Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities

by Guillermo Del Toro

  NOTEBOOK 4, PAGE 5A

  Del Toro drew inspiration for the main building in the film from the chimneys characteristic of the historical architecture of the Pyrenees.

  –“Don’t get me wound up, animal. . . don’t push me”

  –They use the binoculars to spy on the police officers who arrest the fighter from the train. They can make them out perfectly.

  * Julio Vélez, a good actor to play a civil guard. Thin.

  –Hellboy calls the new agent “Lil’ fella” or “squirt.”

  –Abe has “insight” that they are very weird “Kidney.”

  –When I was a boy, I could feel them in my bones. My hand.

  –The spotlight doesn’t work. Would there be electricity?? In the middle of the countryside??

  –High Relief Portico, LEDGE, CORNICE, Pillar, Post

  –Chimneys in the Pyrenees.

  –One never bathes in the same river or sees the same film twice. Memorable TRUEBISMO #1

  –Ofelia has: a very slight hunchback DDT or a lame leg (?)

  –Take your hat off when you speak to me you goddamn son of a bitch!!

  –Production Designer: Martin Childs for HB/MoM.

  –Maria Portalez Cerezuela is the name of B.’s mother.

  –What Vidal keeps in his safe must be SEEN (dry sausages).

  –Crown/how much, sleeps, fire in the window, the house awakens, labyrinth. enter (stable-ish dynamite). It’s you. It’s you. Here we go.

  –The wooden man instead of the ghosts

  –They prick her cheeks to give them color.

  –Art Director: WOLFGANG BURMANN

  –In some stories, elves replace people with wooden logs that turn into human beings the next morning.

  –She has a shoe catalog that belongs to her father.

  –Don’t open your mouth or make a sound or you’ll remain there with them forever. Forever.

  –The old, blind man’s name is Benigno and he’s the girl’s father.

  –Benigno knows the house and labyrinth inside out. He tells Ofelia about the children that the well “swallowed up” and about how nobody ever saw them again.

  –Mercedes and the old man need to be seen doing “what they do” without it having anything to do with the plot.

  –I had a dream and I know I’m not his daughter.

  –Vidal has a gold cross or a rosary hanging from his neck.

  This reference was carried through in the design of the mill seen in this production artwork by Carlos Jimenez.

  GDT: I did a lot of research on the architecture of northern Spain while working on Pan’s Labyrinth because the north of Spain is very peculiar. It has sort of a fairy-tale feel, both the northeast and the northwest. Whether you’re in Galicia or on the border with France, either way you get these lush, cold forests.

  And I just made the house they lived in out of the chimneys of the Pyrenees because I thought it needed to feel crooked, or needed to feel like straight lines going wrong, like a motion detector.

  Then [opposite] it says, “In some stories, the elves replace people with wooden logs that turn into human beings the next morning.” That is the changelings. I thought, at some point while creating Pan’s Labyrinth, that there would be elves who would take the baby into the labyrinth. I obviously changed that.

  “One never bathes in the same river or sees the same film twice.” This is a reference to Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, who said that about rivers, but it’s also true about film. You never see the same film twice.

  Then it talks about Ofelia having a limp leg. I wanted her to not be completely normal, but then I thought what is great is making her physically normal, but making her different in other ways.

  Del Toro gave Vidal (Sergi López) stiff leather boots so that he would creak when he walked.

  GDT: There are some notes here [opposite], like I’m playing with what the movie would be called in English because I knew that “The Faun’s Labyrinth” would be bad.

  And then it says, “Coat on his shoulders, gloves, glasses, and silver cane.” Everything but the silver cane is the captain. And it says, “Hair parted in the center, patent leather shoes, beige scarf.” No scarf, but the shoes and the gloves were very important for me with the captain because I needed him to creak.

  MSZ: What is this house? Is it something you invented or remembered, or did you come across it?

  GDT: It’s actually the house where Luis Buñuel lived as a kid. I thought it would be great to use it as the model for the house in Pan’s, but I abandoned it because I thought the mill was a better thing.

  I went to the cinemathéque in Spain and read a lot about Buñuel for Pan’s Labyrinth. He’s one of my two favorite filmmakers of all time, along with Hitchcock. Formally, they’re polar opposites. But, content-wise, they are very similar, and there are traits of their personalities that are interesting. As a friend of mine put it very brutally, “The only difference between Buñuel and Hitchcock is that Buñuel was handsome.” Which is a big difference. But they were both guys that lived very bourgeois, very middle-class lives. They lived like gentlemen. You went to Buñuel’s house, and he was very rigid. He was very much a male, a very macho guy with his wife. It was like old-school gentlemen, but in their imaginations, they were anarchists. Buñuel was a huge fan of the Marquis de Sade, and he was obviously a man with many, many twisted ideas and an iconoclast. Hitchcock was the same. The curious thing is that they lived these guarded lives and had completely unguarded imaginations.

  So for Pan’s, I was very attracted to the idea of making some kind of reference to Buñuel.

  Del Toro sketched the house where Luis Buñuel grew up in his notebook, using it as an inspiration for the film’s main building, conceptualized by Carlos Jimenez.

  NOTEBOOK 4, PAGE 5B

  –FOUNDLING: Abandoned or consigned to an institution

  –CONSTRUCTION: MATEO MARIOTTI (Madrid/Barcelona).

  MAKEUP: Gregorio Ros/ Hair Stylist: PEPITO JUEZ.

  –In the Labyrinth/ In the Labyrinth/ The Faun’s Labyrinth.

  –Boston, Bostonian furniture, vertical in the entrance.

  –Coat on his shoulder, gloves, glasses, and silver cane. Hair parted in the center, patent leather shoes, beige scarf.

  –There are runes on the stones around the well (name of God).

  Luis Buñuel’s house

  –Man may acquire grace directly from the world and not through public/ charitable organizations

  NOTEBOOK 4, PAGE 13A

  The tunnel full of roots below the tree began in del Toro’s notebook and was developed by Raúl Monge

  –A watch instead of liquor. He/she tells them the story—

  –I believe in two things: God and time. Both are infinite, both reign supreme. Both crush mankind—

  –For the coffin with blurred “edges.”

  –My mother taught me how to live. My father taught me how to die. To die with courage. The only decent way to die. That’s where the broken watch comes in.

  –The doctor is going to help him “DIE WELL.”

  –Why do you smile when you say it. . . this? You call this a smile?

  –Ramon Fontserè for the role of the priest in P.L.

  –Kate Corrigan drums her fingers incessantly on the table

  –We have gained arrogance instead of Wisdom, gained cruelty instead of intelligence and made the world a cruel, cold place.

  –Abe, you look like a woman when you laugh like that.

  –Devane’s Speech in Marathon Man to explain the BPRD.

  –Abe to HB: You should have a “blurb” a one-liner, a signature piece that people remember you by, like: Crime is a disease and I am the cure. Later HB tells him, Aw, crap.

  –Use Abe Sapien in the programs with the Hannusen model

  –Hellboy versus the GIANT PIG MAN/flaming skeletons.

  –Good punch, HB!! K.C. says, “Somehow I think it’ll take more than that, Red responds. Abe makes his “AOL” impersonatio
n.

  –Manning explains his “BALL OF GAS” theory to the press.

  –1/23/05 Carmen gives clothes to my daughter./Better life/She believes in weddings.

  –You cannot deny that your soul has been touched by fire.

  –You don’t Diddly-squat about us.

  –For the ghost VFX it would be worth it not to use a conventional [?] but instead to use a CH [?].

  –STOP MOTION instead of CGI.

  –Hellboy flicks away a fairy with his finger.

  –She puts the mandrake root under the bed. Explosions. Pitched battle. A wounded man. Theft of the antibiotics. They’ve captured one of them. Mercedes and the doctor speak to one another. The antibiotics are the same. Torture, the deaf-mute’s suicide.

  GDT: At the top [opposite], I have the captain’s watch, broken. This came, actually, from a Fascist movie. There’s a Fascist movie called Balarrasa, which is a movie that was done during the Franco years, so the heroes are Fascists. And one of them hits his watch right before he thinks he’s going to die, and he says, “I want people to know the time of my death.”

  And I thought that was a really arrogant gesture, and I took it for the captain’s father, who says, “Let my son, like his father, die like a true man.” And he’s ready to do that at the end. He pulls out the watch and he’s ready to say, “Tell my son—” And they say, “We won’t tell him shit. You’re gonna be forgotten.” And then he says something I feel very much about the Old World right now, and it’s very much the theme of Hellboy II: “We have gained arrogance instead of wisdom, we have gained cruelty instead of intelligence, and made the world a cruel, cold place.”

  And then it says, “She puts the mandrake root under the bed. Explosions. Pitched battle. A wounded man.” This is pretty much the way the movie is. “Theft of the antibiotics. They’ve captured one of them. Mercedes and the doctor speak to one another. The antibiotics are the same. Torture, the deaf-mute’s suicide.” And I made him a stutterer instead of a deaf mute. But at one point I thought, “Well, what if the guy survives, and they find he’s a deaf mute? And they have to interrogate him, but he can’t speak. So he starts writing, and as he is writing, he commits suicide.” I thought he would grab a pen and stab himself rather than talk. But, as it is, they tortured this stuttering guy.

  Eventually the tunnel full of roots becoming the site for the scene in the final film where Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) confronts the frog to retrieve the gold key in its stomach.

  Then, on the right hand side [below], we have almost exactly the shot that I have in the movie, in which Mercedes turns around and her umbrella covers the frame. And then, when she turns back, the captain is there.

  NOTEBOOK 4, PAGE 13B

  –IN HB II, Abe: You’ve been listening to Barry Manilow. —No, I most certainly am not (and he hides the CD) The book Remains

  –Later you’ll both listen to him together and you’ll break into tears

  –Abe is delighted by all the jokes Kate Corrigan tells

  –FACE REPLACEMENT in the case of the faun.

  –Do you haunt this bridge?

  –How much does it cost to support HB?/annual.

  –The Spanky method to disappear in the river, use it in HB II

  –Cloak of invisibility/ring.

  –Prison Break/MAXIMUM SECURITY area.

  –The inside of the mill is RED.

  –I’ll need something small in return: your seed.

  –You can SEE the forest from the valley, but not from the forest.

  –As soon as the self ceases to exist. The world exists.

  –Criticism gives one the illusion of participating in the act of creation by way of an autopsy. The act is there and it exists and moves and challenges you while criticism fights to approve and validate.

  –EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT HIMSELF.

  IT’S ONLY THROUGH ART THAT YOU’RE ABLE TO GLIMPSE OTHERNESS.

  –One door is made of gold, another silver, another wood.

  –Signed by the lawyers at GUILFOYLE & GUILFOYLE.

  –SCARLET dress for the girl during the episode with the toad.

  –Story of the fox and the [?] pigeons.

  –Stuart Baxter: LOCATION SCOUT and professional PHOTOGRAPHER.

  –The guests are DRY and DEAD: A SOUL SUCKING PIG.

  –Use a THORN FOREST for HB with a sword.

  –Sequence in the rain in which Liz or RC is kidnapped.

  –Anything you want to tell us about your foes: Well they have great fancy-pants names “Lord of this-that” and they smell.

  –How much do they owe? Don’t worry about it—a hand gesture would be better

  –Look at me you, BASTARD. The captain in the cantina.

  –There are a thousand ways to kill a man, only one way to give him life.

  –He who has nothing but feet will contribute his feet.

  He who has nothing but eyes will contribute his eyes.

  For this great spiritual project. “The finger and the moon” A. J.

  * * *

  THE MAGICIAN

  CORNELIA FUNKE

  For the unrealized Mephisto’s Bridge, del Toro drew on the iconography of archangels to design the demon called Spanky.

  HOW DOES ONE WRITE about a true magician? It is quite a dangerous task, as a true magician can’t be summoned or captured by words. And Guillermo del Toro is one of the greatest magicians of our time. Under his spell, words whisper and spread burning sparks over the silver screen to explode in a thousand archetypal images, so old and so new at the same time.

  Guillermo del Toro takes “Once upon a time” and wraps it into black and golden yarns. He weaves the truth about the world from images and words until the shimmering fabric tells us all about the darkness and the light—the shadows that haunt us and our most secret wishes and dreams.

  The labyrinth of the human heart . . . Guillermo knows all about it. And like every true magician, he dares to lose himself on its winding paths. He explores even its most frightening corners, just to bring back the truth.

  He hunts for creatures and tales between its hedges, ancient remnants that have guarded our secrets since the very first story was told around a fire to fight the fear of what hides in the dark.

  Guillermo brings back the treasures of myth and fairy tale and feeds them with the fears and hopes of our time. That’s what makes his storytelling so powerful and unique—he deciphers our modern age with tools from the past. He uses the oldest language to reveal what we try to hide—all the desires of the human heart, all its weakness, fear, anger, and cruelty. Fairy tales never lie about human nature, and neither does Guillermo del Toro. His art proves that nothing is more realistic than fantasy. He paints the political reality of our world and times on the screen using the colors of our subconscious.

  But he doesn’t just reveal the demons. Guillermo also knows about the angels. And maybe it is that quality that makes all his work so unforgettable and profound—he looks at us with such tenderness although he knows about our dark side. Guillermo’s haunting screen landscapes are deeply humane, and even his most nightmarish horrors know about love. That’s something only a true magician can do—summon all the demons and, despite their growls and screams, still let us hear the angels’ footsteps in the dark.

  NOTEBOOK 4, PAGE 16A

  Del Toro wanted to embellish Ofelia’s bed with carvings of owls, an idea developed further by Raúl Monge.

  4/07/05. M. Frost’s betrayal breaks my heart. He gave Lo7 to B.P for them to control without even mentioning to me. Becoming a man means being left on your own.

  –Anno Domini: “In the year of our Lord” 2005 A.D.

  –The Celts entered Hispania from the Northwest at almost the same moment they entered Great Britain, circa 500 B.C.

  The LA TENE period. Sophisticated sculptures

  4/10/05 Yesterday F. Trueba, Cristina and David Trueba had dinner with Lorenza and me: a couple of names were suggested: ZAY Nuba and Joaquín NOTARIO from S. of G. for E. L.
d. F.

  –This group was the most feared of all since their words confirmed the prophecies.

  –VISIT the R. Dahl Museum in Buckinghamshire.

  –Her last name was “STREGA,” from the Italian for witch

  –Patricia [?] and Gerardo [?] on Eve’s list.

  –DEVICE to flood and demolish the entire temple and make the army disappear.

  –I’ve heard about you. You’re one of us.

  –The grandmother in The Witches was inspired by R.D.’s grandmother, whose name was Sophie.

  –He loved the bull’s tail soup.

  –Galicia, the cave of the cathedrals, looks like a landscape in the north of U.K.

  Ofelia’s bed.

  –Manolito at the cave’s entrance.

  –Try to use a little animal that falls in love with Liz Sherman and that H.B. despises

  –H.B. to Manning: “It’s time to pimp ma’ ride.”

  –4/22/05 After the [drawing] we’re having dinner with L.D.

  –IN CONSILIIS NOSTRIS FATUM NOSTRUM EST.

  –Sunshades for the mill. Bread in little bags, suitcases, soldiers with measurements they use for rationing. If anyone asks for more, bring him to me.

  –Abe tells HB that there’s a lot of annoying things about him

  –The legacy of a gone era. Handed down through time.

  Iñigo Carlos Raul M. Raul [?]

  –In the Spanish village of Tronchon, there is a relic of a mutilated hand that once belonged to one of the Innocent Saints and that prevents the rain from falling.

  –A king with only one eye and one leg whom we recognize when he appears, now much older.

  Carlos Jimenez and carried out in the film’s production design.

  MSZ: Let’s talk about the images on this page [opposite]—the mask and the owl.