GUILLERMO DEL TORO

MONSTERS AND HELLBOY AND HOBBITS (OH MY!)

Mexican director Guillermo del Toro is having a VERY good year. Hot on the heels of the critical and commercial success of his visionary adult fairy tale, Pan’s Labyrinth, his sequel to 2004’s under-appreciated Hellboy has raked in over $70 million at the box office. If that wasn’t enough, he’s also been hand picked by Peter Jackson to take the creative reigns on The Hobbit, the two-part film prequel to Jackson’s three-part Lord of the Rings masterpiece. We recently talked to the always-effusive del Toro about his latest cinematic success and the burden of expectations surrounding his forthcoming project.

I read somewhere that this is the Hellboy you really wanted to make from the outset.

No, I wish I was that wise. I wish I was that fucking sleek. I think it is, but it was not planned that way. The first movie I fully thought we were doing the exact version that would honor and be faithful to the comic, but as time passed I realized mistakes were made. I was a bit prudish on the first one and I was completely unbridled on this one. I think it made a difference, because on the first one I was there to try and satisfy a specific aesthetic and a specific character I admire, which was Mike's [Mignola].  I made it my own only to a certain point. I was desperate to make the second one to improve, expand and go a little wider.

To find a balance between Mike’s vision and your own?

Yes, I believe so. It will always be Mike's creation, but I really allowed myself to disagree with more people on this one sometimes, including Mike. It was a riskier proposition, but I feel if you were going to do the second one and be equally timid, you were going to come out with the exact same approach.

There were a lot of references to other films, including Star Wars, Bride of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon ...

Every movie that I referenced in the film– Harryhausen, Creature, Wizard of Oz, American Werewolf–those are movies I call my 12-year-old movies. The idea of Hellboy II was, can I shoot a movie like a 12-year-old? I’m 43, I've done X number of movies, but can I learn to just devolve emotionally into a guy who is so in love with these things that I shoot it with that much emotion? I wanted very much for this movie to have that wide-eyed view of the creatures, where you have that love for monsters that’s unbridled and untempered by any adult concern in the emotional aspect.

Is that childlike innocence what attracted you to The Hobbit?

I believe so. The Hobbit, like this movie, has to be a balance between the two. Pan's Labyrinth is the same thing. It had a lot of that awe, but at the same time it is a more adult theme and tone. The Hobbit aesthetically can't be as poppy as this movie, so the approach will be different. The Hobbit is an 11-year-old book: I read it when I was 11 and it hit me hard, so I tried to honor that feeling. It would be my most sincere hope that somewhere at some point on the Hellboy II exhibition there’s a 10 or 11-year old with his or her parents that falls in love with one of the creatures, like Wink or the Angel of Death. Everyone that was involved in creating those creatures, I asked them to come at it from a place of love. Instead of an assembly line, we gave each person one monster and they created him all the way to final realization, wardrobe, sculpting and painting, just like you give a lead animator a character in an animated film. I felt you needed that level of commitment in the creation of the creatures. It is a very uncommon approach. I'm not sure that it is economically great, but it was creatively.

If you decide to do a third Hellboy, how are you going to work it logistically if you’re committed to the next several years on the Hobbit?

There was four years between the first Hellboy and the second one. There can legitimately be four years between the second one and the third one. It took two and a half years to solve this script for me because I wanted to make the action set pieces relevant to the story. With the third one the ante is upped considerably because I want to signal the end of this incarnation of Hellboy. Not forever, but I would not be involved past that and it will be probably the last Hellboy Ron has in him physically. It is a very grueling process, and he is entering the silver years, shall we say. He's a guy that I cannot demand physical action from again and again, and I think that we would love to make [the third film] sort of a capper.

How is the Hobbit screenplay coming along?

We started taking notes on the novel and on the first movie, and making adaptations for the ideas for the second one. It is in its infancy right now.

Are you staying faithful to the novel?

The only faithful adaptation is to actually put the book in front of the camera and turn the pages one by one. Hitchcock used to make a joke: If a goat in a garbage dump eats the book and the film, the goat will turn and say, "I prefer the book." It’s just a commonality. We will be as faithful as possible to what we believe has to be done. If this is any indication, I find the changes Peter Jackson, Fran and Phillipe made to the trilogy in adapting it to be absolutely necessary. Many fans were irate, while many others agreed, and the same thing is going to happen with this.

Where do you see a middle point to break the Hobbit in two?

I don't see a middle point. I think the book should be contained in the first movie if possible, but this is an exploration. The second one would [weave] through the gap of about half a century between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring and connect them. Ideally, we would have an overture and a first movement to a symphony of five films. But it is too early. Three weeks from now I will be more and more able to answer.

Will you be relocating to New Zealand for a number of years?

My life completely was going in another direction, and when I got the call I said, "Yeah, let's spend half a decade over there." I was just finishing my house… and when I say “my house,” I mean MY house. I'm doing a man-cave of epic proportions. My collection of crap was getting so big that my wife said, "Dude, it’s either you or us." So I said, "let's move the things out." I bought a house five blocks away from my house, I put in a secret bookshelf door, I put in a haunted mansion room, and I’m moving all my stuff there. I was planning on having that as my office for the next five years, and then I got the call.

Will you move the house?

I'm going to lend it to a like-minded friend to live there for three years while I'm gone. He's going to have 7,000 DVDs, 15,000 comic books… the only thing he can't touch is my toys. I have many iterations of Disney's The Nautilus. I collect haunted mansion memorabilia. I collect any iteration of Chernabog, the demon from Fantasia. I own two of the original sketches that Kay Nielsen and the other artist pitched to Disney. I am an obsessive collector, but mercifully I do dress like shit and I drive a really old car, so the only vice I have is collecting this stuff. When I used to come through customs in Mexico, I was really afraid that the customs agents would look and find my rubber spiders and my EC Comics. When you press the button in Mexico, the red light comes on and it means you’re going to be inspected. So one day I put my bag down and I go, "My God, I'm going to pay a $1,000 fine for all my imports!" They open it and pull out the rubber spiders and the comic books and the guys goes, "This guy has all this shit!" and lets me go through.