Guillermo del Toro with actor Doug Jones as The Faun during
production of Pan's Labyrinth
Guillermo del Toro first grabbed the attention of the film business (both indie and otherwise) in 1993 with the release of his brazenly creative feature Cronos. Produced in his home country of Mexico and receiving nine Mexican Academy Awards, Cronos gives your typical vampire tale the sort of sci-fi spin del Toro's work has come to be known for.
Del Toro's involvement with Film Independent extends over the past decade, beginning with his participation on the Spirit Awards Nominating Committee in 1998 and 1999. His work ethic is particularly inspirational given his consistent ability to juggle not merely budgets large and small but also sensibilities spanning more mainstream Hollywood fare (like Blade II or Hellboy) with non-American and non-English features like 2001's Devil's Backbone.
Devil's Backbone marked del Toro's first demonstration of his fascination with the Spanish Civil War, a focus he's perpetuated with his latest feature, Pan's Labyrinth. This time, del Toro marries his interest in this tumultuous time period with the desire to tell an old-fashioned fairy tale. Through this powerful combination, he brilliantly and beautifully demonstrates that in the darkest of times, one's imagination can be a source of strength rather than weakness, empowering us to do what's right even when all that surrounds us is so very wrong.
Tell me about making the conscious choice to tell a story that is very different from the bigger stuff you may be more known for like Hellboy or Blade II.
I try to mix and do one mainstream or "pop" movie then I try to do one — usually in Spanish — more esoteric, personal film, although curiously enough for me Hellboy is pretty personal. But Pan's Labyrinth was definitely a movie that I wanted to do in the independent format — the European co-production format — because I knew it was a story that was not suited to survive any meddling. It was a movie that proposed a very, I thought, very spiritual view about the responsibility of the imagination and the need for disobedience and personal choice. When I was finishing it and I showed it around to Hollywood friends, a couple of them said to me, "If you could only tone down the violence it would be such a fantastic children's movie!" And I said, "That's not the point. The point of this movie is that it's a movie about childhood for adults." And I knew that in Hollywood you tend to be put into a little niche, you know?
That's true - and because of that, how many adults see kids' movies and take them seriously? It has to be dark, it has to have violence, in order for an adult to really think about it.
The reality is that most of the time we get these absolutely inconsequential, in the strictest sense of the word, children's adventures and fairy tales that have no real consequence on the children's lives. The same can be said about war movies: you get these war movies where all the good guys are alive and all the bad guys are dead at the end and that is not the way war is either. So I think Pan's Labyrinth actually takes a very purist approach to fairy tales and tries to recuperate one of the main traits of the traditional fairy tale, which is they always happen in very dire circumstances — famine, pestilence, war — and most of the time we tend to forget that. We go with the Disney version of the fairy tale.
Going back to what you said about taking an independent approach and taking it outside of Hollywood, don't you feel that maybe if you had kept it within Hollywood, if you had maybe attempted to struggle to bring it to fruition within the system, isn't that the kind of thing the system needs — that sort of shake-up?
I think the shake-up needs to be done with doing the movies you want to do and then, depending on the results, you are proving that those movies can work. For example, in Spain, Pan's Labyrinth opened number one, stayed number one for the second weekend, and on the third weekend only registered a drop-off of about 25-30%, which is astounding for a third weekend. That's a strong message. I think you can be very ambitious with the story or you can be very ambitious with the format in which you tell the story, but if you try to break both at the same time, it's a little risky. I'm not here to prove how the industry should be run; I'm here to tell my story. So if the industry needs a shake-up like that, I'm sure that somebody with a lot more clout — Scorsese, Cameron, Spielberg or someone of the like — may give it to them. But I am not any of those gentlemen and I can only protect my children. I can only protect my stories.
There's a wave of non-American filmmakers like you coming into the Hollywood system, stirring things up in your own ways and getting a lot of attention. As such, do you feel maybe cinema is headed away from Hollywood?
Not in the industrial sense. What is important is to show that you may choose to conform up to a point but that you retain your independence also. I really admire a career like Stephen Frears. Stephen Frears is capable of doing Academy Award-winning, very crowd-pleasing movies, and then he goes away and does a smaller movie that is quirky and brilliant and edgy that he would never attempt to do in the Hollywood system. I really admire that guy; I think he's incredibly smart and incredibly articulate as an artist. So I think that's the way to go. I mean, Alejandro [Gonzalez Iñarrítu], Alfonso [Cuarón], and I keep going back and forth — you know, we do an American movie but then we do a smaller, quirky movie.
Tell me why you haven't gone back and done a movie in Mexico. You seem to take great pride in where you've come from and it really informs a lot of your films, however subtly, so what's been the hold-up in returning back home to make a movie?
Well, I've been producing in Mexico actively, so as a producer I keep producing films that are Mexican-based and mostly by first-time directors. And I use Mexican talent in things like Devil's Backbone and even more so in Pan's Labyrinth, which is actually a double-nationality movie — it's Mexican and Spanish. So in my mind I'm making movies that are Mexican movies or Mexican-Spanish movies; I don't necessarily need to confine myself to the themes that are "allowed" to me geographically. In other words, I don't see anything Italian about The Last Emperor yet Bertolucci directed it. And I think that we sometimes confine ourselves into a ghetto of stories that "need to concern us" instead of those that attract us naturally. I've been attracted and horrified by the Spanish Civil War since I was a young adult and I have things that I want to tell about it. And I think that that makes it universal — I don't need to fake a voice for a story that would not suit Mexico. Mexico's revolution was literally a war of classes; it was not a civil war like the Spanish Civil War and the only kind of civil war that we had in Mexico ever was a religious civil war right after the revolution, which was the time when the government forbid Catholic religion in Mexico. I have not much to say about that except I agree — they should have forbid the Catholic religion a little longer! (Laughs)
I know you were raised Catholic and those polemics and the dogmatic structure of the Church are all over Pan's Labyrinth. But do you not consider yourself Catholic anymore and, if not, why is it still a part of your movies?
As Buñuel would say, I hope to God I am not. (Laughs) Or he said something like, "I'm an atheist, thank god!" And I feel the same way. But once a Catholic, always a Catholic, though I'm not a practicing one. I hate organized political thinking, I hate political parties, I hate organized religions no matter what denomination it is. I think that religion and politics are individual endeavors where you make or you side with other people and that makes it sort of a group. But the moment you name a head, the moment you name the structure and you have the structure running things, I think it's inherently corrupt. So I'm not in favor of one religion or against another or in favor of one party against another, I just think that all political endeavors should begin and end with one's self.
So you use the Catholic symbolism as a means to get your point across?
I think that the world is definitely permeated with Catholic dogma, with Catholic symbols, but also I use very pagan symbolism. The way I see Pan's Labyrinth is the same way I saw Catholicism: it's a parable. When I was a choirboy I used to love parables because they instructed me and made me think about big issues with very whimsical stories. And I try to organize mine in such a way so that those who are looking for it can find it, but those who are not can just have a nice, emotional journey if they want. Parables need to be emotionally resonant — they need to move you before anything. And I think that's what I tried to do with Pan's.
Let's talk about drawing lines between various roles on a film production and your feelings about keeping tasks separate in order to get the best work done. I bring this up because you were the writer, director, and producer of Pan's Labyrinth. Would you ever do all three at the same time again?
I'll try to but it's not an easy task. Producing and directing means you always go to bed with an asshole. (Laughs) The only thing that I like is that it allows me to keep more control. Fortunately for me on this movie I partnered up only with friends — [producers] Alfonso Cuarón, Bertha Navarro, Frida [Torresblanco] — these are people I've known a long time if not half my life, you know? So I was pretty at peace with them. I think that you only encounter prudishness about genre in the Hollywood system and with the rest of the formats you find a more adventurous thing. And I think whatever works, works, and if you're mixing a genre with another I find it very effective. I can talk to you about movies that I find mix it and match it and are very effective — ultimately it can be Pulp Fiction or it can be even things as mainstream as Superman. I think that they take a stance where the genre is not as pure as some people would like it to be, but they work. James Cameron's Alien mixes horror and science fiction and war movie all in a big movie that is a crowd pleaser but ultimately is not pure in genre.
What's the difference in approach that you take when you're working with a group of friends like you did on Pan's Labyrinth versus something different — and here I go back to the Hollywood system where you probably did not do that on Hellboy and I'm sure you didn't do it on Mimic. How does your directing and taking charge of your productions differ from film to film?
When you have a group of friends around you in the project, you know everybody's working for the same movie, whereas in Hollywood everybody has a different agenda. Some are working for the movie that will sell more tickets, some are working for the movie that will give them an extra point in the brownie system, some are jockeying for position to run a position in the studio — you never know! And the last thing a lot of them think about is the movie. They think about the niche, the slot, the release date, the ancillary product, the DVD release — they think about all these things and they don't think about, "Is the movie going to be better if I do this?" When you're working with friends, everybody's thinking, "How do I make the movie better?"
Does that go for the craftspeople as well like your production designer or your DP? Have you found similar problems to what you just described when you're working within Hollywood as opposed to not?
For the craftspeople, we are always in the trenches; we are always the grunts and we are always in the battlefield, so we have a battlefield ethic. We cover our asses and we cover the ass of the movie, you know? We cover each other's asses. We are not every man for himself. I really find that camaraderie is as true in Hollywood as it is in Europe or Mexico.
You wonder, if there are so many people maintaining artistic integrity or integrity about what they do, why don't they maintain more control of their work in the end?
Because of exactly the same thing I told you: the moment you organize any endeavor into a system, it is inherently corrupt. And the same is true for any religion or politics or moviemaking. Ultimately moviemaking should have a division of church and state: moviemaking should have a studio that acts as a financier and a release entity and nothing more. And the filmmaking should be left to producers and directors.
So then where does the money come from? The financiers always want a guarantee. They always want to know where it goes.
As has been proven by a hundred plus years of moviemaking, that guarantee is an absolute illusion no matter what system you put in place. You can design by committee a moneymaking box office bonanza and it fails miserably at the box office, then a couple of kids with a $100,000 and two cameras come out with a movie that shocks the world. By the same token, a couple of kids with a $100,000 and two cameras do a piece of shit and sometimes design-by-committee makes a movie that's a blockbuster. So the rule boils down to the same: there is no guarantee! So why bother? Why not at least leave the system working organically? And mind you there are studios that are creatively much, much better and comfortable to work with than others. There are places that are just like the seventh circle of hell and there are places that are havens for filmmakers to find a partnership in. Not all studios are created equally in the same way that not all independent filmmakers are created equally.
I have been part of the Spirit Awards Nominating Committee several times and we encountered as much calculated, coldhearted formula in watching "independent" films as we did watching a studio movie, you know? The only thing that I do believe strongly is that no matter what, the ideal function of the studio would be to get rid of a lot of overhead in people and let filmmakers run the films. And I'm not talking just directors; I'm talking directors, producers, and writers—writers being a component that is relegated to the lower echelons of moviemaking and they shouldn't be. They're not in Europe and not in Mexico, only in the industrial scheme.
What is your advice about doing what you want to do, which is what all you've said and all your work boils down to, versus trying to make a living within the system? There are a lot of people who do things thinking, "I'm going to make a paycheck and then I'm going to use it to make what I really want to make," but is that compromising?
When I see people like John Huston or as I said Stephen Frears or, to a certain extent, people like Soderbergh, who have very mixed careers in terms of mixing industrial sort of Hollywood movies and more risky venture-type of movies independently, I think that you have to look back at what you do once you've done a certain number of things and say, "Have I always tried to do the movies I'm interested in?" And if your answer is yes, you should be at peace. I have done movies like Blade 2 or Hellboy because I was very interested in some or all elements of them.
By the same token, I have never accepted an assignment. I have never been in itinerant filmmaker. I do think you should never be an itinerant filmmaker if you can avoid it; you should only do movies that you believe are the shit. As I say, if you do a movie in which you are not willing to risk your own money — I go against the rule of Hollywood — then don't make it. If you say, "It's their money, it's their movie, let them do whatever they want," then you are absolutely whoring out. I am very proud to say that in every movie I've made, except Devil's Backbone, I have put and risked my own money to a big extent and sometimes I get it back, sometimes I don't. But all of them have required me to do so.
And you've never worried about that even now that you have a family to take care of?
I don't because they are a circus family — they know they married the fire-eater. They shouldn't complain!
I can't wait to see what kind of fire-eater rabble-rousers your kids grow up to be. Or maybe they'll grow up to be accountants saying, "To hell with Dad!"
Whatever they like! I think it's beautiful to have their support while they have no other choice. (Laughs) And whoever reads this, remember the maxim of filmmaking: making movies is like eating a sandwich of shit: sometimes you get more bread, sometimes you get less bread, but you always will get shit. So remember, it never gets better. But dream of the bread!
