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- [00:01]
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- [00:14]
Terry Gross
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The great filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has written and directed a new reimagining of Frankenstein. It takes inspiration from the 1931 film Frankenstein, which one of the first, best and most enduring horror monster films, but mostly from Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein, which many consider to be the first science fiction book. She was only 18 when she wrote it. In del Toro's movie, the final part of the story is told from the creature's point of view. Some of the themes of his new film echo themes that he's been obsessed with for years, misunderstood creatures, men who behave like monsters, father, son, relationships, religion, empathy, cruelty, misguided scientific experiments that take a terrible turn and what del Toro describes as the uneasy truce between science and religion, machine and man, and the realization that you are inescapably alone. His other movies include Pan's Labyrinth, the Shape of Water, which won four Oscars, including best picture and best director Nightmare Alley, a reimagining of Pinocchio filmed in stop motion animation and two Hellboy films. In del Toro's Frankenstein, Oscar Isaac plays Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the surgeon who wants to create new life, a new man built out of body parts from the newly dead. The creature he creates is played by Jacob Elordi, who's best known for co starring in Euphoria and also played Elvis Presley in the Sofia Coppola movie. Priscilla del Toro grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico, and lives in La. Guillermo del Toro, welcome to FRESH air. Congratulations on your new film which brings together so much of your other work. And I know it's a dream come true for you to do your own version of Frankenstein. You first saw the movie, the 1931 movie, which is totally different from the book and your new movie. But. But that movie really had a hold on you. Tell us why it had such meaning for you.
- [02:22]
Guillermo del Toro
Well, it was curiously enough, on a Sunday after Catholic mass, we came back home and then we would watch horror movies on Channel 6 all day. And it was the first time I saw Frankenstein and the moment Boris Karloff crossed the threshold, I had an epiphany. I had St. Paul on the road to Damascus kind of experience. I realized I understood my faith or my dogmas better through Frankenstein than through Sunday mass. I saw the resurrection of the flesh, the Immaculate Conception Ecstasy, you know, stigmata, everything made sense. And I decided at age 7 that the creature of Frankenstein was going to be my personal avatar and my personal messiah. It was a really profound transformation and it made an impression that lasted my whole life.
- [03:19]
Terry Gross
Can you compare how you saw the story as a 7 year old to how you see it now?
- [03:24]
Guillermo del Toro
Well, I saw it as a son when I saw it first, and now I see it as a father. And more poignantly, I had become my father whilst trying to run away from the same mistakes of absence or, you know, mysterious emotions that I couldn't figure out as a kid. And I had a really profound moment to be able to reconcile this knowledge with a beautiful talk with my own kids and stop this lineage of pains. And, you know, fathers are a big shadow, particularly in Latin American families, I imagine.
- [04:06]
Terry Gross
What's the pain you're referring to in talking about your relationship with your father?
- [04:09]
Guillermo del Toro
It is. My father was always a mystery and he was really funny and warm, but by turns he was also aloof and distant and had a lot of problem even, you know, when he came back from the kidnapping, he was taken 72 days and I said, I'm going to get to know him real well. And our conversations never lasted more than a few minutes, you know, and he just couldn't. And I didn't understand that. And I realized that, particularly with my profession, I had a huge alibi to repeat this distance. And I unfortunately cut it, I believe on time to really change it and become a very dedicated father.
- [04:55]
Terry Gross
You mentioned the kidnapping. He was kidnapped and held for a million dollar ransom, and you managed to get the money to pay the kidnappers and rescue your father. And that's my understanding, is that's why you moved to the us, because of death threat.
- [05:11]
Guillermo del Toro
Yeah, well, it was the constant threat and the ptsd, et cetera. But a lot of the moments that happened during that kidnapping are actually obliquely reflected in the film. I tried to make it an autobiography of the soul for me.
- [05:26]
Terry Gross
There's three parts of the movie, there's the introduction, then there's the story told pretty much from Dr. Frankenstein's point of view, and then the final part is told from the creature's point of view.
- [05:38]
Guillermo del Toro
Yes.
- [05:38]
Terry Gross
I really wanted to read Mary Shelley's novel, which I've never read before, speaking to you again, and I wasn't able to find the time to do it. Yes, I did, however, read your introduction to, like, I think it's a 2021 annotated version of your novel. But anyways, in Mary Shelley's original telling of the story. Is there a chapter that's from the creature's point of view, or is that just something you wanted to do?
- [06:04]
Guillermo del Toro
No, no, no, it is. There are so many things that are in the novel, you know, that is one of them. When the creature meets Victor in the frozen north, he says, well, this is what happened to me. And he proceeds to tell him his itinerary of degradation and humanization and learning the language with the family of the hermit. You know, all of that is in the novel, but it's been rarely articulated. And I found that hinging the movie in the middle was structurally the best way to make the audience almost get a jolt and say, oh, I've never seen this before. Even if it's been dramatized briefly in other versions, this is the one that tracks the creature in a distinct chapter. It starts in the frozen north and is very discreet in color. Then you have childhood and young age of Victor, which is idealized and very heightened visually by the fact that Victor is telling the story. And then the fairy tale, like.
- [07:12]
Terry Gross
Yeah, I'm glad you said fairy tale. Cause that seems to me like the part from Dr. Frankenstein's point of view, you know, has elements of, like, horror film and monster film. But the second part, it's set in the woods. It's like a fairy tale in a little cabin. Yeah. And the old blind man, it's kind of a very fairy tale benevolent character. There's spirits in the woods, and he's guided.
- [07:38]
Guillermo del Toro
The creature is guided by all sorts of animals into understanding the world.
- [07:42]
Terry Gross
Yeah. And the blind old hermit thinks that because he can't see, he doesn't see the monster that other people see. And in fact, he thinks the creature is the spirit of the woods.
- [07:58]
Guillermo del Toro
Yes. That was very important to me, that the three chapters were very distinct in style and very distinct in energy. The camera work is very different. The color palette is very different. And I think that I would say having seen most every version of Frankenstein on film, this is. This is very unique. The scale of the movie, both being epic and intimate, is very unique. But the fairy tale breadth of it all and the parable, it feels like a parable of the prodigal father. I'd say, jokingly.
- [08:35]
Terry Gross
Are you trying to interpret Frankenstein? People always call the monster Frankenstein.
- [08:42]
Guillermo del Toro
Yeah, that's a mistake. That came from a play.
- [08:47]
Terry Gross
So are you trying to compare the creature in Frankenstein to Jesus?
- [08:55]
Guillermo del Toro
I think so. I mean, I think the parallels are very, very curious. I triangulate the creature with Jesus and Pinocchio yeah.
- [09:04]
Terry Gross
In your version of Pinocchio, and I don't know if this is in other stories or in the original fairy tale, Geppetto, who creates the puppet. Pinocchio also has built or carved, I should say, a huge depiction of Jesus being crucified and for the church.
- [09:26]
Guillermo del Toro
Yeah. No, that's completely original, too.
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Terry Gross
That's original, yes.
- [09:32]
Guillermo del Toro
To me, the myths are very related. The two biggest mysteries in the Bible for me growing up, and I am a lapsed Catholic, but the two mysteries were the Book of Job, in which man questions God. Why do bad things happen to good people? And the answer, basically, of God is, why not?
- [09:52]
Terry Gross
It's very comforting the way you put it.
- [09:55]
Guillermo del Toro
That's the way God put it. He says, who are you to question my wisdom? You were not there when I created the world. Basically.
- [10:02]
Terry Gross
When we talked a few years ago, you mentioned that your grandmother, who was very Catholic, very exorcised you. Not exorcised, but as in an exorcism. She exorcised you twice.
- [10:17]
Guillermo del Toro
Yeah. With the holy water. Yeah.
- [10:19]
Terry Gross
Did you feel like people saw you as unholy and a sacrilege in the same way that people see the creature in Frankenstein and even Pinocchio? When Pinocchio is kind of rowdy in church because he's never been there before, he doesn't understand what church is. The people in the church call him unholy and a sacrilege.
- [10:41]
Guillermo del Toro
Well, you know, I'm very used to not fitting. I'm always looking through the window into the world, you know, a little bit, with a set of thoughts and a set of principles and ideas that don't necessarily conform. So my grandmother was in great pain that I would draw monsters all day. I would talk about the Bible, asking questions that were maybe too poignant, you know, but we loved each other, and that is salient in my movies. No matter how different we were, we can love each other. And that is, again, in Frankenstein. There's Frankenstein in all my movies, from Kronos all the way to Pinocchio. And every single movie, I hesitate to think of one that doesn't have elements of it.
- [11:30]
Terry Gross
You could say in some ways that the creature in Frankenstein is like artificial intelligence because he's created by man, but then lives on its own and can destroy man without even understanding quite what he's doing. So what are your thoughts about AI and did that kind of inform the movie in any way?
- [11:52]
Guillermo del Toro
It did and it didn't. It didn't in the sense that my concern is not artificial intelligence, but natural Stupidity. I think that's what drives most of the world's worst features. But I did want it to have the arrogance of Victor be similar in some ways to the tech Bros. You know, he's kind of aligned creating something without considering the consequences, you know? And I think we have to take a pause and consider where we're going. If you have to teach an AI to think in ones and zeros, you know, oh, my God, I would love for a generation to get raising kids right one time, one time in the entire history of mankind, there hasn't been a single generation that was raised right all across the globe. And I think that's our biggest failure in a way. You know, ones and zeros don't get the alchemy that you get with emotion and experience. You get the information, but you don't get the alchemy of emotion, spirituality and feeling. I'm not saying it's impossible to replicate, but we have it readily available with the next generation of children. And that's why the painful thing that Jacob Elordi and Victor enact is a father and son relationship that is very relatable in the film. Very relatable and very moving by the end.
- [13:22]
Terry Gross
Did you take advantage of any AI in making Frankenstein?
- [13:27]
Guillermo del Toro
AI, particularly generative AI is. I am not interested, nor will I ever be interested. I'm 61, and I hope to be able to remain uninterested in and using it at all until I croak. I really don't. The other day, somebody wrote me an email, said, what is your stance on AI? And my answer was very short. I said, I'd rather die.
- [13:50]
Terry Gross
Oh, those are strong words.
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Guillermo del Toro
Not for me. I'm Mexican. But I think, Terry, that even when a human sings a song that has already been recorded six, seven times, they're filtering their experience, their life. I often think of Johnny Cash singing Hurt, the Trent Reznor song, and making it entirely his own. Or Joe Cocker singing the Beatles. That's not aversion, that's not remixing. That is filtering through alchemical pain and experience, a work of art, into making it your own.
- [14:28]
Terry Gross
The creature in Frankenstein is endowed with eternal life in your film. Well, that's what I was going to ask you. What do you think about, you know, his eternal life is hell. The creature is alone and he wants to end his torment in life, but he can't. There's no one in the world who's like him. And Dr. Frankenstein refuses to make a companion for him. And the creature says, there was only one Remedy for pain. Death. And you took that away from me too. After the creature survives something that other people assume would have killed him, he says there was silence. And then merciless life. I felt lonelier than ever. So when you think of eternal life, do you think that that's torment?
- [15:14]
Guillermo del Toro
Oh, I do. I'm a huge fan of death. I'm a groupie for death. I think it's the metronome of our existence. And without rhythm, there is no melody. You know, it is the metronome of death that makes us value the compass of the beautiful music. You know, I'm going to say this comes when my father was taken. Every day was torment. And I used to see the sun rising and resent it. And I said, the sun doesn't care about my pain. But then eventually I realized it was my pain that didn't care about the sun. And that I needed to change that, that I needed to accept it. I needed to understand that the rhythm of the cosmos is different than that of my little heart.
- [16:04]
Terry Gross
You know, you mentioned the fear of death every day that your father was held hostage, kidnapped for ransom. Of course you'd be worried about death then. I mean, it was the threat of death hanging over him. And his life was in your hands to save. Putting that aside, as major as that is, did you have a fear of death growing up? And as a young man?
- [16:30]
Guillermo del Toro
Yes, as a young man, my grandmother and I had a very precarious sense of death and life. My grandmother would say good night to me every day and say, let us pray that I'm here tomorrow. And that is very. That is pretty intense for a four or five year old to hear. And I would spend. Sometimes I would sleep at the foot of her bed and I would be listening in the dark for her breathing. And if the breathing ceased, even for two seconds, I would be jolted and take a look to see if she was okay. And that stayed with me for many decades. I don't fear it anymore. I don't fear that anymore. I feel losing people. Yes. But me, I'm not afraid of dying, I hope. You know, really, Terry, all these great questions, you know, when they get resolved, right? When the lights flutter and you are no longer a director or a general or a pope, right? When you become just you and the lights are flickering out, that's when you realize what you did or didn't do in your life. And that's the most momentous thing anyone can experience. And you can go with great agitation or great peace.
- [17:49]
Terry Gross
We were talking earlier about the Book of Job?
- [17:51]
Guillermo del Toro
Yes.
- [17:52]
Terry Gross
You asked your cast to read the Book of Job.
- [17:56]
Guillermo del Toro
Yes. And the Tao, what did you want.
- [17:58]
Terry Gross
Them to take from it?
- [17:59]
Guillermo del Toro
Because ultimately, that's the plea of the creature, too. The plea of the creature is why, you know, why do this thing have happened to me? And the answer comes at the end. The final image of the film is what tells you what we can do. I mean, acceptance is so profound. You know, we are building a culture in which we have the idea of what things should be. And when they don't happen, you can feel frustrated, rebel against them, but at the end of the day, they are what they are. Marty Scorsese tackled the same sort of question in the Irishman, and the answer is very, very beautiful. He says it is what it is. That's the Book of Job. It is what it is. The Tao says all pain comes from desire, which is absolutely true. You want more awards, you want more money, you find yourself in pain. I do, you know. But if you don't, if you don't want more, there's a zero that gives you peace and the same with life.
- [19:05]
Terry Gross
So you found feeling insignificant.
- [19:07]
Guillermo del Toro
Oh, great.
- [19:08]
Terry Gross
Liberating, Liberating.
- [19:10]
Guillermo del Toro
Which can happen with reviews.
- [19:16]
Terry Gross
You read them.
- [19:18]
Guillermo del Toro
Not anymore. Not anymore. I'm 61. I don't. But I did. I did. Oh, my God. When I was younger, I would read every single one until I found the one that would never leave my brain. I remember a few that are really well phrased.
- [19:32]
Terry Gross
Do you want to quote one?
- [19:33]
Guillermo del Toro
Well, Jay Hoverman of the Village Voice wrote a great he put down Blade too beautifully. He said the only thing, Remot, about Blade two is that it's done by the same man that did Devil's Backbone, which is beautiful.
- [19:49]
Terry Gross
On that note, let me reintroduce you again. We have to take a break. If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. He wrote and directed the new film Frankenstein, his own interpretation of the Frankenstein story inspired by Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. We'll be back after a short break. Terry I'm Terry Gross, and this is.
- [20:08]
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- [21:37]
Terry Gross
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. He wrote and directed the new film Frankenstein, a new interpretation of the story inspired by Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. He also fell in love at the age of seven with the 1931 film Frankenstein, which starred Boris Karloff as the creature. The creature is played by Jacob Elordi in The new film Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the surgeon who creates the creature and brings it to life is played by Oscar Isaac. Del Toro's other films include Pan's Labyrinth, the Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley, a stop motion Animation, PG Reimagining of the Pinocchio story, and two Hellboy movies. I want to talk with you about the 1931 film Frankenstein, which was directed by James Whale, who also directed the first film version of Showboat, which is quite a contrast.
- [22:36]
Guillermo del Toro
And the first version of Waterloo Bridge, which is his version, is so brutal and sort of Brechtian. He was a very interesting director and a very interesting man.
- [22:47]
Terry Gross
Well, you know, I watched that movie so many times when I was a child because it used to be run frequently on Million Dollar Movie in New York. And they would show one movie and run it over and over all week. And then I watched it again a few nights ago because I wanted to refresh my memory. And part of what I love about the movie is just the otherworldliness of it. The cinematography is so good and it reminds me of like film noir, German expressionism. And it's misty, it's stormy, it's dreamlike.
- [23:21]
Guillermo del Toro
It'S very modern, by the way, ye I mean for 1931, this film. Well, Whale and a lot of this era of Hollywood filmmaker is extremely influenced by German cinema and to the point where Whale does An artifice that is not apparent to the audience until you tell them to look for it. If the shadows on the set didn't fall the way Whale liked it, he would spray paint him.
- [23:49]
Terry Gross
Whoa. Really?
- [23:50]
Guillermo del Toro
Yeah. There's a lot of shadows in the window that don't correspond to. To the light that is being poured on the set. And the light is. The shadows are painted with spray paint on the walls. And nobody knows now that I told you, if you watch it again, you'll see it here and there.
- [24:08]
Terry Gross
Did the style of filmmaking, the shadows, the lighting, the mist, the nightmarish quality of the images, did that influence you as a filmmaker?
- [24:20]
Guillermo del Toro
It did up to a certain point, and it did only on certain movies. Like, for example, on Pinocchio. The creation of Pinocchio is shot like a horror film, but the creation of the creature in this film is shown like a concert, like a joyful cornucopia of anatomical parts, blood, ligament and muscles, which has never been shown in any other versions before. But to me, it was mandatory because I wanted to see Victor at his professional best and at his artistic best. So I talked to my composer, Alexandre Desplat, and I said, we're gonna do it with a waltz and I'm gonna shoot it like a fun filled concert of anatomical part.
- [25:07]
Terry Gross
Did you study anatomy in order to do that?
- [25:09]
Guillermo del Toro
Yes. First of all, I've been obsessed by medicine and anatomy. I was the world's youngest hypochondriac.
- [25:18]
Terry Gross
Congratulations. That's quite an achievement.
- [25:20]
Guillermo del Toro
There must be a Boy Scout patch for that. But I went to my mother every day and I said, mother, I think I have trichinosis of the brain. Mother, I have cirrhosis. I read an entire encyclopedia of health as a kid, and I've been very taken by anatomy ever since. And we had a Victorian consultant and I used an entire. A medical library that I purchased from 1835. I bought it in London, and I used it to make sure the terms and the procedures were up to speed but not too advanced.
- [25:58]
Terry Gross
What did you tell your collaborators about what you wanted your Frankenstein to look like? Because he looks nothing like Boris Koloff. No, and I don't mean just. I don't just mean his face, but he doesn't have, like a bolt in his neck. He doesn't look all stitched together.
- [26:14]
Guillermo del Toro
What I was trying to capture is the beautiful style of the illustrations of an American artist called Bernie Wrightson, who illustrated for me the best illustrated version of the novel ever and who collaborated with me earlier on. And it has a very Byronian, very doomed, very wuthering height, sort of look of a doomed hero. And when he's first born and he's bald and almost naked, I wanted it to feel like an anatomical chart, like something newly minted. Not a repair job on an ICU victim, but the skills of Victor, his exquisite sense of design. The head is patterned after phrenology manuals from the 1800s, so they have very elegant, almost aerodynamic lines. I wanted this alabaster or marble statue feel, so it feels like a newly minted human being. And we also tried to make it the way I remember the Jesus images, life size, in the churches of my childhood.
- [27:25]
Terry Gross
The original Frankenstein movie is so dreamlike, nightmare like. And I think several of your films have very nightmarish imagery in it. I read you were a lucid dreamer.
- [27:40]
Guillermo del Toro
Yes, as a kid.
- [27:41]
Terry Gross
As a kid. So explain what you mean when you say a lucid dreamer.
- [27:46]
Guillermo del Toro
A lucid dream for me, or waking nightmares used to be called too, is you wake up in your dream in the exact environment that you fell asleep on. But there are elements that are not normal. I used to see monsters. I saw a burning figure at the foot of my bed, which is where the burning archangel comes in. Frankenstein. And that figure extended its arms and said, I live. And I woke up screaming. When I was a very young child, I used to see a fawn, a goatman come from behind an armoire while the church chimed midnight in the neighborhood. And with each chime, the figure would come up. And then you wake up and nothing is there and you're covered in sweat. And that's sort of lucid dreaming, or waking nightmare states, which are a disruption of the REM cycle on the brain, but to you as a kid, is truly harrowing.
- [28:48]
Terry Gross
So you would dream that you woke up and escaped the nightmare, only to find that the nightmare still is going on. So it makes the nightmare seem even more like reality.
- [28:59]
Guillermo del Toro
Yes, which is why one of the best images in the novel of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein had never been rendered on film until now. And it was my favorite moment reading it at age 11. I read the novel, and it's the moment Victor wakes up from the night of creation and the creature is standing at the foot of the bed looking back at him. As a kid, I held my breath. I was shocked, and I prayed for decades that I could make that moment come to life on a film before anyone. And fortunately, nobody did it.
- [29:39]
Terry Gross
Well, we have to take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Guillermo del Toro. He wrote and directed the new film, A New Interpretation of the Story. We'll be right back. This is FRESH air.
- [29:51]
Justin Chang
Hey, it's Mike Danforth, executive producer of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Here's a great way to get the perks of being an NPR producer without doing any of the work. Join npr. With npr, you get extended interviews, inside looks at your favorite shows and more, all while supporting NPR and never having to pull an all nighter. Or if you work on one of the new shows, an all morninger.
- [30:12]
Terry Gross
Sign up@plus.NPR.org Evergreen trees are Pacific Northwest icons in journalism.
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Terry Gross
The Evergreen is also a podcast from OPB about the Northwest. I'm Jen Chavez. Listen to the Evergreen Podcast from OPB.
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Terry Gross
Want to do is help.
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Terry Gross
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- [30:57]
Terry Gross
This is FRESH air. Let's get back to my interview with Guillermo del Toro. He wrote and directed the new film Frankenstein, a new interpretation of the story inspired by Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. When we left off, we were talking about how as a child, del Toro experienced lucid dreaming or waking nightmares. That's when you think you've awakened from a nightmare, but you haven't really. You're just dreaming you woke up and the nightmare continues. Do you think that your lucid dreams when you were a child relate to how you fell in love with movies when you were a child? Because movies are so dreamlike, but they might haunt your dreams. You might be afraid of them, but you're not literally going to think that you live in that world.
- [31:44]
Guillermo del Toro
You're absolutely right. The first film I saw was William Wyler's Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier. I went with my mother to a cinema downtown that was super cheap and showed very old movies. It was really gothic atmosphere with rain and the moors and Olivier. It's basically a ghost story in many ways. Wuthering Heights and I fell asleep full of fear. I dreamt my dream and woke up in the theater with the movie still playing. So. Exactly. My first movie was part of a lucid dream. Exactly.
- [32:20]
Terry Gross
Wow. What was your emotional reaction to that?
- [32:24]
Guillermo del Toro
You're looking at It. That's when I fell in love with Gothic romance. And I couldn't have been more than four. Why do I know it? Because I remember the house we were living in where I was born and my father won the lottery, the national lottery, in 1969, which would make me five years old when we moved from that house to a giant house in the outskirts of the city.
- [32:50]
Terry Gross
Your father won the lottery. How much money did he win?
- [32:54]
Guillermo del Toro
$6 million in 1692, which is the entire budget of Planet of the Apes.
- [33:00]
Terry Gross
That's amazing. How did it change your life?
- [33:02]
Guillermo del Toro
Completely. I mean, completely. We moved into a house and lived a very sort of strange life. I mean, we had all sorts of pets. We have eagles, a pet lion, $30.
- [33:17]
Terry Gross
Whoa, whoa. You had a zoo?
- [33:19]
Guillermo del Toro
Yeah, we had, like a zoo. And we had. I could go like Danny in the Shining. I could go on my tricycle for hours in the long corridors. Sometimes, like a magic realism novel, I would go for weeks without seeing a single adult. I would find food on the fridge. I would find clean clothes on my drawers. And I didn't interact with many adults. I would just, you know, exist in a mysterious life in an enchanted castle.
- [33:50]
Terry Gross
$6 million was a lot more then than it is now.
- [33:53]
Guillermo del Toro
It was. And one of the things he did is he bought a library and filled it with books that he never read. But I read them all. And that's where I read the Encyclopedia of Anatomy and Health. And that's where I read all my classics, you know, Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Fin, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde.
- [34:15]
Justin Chang
Wow.
- [34:16]
Terry Gross
So what happened to the money? Because he was held for a million dollar ransom about 30 years later and didn't have the money.
- [34:26]
Guillermo del Toro
Well, what happened is my dad controlled every single. None of us had access to that money. My father raised those. He would say, you want. I would say, I want to buy film for my camera. And he would say, okay, go to the car dealership and clean all the cars all week. And Saturday, I'll give you a third of it. You come back another three weeks, I'll buy you a reel of Super 8. He didn't want to raise us as if we had everything, so, you know, none of us had access to that money. He had the money to pay for the ransom, but none of us could access it. Oh, yeah, I had some money left from Mimic when he was kidnapped. I put it all in. Friends of his gave us loans. It's a long story, and not a very pleasant one about the nature of humanity, but we managed to Collect it. We had a negotiator that came from England, and that negotiation was paid by Jim Cameron, who has been my friend for more than 30 years.
- [35:27]
Terry Gross
The director. The director who directed Titanic, among other things.
- [35:31]
Guillermo del Toro
Titanic, Terminator 2, Avatar. Yeah.
- [35:35]
Terry Gross
Did your father ever pay you back?
- [35:37]
Guillermo del Toro
Yeah, eventually. I mean, that was a source of disconnect. I had to move to Texas, and for a couple of years, you know, we didn't stay in very close contact. He. You know, it's too personal to discuss. But, you know, eventually he came around and he did pay me back. And we. I think we ended up in great love and great understanding of the fact that my dad was not my dad. He was a guy that played my dad on my particular sitcom, you know, and my dad and I understood each other. We were, at the end of the day, very similar and very different, but I loved him so much.
- [36:25]
Terry Gross
So I have to ask, you live in la, there's been quite a large ice crack down there. And you're Mexican. You have an accent. Has anybody from ICE stopped you and asked for your papers?
- [36:42]
Guillermo del Toro
Not yet, but if we ever meet in person, I'll show you. I have a wallet the size of a leather portfolio, and I always carry my papers. I have been stopped in the past and asked to show my papers in the past and asked pointed questions in the past, pulled aside in immigration in the past. So I have all my papers with me at all times. And it is a very difficult time when there is no voice for the other. And I think that understanding that the other is you is crucial.
- [37:20]
Terry Gross
Well, you experienced that when you were very young, too.
- [37:24]
Guillermo del Toro
Exile had been momentous, extremely traumatic. I haven't processed it, but I did it in the best way possible. I looked for a home in Spain. I looked for a home in Toronto. I made a home in Toronto, in a way. And when I go to Mexico, I. I love going to Mexico. And at the same time, I have to admit that I get sort of PTSD here and there, you know.
- [37:54]
Terry Gross
Ptsd?
- [37:55]
Guillermo del Toro
Yeah. I feel like something may happen at any moment or.
- [37:59]
Terry Gross
Because of the kidnapping?
- [38:00]
Guillermo del Toro
Yes, because, I mean, when it lasts 72 days, you go through all the stages of grief five times. It increased my sense of being unmoored in my existence, not belonging in my existence. You know, it reaffirmed that feeling that was originally from childhood. And now as an adult, I feel it in a different way. But, you know, as Marty Feldman puts it in Young Frankenstein, it could be worse. It could be raining.
- [38:35]
Terry Gross
Do you like Young Frankenstein?
- [38:36]
Guillermo del Toro
I adore it. That's a movie that is more people think is based on the whale movies. It's partially based on, but more than any other movie. And I recommend this movie wholeheartedly. It's based very much on Son of Frankenstein, which is a great Frankenstein movie. Really, really terrific.
- [38:56]
Terry Gross
Do you have a favorite song from Young Frankenstein?
- [39:00]
Guillermo del Toro
Yes. I think that the point of disagreement between Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, which is the most brilliant moment, is putting on the Ritz, of course.
- [39:09]
Terry Gross
Yes.
- [39:10]
Guillermo del Toro
I think that's not only one of the greatest comedies ever made, he's one of the great Frankenstein movies ever made. It is so much its own identity that people believe erroneously that the Blind Hermit comes from Young Frankenstein sometimes. And it comes obviously from the novel and from Bride of Frankenstein, the whale movie, which is an exquisite sequel to the first Frankenstein.
- [39:37]
Terry Gross
Guillermo del Toro, it's been such a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much for coming back to the show.
- [39:43]
Guillermo del Toro
Always a pleasure. And thank you for the wisdom and the careful guiding of this lengthy interview, which I adored every second of.
- [39:53]
Terry Gross
I really appreciate you saying that. I love talking with you.
- [39:56]
Guillermo del Toro
Same here.
- [39:57]
Terry Gross
Guillermo del Toro wrote and directed the new film Frankenstein. Ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs, Damen und Herren, from what was once an inarticulate mass of lifeless tissues, may I now present a cultured, sophisticated man about town.
- [40:19]
Guillermo del Toro
Hit it.
- [40:21]
Terry Gross
If you're blue and you don't know where to go to, why don't you go where fashion sits? Different types who wear a day coat, pants with stripes or cut away coat perfect fits in the beast dressed up like a million dollar trooper trying mighty hard to look like Gary Cooper, Cooper, Cooper, come let's mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks or umbrellas in their. That was Gene Hackman and Peter Boyle from the film Young Frankenstein. After we take a short break, Justin Chang reviews a new film by the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi after he spent seven months in prison. The film won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. This is FRESH air.
- [41:42]
NPR Announcer
I love space, I love physics and I love movies. And when I tell people all three.
- [41:47]
Terry Gross
Of those things, they often ask me.
- [41:49]
NPR Announcer
About one specific movie, Interstellar. In the words of a 2013 Facebook relationship status, it's complicated. So on NPR shortwave podcast, we rewatch Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. To separate the science facts from the science fiction, listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [42:07]
Justin Chang
This message is sponsored by dsw, the birthplace of the humble brag, full of all kinds of shoes that get you at prices that get your budget. And when there are never ending options for every style, mood, occasion and budget, there is unlimited freedom to play. And that's something to brag about. So go ahead, stock up on fresh sneakers from your favorite brands or try those boots you always secretly knew you could pull off. Find the shoes that get you at prices that get your budget. Dsw. Let them surprise you.
- [42:40]
Terry Gross
A lot of short daily news podcasts focus on just one story, but right now you probably need more on up first from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes because no one story can capture all that's happening in.
- [42:57]
NPR Announcer
This big crazy world of ours on any given morning.
- [43:00]
Terry Gross
Listen now to the Upverse podcast from NPR. This is FRESH AIR. In February 2023, after spending seven months in prison, the Iranian filmmaker Jaafar Panahy was released after going on a hunger strike to protest his incarceration. Since then, he's directed a new movie called It Was Just an Accident. And like most of his films to date, it was shot in secret and without the approval of the Iranian government. The movie won the Palme d', or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and was submitted by France, one of its co producing countries, in the Oscars best international feature category. It Was Just An Accident, as now playing in select theaters. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.
- [43:46]
Justin Chang
When the Iranian director Jafar Panahy showed up at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, it struck some of us as something close to a miracle. For most of the past 15 years, since he was arrested in 2010 and charged with making anti government propaganda, Panahy had been forbidden to travel outside Iran. He'd also been banned from making movies, though he got around that restriction with great ingenuity and continued to shoot films in secret. But then in 2022, Panahy was arrested again and imprisoned. When he announced seven months later that he was beginning a hunger strike, many of us feared it would end with his death. Instead, he was released after two days and has been free to travel ever since. It's an astonishing real life story, one that for tension and peril may well rival the one that Panahy tells in his new film, it Was Just an Accident. This remarkable movie, which ended up winning the Palme d' or at Cannes, feels like a liberated work in every sense. In his recent, more under the radar films like Three Faces or no Bears, panahy sometimes seemed to be speaking in code or through layers of parable. But there's nothing cryptic or ruminative about it was just an accident. It's a blast of pure anti authoritarian rage. A gripping and often shockingly funny revenge thriller that, as Panahy has said in interviews, was informed by the stories of people he met in prison. It begins on a dark night when an auto mechanic named Vahid, played by Vahid Mobaseri, hears something in his shop that catches his attention. It's the sound of a customer's prosthetic leg clomping slowly along, and it clearly triggers painful memories. Some time ago, Vahid was one of several people arrested while protesting for workers rights in prison. They were brutally tortured by a man they came to know as Pegleg because of his prosthetic. Now, Vahid could swear that the customer in his garage, whose name is Egbal, is Pegleg himself. But since Vahid was blindfolded during his torture, he can't trust his eyes, only his ears. What Vaheed does next is shocking. The following day, after tailing Igbal for a while in his van, Vahid knocks the man out with a shovel, ties him up, transports him to a remote area and tries to bury him alive. But Eqbal regains consciousness and begs Vahid to stop claiming that he isn't the culprit and has no idea what Vahid is talking about. Vahid puts Egbal back in his van and drives off to find others who can verify the man's identity. One of his fellow former prisoners is a photographer named Shiva, played by Maryam Afshari, who when he finds her, is in the middle of taking a couple's pre wedding photos. The bride, who's dressed in her full white gown, turns out to be one of Pegleg's victims too. Before long, Vahid's van has picked up so many passengers that it starts to resemble a clown car or maybe the yellow Volkswagen van from Little Miss Sunshine. Most of those passengers want Iqbal dead, but none of them can be 100% certain he's the guilty party, and they bicker relentlessly about what to do next. As deadly serious as everything is, Panahy pushes the action and the banter to often farcical extremes. He's made a road movie in which the characters keep going around and around in circles. It's startling just how funny it was. Just an accident can be. It's attuned to the comic futility as well as the horror of the situation. There's an especially dry running gag in which Vahid finds himself forced to bribe various people, from security guards to hospital nurses, a jab at the banal, everyday corruption of life under an oppressive system. As day bleeds into night, it was Just an Accident builds to a dramatic climax of lacerating emotional force, a sequence so intense you can practically feel Panahy's rage burning a hole through the screen. His movie in Weighing the Question of Revenge versus Mercy is an obvious warning to authoritarian regimes everywhere, but it also feels like a warning to people living under those regimes. Several weeks ago, I moderated a Q A with Panahi in Los Angeles, a city he hadn't visited in almost 20 years. While we were talking before the Q A, Panahi turned to me with a grave look on his face and said, I'm worried about your country.
- [48:44]
Terry Gross
Justin Chang is a film critic at the New Yorker. He reviewed It Was Just an accident. If you'd like to catch up on Fresh AIR interviews you missed, like this week's interviews with Ken Burns about his new PBS series on the Revolutionary War, or with Malala Yousafzai, who's written a new memoir, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of Fresh AIR interviews And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to. Subscribe to our free newsletter@whyy.org Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Stanischewski. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyers, Roberto Shorrock, Anne Marie Boldonado, Lawrence Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivinesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
- [49:56]
NPR Announcer
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- [50:17]
Terry Gross
You think Taylor Swift is exploiting her fans?
- [50:21]
Guillermo del Toro
No.
- [50:23]
Justin Chang
I'm gonna say yes with an asterisk. Every pop star exploits their fans.
- [50:28]
NPR Announcer
Is Taylor Swift exploiting her fans or.
- [50:31]
Terry Gross
Is she feeding them?
- [50:33]
NPR Announcer
Listen to It's Been a Minute on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [50:40]
Terry Gross
On this week's Wildcard podcast, Nick Offerman says when he fell in love with.
- [50:44]
NPR Announcer
His wife, Megan Mullally.
- [50:45]
Terry Gross
He couldn't believe it.
- [50:46]
Justin Chang
It was like if Meryl Streep or something showed up where I was just like, I think I'm Meryl Streep and I are in love. But that doesn't seem possible.
- [50:57]
Terry Gross
Or write, watch or listen to that wild card conversation on the NPR app.
- [51:01]
NPR Announcer
YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.