The hilarious, affable and sincere key holder to the Tolkien film franchise discusses Hellboy, Halo, Weta, The Hobbit, how Pan is a fraud and why he’s on edge when having tea with Doug Jones!

Guillermo Del Toro: Thank you very much, here I am to answer anything you want to ask or throw shit at me, whatever you want. I’m here. Thank you very much for coming, and let’s proceed.

What were the differences between working Sony in the first film and Universal in this film?

The main thing is first of all, although Hellboy has always been, in terms of a studio understanding a property, it’s very difficult. We have the same conversations sometimes that we had the first time. ‘Why does it have to be called Hellboy?‘ When we did the first one, some theaters in the south, I have the Polaroids, that shows the movie next to The Passion of the Christ. There were a couple of marquees that said “Hello Boy”, which obviously was a musical with Barbara Streisand or something.

You’ll have those conversations, but it’s understandable. I always say, the studios, the industry of movie-making looks back. And they find reassurance in that. A filmmaker looks forward. It’s been a conflict of interest in a way. Inevitable. I remember there were points in the first one. I remember in the first campaign, we tried a lot of things that worked, a lot of things that didn’t. But the main thing is this time the product was embraced for what it was. So we were not hiding Hellboy, we were not hiding the title. We were not hiding the comedic aspects or this and that. The first one was sold mostly as an action movie, it was mostly on those merits.

I think I kind of screwed up. Because whatever you expect of the movies I make, I always do something different. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. But I do something different than the trailers. On any movie you can watch I tried to go purposely against the grain of what is expected. The collaboration, I was defining it today somewhat. I said it was a big muscle studio, but it was detailed, and tailored for the movie. When somebody at Universal came up with the idea for the NBC interstitials. When I read, I popped a boner. I said this is brilliant, and off-kilter— boner is a candy they sell in Mexico.

Ron said ‘I’m not sure’. I rewrote the pieces, for the NBC commercials to be more Hellboy-ish, and they were brilliant. The tagline: Believe it or not, he’s the good guy, assumed a lot of things. As a marketing campaign, I thought they did a brilliant job at reintroducing and re-familiarizing people with the movies. The first one is 4 years old. I told you what I did was [unintelligible] my library today, I bought my own man cave, I have so much crap.

[microphones cuts off briefly, looks quizzically at it]
…What the fuck?
[audience laughter]

At some point, it took three quarters of the house. So I bought a little house near. Today I tried for the first time, a little entertainment system, my first one. I said I’m going to give myself this extravagance– I’m 43 and I dress like shit, I have an old car– and I tried it with Hellboy. I was happy to reacquaint myself with ten, fifteen minutes of the film. Things have changed, I have changed also. I think the movie is more free than the first one. Whether people will like it more or not, is up to each of you, but I think they did a fantastic job in selling it.

Question regarding creatures, effects and how this will be applied to The Hobbit

Well if everything goes well, if everything goes as planned, the idea is to supplement the pipeline they have for digital creatures. We’re actually doing a shitload more physical creatures in this one. I think there’s a perfect opportunity in that. People tend to forget how many new creatures and new places can be explored in The Hobbit. Not made up, they’re in the book.

Beautiful moments like when they see the giants with the stones, it’s such a magical majestic moment. The fact that the spiders in Mirkwood are somehow the progeny of Shelob but they can look different. And I have some ideas for that. And Smaug! What I hope to do is, I started experimenting with CGI enhanced physical creatures with Blade 2, we did the maw of the reapers that way.

I wanted to do it since Mimic, but on Mimic I was too busy trying to pull out whatever it was up my ass at that point that I didn’t have a chance to experiment. I think that the beauty of doing that is you can get to a point. And I think we will get to a point, where you can create a creature that is neither nor. There are moments when Wink (Hellboy II creature) is completely real, but we added the tongue and the mouth so he could scream a little and move the tongue. Or his fist is CG, but the rest of him is real. I think it’s blended quite nicely!

With Weta, which is in my opinion the best digital studio in the world right now– and Spectral Motion partnering up and DDT(?) and other people coming in, it will be fantastic. I’m hoping to bring the best of both worlds together.

Question on the balancing of his films with studio desires for mass audience appeal and classification of his films towards adults or children

The main thing is, very simple: The biggest lesson I learned on Mimic is to say no for the right reasons. To say no out of ego or insecurity, you are screwing everybody, yourself, the movie. If you assume the fact that the director is nothing special but he may be special in the way he connects with the movie. I’ll use an analogy: When my first daughter was born, and during the horrible experience of Mimic. When I was weak, I thought of her. How can I go back home and give her lessons in ethics or morality if I don’t stand up and tell them to fuck off. That gave me the strength to tell them to fuck off many times. It’s the same with the movie. The only moral right a director has is not his own, it’s the movie he’s defending. You do it for the right reasons for something stronger than you.

Normally I’m shy! When my daughter went to school for the first time, believe it or not, I was afraid to go in with her because the kids would make fun of me. I’m a complete freak! But when it comes to the movie I become brave, because I defend the movie.

[[spoiler-ish Hellboy II material ahead]]
The elemental scene was asked, if we would let it go. I said no, because to me although the movie is very simple in the narrative, the way the screenplay is constructed so that there are many things going against the grain. The villain is the only guy that has moral principle in the whole movie, not the heroes. He’s the only guy that has a thing he’s standing for– him and his sister and his family. Our guys are too busy trying to please someone or be something other than themselves. And it was very important for the world of Hellboy, all he does is kill monsters, right? And there was a moment where it’s a to be or not to be. Where he goes, ‘Hmm‘.

For Hellboy to say the last line in the movie: “I win, you live“. Is very important to have the other moment before. I fought at some point for the locker room scene. Or the tumor line, which was improvised on the set. Also even small things, or big things like the Barry Manilow scene. A lot people said you’re fucking insane. [[end spoilers]]

And it is. I wanted the movie to have an almost Seinfeld-esque interaction with the characters where nothing is happening outside their adventures. I really wanted to see these big, elaborate set pieces juxtaposed with moments that are so insignificantly small but personal. When somebody can drink a beer and lose his balance, and then juxtapose them with the rest of the story. I was curious to do that, and that was very experimental. It was not what I was doing on Blade or the first Hellboy. It was me and nobody else; I was still trying to somewhat meet a pattern or what was expected of an action movie. On this one I said screw all the patterns, I’m going to do whatever I want to do. This is closer to my universe and my style.

I think of kids with such respect and I think of kids being emotionally such sophisticated guys. I really don’t think of it always as ‘it’s a movie for kids‘. Anyone 10 or older, I would say by all means see the movie. I think Pan’s Labyrinth, I would allow anyone over 13 to take a look. I think kids, their reality is very difficult. We think of them like some sort of.. retarded creatures. And they are very, very sophisticated. I went through an infancy that was out of Midnight Express, and at home they thought I was in Sesame Street. We got to give them credit for that. I hope they see all the movies I do, eh, maybe one exception. [giggles]

Moderator: Speaking of which, a little girl has a question.

Oh my god! I’ve been sayin…. don’t talk like that! Ever!

Little girl asks of the possibility of Hellboy III

I think, look. I could ask my agent and he would say ‘we’ll know Monday‘. I can tell you when we mapped the story, we mapped it where we want to go if there is a third one. The answer is from our side: absolutely, resoundingly ‘YES‘. We’ll know soon enough. Ron Perlman, god knows we gotta do it before he has to consume Cialis to get up in the morning.

[audience laughter]

Hellboy II and the first are much more fun compared to other films you’ve made like Pan’s Labyrinth. Was that sort of atmosphere was reflected for you in production or on the set.

The difference is on the pre-production stages, mostly. When I’m alone writing, for example the music I was listening to when I was writing Pan’s Labyrinth, I was listening to a composer Arvo Pärt who created a piece called Spiegel im Spiegel, mirror in the mirror. It was completely intimate and moody. When I was writing this, I was listening to Danny Elfman. The way I interact with the page, if I write and I laugh, it’s happy. If I write and I cry, I know it’s great. It’s that moment of creation that’s different. In the set I suffer exactly the same. I am completely unhappy. I am never thrilled. I am only thrilled when it’s over I can go home because it’s when the movie escapes from your grasp.

There was a great moment in this movie, where we have the canary right? For the troll. We’re in Budapest and freezing our asses off in the night. Everything you see in the movies I do, with the exception of Mimic. Everything is first unit, everything we shot ourselves. We were freezing there. Now it’s time for the closeup of the canary. The wind blows the canary cage, it falls, and the canary escapes. I turn to the wrangler and say ‘well, bring the other one.‘

‘There is no other one‘.

[audience laughter]

It’s 2AM and I know I have 5 hours to go. So that’s the reality. And the shit we make up for the interviews like ‘yes, I calculated..’. You calculate everything you can, but then you find serendipity. That’s when the mood changes.

Mind you, for the outside world, 70% of the time I’m cracking jokes on the set, trying to keep it amicable. People know when i get pissed off, I get deeply, darkly pissed off. But brief eh? Brief! If you bring me a candy it will be over.

[crowd laughter]

Hola Guillermo, thank you for Hellboy II, it was awesome. As a director, what’s the hardest thing to achieve story telling-wise and acting-wise?

Since Cronos, I’m very respectful in my knowledge of the genres. We can discuss about the difference between genres that people confuse very easily, like sci-fi, fantasy, horror, suspense. Some people use it interchangeably. Drama, melodrama. In the movies I do, I try to change register really fast. We can go from a funny moment to a completely sappy moment to a really heartbreaking moment, to moment of horror. That is the hardest thing to pre-plan, on the storyboards. The other thing is to create, to color-fy everything in the film as much as I can so that the color, the texture, the art direction, the design of the characters, way they move– everything is actually a motor telling the story. I say jokingly that I try not to do eye candy but I [unintelligible]. We are using critical and theoretical tools that we inherited from the last century. I do believe that film, especially now, storytelling occurs not on the screenplay level, but on the audio visual level in a much faster way. Those are the two most challenging things. I’m a hard working guy, I know that if you tell me ‘you have to move this mountain‘, you give me one ax or something, I’ll go at it. Weeks, months, years, I’ll just keep going!

Wink was very challenging. The Angel of Death technically was very challenging, but we have the best make-up effects shop I could hope for– Spectral Motion. Especially one guy there called Mark Setrakian, is really mysterious a character that I think, feeds on human blood. And lives in Glendale, so be very careful there. I was very decided that the wings should be achieved physically. So packing all the servos, and all the motors in the space of the wings for all the eyes to blink and look around. Very very difficult, incredibly heavy. Johann– the mouth mechanism, everything was put together at the last moment because I kept redesigning it. I had conceived this idea for Master Chief, for Halo– the idea of a helmet that could act. It would’ve been more sleek and far more invisible than Johann’s. I changed the thickness the glass at the last minute. Which added 5 pounds of resin on the head of the guy, so on the end of the first day of shoot he was looked like [unintelligible] of Jesus. Tears of blood and he looked all… I felt like a Judas. All my catholic guilt emerged.

Question regarding Doug Jones

Doug Jones I’ve worked with now in Mimic, we did the first Hellboy, we did Pan’s, and we did this, so four movies. I’ve always loved his work. In Pan’s Labyrinth there was a reason I wanted him to play the Pale Man. In my mind, all the tests for the girl are fake. Pan is the Pale Man. He is impersonating the creature; Pan is a fraud. So I wanted him to play the character for that reason. But he was so good, that he was screwed. Now on Hellboy he plays three creatures, and god willing, in the next movie he’ll play four.

I know he is going to be a guy that demands the utmost of him in the nicest possible way. If you have ever met Doug Jones, he’s the nicest guy on Earth. So was John Wayne Gacy. [audience laughter] Whenever I go to have ice tea at his house, I leave the door open, and look at my car. I think of Silence of the Lambs. He’s very nice. He’s incredibly creative. When you’re blessed with partnership like that it becomes evident and clear that in life we are born with one family. As we go along, we form another one. Doug, like Ron, like Guillermo (Navarro), Mike Elizalde– they are like family. People I love as brothers, and I torture them like brothers.

With that said, listen, thank you very much, please spread the word thank you very much. Gracias!