Guillermo del Toro, director: I only make movies for art

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Interview – Guillermo del Toro, Director: “I Only Make Movies for Art” (BBC World Service, Mar 4, 2026)

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Overview

This episode of The Interview features Oscar-winning director, screenwriter, and producer Guillermo del Toro. Hosted by BBC’s John Wilson, the conversation explores del Toro’s childhood in conservative Guadalajara, his early exposure to religion and death, his love of monsters and the supernatural, the autobiographical nature of his films, and his unwavering commitment to artistic integrity. Del Toro reflects on his creative influences, including his parents, literature, art, Alfred Hitchcock, and the Romantic painters. The episode closes with his views on technology in filmmaking, the streaming revolution, and what truly motivates his work.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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Del Toro’s Childhood and Family

• Upbringing in Guadalajara
  • Raised in a deeply traditional, Catholic environment—a city that “even if it was the ’60s, it felt like the 1800s.”
  • Father, a former motorcycle racer, won Mexico’s national lottery, suddenly changing the family’s fortunes and surroundings ([03:27–04:27]).
• Religious Influence and Fear
  • Great aunt (whom he called grandmother) raised him strictly Catholic, instilling fear of purgatory and death ([05:45–06:39]).
    • She physically punished him to “atone for original sin” by placing bottle caps in his shoes ([05:45–06:12]).
    • Created deep anxiety about death.
  • “Every night I would sleep at the foot of her bed... She would say, ‘If I wake up, because God may choose to pick me up tonight.’” ([07:46]; also [06:13–07:27]).
• Parental Contrasts
  • Mother: Bohemian, artistic, traveled, read tarot; father: practical, aloof ([06:39–07:27]).

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Early Fascination with Monsters and Storytelling

• Nature of Monsters
  • “That’s why I embrace monsters, because monsters have a clarity of purpose. When you look at them, you know what they are.” ([02:46], [12:06])
• Creative Origins
  • Bilingual by age 4 or 5, obsessed with movies and genre fiction ([05:07–05:25]).
  • Made Super 8 stop-motion films at age 8 (“Planet of the Apes,” “The Killer Potato”) ([13:48–14:19]).
    • “It’s the happiest experience to this day I’ve ever had making movies, because I saw the image projected on the screen and... I made that.” ([13:48–14:12])

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Connection Between His Life and His Films

• Autobiographical Elements
  • Childhood feelings of abandonment, paternal distance, and the experience of orphaned children pervade his stories:
    • “Every character I write has to have something of me, whether it’s Michael Mori in Pacific Rim or Hellboy or the Kids, or in this case, the creature and the Doctor on Frankenstein.” ([10:11])
    • “As you get older, you write yourself as the antagonist.” ([10:11])
    • Films like Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone, and Kronos draw directly from personal trauma ([09:50–10:41]).
• Father-Son/Creator-Monster Duality
  • “The physical monstrosity is something that when you grow as an outsider, for whatever reason... certain souls are made of a crystal that fractures with reality. Mine was one of those. I was not really good at reality. I was very good at fiction.” ([10:59])
  • Profound curiosity with the Christ figure: “Why would a father send his child to be crucified? What was God trying to learn?” ([11:37])

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Views on Art, Happiness & Faith

• From Fear to Comfort
  • Once “mortally afraid of dying,” del Toro says, “Now I’m completely free of that fear.” ([07:46], [12:06])
  • “I aged into a form of happiness. The most unhappy period of my life is in my childhood.” ([02:46], [12:06])
• Relationship to Religion
  • “I don’t like anything that needs a building. I am very spiritual. I come to believe that good is good, and it’s a state of grace.” ([12:42–12:56])

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Artistic Influences and Education

• Self-Education
  • Del Toro read widely as a child, consuming medical encyclopedias, world literature, and volumes of art history ([20:11–21:08]).
    • “I became the youngest hypochondriac. I would go to my mother and say, I think I have trichinosis in the brain. I think I have cirrhosis...” ([20:33–21:05])
  • Deep interest in Romantic artists (Goya, Blake, Caspar David Friedrich) for their “eloquence and grandeur” ([22:14–22:37]).
    • “They want to be operatic, they want to move you instantly and… transmit a mood.” ([22:21])
• Hitchcock as Film School
  • Admiration for Alfred Hitchcock; wrote a 500+ page book on him at age 21 ([16:20–17:10]).
    • Hitchcock taught him “the discipline of storytelling... an emotion is the effect of arrangement and composition of audiovisual elements.” ([19:26])
    • “What is film but a rectangle charged with emotion?” ([19:26])

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Technology, AI, & Modern Cinema

• AI and Art

  • Strongly opposes artificial intelligence for filmmaking:
    • “It offers me the opportunity of never being in contact with it. I’m not interested at all.” ([23:14])
    • “Ones and zeros don’t experience loss or gain or pain or… bereavement. How can they speak about love and transcendental emotions if they’re programmed permutations?” ([23:45–24:26])

• Streaming and the Value of Cinema

  • Defends his partnership with Netflix for Pinocchio and Frankenstein:
    • “Everybody passed and Netflix came to me… and he [Ted Sarandos] gave me theatrical release and, more importantly, complete freedom.” ([24:52])
    • “It would be very hard for me, born in 64, to defend that [only theatrical experience matters]. What I can defend is that the best experience will be in a theater… But the final piece for me is Frankenstein had hundreds of millions of people were exposed to it after only a few days.” ([24:52–26:25])

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Commitment to Art over Commerce

• Making Films as Biography
  • “I have never made a movie I didn’t believe was necessary…. only done for the art….every movie I made has five biographies of some sort, even Blade 2.” ([26:46])
  • Has turned down major commercial projects in favor of personal work. “Rather than take a movie that they commissioned from me, I’ve been offered huge franchises, and I said, I don’t understand them.” ([27:47])
• Creative Drive
  • “Lost causes. I really want to do things that nobody else wants to do. If it looks like nobody should make that movie, that’s the movie I try to make. I am the truffle seeker of impossible movies to make.” ([27:50])
  • “[With] Pinocchio, yes, but I want to do it during the rise of Mussolini. Jesus Christ. Make your life a little easier, won’t you?” ([27:50])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Monsters and Clarity

  • “Monsters have a clarity of purpose. When you look at them, you know what they are. You don’t see Godzilla enter a city and think, what does he want?”
    — Guillermo del Toro, [02:46], [12:06]

• On Creative Freedom with Netflix

  • “He [Ted Sarandos] gave me the scale, the chance to make them. He gave me theatrical release that was considerable for me, but more importantly, complete freedom.”
    — Guillermo del Toro, [24:52]

• On AI in Filmmaking

  • “It offers me the opportunity of never being in contact with it. I’m not interested at all.”
    — Guillermo del Toro, [23:14]
  • “That’s the difference between a microwave and an atomic bomb. They’re not the same.”
    — Guillermo del Toro, [23:45]

• On Commitment to Art

  • “I have never made a movie I didn’t believe was necessary for me or for someone in the world... It’s been only done for the art.”
    — Guillermo del Toro, [26:46]

• On Lost Causes

  • “Lost causes. I really want to do things that nobody else wants to do. If it looks like nobody should make that movie, that’s the movie I try to make.”
    — Guillermo del Toro, [27:50]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• Family Background & Childhood: [02:03–07:27]
• Religion, Death, and Monsters: [05:25–12:39]
• Autobiography in Films, Parental Figures: [08:39–10:41]
• Connection to Art, Literature, and Hitchcock: [16:10–17:46]; [20:11–22:42]
• Views on Technology and AI: [23:14–24:26]
• The Streaming Revolution: [24:52–26:25]
• Film as Biography, Artistic Integrity: [26:46–27:50]
• Closing Insights on Creative Motivation: [27:50–end]

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Tone and Language

Del Toro’s language is reflective, candid, humor-tinged, and deeply passionate about the redemptive power of art and storytelling. The interview moves fluidly from personal trauma to creative inspiration, always connecting experience with artistic vision.

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For listeners and creators alike, this is a portrait of an artist wholly committed to making cinema that is personal, poetic, and, above all, meaningful.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host]

This is not the future we were promised. Like how about that for a tagline?

[Podcast Narrator]

For the show from the BBC, this is the interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about COR quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your

[Podcast Host]

everyday life and all the bizarre ways people are using the Internet.

[Podcast Narrator]

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[John Wilson]

Hello, I'm BBC presenter John Wilson and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention.

[Guillermo del Toro]

We have never seen a people so united.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Do not make that boat crossing.

[John Wilson]

Do not make that journey.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not. We're more popular than populism.

[John Wilson]

For this interview, I met the Oscar winning Mexican director, screenwriter and producer Guillermo del Toro at BBC Broadcasting House in London. Born in Guadalajara in 1964, his life

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

suddenly change changed at the age of

[John Wilson]

five after his father, then a motorcycle racer, won the national lottery. While his parents traveled the world with the winnings, Del Toro was raised at home by his Catholic great aunt, a deeply religious figure who exposed him to concepts of purgatory and sin. Fascinated and frightened in equal measure, it piqued his interest in the supernatural, leading him to seek out books and films on the genre. And when his father presented him with a video camera a few years later, the two interests combined and set the young del Toro on a path to becoming an Oscar winner. Renowned for making films that mix fantasy, horror and gothic romance to create modern fairy tales.

[Guillermo del Toro]

I've aged into a form of happiness. The most unhappy period of my life is in my childhood. I was fraught with nightmares and fears and I didn't understand the world. That's why I embrace monsters, because monsters have a clarity of purpose. When you look at them, you know what they are. You don't see Godzilla enter a city and think, what does he want? Is he going to be careful with the city? This time I found that clarity, sort of a permission to be imperfect.

[John Wilson]

Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Guillermo del Torojara is

[Guillermo del Toro]

the second largest city in Mexico. And it was and is very conservative in a way, and very Catholic. I was born in something that, even if it was the 60s, it felt like the 1800s. Widowed women wore black the rest of their life. People wore veils to the church. Men had a pocket handkerchief, three piece suits. It was really traditional, very incredibly traditional. And I was born in a sort of really repressive Catholic family on my mother's side. My dad was a little bit of bohemian. He was a motorcycle racer and he was a ladies man, and he was like a bumby van. But he came from nowhere.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Sorry. But he raced motorcycles. Not professionally.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Professionally, really. He was a motorcycle champion. And then later, in 1969, he won the lottery, the National Lottery. He won $6 million in 1969.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

And life changed.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Life changed. So my childhood goes from the. My original neighborhood where all the streets were paved in duotone handmade tiles. The sidewalks looked like something out of a classical pa, to a suburb where my father built this gigantic white elephant of a house. It was almost half a block. We could go weeks and weeks without seeing each other.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Because it was so big.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Yeah, it was very big. You could avoid adults for weeks and still find food in the kitchen and find your clothing cleaned and pressed.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Was this a very modern house in a very old traditional neighborhood?

[Guillermo del Toro]

Well, it was actually in a suburban neighborhood. And as part of that, I was torn between all the Catholic Guild mythology and all the fiction. Like, I adored movies. I became bilingual at a very early age. Four or five years old, I was already bilingual.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Let me just ask you about your religious upbringing. Catholic imagery, of course, runs very deeply throughout so many of your films, not least in Frankenstein, your most recent film, where you have a Christ like monster. Just tell us something about your religious education and the upbringing. You had to go to church, obviously, all the time.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Yeah, every day. Every day we would go to church and Sundays, particularly very early. The woman that I called my grandmother, who was really my great aunt, she raised me with the fear of purgatory, Original sin. She used to explain to me that I needed to mortify the flesh in order to atone for original sin. So she would put upside down bottle caps on my shoes so that my shoes. My feet would bleed.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Inside your shoes?

[Guillermo del Toro]

Inside the shoes, so that my feet would bleed and I would atone. And my mother discovered this after many months, and she stopped the practice. But, you know, she raised me. And she raised me with. As a child, with an enormous fear of death.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Why was she raising you, this woman who was your great aunt, who you called grandmother?

[Guillermo del Toro]

Because when my father and my mother came into money, they decided to see the world. So they would disappear for weeks and weeks and weeks at an end.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Wow.

[Guillermo del Toro]

My father had a very particular apprehension of the world. He would describe New York as a bunch of elevators. I said, how was New York? He said, a bunch of elevators. Paris made no impression on him except that food was expensive. But my mother was a different sort. She was sort of a poet and a painter, and she had the bohemian side, so she would also disappear, and she would run with the bohemian. She even learned from Romani wanderers. She learned to read the tarot and palmistry and the tea leaves. And she was a little bit of a white witch. A very interesting childhood torn between the complete sort of bohemian wild side of my mother and the very conservative side of my grandmother.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Sounds like you've inherited a lot from your mother aesthetically, in terms of your.

[Guillermo del Toro]

And in terms of discipline and work. I'm very much my father.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

So the woman who was your grandmother, but actually really your great aunt, not only inflicting physical pain on you, but creating a sense of doom, Purgatory.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Every night I would sleep at the foot of her bed in a little mattress. I said, good night. See you tomorrow, Grandma. And she would say, if I wake up, because God may choose to pick me up tonight. And I would spend the night, the entire night, hearing her breathing. And if she stopped even for a second, I would get up and look and make sure she was alive. When I was not with her, I would say goodby on the phone. And I would call her three minutes later to make sure she was still alive. And that is still my M.O. in a way. But the funny thing is, I was mortally afraid of dying when I was a child. And now I'm completely free of that fear.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

So you were fascinated with death then?

[Guillermo del Toro]

Well, I was inevitably exposed to it. I saw people burn alive in a car. I saw my first accident when I was four. I saw that Guy laying on the grass and his head was tangled on a barbed wire fence.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

One of the recurring themes of your films, the recurring character, in fact, is the paternal figure. We see it in your very first film, Kronos, Rise It Up Again to Frankenstein, in which the monster calls his creator Frankenstein father.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Yes.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

It's also there in the themes about orphaned children, abandoned children. Were you in those films drawing directly, do you think, on those childhood experiences, fears that you had as a child?

[Guillermo del Toro]

Yeah. No, of course. I felt completely out of place. I think I was a puzzle to my father in ways. He was very dear to me and I was very dear to him. But we were very different, I thought, until I turned 40 and realized I was my father. You know, he was physically very affectionate, very aloof, very mysterious. He wouldn't like to talk about himself. You know, he was really naturally remote and that he was kidnapped in 1998 for 72 days. And I think that aloofness served him well because he came out of it relatively intact, mentally. He had a week in which he became a saint, and then the week after, he was my good old dad.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Several of your films feature a child protagonist facing monstrous adversity, especially in Pan's Labyrinth, which is set in 1940s fascist Spain. It's about a young girl that descends into the underworld. Are the children that we see in those situations? We also see it in Kronos, in Devil's Backbone that you mentioned. Are they, do you think, versions of you as a child?

[Guillermo del Toro]

Yes, mostly. Every character I write has to have something on me, whether it's Michael Mori in Pacific Rim or is Hellboy or the Kids, or in this case, the creature and the Doctor on Frankenstein, the Baron, they all have aspects of myself. The difference when you ride when you're young is you ride as the protagonist of your film, and the older you get, you write yourself as the antagonist.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

And this duality in characters, the father, son, relationship, the creator, the monster, again a recurring theme. We see it in Pan's Labyrinth, in Shape of Water, Frankenstein, an empathy for these monstrous characters, because I think there

[Guillermo del Toro]

is monstrosity of personality and monstrosity of physique. I think that the physical monstrosity is something that when you grow as an outsider, for whatever reason, and it can be temperament, you know, I think that certain souls are made of a crystal that fractures with reality. Mine was one of those. I was not really good at reality. I was very good at fiction. And one of the salient things that occupied my mind as a young child was the Consubstantial nature of God and Jesus. I was very intrigued by why would a father sent his child to be crucified and tortured? What was God trying to learn? And that is partially one of the questions I ask in Frankenstein. And the answer is, you know, there is. First of all, I think God wanted to know pain and wanted to know what it was to be human. And death intrigues me because it seemed to be out of his control, like it's when the warranty expires. I guess those were things I would ask the priests.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Were you a happy child?

[Guillermo del Toro]

No. I aged into a form of happiness. The most unhappy period of my life is in my childhood. I was fraught with nightmares and fears, and I didn't understand the world. That's why I embrace monsters, because monsters have a clarity of purpose. When you look at them, you know what they are. You don't see Godzilla enter a city and think, what does he want? Is he gonna be careful with the city this time? You know, I found that Clari. Sort of permission to be imperfect.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

What's your relationship with organized religion now?

[Guillermo del Toro]

Well, I don't like anything that needs a building.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Are you spiritual, though?

[Guillermo del Toro]

I am very spiritual. I come to believe that good is good and it's the state of grace. And when you break, it is very clear to the human heart that sense

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

of goodness, the state of grace is explored in Frankenstein. You've said a movie version of the Mary Shelley novel has been a lifelong ambition for you. When did you first come across the story?

[Guillermo del Toro]

The first time I saw the original movie, which is what I saw first, was on a Sunday after church. We went to Mass at 8, came back home. We watched monster movies all day in Channel 6 in Guadalajara.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

And you say that you were coming home regularly and watching monster movies on television after mass, whenever it was. But did you imagine at that time as a kid that you could make your own movies? Was that part of your imagination?

[Guillermo del Toro]

When I was 8 years old, my father, who had many car dealerships, he took Super 8 equipment as down payment for a car. And he said to me, you like movies? Why don't you use it and tell me how it works?

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

At 8?

[Guillermo del Toro]

At 8. And I did a couple of Super 8 movies. You took the reels to the pharmacy, and the pharmacist would return them to you, like two weeks later. And I projected it. And it's the happiest experience to this day I've ever had making movies, because I saw the image projected on the screen and. And I said, I made A movie. I made that.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

What was it? What were you seeing?

[Guillermo del Toro]

It was a Planet of the Apes stop motion with my toy figures.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Oh, so you weren't just filming your family, you actually created a story?

[Guillermo del Toro]

I created a story. The Planet of the Apes stop motion, crudely made. And I then went to do a movie called the Killer Potato, about a potato that wanted to take over the world and got crushed by a car trying to cross the street.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

These are the first del Toro movies.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Yes, yes. But, you know, the thing is, at age 11, when I read the novel, I very, very earnestly say, I'm gonna make that movie.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Took you 50 years.

[Guillermo del Toro]

It took me 50 years. And I didn't go through the pharmacist this time.

[John Wilson]

You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.

[Podcast Host]

This is not the future we were promised. Like, hold that up for a tagline

[Podcast Narrator]

for the show from the BBC. This is the interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your

[Podcast Host]

everyday life, and all the bizarre ways people are using the Internet.

[Podcast Narrator]

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[John Wilson]

Right from the start of our conversation, it was clear to me that Guillermo del Toro is a natural born storyteller, bursting with energy as he recounted vividly detailed memories of his extraordinary Mexican childhood. A big man with a huge sense of the transformative possibilities of the imagination and the redemptive power of love. He was an absolute joy to talk to. He's an ebullient raconteur whose passion for art, literature, and fantasy has fed into every frame he's ever shot. Okay, let's return to my conversation with

[Guillermo del Toro]

Guillermo del Toro, Alfred Hitchcock, another Catholic overweight man.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Ah, yes, yes. I hadn't made that connection.

[John Wilson]

When did you first see his films?

[Guillermo del Toro]

Well, the first film I saw was. It was a big event when Psycho came on tv. And I saw it. I loved it. But the one that got me was I Confess with Montgomery Clift, because it was a Catholic thriller. And the MacGuffin, as Hitchcock would call it, was the secret of confession. It was so thrilling to me. I was on the edge of my seat. And Montgomery Clift was such a great martyr. It was his calling to be martyred. And Hitchcock plays with that heavy weight in a way that, you know, he knows I knew that moment. He was Catholic. And later, at age 21, I think I wrote a book on Alfred Hitchcock, 500 something pages long and got published by the University of Guadalajara.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

That's really interesting because, I mean, your route to filmmaking wasn't a conventional one. I think you spent a decade or so working in special effects, and then you set up your own effects company, but you didn't have any formal filmmaking training.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Not quite.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

So was. Was Hitchcock, in effect, was he your film school?

[Guillermo del Toro]

Well, he was in many ways. I mean, what happened is I was a film director in Super 8 and 16 and all that, and I created my effects company in order to, many years later, be able to do Chronos, because no one would do the effects in Chronos. So I said, okay, I better create a company.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Well, so you knew you were gonna be a filmmaker, but you.

[Guillermo del Toro]

I knew I was a filmmaker before I did effects, and I offered my services to storyboard, to do makeup effects, physical effects, stop motion animation, anything. Created the company in order to finance the effects in Chronos. And in the meantime, I studied three years of screenwriting and three years of makeup effects creation.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

We should just explain Kronos, your debut film, is about an antiques dealer who comes across an ancient object which somehow attaches itself to him and injects him with. Well, I was gonna say eternal life.

[Guillermo del Toro]

I was gonn. It's vampirism. And the connections between vampirism and Catholic dogma, they were very appealing to me. So the character is called Jesus Gray, and he resurrects on the third day, and he has a stigmat on his feet. And it was about the bond between him and his granddaughter, which was an echo of me and my grandmother, you know, because I loved my grandmother in spite of her imperfections. And I thought. But the unconditional love of the granddaughter was very appealing to me when she realized the grandfather was a vampire, but didn't care.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

What's interesting, though, is, I mean, if you watch Kronos now, there is that aspect to it of the eternal life and the sort of Catholic possibilities.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

But it doesn't look immediately like it's been influenced by Alfred Hitchcock.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Oh, no, no, no, I don't think. I think that one thing is, who is your formative filmmaker? And a very different thing is that you're trying to be here. Him. I don't think anyone can be Hitchcock.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

But what did he teach you, as I suggest there, you know, he was your film star. No, no.

[Guillermo del Toro]

But I'll tell you, the discipline of storytelling is the most salient thing on him. He has very clear that an emotion is the effect of the Arrangement and the composition of audiovisual elements. He used to say, what is film but a rectangle charged with emotion? And I think the way you engineered that was very clear to me. I saw, okay, he's using a close up here. He's using a wide shot here. He's hiding this piece of information for the audience to be ahead of the protagonist.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

The next significant influence. Guillermo, is an art encyclopedia that sparked a fascination with the romantic artists in particular. Goya, Blake, Caspar, David Friedrich. Was this a schoolbook or one of those that you had at home?

[Guillermo del Toro]

You know, as part of the lottery, my father bought and built a huge library studio, which he never, and I mean never used. If he was in there two times, three times. I am exaggerating.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

You say a library. He stocked it with books as well.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Yeah, they said you should buy books because they look really good. So he bought a whole library.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

But never read them.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Never read them. I read them all. And the three salient things that I got from it, I read an entire encyclopedia of the health, anatomy. And I was morbidly interested in medicine. I became the youngest hypochondriac. I would go to my mother and say, I think I have trichinosis in the brain. I think I have cirrhosis. I think I have an aneurysm. And she would say, why? And these are my symptoms. And that's still in Frankenstein. This fascination with the biology and the lymphatic system and all this.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

And a fascination with anatomy.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Anatomy.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

A fetishization of anatomy run throughout 75.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Very much so. And that is tied to martyrdom paintings, too, in a way. But then the second biggest thing was obviously a classic library where I read Dr. Jenkins and Mr. Hyde, hunchback on Notre Dame, Portrait of Dorian Gray, Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn. I read every book very rapidly. And then the most important of all was the Encyclopedia of World Art, which was many, many volumes. And I read all of them. And I received an education on the history of art at a very young age. That, in a strange way, combined with my knowledge of the pop narrative art, I was being exposed to comic book artists like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko at the same time that I was discovering Manet or Caille Bode or Monet or Degas, you name it.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

With the Romantic painters in particular, there is an element of fantasy, isn't there? Of a widescreen narrative. If you think of, you know, Casper, David Friedrich in particular, or some of

[Guillermo del Toro]

the fantasy, or, you know, Zeri Khan.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

And do you think that has fed into the visual aesthetic of your films.

[Guillermo del Toro]

I mean, there's a vocation for eloquence and grandeur in the Romantics. They want, you know, all the poses are very eloquent. They. They want to be operatic, they want to move you instantly and they want to transmit a mood with all these references.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Then is it fair to call you a romantic filmmaker?

[Guillermo del Toro]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Rather than a horror?

[Guillermo del Toro]

100%. First of all, I'm a gothic romance addict, but I am a romantic filmmaker. I think it's a very difficult position to be in the world as it is today.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Let me just ask you about the technology of filmmaking. You've created so many fantastical creatures, environments, landscapes, other worlds in a way, using a combination of that physical production design and cgi. What opportunities does AI offer you as a filmmaker?

[Guillermo del Toro]

It offers me the opportunity of never being in contact with it. I'm not interested at all. I think artificial intelligence is a very tricky subject for me. I understand it in disciplines like architecture, engineering, science, medicine, things that depend on a glossary of terms or ideas that can be cross pollinated. I find it of no use in

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

art, even though some people would say, obviously your films are enabled by computer generated imagery and therefore. But is it not the next logical technological step?

[Guillermo del Toro]

That's the difference between a microwave and an atomic bomb. They're not the same. You know, first of all, I think that there's a tacit agreement culture has with imagery, with iconography that tells us this is a spirituality. The silhouette of a hand in a cave in Altamira is testimonial of somebody that lived. If you do that with an airbrush and a mechanical arm, it's the ceremonial of what? You know, ones and zeros don't experience loss or gain or pain or, you know, bereavement. How can they speak about love and transcendental emotions if they're programmed permutations? We are biochemical machines.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

Your most recent projects, including Pinocchio and Frankenstein, have been made for Netflix. As somebody who clearly loves the cinematic spectacle, yes, that's best appreciated on the big screen. Does it not worry you that so many people will see your Netflix films, at best, on a television screen, more likely a computer screen or a tablet, or at worst, on their phone while they're sitting on the bus.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Well, there's three pieces of information that is important to qualify. First, I've been trying to make both Pinocchio and Frankenstein for more than 20 years. Everybody passed and Netflix came to me and Ted Sarando said, what is your bucket List. I said, pinocchio and Frankenstein at this scale. And he said, go ahead. He gave me the scale, the chance to make them. He gave me theatrical release that was considerable for me, but more importantly, complete freedom. So that is number one, because people imagine or fantasize that filmmakers choose their career. A career happens to you. I've written about 40 screenplays, done 12, 13 movies, you know, so by my count, any chance I have to make a movie, I take it. I think, second, I find it very difficult to say that the only experience has to be theatrical, because I witnessed Frankenstein on a television, on a little telefunken television. I experienced Citizen Kane, I experienced Jamie Cash, the golden age of Mexican cinema all through television. So it would be very hard for me, born in 64, to defend that. What I can defend is that the best experience will be in a theater, if you can, and if it's accessible to you economically or geographically. And the final piece for me is Frankenstein had hundreds of millions of people were exposed to it after only a few days.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

When you started making films in 1992 with Kronos, I know that was a struggle. From what I understand, you remortgaged your house, you. And you underwrote a lot of the production. But is it now harder to make films from the root of your imagination, Things that challenge perceptions of what is a commercial film? Because the expectations, the commercial demand are so.

[Guillermo del Toro]

Well, it's never easy. I mean, I have never made a movie I didn't believe was necessary for me or for someone in the world, whether to entertain or to connect at a spiritual level or something. It's been only done for the art. And it doesn't matter if it's Pacific Rim or Devil's Backbone. I believe in both as remedies of some sort for a spiritual need or a dialogue of some kind that is very intimate. Movies have saved my life so many times. So it is always hard when you are not somebody interested in a career, when you're interested in a biography through film. I mean, every movie I made has five biographies of some sort, even Blade two, which is a sequel. So there's always a streak of strong biography in what I do. And as a result, I've been unemployed many years. Rather than take a movie that they commissioned from me, I've been offered huge franchises, and I said, I don't understand them.

[Interviewer (BBC Journalist)]

And more generally, what drives you on creatively?

[Guillermo del Toro]

Lost causes. I really want to do things that nobody else wants to do. If it looks like nobody should make that movie, that's the movie I try to make. I am the truffle seeker of impossible movies to make. I want to do Pinocchio, yes, but I want to do it during the rise of Mussolini. Jesus Christ. Make your life a little easier, won't you?

[John Wilson]

Thank you for listening to the interview. You'll find more in depth conversations on the Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including episodes with the Ugandan human rights lawyer Nicholas Opo, musician Patti Smith and the tennis champion Bjorn Borg. You can also hear more leading artists and creative people talking to me, John Wilson on the BBC's this Cultural Life. Until the next time. Bye for now.

[Podcast Host]

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for the show from the BBC. This is the Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your

[Podcast Host]

everyday life and all the bizarre ways people are using the Internet.

[Podcast Narrator]

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