* They’ve dibloxivuanded poxes: thougt so.
* POKING TRASH with stick.
* It’s FAKE POTATOES: TASTES just as good.
* Neon Sign:
JESUS SAVES ?
* I should’ve STARTED when I was younger (she’s 30!).
THE COLLECTING INSTINCT
ADAM SAVAGE
I’M MADLY IN LOVE WITH GUILLERMO’S FILMS. He holds to Elmore Leonard’s axiom, “Don’t ever write a villain you don’t like.” It makes for terrific drama when you’re not sure who you should be rooting for. Especially when you manage to identify—even in some small way—with the bad guy.
I think the first del Toro film that I saw was Mimic. Although it’s well known that Guillermo’s vision for the film was compromised by studio interference, there are many images from the movie that have stayed with me over the years. The idea that the “villain” of the film is not driven by evil motivations but is simply a bug that has learned to look like a man is a stunning reveal. As an audience member, you always want to ascribe an intelligence to the villain; for there to be a reason for their villainy. The cruelest trick of the natural world is that there is often no motivation for a creature’s actions save for its biological impulses. In the animal kingdom, evil is truly banal. For me, this makes the villains in Mimic even scarier.
It’s a shame that Mimic was a disappointing experience for Guillermo, but his director’s cut of the film, released in 2011, went some way to reinstating his original vision. Having worked in the movie industry as a model maker, it’s so funny to me that Hollywood is an industry where they hire people specifically for their vision and then persistently interfere with it. Fortunately for all of us, Guillermo wasn’t cowed by the experience. Quite the opposite. He’s gone on to create a powerful and singular body of work.
We first met in 2010 when I was at San Diego Comic-Con promoting MythBusters. After a sixteen-hour day, my wife, Julia, and I pulled up at our hotel to find Ron Perlman standing outside. “Look, sweetie,” I said to her, “it’s Hellboy.” In 2008 I actually walked the floor at Comic-Con in a full Hellboy costume, complete with prosthetic makeup, so needless to say I am a bit of a fan of the movie (you could say rabid). Julia pointed out that another of my heroes was standing right next to Ron—Guillermo del Toro! To this day she makes fun of the fact that I (allegedly) clambered over her to get out the door to meet him. As I was approaching, he looked at me, his ever-present smile grew twice as big, and he greeted me like an old friend. “I love your show!” he said, and gave me the biggest bear hug I’ve ever experienced. We talked briefly but enthusiastically, and as we were parting ways, he said, “Come to my man cave.”
Sketches of the human brain and heart by del Toro from Notebook 3, Page 3A.
As anyone who has seen MythBusters is aware, I too am obsessed with collecting and re-creating esoteric ephemera from movies and elsewhere, so the chance to visit Bleak House was not to be missed. I discovered, however, that I am an amateur compared to Guillermo. Bleak House is a wonder. We spent hours walking around the various rooms, trading stories, and talking about our obsessions with props and the unobtainable treasures we hope to track down or build one day.
Like Guillermo, I have a strong belief in the talismanic power of objects. Collecting and making movie props is, on one level, a way to connect with the films that inspire me. There’s a power to those objects, and my weird passion for them and the films they’re from is the engine that drives me as a maker and as a man. Feeding those passions is the engine of everything I have. Like the innate drive of the Judas bugs in Mimic, it’s simply in my nature to behave this way.
I think it’s the same for Guillermo. He spends a lot of time at Bleak House painting models and assembling pieces to put on display. Just to have them around, feeding his creativity. For us, it’s an important meditative practice. I get asked, “Why are you doing this?” and all I can say is that if I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t be nearly as happy. I also wouldn’t be me.
Sharing these passions with Guillermo has been a real joy. Since that first visit to Bleak House, we have ended up becoming patrons of each other’s collections. His enthusiasm and generosity are overwhelming and truly infectious to be around. I don’t think I’ve ever been around him when it hasn’t felt like he was having the time of his life.
BLUE NOTEBOOK PAGE 199
* Manny shining shoes in his apartment
* Someone appears by dissolve while walking along.
* Are you drunk? I—uh—oh (looks at the bottle) uh, yeah, this things, the glass is too thick….
* I feel on the verge of tears, explain that 2 me. o/Could you explain to me then, why i—why I
* Shadows on paint puddle MIMIC
* Window shot droplets in FG. Foc.
* Track along a heavy textured wall “a la” nightmare
* MAGIC narrative about images without orig. AUDIO.
* Things that have been set in motion.
* Sometimes I think you don’t care… about anything. About image of someone who is totally distracted
* Chuy looks at a very rare and violent image (Saint Cecilia or Sacred Heart).
* Chinese man with glasses on
• MSZ: The grandfather figure in Mimic is interesting because there’s a resonance with the grandparent/grandchild relationship in Cronos.
GDT: I wanted Federico Luppi to play the character (you can see it in the art), but his English was not very good. When we talked with him, we realized he would have trouble with abundant dialogue. So we had to cut a lot of the vignettes between the grandfather and the grandson in the original screenplay. In one, he said, “This god cannot see,” and he cut his own throat. It was too much for him to see the kid that he loved sort of happily living with the insects. And the grandson didn’t react to the grandfather’s death in the script, which was doubly shocking. They were good ideas, but I don’t know if I would’ve gotten away with them even in the best of circumstances.
MSZ: That’s interesting, because in Cronos, I think of the relationship as the granddaughter observing the grandfather, as opposed to the grandfather watching the grandson.
GDT: I love the idea of somebody watching a loved one doing something unforgivable but still loving them. Or in Hellboy, I love the fact that Liz Sherman comes to terms with who she is by allowing Hellboy to be who he is. I think that’s a very beautiful love story, better than the “Beauty and the Beast” idea of the beast having to look like a prince. Instead, the princess has to accept her own bestiality so the love story can happen.
Jeremy Northam and del Toro on set. It was crucial to del Toro that Northam’s character, Dr. Peter Mann, wear glasses.
“God roach” concept by TyRuben Ellingson.
• GDT: A big, big win for me was that Jeremy [Northam] would wear glasses. The idea was that his character was a scientist—an arrogant guy who thought we could control everything. So then his glasses break, and he cannot go to the optometrist. There was a great line that we shot, when Mira Sorvino was putting the hormones all over Jeremy, and he says, “All I need is a pair of pliers.” And the problem is that they’re under the sink at home. And it just gives you an instant idea of how screwed they are. They are close to home, but the pair of pliers is just so far away. He might as well be in Moscow.