© C) 2008 Sue Schneider Guillermo del Toro poses at the World Premiere of HELL BOY II THE GOLDEN ARMY

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Profile: GUILLERMO DEL TORO ESCAPES 'LABYRINTH' AND ENDS RIGHT BACK INTO 'HELLBOY'

The director discusses the sequel to THE GOLDEN ARMY and staying forever young as a filmmaker

By CARL CORTEZ, Contributing Editor
Published 7/9/2008

While Guillermo del Toro has been one of fandom’s most unique and eclectic filmmakers, it was a little art house film he did two year’s ago – PAN’S LABYRINTH – that finally brought him to the mainstream.

In fact, that little film set in Spain circa 1944 and following a little girl’s fantasy escape from the real-world troubles of the Spanish army really exploded Del Toro’s imagination and set the stage for his current film, the big budget HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY.

Speaking at the premiere of his new film at this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, Del Toro exclaimed: “Something beautiful happened after PAN’S LABYRINTH. I was a more timid creature on the bigger Hollywood movies and then with HELLBOY II, I decided to let it all out.”

And let it out he does – surpassing the beauty of the original HELLBOY (from the Mike Mignola created comic book) and managing to bring his PAN’S LABYRINTH touch to every frame of his latest directorial effort.

“I wondered with this movie if I could be a twelve-year-old filmmaker,” says Del Toro. “Picasso said it took him thirty years to learn to paint like a seven-year-old and I feel the same way. I'm forty-three, but I'm finally making movies straight from the zone that I was watching them when I was a kid. I really feel the awe and the wonder of a [Ray] Harryhausen movie. I tried to shoot many of the scenes in this movie like that. When they resurrected the fairy and I do a wide shot of everyone standing around and a little fairy moving in the middle that's straight out of a SINBAD movie. Texturally we tried to imbue the movie with little moments from movies that we loved as kids. The idea was 'can I shoot from awe as opposed to whether I could shoot from knowledge' and certainty at age forty-three, I tried to shoot it like that.”

In HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY, Hellboy (Ron Perlman) must continue his battles with spiritual forces who want to take control of the earth after being banished to the underground after a long-standing truce is broken. It’s up to Hellboy and his team from the BPRD (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) including girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair), the amphibious Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and newcomer Johann Kraus to stop the underground from wrestling control.

The shades of gray ambiguities of villainous Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) is what makes HELLBOY II an anomaly in the summer-movie going season because not only does it provide escapist fair – it also has a positive ecological message of what we’re doing to our environment and the world around us without hitting the audience over the head (THE HAPPENING’s M. Night Shyamalan could take a few pointers from Del Toro when it comes to message filmmaking like this).

“The thing that I liked the most about the first movie were the monsters and the intimate moments,” says Del Toro. “I really enjoyed the moments where Hellboy was having cookies and milk with the kids, for example, or when Hellboy and Manning were lighting each other's cigars and talking about matches instead of lighters. I'm attracted to that. I would love to know who washes the Bat suit and who fills the Batmobile and whether they use unleaded or diesel -- whatever. Those things are kind of obsessive for me. Who patches the Spider-Man suit? I would love to know the details. Does Iron Man wash his own socks or what happens when the washing machine is clogged. It's those things. I try to give an everyday life feeling to the lives of Abe, Liz and Hellboy. It's the fact that Hellboy is a slob, a knucklehead slob that nevertheless when the time comes, he can be a hero. The people I admire in life, they're not heroes twenty four hours a day. They're heroes just in the moment that you need them to be, be they fireman or whatever – the people who take out the trash and drive their kids to school and at 8:30pm they save a life. I thought it was interesting to have these guys act like humans. Again, fallible, palpable and perhaps in a true Mexican way, having a few beers and singing a song. I think those are the things that make them human.”

That singing a song instance in HELLBOY II has actually gotten the film the most ink – a charming moment where Hellboy and Abe drink together, wax about women problems and start singing (off-key mind you) Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You.”

“I was raised in pure hardcore punk rock and was listening to The Sex Pistols and The Ramones, but late night, now and then when I was alone, I would listen to [Manilow’s] ‘Mandy’ and tear up,” says Del Toro with a laugh. “Look, there are many things in the movies that I make for the summer that I try to go against the grain of what it should be and this could be a tumor joke or it can be singing a song or it can be textually different, but I think what I've learned is that the less I conform, the more I love the movies. The more that I kind of conform the less that I empathize with the result a couple of years later. So I tried to give these moments to these characters. They needed them. I think that Abe needed to get a bug out of his ass and sing Barry Manilow because he was listening to Vivaldi and Mozart. 'No. You're listening to Barry Manilow, you sap. Admit it.'”

That said, Del Toro is very proud of his eclectic group of films and feels epithets are limiting.

“Back in THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE time people said, 'Why are you doing a civil war story and I said, 'For the same reason that [Bernardo] Bertolucci does a movie about a Chinese Emperor,' because we want to,” says Del Toro. “As filmmakers we have to talk about the things that concern us and I think epithets are little passports that we issue ourselves to fit in a category, saying, 'I'm an overweight filmmaker and there's an overweight filmmaker festival somewhere. I'll be a part of that festival.' I think it's limiting. What I think is that we have to make the movies that come out of the heart and the cojones, perhaps. Other than that I function as my life needs me to function. I continue producing Mexican films. I continue to produce Latin American films. We just finished COSAS INSIGNIFICANTES with a first time filmmaker. We're in the progress of shooting a movie called RABIA which is a production between Spain, Ecuador and Mexico. So I don't close my door either way. I don't say that I only do Hollywood films. I do whatever is required in my life and I think that's liberating.”

Of course, anyone not living under a rock knows that door is far from being closed, as the filmmaker has agreed to spend the next few years realizing THE HOBBIT, a two-part prequel series to the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy to be produced by original helmer Peter Jackson. Shooting is set to commence in 2010.

“We’re going to have a break in the middle of filming, but I don’t know how long that break is going to be,” explains Del Toro. “We’re going to do it because of the textural differences between the two movies. The second one is meant to blend with the trilogy and so many sets will have to be refurbished and reconstructed and so forth. Ultimately we will start editing, and I normally shoot six days a week and edit on the seventh, but I'll start editing the first part of the first movie in that break.”

(Additional reporting by Jenny Peters)

Reader Comments

CHRISTO from sez....
I LIKE THE MOVIE
4/24/2009 8:54:28 PM

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