yeah yeah yeah this movie the smallest part was to my satisfaction so everything everything went horribly won but everything went horribly right you know and and and it's it made it's made a difference well in look to me it's a strange profession we chose as directors because it's a combination of being tough as nails and being as permeable and fragile as you can and you need to sort of separate the two you cannot be completely fragile because then you won't make movies used to become a point or a painter you know because I filmmaker is never gonna die and they're gonna find a drawer full of movies that he never did and oh my god and it's gonna be on DVD and blu-ray it won't be no you have to be a tough to get into the business side and fight and tell the bastards no no and I know I won't do it I'll do it my way a lot of fights so you have to be tough in that and you have to fight and be able to defend what the movie needs to be defended and then at the same time you need to be incredibly incredibly permeable and fragile and for example you can be screaming at your producer one moment about the crane of being ready and then you have to be completely open with your actor to watch the actor perform you cannot so it's very very strange and that goes for the childlike imagination you have to preserve that and yes it can get really bad but I think that's the one thing that that experience gives you I've been doing this for 25 years now and you know after year 20 you're going to set and there is a certain thing that clicks and allows you but you're always mortally afraid mortally afraid because everybody thinks the director is purely and everybody thinks the directing is an exercise of control and that's a myth that we enthrone because of course the great is Erich von Stroheim than 120 tags or some Wells knew everything a lot of land but I can tell you in reality the directly no matter who you are is the art of orchestrating accidents you know because of course you prepare of course I call our code and design the movie to a tee of course all that happens but every day you're gonna get 30 kerbals the Sun is setting the actor twists his ankle that the car crashed whatever it is and you cannot say oh well because the day cost between 25 to 125 thousand dollars if it's a hundred and twenty five thousand dollar a day each moment of hesitation is ten thousand dollars you know so you cannot stop and and and and you need to take what is there and make it work you know and and and I think that part then is combined with the fact that as a childlike imagination you need to be open to seeing what is right about it you know let me put it another way if an actor acts and you have a only one idea of how the scene should be the actor is gonna come with great colors he's gonna put them on the table and you're not gonna see any of those colors she's just gonna see red because that's what you wanted and maybe green is better you can say to the actor try this other way and if it's the right way and it's your way you insist but you have to be open and the same is true of every accident you may encounter you know how many of you have seen Devil's Backbone okay great thank you thank you thank you no wonder you're here the the ending of there was rag1 was the worst day of the shoot we have like 50 setups to make one day there was no more time the Sun was setting in we have done the stabbing of Conchita the arrival of the car major major scenes all in the same day inserts and I had to do the ending nothing no more not less than the ending of the movie and the original away it was written is the kids going to the desert the the silhouette of Casares comes his translucent the the professor they carlos the main pretend his turns around looks at him he looks at Carlos he nods disappears the kids sigh and walk into the desert and I do the first shot and we're out of time we're out of sight and the first shot is so beautiful and I said that's the ending but you need to identify it that's the ending and my BP and my producer well that should the rest we don't need to shoot the rest let's move to something else and and that's the ending so you identify if I had in my head that it has to be all those shots I wouldn't have seen that short for what it was which is a blessing so you need to be like that and then you do need to never lose your hope it's an evolutionary business in other words it's gonna be brutal it's gonna be horrible it's gonna be merciless and if you break you shouldn't be making movies you know it's the end of it you need that combination of resilience and fragility so you know it's you you have to have it all of them have them all of them are some form of autobiography Pacific Rim even believed to I mean seriously like Norma canned his father that relationship is very much the way I felt about my dad the poor man you know and but I always I I would I have never made a movie that I wouldn't die for you know and and I it doesn't matter if it's commercial or people think it's commercial I've said no to incredibly lucrative things you know incredibly lucrative like my agent must be very unhappy with me because I don't know I'm gonna do this other movie okay but but all of them are biography all all art is portraiture all art is purchaser and em all art is political those are things that you can't avoid and you will know a person like for their art if it's true more than you would know probably from living together for 10 years you know but I yes in high school you know I said I'll always look this good when King no but but it was such a moving moment for me when he says I wish I could do something about this you know we can't you know but I think I've been trying to solve what love is most of my life you know that's why it's so satisfying for me the shape of water because is the first time I've been able to articulate it you know because I think the the greatest act of love like cinema is to see you know when somebody sees you in your entirety for who you are that's the greatest act of love because it's granting you existence beyond what defines you in the exterior or your nationality or whatever it is when they see you with love and compassion and beauty is the greatest act of love and that's why the line in shape of worries is when he sees me you know every time he sees me he doesn't know I mean complete because that's the essence of it you know and and and it's exactly like cinema I think film is an act of love is the desire to apprehend the world you know and I think fantasy is infinitely more realistic than realism because like Bohr has said if I wrote a poem in which the world was conned that poem would be the world and that's an impossible task so it is the only way you can trap the world is through parable you know this parable allows you to apprehend the larger concepts and discuss them and you can make a creature without faith power you can make a creature that lives in the water the outsider the other you know you can and then you can go on and on and on that's why parable is used to explain the deeper concept all the way to the Greeks you know but yeah everything is autobiography Chronos the relationship returned the girl and the grandfather is very reason my relationship with my grandmother you know when I was a kid I she would pulled out a little mattress from the closet put it at the bit of the foot of the bed and we would talk into the night and I would fall asleep you know and basically I would say I would love to do secret passages in the house and we could do them this way and there way that's a great idea we should budget it tomorrow you know yeah and then we can have a sliding bookshelf grandma's that's a great idea or a portrait and we move the portrait and we go into a secret room yes and that's the house I have now I have I have my man cave his two houses 13 libraries interconnected with secret passages secret paintings and a room where it rains 24/7 you know and and and I think that I think that that's my attempt at a cabinet of curiosities that encompasses the world but my movies are all cabinets of curiosities of Who I am my I used to talk to ants I used to love insects I wanted to be a naturalist biologist an entomologist so you know everything you see is portraiture you know I am that weird first of all my deepest admiration and sympathy for what you chose as a profession it is brutal it's absolutely merciless I'm the worst part the grinder of it all is auditions so the first thing you need to say to yourself is what I say when a movie I spent a year and a half preparing a false false true I tell my designers it was good practice you know so every time you go into an audition come in with something you want out of it and it shouldn't feel it shouldn't be the job that's I know weird but success is a Mirage doesn't exist and a number if you need success you'll never have enough so you you do is what we did with the episodes Alfonso and I let's practice a dolly let's use it with this shoot it with long lenses those are perfectly achievable goals so whenever you're preparing for a part read the part and say I'm gonna try this because then the then you're in control you go you know if you go in is a mid-market you're parading yourself like a beauty pageant of acting and you have that have been there all day with Doritos and a coke you know saying to you thank you and then you come out destroyed from that but if you go in to try something these are your audience and you go in and you try what you want and you go that was good and they go thank you and you are thank you and you leave so that's that's number one because then then you're in control okay then second what I do for my actors and some of them take them some of they don't and I do it for my screenwriting process I write incredibly detailed biographies you can find him on the crimson big book you're gonna find him on the shape of water book I if you follow me on Twitter I posted them you know I tell them everything I know about the character everything what they eat what they don't need what music they listen what secrets they keep you know and I tell them from birth to the moment of the movie and you build that for a project and you then are open to listening you know then you're open to listening but you have a fallback because a lot of the time directors are mortally afraid of actors another horrified to talk to the actors and they can only say faster shorter blah blah and there is a reason to when you're acting you know I'm talking right now I didn't know these lines I didn't know I was not really saying this to you right now my right leg has gone to sleep you know and these pants are too tight that's that's my reality so to an actor you give an actor a verb something to do and as an actor you need to know the verb you wanna enact nobody nobody gives it to you I always talk about a scene I think is in diner or the Pope of Greenwich Village in which Mickey Rourke is talking on a diner and he opens her sugar and empties the sugar and then puts all the sugar back into the container well he's delivering a big dialogue because he was not delivering dialogue he was playing with the sugar so always come in with a little playground for yourself and then if somebody gives you another idea namely the director then you can take it or not you know thank you no it is I mean look what we do is not very important I mean the entire canon of Shakespeare didn't change the world it didn't it just maybe made it a little more palatable place to be because you can read it or see it in the theater but it didn't change we still have horrible politicians we still have corruption destruction abuse you know so you have to really think look art is just a nice thing to stay alive you know and then you say what can I do that is not being done I would I would say I tried to be a humanist in the movies and it doesn't matter if it's Pacific Rim Pacific Rim when I took Pacific Rim I made my conditions no I said I'm not gonna subscribe to any army of any country I don't want one country saving the world I don't want it I wanted to be a black leader a Japanese girl and a pair of Australians a Peruvian technician and I said I don't want one race to save the world I don't want this I don't want that it's not what I want is what I don't want you know and I I'm a big admirer of the 30s and the 40s and when film was starting some of the greatest parts were written for John Crawford they were written for barry davies they were sylvia sydney you know these were fantastic actresses complex women especially pre-code you know when you see a movie like three on a match three really complex characters john Blundell fantastic parts and that's not done anymore and I'm just I think that there is so much more nuance I mean I would never never say I'm feminist because that's gender misappropriation I find it really obscene when I guy says I'm a FEMINIST filmmaker really how do you know I mean you can guess you can get but you can know what it feels I mean you you can as a dramaturgy exercise attempt but I attempt the same with the bad guy the good guy that I tried to write them from the way I kind of understand it but I try to make them human and complex and that's why I think the great relief for me on shape of warriors too with a masturbating scene you know because okay she's not a Disney princess as I said but also is the one practice everybody's good at and has had the experience with you know is the one sexual practice where you go yeah that was good you know most everybody got and and we are you know we're afraid of those dimensions you know and when I wrote crimson peak I wanted a beautiful pair of rolls but not perfect not perfect Lucille is not perfect but he's a great role it's a great role and either it is not perfect but it's a great role you know I think that in writing a female part is like having a relationship with a female companion you the worst things you can do is put them in the cellar and demonize them or put them on a pedestal because both are incredibly isolating and impossible to fulfill you know if you put someone in a pedestal you're putting that person there to tumble them it's gonna tumble because nobody deserves to be perfect I always say and that's why I love monsters that perfect imperfection is a perfectly attainable goal for all of us and and if we're going to writing imperfect characters that have huge flaws but we can love them for that you know there's a line on Hellboy we like people for their qualities but we love them for their defects you know so I am very interested in writing good parts there are human humanistic parts and the more to me how many of you saw shape of water thank you yeah well no wonder you're here that second time one of the great moments for me is the moment where Sally just looks at Michael Shannon when he comes to her and she just looks saying like and there's such a you in there and it is written very terse and you need a great actress to deliver that because it really doesn't care about him and I love those moments because the writing writing for a great actress and I think that the world and you know everybody's talking about the scandals and power abuse it's not limited to film is the world is a rigged game and it's been rigged for millennia so you know I just I just tried to find interesting people with interesting knives that that clean toilets but can also be incredibly good enemies to a guy like Strickland you know because that's what I want to do I want to see the kids in Devil's Backbone kill the fascist you know I want to see the girl have a much better ending than the fascist captain I want those are the things because the world most of the time doesn't work like that so I think we should aspire to better [Applause] [Music]

Channel: BFI

Views: 96,242

Rating: 4.9359536 out of 5

Keywords: British Film Institute (Publisher), British, film, institute, films, movie, movies, BFI, BFI London Film Festival, Q&A, Screen Talk, interviews, The Shape of Water, Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, Guillermo del Toro, Blade II, Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth

Id: rfbD3OBir64

Length: 74min 18sec (4458 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 06 2017