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- [00:00]
Lizzie Bassett
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- [00:18]
Chris Winterbauer
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- [01:57]
Lizzie Bassett
Hello and welcome back to what Went Wrong? Your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a childhood fantasy, fairy tale slash nightmare. Or is it for the ages? I'm one of your hosts, Lizzie Bassett, here as always with Chris Winterbauer and Chris, what Laberinto del Fauno do you have for us?
- [02:22]
Chris Winterbauer
The one and only Labrinto del Fano. The one that has been misnomered, I should say, or marketed as Pan's Labyrinth. Although there is no Pan in this movie. No, there's no character named Pan. There is no Greek mythology in this movie at all. Let's debunk that right now. I saw a lot of Reddit threads saying, oh, he's a God on this world. Nope, Pan was just a marketing choice. So let's Just get that out of the way right now. This movie is. Yeah, Lizzie. A dark fairy tale in some ways. It's also a war film in many other ways. Or a post war film, a resistance film. Pan's Labyrinth, written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. Lizzie, I'm assuming that you had seen it before this episode. What were your thoughts upon watching it for the podcast?
- [03:03]
Lizzie Bassett
I saw this at the Byrd Theater in Richmond, Virginia. Shout out to the Byrd. It's an amazing theater that plays a lot of independent and foreign films. There's a Wurlitzer organ that comes up out of the stage before the showing. And I loved this when I saw it. We were, what, probably 16, 17 when this came out. Would have been in high school. It really blew me away. But I remember thinking at that point in time, oh, it was clearly all in her head. Like, this is such a tragedy. This is just a child trying to understand how to deal with tragedy and how to deal with trauma. And like, that's what this movie is about. I don't think I had rewatched this until last night when we watched this for the podcast, and I was so surprised because on this viewing, I feel pretty strongly that it's all real. And it's not that it's not about the reasons that we create fairy tales or the reason that, you know, children may need them to process trauma and understand it, but I felt like the two are not mutually exclusive in a way that I guess I didn't the first time that I watched this. But, I mean, this is just. This is a pretty perfect movie. It is brutal. I did remember the most violent moment in this that will always stick in my head is when he kills the guy with the bottle, which is just awful. And I can't look at it, but I was pleasantly surprised by how great the effects look in this. I think for the most part, it all really, really held up. I think the girl who plays Ophelia is remarkable. Really. All of the acting in this is wonderful. To me, this is Guillermo del Toro's absolute best movie, hands down. I just. I think it's beautiful. And I got a lot more out of it this time. I guess I loved the connection between, you know, the fauno saying, oh, you have to just do what I'm saying and you can't ask any questions. Which is, of course, what the doctor says to the captain when he says, you know, I'm not the kind of person who can just accept any authority without questioning you, whether or not it's right or wrong. And Then it turns out that that was the faun's point. And the whole thing was she was supposed to question what he was offering. So, anyway, it's beautiful. It's sad. I hope she's living forever for centuries in her father's kingdom, and not just dead post Spanish Civil War. But what about you, Chris?
- [05:08]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah, I agree. I saw this in high school as well. I did see this one in theaters and remembered loving it. I was already a Del Toro fan. I saw the Devil's Backbone, which we're gonna talk about today, when I was a freshman in high school during Spanish class.
- [05:23]
Lizzie Bassett
So I have not seen that one.
- [05:24]
Chris Winterbauer
Oh, it's great. And we'll talk about it a little bit because it's really the sister film to this movie in so many ways. But then I went and I watched all of his stuff because I liked Blade 2 a lot. I loved Hellboy. I went and watched Kronos, which we will also talk about, even something like Mimic. And one of the reasons I wanted to cover this movie is that Del Toro is a really, I think, rare, modern example of a director who sits at the intersection of studio movies, art house fare, and not in that he's doing both at the same time, necessarily, but he really weaves in and out of both of these worlds. And I was talking to Jesse, our researcher, and she was saying he refers to Pan's Labyrinth as one of the most, if not the most difficult experiences of his life making this movie. And when she started going through the research and tried to figure out why, yes, the production was hard, as we'll get to, but I think it more has to do with where Del Toro was in his life when this movie came out and where he was in Hollywood.
- [06:19]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah, because I think I and David, when we watched this last night, we both had the assumption that this must have come earlier in his trajectory because this was such a sort of watershed moment for him. But it's not. There's so much before it. And I guess it makes sense because instead of this being him breaking out, it was him breaking out as the kind of filmmaker that I think he wanted to be.
- [06:42]
Chris Winterbauer
I agree. I think this movie is an inflection point in his career. So because we're going to go through this roadmap, I'll just really high level say it. So his first film, Kronos, early 90s, you know, $2 million indie genre film. We will talk about it in a moment. And then he goes to do Mimic, and we'll talk about that. Which is a Hollywood film, and then he kind of ping pongs back into Spanish language with the Devil's Backbone genre. Very, very similar tonally to Pan's Labyrinth, then back to Hollywood, Blade II, love Blade 2 Hellboy. Then back to Spanish language, Pan's Labyrinth. So, yeah, he was straddling two worlds very much by the time that Pan's Labyrinth comes along. I agree. I think this is probably his best movie. Although I do love the Devil's Backbone so much. And for me, this movie, for the first hour, I find myself wondering every time I watch it, even though I know the answer, how is he going to tie the disparate elements of the resistance fighters and Captain Vidal and Mercedes and all these characters that are existing in a very brutal, real political resistance, you know, sort of world under Franco's authoritarian regime, going to blend with Ofelia and her relationship with the faun and the tasks that she's doing, and it's like a magic trick every time. Every time we hit the third act, I'm just left speechless with how well it ties together. He does such a brilliant job of. Captain Vidal is such a heinous person and villain, yet his motivation is so well drawn in this movie. Like, I find that I hate him so much for the violence that he commits. The scene you mentioned with the farmers comes to mind. And yet at the end, the moment when he, you know, says, tell my son, you know, and then, Mercedes, he will not even know your name. I think, again, it's not that you are sympathetic towards his character, but you really understand his character. And it was reminding me of. We were just discussing disclosure day on this podcast, and I did not understand the villains in that movie very well.
- [08:33]
Lizzie Bassett
No.
- [08:34]
Chris Winterbauer
And Del Toro does such a good job. So I agree. I think this is an absolutely lovely movie. I think it's a triumph of so many departments. The Pan's the Lullaby is absolutely gorgeous. I will remember it forever. Fantastic performers and in so many ways, Lizzy, a movie that very nearly didn't exist. And so today's episode, we're going to spend a lot of time on Del Toro and how his creative being was formed, because this movie is a crystallization of so many parts of his childhood and early career. It'll be kind of first half on that and then second half on the actual production of this movie.
- [09:10]
Lizzie Bassett
Great. I can't wait.
- [09:11]
Chris Winterbauer
Before we get there, the details. So Pan's Labyrinth is a 2006 dark fantasy, although I would add historical war or resistance film.
- [09:19]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes.
- [09:20]
Chris Winterbauer
Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. It was produced by Del Toro, along with Bertha Navarro and Alfonso Cuaron. It stars Ivana Baquero as Ofelia, Doug Jones as Fauno, the Pale man as well Sergi Lopez as Captain Vidal, Maribel Verdu as Mercedes, Ariadna Gil as Carmen, Ophelia's mother, Alex Angulo as Dr. Ferrero, and many, many more. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival Lizzie on May 27th of 2006, rolled out internationally as it hit a number of festivals, and then reached the United States in a limited release at the end of December, and opened wide on January 19th of 2007. And as always, the IMDb logline reads, In 1944, Francoist Spain, an imaginative young girl meets a faun who tells her she's a princess and that she must prove her worthiness by completing three dangero tasks. Also, there are resistance fighters.
- [10:16]
Lizzie Bassett
Also, the Spanish Civil War ended like, maybe four or so years ago. Because they do reference D Day, don't they?
- [10:22]
Chris Winterbauer
They do.
- [10:23]
Lizzie Bassett
So this is post Spanish Civil War.
- [10:24]
Chris Winterbauer
Yes. So the Spanish Civil war ran from 36 to 39. And this is under the Franco military dictatorship. Initially it was a military junta, and then it was. Franco came to power in 36, I believe. The Francoists won and they were backed by Nazi Germany and the Italians, and they were ruling through 1944. The war is coming to an end. The Allies are landing at Normandy during this movie. They make reference to it.
- [10:50]
Lizzie Bassett
But there are still resistance fighters that are there.
- [10:52]
Chris Winterbauer
Yes. Living in the mountains and whatnot.
- [10:54]
Lizzie Bassett
As we know. It's interesting because, like, we know they're not gonna win. Like, that's the position you're in from the very beginning. And that's kind of lovely. Cause it doesn't matter at the end because Franco obviously ruled until 1975. Is that right?
- [11:08]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah. And kind of similarly, in the Devil's Backbone, it takes place right in 39, at the end of the Spanish Civil War. And children in the orphanage are mostly the sons of the fighters for the republic. And so we know their parents are also. They're going to remain orphans, basically. Obviously, yeah. Sources for today's episode include, but are not limited to, Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, My Notebooks, Collections and Other Obsessions by Del Toro and Mark Zicre. The Making of Pan's Labyrinth by Mark Catavaz and Nick Nunziata. That's a book, the film's dvd, commentary and special features, and many, many more articles, interviews and retrospectives with those involved in the making of the film. In particular, Guillermo del Toro alright, Lizzie. In order to tell the story of Pan's Labyrinth, we have to set it up a bit like a fairy tale. Her a se una ves e una casa grande y solitaria. Once upon a time, in a big, lonely house, there lived a lonely little boy who loved monsters. But it wasn't always that way. That boy's name was Guillermo del Toro. And he was born, of course, in October. What other month could be appropriate? October 9, 1964. When he was four years old, his life changed forever. He sat down and watched an episode of the American science fiction anthology series the Outer Limits. Not the Twilight Zone. Oh. An episode called the Mutant. The main villain was Lizzie. A mutant, very good, with huge, bulging eyes. Del Toro was terrified. And then his brother decided to scar him for life. He put little Guillermo in his crib, left the room, and came back with fake plastic fried eggs over his eyes and his mother's stockings on his head. Del Toro immediately wet the bed.
- [13:08]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh, buddy.
- [13:09]
Chris Winterbauer
And from then on, all he could see were monsters. The shag carpet in his bedroom looked like long green fingers ready to pull him down into the floor. The armoire would mutate when the church bells rang. Growing a hand, a goat's face and a leg. Del Toro was terrified. And he kept wetting the bed. His mother would punish him with chores every time. Finally, he'd had enough. This was no way to live. It was time to make a pact with the monsters. I'd like to play you a clip of how Del Toro approached these fiendish friends. And one night I got up and I said to the monsters that I saw in the closet and all that, I said, if you let me go pee, I'll be your friend forever. And this was said in earnest. And immediately something magical happened. I started what my therapist says is reverse phobia. But basically I bonded with them. I adore them, and I adore them to this day. So Del Toro, just to go pee, said, I'll be your friend forever. And he went from being a scared little boy. Lizzie. To being a strange little boy.
- [14:20]
Lizzie Bassett
Yep.
- [14:21]
Chris Winterbauer
For Christmas, he asked his mother for a mandrake root so he could perform a Wiccan ritual to turn it into a living being. So she took him to a psychologist. The psychologist gave Del Toro a ball of clay and said, do whatever you want with this. I'll come back when you're done to assess. He left the room. When he came back, Del Toro had turned it into a skeleton. Okay. He was 5 years old.
- [14:42]
Lizzie Bassett
How did a 5 year old find out about a Wiccan ritual involving a mandrake root. There was no Internet.
- [14:47]
Chris Winterbauer
We'll get to it. He may have had a familial influence that we'll talk about in just a moment.
- [14:52]
Lizzie Bassett
Has to have. Yeah.
- [14:53]
Chris Winterbauer
So in many fairy tales, there is a reversal of fortune that comes at the end of the story. So Hansel and Gretel find the witch's precious stones. The family's situation is improved. The circumstances that led to the child being abandoned in the woods is undone. Jack gets the giant's gold, for example. Jack and the Beanstalk. But for del Toro, everything seemed to be happening backwards. When he was just a boy, Del Toro's father won the lottery. $6 million. What? And so the strange little boy moved into a house so big that he and his family could go weeks and weeks without seeing one another. But he had something new to keep him company. Stories. So Del Toro's father was a self made man who'd stopped going to school very young. He'd never learned how to read, but he was self conscious about not having a proper library now that he was rich. So he had one installed. And even though it doesn't sound like he used it much, Guillermo del Toro lived in that room. There was a medical encyclopedia that made him a mini hypochondriac. He'd diagnose himself with something awful, run to his mother and say, I'm dying. But he also learned how to diagnose art. There was a 10 volume set called how to Look at Art that introduced him to Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, Manet, Goya. Guillermo read a book every one to two days. And not stuff for kids, heady stuff. Surrealists, symbolists, Gothic horror. Obviously, when he wasn't reading, he was writing and illustrating his own horror stories. Now, del Toro had made friends with the monsters, but he wasn't completely fearless. His great aunt Josefina made sure of that. Now, del Toro's parents decided to use some of their lottery winnings to travel the world. And in true Roald Dahlian fashion, I'll say. Del Toro was left behind with Josefina. Now, on the one hand, she liked to listen to his stories. They even hung up a sign at the house that read, Monster Club, do not trespass.
- [16:45]
Lizzie Bassett
Aww.
- [16:46]
Chris Winterbauer
On the other hand, he said, she made the mom in Carrie look like a party animal. She'd read him the most disturbing parts of the Bible. She tried to perform an exorcism on him. She threw holy water at him, and she put upside down bottle caps in his shoes. So he'd bleed to, quote, mortify the flesh and atone for the original sin.
- [17:07]
Lizzie Bassett
Well, she's just having a good time. Listen, you have to find some activities when you got a kid on your hands. You can't just let them sit there.
- [17:13]
Chris Winterbauer
Absolutely. And you have to make sure that they appreciate every moment. Which is why, when they weren't living together, she'd end their phone call saying, good night. I don't know if I'll wake up tomorrow.
- [17:24]
Lizzie Bassett
Honestly, a parenting icon now.
- [17:27]
Chris Winterbauer
Like Ofelia in Laberinto del Fauno or Pan's Labyrinth.
- [17:31]
Lizzie Bassett
Sorry, Chris. You have to do it in the Doug Jones voice.
- [17:33]
Chris Winterbauer
How does he do it? He does it, like, with the Spanish voice, Yo soy una fauno. But that's not Doug Jones's voice, to be clear.
- [17:39]
Lizzie Bassett
Okay.
- [17:40]
Chris Winterbauer
It's dubbed.
- [17:41]
Lizzie Bassett
I thought he learned Spanish for this.
- [17:42]
Chris Winterbauer
He did, but it's still not his voice.
- [17:44]
Lizzie Bassett
Okay. Okay.
- [17:45]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah. So, like Ofelia, Del Toro's dark fairy tale of a life was surrounded by very real political violence. And he has spoken at times about witnessing real life horrors at a young age, seeing corpses of, quote, people who had been shot or had accidents or even people burned alive. He was roughly four years old during the infamous Tlatalolco massacre and seven during Alcanazo, or the Corpus Christi massacre. In the first of these, students had been protesting the ruling party of Mexico for not delivering on the promises of the 1917 Mexican Revolution. There was a demonstration, and days before, Mexico hosted the Olympics. The police and military, including tanks, fired into the crowd.
- [18:21]
Lizzie Bassett
Jesus.
- [18:22]
Chris Winterbauer
And the exact death toll is debated, but official estimates pegged the fatalities at 32. Unofficial sources. I saw it go into the hundreds or even thousands, and lots of people were arrested and beaten. From this, a counterculture film movement was born called Los Super Ocheros, or the Super Eights. Amateur artists and filmmakers started making Super 8 movies and documentaries. The film was cheap. They could evade censorship. And Del Toro's family happened to own a Super 8 camera projector and screen. Not because he was countercultural or a cinema revolutionary, but because he owned multiple car dealerships. Now, what do you do when you win the lottery? You buy car dealerships.
- [19:01]
Lizzie Bassett
It's not a bad idea.
- [19:02]
Chris Winterbauer
And someone had given him the camera equipment as a down payment on a car. So when Del Toro was eight years old, he made his first movie. It starred his Planet of the Apes figurines. It was an action film. But he quickly moved into genre with the Killer Potato, about a potato that wanted to take over the world. This sounds great.
- [19:21]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes.
- [19:22]
Chris Winterbauer
Then he saw The Exorcist. And he was blown away by Dick Smith's makeup effects. They're incredible. He bought Smith's makeup kit in a toy store. He started creating his own effects. He and his brother would make full size human like figures filled with ketchup, and then they push them off the roof of the house to watch them explode.
- [19:39]
Lizzie Bassett
That's great. Sounds fun.
- [19:41]
Chris Winterbauer
Now, mainstream Mexican cinema was undergoing a bit of a revival. Despite the fact that Mexico was under authoritarian rule. Several more left leaning directors were making movies that, quote, broke through the barriers of satire and farce to tackle the problems of contemporary Mexico more directly and deal openly with previously taboo subjects such as sex, violence and politics. One of the few films on this list that I was familiar with is called Kanoa, which is about another political uprising massacre of intellectuals. And one of these directors that was part of this movement was Jaime Umberto Hermosillo. He was openly gay. He explored gay relationships through his films and often criticized what he saw as hypocrisy in Mexican cultures. And when Del Toro was in high school, Hermosillo moved to Del Toro's hometown of Guadalajara. Now, in fairy tale parlance, the Faun of Pan's Labyrinth is sometimes referred to as a donor or a mentor. These are creatures that appear in liminal spaces. They test, they help the hero. A fairy godmother, Lizzie would be a classic example. Obviously, the faun is a little bit more mysterious than that. We can't tell, is he good, Is he nefarious? Oftentimes they're a talking animal and sometimes they're a director looking for students to help on their next film. Now, unfortunately, Guadalajara did not have a film school, so Hermosillo made one. He co founded the Guadalajara International Film Festival and Center for Cinematographic Studies at the University of Guadalajara. And Del Toro started working on his films, first as a PA and then as a producer. In fact, as he rose up the ranks, he not only produced one of Hermosillo's most enduring films, Dona Erlinda and Her Son, about a gay couple, but Del Toro's mother played the lead in that movie. And like any good donor or mentor, Hermosillo installed in Del Toro a crucial lesson. If a road is not presented, you build one. Del Toro grew up obsessed with Universal monster movies and Mexican melodramas. He wanted to take the genre, mixing stylings of the Mexican horror films he'd grown up on, but combine them with Hollywood quality special effects. He wanted to do melodramas with monsters.
- [21:39]
Lizzie Bassett
Nice.
- [21:39]
Chris Winterbauer
The only problem, nobody was doing this at least in Mexico there was no road, so he'd have to build one and it was gonna be bumpy. This podcast is sponsored by Chime Guys. I literally can't remember the last time I walked into a physical bank and that's why I wanna talk to you about Chime. Chime is changing the way that people bank with rewarding fee free banking built for you. Not the 1% with no overdraft or monthly fees. But don't take it from me. Chime is rated five stars by USA Today for customer service where you'll get real humans 24. Seven plus you get a savings that grows faster with a 3.75% APY. That's nine times the national average. So if you're like me and you're tired of fees, start using Chime. Chime is not just smarter banking, it is the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee free today. Head to chime.com wrong that is chime.com wrong. It only takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank.
- [22:39]
Lizzie Bassett
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- [24:05]
Chris Winterbauer
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- [24:33]
Lizzie Bassett
on Monday dot com.
- [24:42]
Chris Winterbauer
So in the mid-80s, he strikes out on his own. And he founds a stop motion animation and makeup effects company called Necropia. Do you want to know their slogan, Lizzy? It's really compelling.
- [24:52]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes.
- [24:52]
Chris Winterbauer
We're not the best. We're the only ones.
- [24:55]
Lizzie Bassett
Hell yeah, we're the only ones. Great.
- [24:59]
Chris Winterbauer
He wrote to Dick Smith, convinced him to be one of his mentors. He eventually traveled to New York to study Smith's work. And in the late 80s, he's working on a Mexican science fiction anthology show, La Hora Mercada, which means the Witching Hour. Something very much in the vein of Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits, for example. And he meets, he actually around this time meets two very influential Mexican directors. They're influential now. They were coming up at the time. Do you know who these other two people are, Lizzie?
- [25:26]
Lizzie Bassett
One's gotta be Alfonso Cuaron.
- [25:27]
Chris Winterbauer
Alfonso Cuaron, that's the important one we're gonna talk about a lot today because he's very involved in Pan's Labyrinth. Do you know the other one?
- [25:33]
Lizzie Bassett
No.
- [25:34]
Chris Winterbauer
Alejandro Ingaritu.
- [25:35]
Lizzie Bassett
Ah, okay.
- [25:36]
Chris Winterbauer
Of course, the Three Amigos, as they would later become known. But let's focus on Cuaron because he is crucial to this story. So Cuaron had just directed his first episode of the series, Aveces Regressan. This is based on Stephen King's short story of the same name. Sometimes they come back, although they never officially credited Stephen King on it. I think they did the whole thing bootleg.
- [25:56]
Lizzie Bassett
Eh, it's fine.
- [25:57]
Chris Winterbauer
According to Cuaron, both he and Del Toro were in the production office waiting room. And del Toro says, you're Alfonso, right? You directed that episode based on the Stephen King short story. And Cuaron knew who del Toro was. He designed corpses, mutilated hands, bullet wounds for a couple of people I knew working in films. Del Toro's reputation, according to Cuaron, was as being generous, smart, funny, and very, very strange. So Cuaron confirms, yes, I just adapted the Stephen King story. And del Toro follows up with, well, if the Stephen King story is so great, why did your episode suck so much?
- [26:30]
Lizzie Bassett
Nice. Neg him a little bit.
- [26:32]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah. Cuaron bursts out laughing and then says, well, why did you think it was so bad? And then del Toro just very calmly explains everything that was wrong with it. Cuaron realized that he was right, and so began a beautiful friendship. And if you ask Alfonso, Cuaron pans labyrinth. Because one of the episodes that del Toro wrote and Cuaron directed was the story of a little girl living with her abusive alcoholic father and the child eating ogre that was haunting her. But there are three feature films we need to talk about briefly before we get into our labyrinth, and the first was never made. Lizzy, did you know that Guillermo del Toro's first attempt at a feature film was an epic claymation prehistoric masterpiece called Omnivore, about a lizard man in a land where everything is savage and trying to eat everything else?
- [27:18]
Lizzie Bassett
Let me tell you, it sounds like a hit.
- [27:20]
Chris Winterbauer
It maybe could have been, but we will never know. Because even though they made 120 puppets, several sets shot and animated the first minute, someone broke into their studio and destroyed everything.
- [27:33]
Lizzie Bassett
What? Did they take anything? Or they just murdered the puppets.
- [27:36]
Chris Winterbauer
Not only did they murder the puppets, they then pooped and peed on everything too.
- [27:42]
Lizzie Bassett
Why?
- [27:43]
Chris Winterbauer
Unclear.
- [27:45]
Lizzie Bassett
You know, I gotta say, anytime there's like, a crime that involves someone taking a dump, I'm like, how do you. How do you do that? How do you do it on command? How do you do it under pressure? I don't understand. I'm not saying I support this. I don't. I'm just saying I'm a little impressed.
- [27:58]
Chris Winterbauer
Twist. It was Cuaron for trashing his first episode. It was not. Del Toro decides, not a great start. I should probably pivot to live action. So he's gonna do a ghost story. He writes an early draft of what would eventually become the Devil's Backbone, and he takes it to his mentor, Hermosillo, for feedback. And Hermosillo throws it in the trash. He says, it's not formatted Properly. If you're not gonna format it properly, why am I gonna read it? So Del Toro says, well, okay, that's not a great start. I could rewrite that or I could start over again. So he says, I'll put that away. And he writes another movie that's a vampire movie. Have you ever seen Kronos?
- [28:36]
Lizzie Bassett
I have not.
- [28:37]
Chris Winterbauer
Kronos is very fun. It stars a very young Ron Perlman or co stars in it. It is about a vampiric device, basically, that clamps onto you. I believe it hints that there's actually an insect deep inside of it that's causing the powers. And it gives you youth and vitality and turns your skin into marble. But it also bloodthirsty. What if vampirism was less a disease and more a mechanical device in this world?
- [29:01]
Lizzie Bassett
Got it.
- [29:02]
Chris Winterbauer
It was unusual. It was genre. It had to do with ideas of life and death. It also has a very fun central story around a young girl and her grandfather. Kind of buddy comedy element to it. And it has an American in it with Ron Perlman, for example, speaking English. It's very much a mashup kind of movie. And the government regulations that pushed for social criticism that had helped his mentor Hermosillo, hurt Del Toro because they weren't really interested in genre movies. It took him four years to get the Mexican Institute of Film to greenlight Cronos. Del Toro pulled together $2 million, apparently, which included $500,000 in banker's fees, which, if I'm reading that correctly, means of the 2,500,000 was just going to the banks for generating the money to begin with. So he really had a $1.5 million.
- [29:48]
Lizzie Bassett
That's a terrible deal.
- [29:49]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He's basically taking out a loan from the Mafia, where The vague is 25% right up front. And it's around this time that he starts keeping journals with notes and drawings. And some of these made it into Kronos, but others, like a torture scene with a sadistic captain, would appear in later movie. Now, Cronos was an enormous critical success. I do think we'll cover it at some point on this podcast. It won nine Adiel Awards. These are the Oscars of Mexico, including best Picture and best direction. And it was nominated for four more. And it was a bit of a big time flopper. It can't be really considered a big time flopper because it was such a low budget movie, but it flopped. Del Toro was broke. He had taken out a mortgage on his house and sold his car just to pay for the vampire device seen in the movie.
- [30:32]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh, no.
- [30:32]
Chris Winterbauer
But over in the United States, Kronos caught the eye of Nina Jacobson, who we've discussed before. Senior vice president of production at Universal. She brings in Del Toro, and she says, I want to give you a development deal. And he says, oh, my God, you're going to give me money to make movies. I've only ever lost money on movies. This is amazing. And it was a dream come true until he met two very real monsters.
- [30:56]
Lizzie Bassett
I bet I can guess one.
- [30:57]
Chris Winterbauer
I bet you could guess both.
- [30:59]
Lizzie Bassett
I'm guessing Harvey Weinstein for one and Bob Weinstein for the other.
- [31:03]
Chris Winterbauer
Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Very good, Lizzie. They hired Guillermo to direct Mimic, a creature feature that would be his English language debut. The IMDb logline reads. Three years ago, entomologist Dr. Susan Tyler, played by Mira Sorvino, genetically created an insect to kill cockroaches carrying a virulent disease. Now the insects are out to destroy their only predator, mankind. Have you ever seen Mimic Lizzie?
- [31:30]
Lizzie Bassett
No.
- [31:30]
Chris Winterbauer
Pretty fun. B movie. 90s bugs have become giant bugs, and they can mimic people with camouflage across their faces in the subways of New York City, I believe.
- [31:40]
Lizzie Bassett
Don't like that.
- [31:40]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah, it's an elevated B movie. I actually quite enjoyed it. You can see hints of what Del Toro is interested in it, but it definitely does not feel entirely like him.
- [31:49]
Lizzie Bassett
And to be clear, he did not write it.
- [31:51]
Chris Winterbauer
He technically co wrote it, so I'm guessing he rewrote it. And it was also based on an existing short story. Just know that it was hell for Del Toro, mostly because of the Weinsteins. He later said, quote, they would hire you for who you are. Then they didn't want your personality on the film.
- [32:06]
Lizzie Bassett
Yep.
- [32:07]
Chris Winterbauer
They wanted to suffocate every instinct you had as a filmmaker.
- [32:10]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah, I mean, we've seen this. Anytime we have encountered them, they, you know, obviously Harvey is horrible for a whole laundry list of reasons, but they, like, they were just creatively crushing a lot of the time. Unless they were dealing with, you know, a Quentin Tarantino, someone who they just had to give money to and back off, basically. But that was the exception to the rule with them.
- [32:31]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah. If you guys remember our coverage of Lord of the Rings, for example, they were suffocating Peter Jackson before he ended up hooking up at New Line.
- [32:40]
Lizzie Bassett
I think the difference is Quentin Tarantino put them on the map to a certain extent, so they didn't have the same power with him that they then would have with every subsequent director that they are doing. This to where they're, they're like offering you this golden opportunity, but then what it really is is they just strangle you.
- [32:55]
Chris Winterbauer
Del Toro is getting a firsthand experience of what a destructive machine Hollywood can be and how monstrous people can really be in this business when it comes to protecting their financial investment, at least from their perspective. They basically could not understand why Del Toro wanted to make an art film out of a bug based B movie. Midway through production, they tried to fire him. The cast then walked out. So Del Toro was brought back. Remember when somebody destroyed his first feature by pooping and peeing all over it? Looking back, Del Toro said the one silver lining was that it prepared me for the Weinstein.
- [33:36]
Lizzie Bassett
Very good.
- [33:37]
Chris Winterbauer
Then after shooting Mimic, Del Toro's father was kidnapped and held for ransom. But guess what? Del Toro later said that working with the Weinsteins was even more harrowing than his father's kidnapping.
- [33:50]
Lizzie Bassett
Great silver linings everywhere, quote.
- [33:52]
Chris Winterbauer
At least the kidnapping had a certain logic. They wanted money and we wanted my father. With Mimic, I didn't know what they wanted. Yep, end quote. Del Toro's father was returned home after being held for nearly two and a half months.
- [34:04]
Lizzie Bassett
Jesus.
- [34:05]
Chris Winterbauer
James Cameron actually helped with that. We can sidebar on that later. We gotta keep moving. Mimic flopped. Del Toro disowned the theatrical cut. He was haunted not by what Mimic was, but by what it could have been. So he made a decision. Success is fucking up on your own terms. His next movie would be a ghost story on his terms. Therefore, he would not make it in Hollywood. So he dusts off that old idea that Hermosillo had rejected. The Devil's Backbone follows a young boy living in an orphanage haunted by the ghost of another orphan. And at this point, it took place during the Mexican Revolution. But Del Toro decided to change the setting to the Spanish Civil War in part because it made it less ambiguous from his perspective. There were so many factions and betrayals and changes of power in Mexico that it was hard to pinpoint two clear sides. I get the sense. And the Spanish Civil War could be boiled down more to the Republicans versus the nationalist rebels. I will say it is more complicated than that. I was looking into it a little bit and it's really the left leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic. And this includes, you know, socialists, anarchists, communists, separatists, and they're supported by the Soviet Union, I believe, broadly. And then on the nationalist side, you know, Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, traditionalists, and they're supported by Germany and Fascist Italy. At this Time. So, again, big coalitions. But you can say, we understand Franco over here, we understand the Republicans over here.
- [35:24]
Lizzie Bassett
Well, there's also a pretty clear bad. I understand that there is nuance to it. There's, you know, I'm sure issues with the other side as well. But there is a very, very clear villain in that one.
- [35:34]
Chris Winterbauer
Absolutely. Now, it should be said, we think that location was another factor. So he had reportedly pitched the project to the Mexican Institute of Film, but they thought it was, quote, too bad.
- [35:44]
Lizzie Bassett
Big.
- [35:45]
Chris Winterbauer
So he reaches out to Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, who had told him, after Kronos, if you ever come to Spain, my brother and I would like to produce a movie for you. What's interesting is Hermosillo, his mentor, is often compared to Almodovar for both doing similar things with pointing out the hypocrisies of culture through sex comedies, et cetera. You know, it's interesting that he's moving, you know, between these two directors who are contemporaries in so many ways.
- [36:07]
Lizzie Bassett
I've not seen Hermosillo's work. I have seen a lot more of Almodovar, and he does lean into fantasy quite a bit in certain ways.
- [36:14]
Chris Winterbauer
Absolutely. And a lot of Mexican cinema at I think, the time, did a movie that I love that it's not super well known. It's called A Poison for the Fairies, about two little girls, one of whom is exerting power over the other by pretending that she's a witch and taking credit for weird things that are happening, like the death of a teacher, for example, and trying to, you know, it's a twisted story of friendship, but it uses religion in Mexico at the time as, you know, sort of a playground for childish desires and whatnot. And then there was some later that I really liked, like Herod's Law and stuff, that are very satirical and outlandish explorations of the complicated, hypocritical Mexican political history and whatnot.
- [36:54]
Lizzie Bassett
Does make sense. I mean, magical realism is such an enormous part of, I believe, Mexican literature as well.
- [37:00]
Chris Winterbauer
So absolutely think of something like Water for Chocolate or something like that. Now with the Devil's Backbone, unlike with Mimic, Del Toro had complete control, and he was thinking about making it a trilogy with the Devil's Backbone as the first installment. He starts playing with an idea, a story of a pregnant woman who arrives at a big mansion in the north of Spain. Her husband is working for a fascist captain, restoring the mansion. The woman falls in love with a faun in the nearby labyrinth. They make passionate love, and then the faun asks for the blood of her firstborn in exchange for opening the labyrinth and taking her to the magical kingdom with him. In the end, she sacrifices her son to go with the love of her life. It's very dark. Obviously, you can see Pan's Labyrinth in here. I also think you can see the shape of water. The Devil's Backbone is released in 2001 to critical acclaim. But like Kronos, it fizzles financially. So Del Toro returns to Hollywood to play with the financially bankable monsters Blade and Hellboy. He directs Blade two and then he directs Hellboy. Fun fact. He wanted to make Hellboy, and the deal was he had to make Blade two first.
- [38:03]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh, interesting.
- [38:04]
Chris Winterbauer
In order to make Hellboy.
- [38:05]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah, they're both fun. I enjoy both of those.
- [38:07]
Chris Winterbauer
I do, too. And it's interesting. I think it was actually a really good thing because Blade, Blade 2 did really well and I think helped secure him more control on Hellboy. Because I think you can feel more of Del Toro in Hellboy than in Blade two, for example.
- [38:19]
Lizzie Bassett
Well, that makes sense. He's establishing the on screen world in a way that you couldn't with Blade two. Because that had already happened with the first one.
- [38:25]
Chris Winterbauer
Exactly. So blade two makes 155 million against a $54 million budget. Heading into production on Hellboy, Del Toro's getting offers. Lizzie, to do a lot more IP work, including the Fantastic Four.
- [38:37]
Lizzie Bassett
Say no.
- [38:38]
Chris Winterbauer
It's 2003. He's 39 years old. He knows he can make dark, melodramatic creature features, but he doesn't know if they can make money. He also knows he can make big studio movies that make money, but I don't know if he thinks they can make him happy. Does he make the Fantastic Four? Lock in financial security? Ride the superhero wave of the mid aughts? Lizzie shaking her head.
- [39:01]
Lizzie Bassett
Just say no. We know how that one turned out.
- [39:03]
Chris Winterbauer
Or does he make the sequel to the Devil's Backbone, a movie that makes made half at the box Office what Blade 2 did on its opening day. So Del Toro has a decision to make and he's in London. He steps out of a cab, lost in thought. I get the sense he is often lost in thought. The man is very thoughtful. He is thinking a lot. And he realizes he is missing his journal. The journal filled with all of the sketches and ideas and story points that he has been accumulating for years for what would become Pan's Labyrinth. He runs for the cabin and he can't catch it. He then jumps into another cab and says, Follow that cab. And they can't catch it. He goes to the police. They can't find it. He calls the cab company. They can't figure out which one he was in. The notebook is gone. He goes home and he cries. And he wonders, why did I lose the notebook? And he realizes it's because I was about to lose myself. I'm going to do Pan's Labyrinths. And according to Del Toro, at that moment.
- [39:58]
Lizzie Bassett
Moment.
- [39:59]
Chris Winterbauer
The phone rings. It's the cab driver. It's been two days. The driver had noticed the journal found Del Toro's hotel using a scrap of stationery that had its logo but no name.
- [40:10]
Lizzie Bassett
Wow.
- [40:11]
Chris Winterbauer
And returned it.
- [40:11]
Lizzie Bassett
That's amazing.
- [40:12]
Chris Winterbauer
Del Toro was going to make Pan's Labyrinth, and then he gave the driver a $900 tip.
- [40:18]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah. To go to that length to find him.
- [40:20]
Chris Winterbauer
And 1% of Pan's Labyrinth's profits. No, he just did $900. Very generous. So Del Toro strips out the love story and decides to focus on the perspective of a young girl. And I have a quote here that I think is very important to understanding his. I find midlife a little dull. I like old age and childhood, because in both stages of life, you become invisible. People write you off like a thing, an idea, and therefore, you become an invisible observer. And if you were to watch Kronos, for example, it is very much about the perspective of this older man and his granddaughter. If you were to watch the Devil's Backbone, not only is it the boys in the Orphan, but also their protector, the older man who's running it and the older woman who runs it with him. And the villain, played by Eduardo Noriega, wonderfully, is the man in midlife who's seemingly vital and young.
- [41:04]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah. And same thing here. The villain is midlife. The mother is sort of at sea for this entire thing. I mean, Mercedes is active, but.
- [41:12]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah, but the doctor, for example, the reason he goes unnoticed. Right. He's older and nobody thinks he has it in him, maybe to, you know,
- [41:20]
Lizzie Bassett
I think same for Mercedes.
- [41:22]
Chris Winterbauer
Yes, I agree. There's a class element to that that I really like. So Del Toro pitches the movie to Cuaron, who says, okay, let's go into pre production. Let's start financing, you and me, and see what happens. And Del Toro backs this up. He says that he called Cuaron and said he was bootstrapping it with $100,000 of his own money. And Cuaron said, screw that. I'll put in half. Meaning of the $100,000, not of the final Budget. Del Toro replied, you realize if the film doesn't go, we'll have a bunch of really expensive drawings. And Cuaron says, yeah. So in the summer of 2004, del Toro moves his family to Madrid and the roughly year long pre production process began. And to be clear, Lizzie, they don't have funding.
- [42:00]
Lizzie Bassett
Wow.
- [42:00]
Chris Winterbauer
Everybody turned us down. He also said that a number of people offered double the budget if they do it in English. But Del Toro said no, quote, I hate those movies that people should be talking in their native languages and they're speaking in English. I agree, completely agree.
- [42:15]
Lizzie Bassett
I would always is rather have them speaking the language they're supposed to be speaking.
- [42:18]
Chris Winterbauer
Producer Bertha Navarro, who was del Toro's longtime collaborator and part of the Tequila gang with him and Cuaron, great name and sales agent Rosa Bash. He was also part of the Tequila gang. They said it took two years to come up with an agreement with Spanish co producer Telecinco. In June of 2005, just before production was going to begin, Del Toro wrote in his journal that he was being Offered X Men 3. I believe men in Black, Thor and the Chronicles of Narnia.
- [42:45]
Lizzie Bassett
Wow. I will say there's one of those that I actually think he could have done a pretty interesting job on.
- [42:51]
Chris Winterbauer
Chronic. Whatcles of Narnia. Yes.
- [42:53]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:54]
Chris Winterbauer
He has said that Pan's Labyrinth is kind of his Chronicles of Narnia.
- [42:56]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah, that makes sense.
- [42:57]
Chris Winterbauer
It bears a lot of similarities.
- [42:58]
Lizzie Bassett
There's a faun in both.
- [42:59]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah. Now he was broke by his standards. He later said it was a moment where, money wise, I was tight and I thought, should I leave Pans to do that and then come back? And I chose to stay. The budget was set at 14 million euros, roughly US$19 million at the time.
- [43:16]
Lizzie Bassett
Wow, that's not much.
- [43:17]
Chris Winterbauer
Not for what you see on screen.
- [43:19]
Lizzie Bassett
No.
- [43:19]
Chris Winterbauer
He estimates that this was roughly the same as the effects budget on Hellboy.
- [43:24]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah.
- [43:24]
Chris Winterbauer
So Hellboy's budget, I think was around 65 or $70 million. I think if you were to say VFX meaning CGI, but also makeup effects, meaning costumes and whatnot. Yes, that makes sense to me because the prosthetics work in Hellboy is so extensive.
- [43:39]
Lizzie Bassett
I will say this movie is so economical with its settings.
- [43:43]
Chris Winterbauer
Yes.
- [43:43]
Lizzie Bassett
He's so smart about the way. So that number makes more sense when you think about the fact that they're
- [43:48]
Chris Winterbauer
clearly shooting farmhouse, labyrinth, mountains.
- [43:50]
Lizzie Bassett
That's it. And you're shooting what looks like around a real farmhouse.
- [43:53]
Chris Winterbauer
That was actually a build. The exterior was built on location and the interior is a soundstage. But your point stands. One big location.
- [44:00]
Lizzie Bassett
You've got the labyrinth, which I'm guessing they built. But that's a set that's actually pretty contained. And then everything else that's extraneous to that looks like a soundstage. So that's like pretty. That's pretty good. Other than the mountains, it's a smartly
- [44:13]
Chris Winterbauer
contained story, much in the way that the Devil's Backbone was, which entirely takes place at this one orphanage.
- [44:23]
Lizzie Bassett
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- [44:39]
Chris Winterbauer
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- [44:53]
Lizzie Bassett
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- [45:29]
Chris Winterbauer
Now. The plan is to do as much in camera as possible, but they would need some visual effects obviously. So he hired a California based studio Cafe Effects. Now I read that they estimated that they would need a million dollars to do everything that Del Toro needed. But they took on the work at a much lower rate so that they could get an associate producer credit on it. And since they were launching their own production company at the time time, let's keep in mind that they already came in low when we get to some overages later. For makeup effects he hired a Mexican firm called DDT Effectos Especiales. Henceforth we shall call them ddt. I like to think that they are the spiritual successors to his prior Necropia, for example.
- [46:06]
Lizzie Bassett
Great.
- [46:07]
Chris Winterbauer
Also don't confuse DDT with gdt, which is sometimes what people call Guillermo del Toro. So the key design is obviously what character? Lizzy, the font, the faun. El fauno.
- [46:19]
Lizzie Bassett
Del Fauno.
- [46:20]
Chris Winterbauer
El Fauno.
- [46:21]
Lizzie Bassett
I just love the way he Talks.
- [46:23]
Chris Winterbauer
I love it, too. It's like half goat, half ent, half faun. It's great. And it changed a lot. So there was a cute, fat, old goatman version designed by American fantasy artist and illustrator William Stout, who has incredible credits, and you guys should look up his work. William Stout, Lizzie. For reference, he designed the big bug villain, Edgar in Men in Black.
- [46:43]
Lizzie Bassett
Great.
- [46:43]
Chris Winterbauer
There was also a younger version. There was an adult version that was more human with goat legs and more hunched over, less upright, which is more
- [46:51]
Lizzie Bassett
of a traditional faun design.
- [46:52]
Chris Winterbauer
Yes, it is. But it was Del Toro who came up with a design that would allow the actor to puppeteer his own legs.
- [46:59]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh.
- [46:59]
Chris Winterbauer
It was simple. So simple that apparently DDT laughed at him when he first proposed the idea. Basically, the actor's legs would sit in front of and above the faun's legs and feet, wrapped in green fabric, and then they could remove them in post, literally. Lizzy, can I show you a photo?
- [47:13]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes.
- [47:14]
Chris Winterbauer
Really quickly.
- [47:15]
Lizzie Bassett
I have seen this before, I think, but let me see it again. Yeah, yeah. It's so cool.
- [47:19]
Chris Winterbauer
We will put this on our Patreon for you guys.
- [47:21]
Lizzie Bassett
God, that's so cool.
- [47:23]
Chris Winterbauer
I mean, it looks horribly uncomfortable, but it is super cool.
- [47:26]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah. That is amazing. That's one of my favorite parts of this movie, is the way the fawn moves, the way that he is able to, like, shake out a leg, you know, the way that a goat might. And it's just obviously, it's Doug Jones.
- [47:36]
Chris Winterbauer
Well, we'll talk about that. That was very specific and also very specific direction from Del Toro.
- [47:41]
Lizzie Bassett
It's so good.
- [47:42]
Chris Winterbauer
So he brings on a bunch of the crew from the Devil's Backbone. I mean, he is making the sister film in so many ways to the Devil's Backbone. So cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, set decorator Pilar Revuelta, composer Javier Navarrete, set construction company Constructiones Moya, casting director Sara Bilbattua and editor Bernat Villaplana. But there were also some fresh faces. So Lizzie, he landed famed costume designer lalauete. She'd won three Goya awards, which is the Spanish Oscars, for costume design. And he had a newcomer with Eugen Caballero, who came in as the production designer. He was recommended by producer Bertha Navarro, who just worked with him on Chronicaz. And Del Toro said that he liked his inexperience.
- [48:22]
Lizzie Bassett
These Del Toro quotes, he seems like the best.
- [48:25]
Chris Winterbauer
He seems like the best, but also, he cannot help but turn it into something epic. It's just. It's great. So here's the quote in his Eyes burned, the death wish of the novice. The limitless hunger you have when you don't know boundaries or budget. End quote.
- [48:39]
Lizzie Bassett
Great.
- [48:39]
Chris Winterbauer
It's just everything's a story. So then del Toro puts his own office in the middle of the art department so he could, quote, torture Caballero all day. I love that Del Toro read all the Celtic lore he could find, plus anthropological, psychological, and sociological studies of fairy tales and myths and folk stories from around the world. And the result, in my opinion, is this kind of lovely improv riff on Iberian paganism that touches on fairy tale lore. You know, never eat fairy food, for example, with the Pale man.
- [49:06]
Lizzie Bassett
That's the thing. The Celtic influence makes a ton of sense because, you know, frequently those fairies are underground. There's the whole thing with not eating the food. There's this idea of them taking children. Like, there is a lot there and coming in threes.
- [49:18]
Chris Winterbauer
And there's so many elements of classic fairy folklore. But then I think there's also kind of equal measure Catholicism in here as well. I think there's a lot of Latin Catholicism in this movie. He also worked in real accounts from the war into the script. So the priest's speech that was based on a priest at a concentration camp who used to tell prisoners, remember, my sons, you should confess what you know, because God doesn't care what happens to your bodies. He already saved your souls. And I do think del Toro's very interested in souls, especially through the idea of something like a ghost. But he is so interested in the human body and the damage that can be wrought to the human body. And you see, there are certain motifs, visually. Wounds through the armpit. Captain Vidal being shot through the optical nerve, like through his cheek, is something that is repeated almost exactly in Crimson Peak, for example. So he locks in on certain forms of violence and really explores them again and again. Also, the apparently other stories he was pulling from the rebel getting shot through the hand, and then elements of Captain Vidal killing the farmer with the bottle. And I read that that was also based on a fight that del Toro had been in. I don't know if that was. I'm assuming that was when he was older, but he had actually been in a lot of fights when he was a kid. He tells a story how he got bullied a lot because he was really thin and he was really pale and had blonde hair and blue eyes. And he actually started eating a lot more, trying to gain weight so he could defend himself in the. These schoolyard scraps. And there was some fight where the bottle didn't break. And it either surprised him or it surprised somebody. And it's really the most horrifying part of the movie.
- [50:45]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah, it is.
- [50:46]
Chris Winterbauer
Production designer Eugenio Caballero studied the Franco era, Obviously. He visited the concentration camps at Birkenau and Auschwitz. And Del Toro storyboarded, designed and planned everything to a T, and then marched straight into hell. But he wouldn't be going alone. So for the role of the faun, Del Toro knew there was only one man for the general.
- [51:05]
Lizzie Bassett
One tall, slender man, 6 foot 3 and 140 pounds. Jesus Christ.
- [51:12]
Chris Winterbauer
Actor, mime and contortionist Doug Jones. The two had met on Mimic.
- [51:17]
Lizzie Bassett
I love this pair so much. I love this friendship.
- [51:20]
Chris Winterbauer
I mean, it's just your classic visual pairing, right? It's an Abbott and Costello style pairing.
- [51:25]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes.
- [51:26]
Chris Winterbauer
So Jones had been called in on Mimic to do last minute pickup shots of one of the giant bugs. The actor, I believe, who had originally played the bug was Canadian. There was a whole up with immigration visas. And so they brought in Doug Jones. He actually also had a small role as a ripper on Tent Girl Lizzie. We didn't talk about him because it was so minor.
- [51:42]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes, I saw his name in the credit.
- [51:43]
Chris Winterbauer
Five years after Mimic, Del Toro calls on Jones for the role of Abe Sapien in Hellboy. I'm sure you remember feel like very much an influence on, obviously the Shape of Water. Later, and in 2005, he gets another email from Del Toro that basically says, I'm working on a film in Spain. The title character is a faun. Nobody can play him but you. And at first, Jones is intimidated. This is a lot of pressure. It's the title character. And then he reads the script and he loves it. And then he rereads the email and realizes the entire movie is in Spanish.
- [52:11]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah.
- [52:11]
Chris Winterbauer
He tells Del Toro, I think you've got the wrong guy. But Del Toro knew he didn't. He told Jones, look, we'll dub your dialogue. It doesn't matter what you say. You can count to 10 for all I care. But even though they did dub his dialogue, Jones learned all of it in Spanish so he could deliver his real lines while shooting. Oh, he did it out of respect for the other actors and to make the dubbing process smoother. And I am sure it made the dubbing process a lot smoother. And I'm sure it was helpful for Ivan Abaquero as Ofelia when they were doing that together. Now, dubbing meant that they had to bring in another actor, which was another expense, but I Think they made up for that because Jones was gonna play another role. Who else does he play, Lizzie?
- [52:47]
Lizzie Bassett
He plays the slenderest slender man.
- [52:49]
Chris Winterbauer
Oh, the creepiest depiction of a non slender man Slenderman ever. The pale man is a skin bag
- [52:56]
Lizzie Bassett
Slenderman with little toothpaste toothpicks for sticks.
- [52:58]
Chris Winterbauer
Oh, the toothpick legs are probably the scariest part of this whole thing.
- [53:02]
Lizzie Bassett
They are.
- [53:02]
Chris Winterbauer
It's horrifying. It's truly horrifying.
- [53:04]
Lizzie Bassett
I mean, I will say, though, I love his little eyeball hand.
- [53:06]
Chris Winterbauer
His eyeball hands are great.
- [53:07]
Lizzie Bassett
When he popped up this time, I was like, there he is.
- [53:10]
Chris Winterbauer
His finger lashes. Yes.
- [53:12]
Lizzie Bassett
I was like, there's my guy. I missed him.
- [53:14]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah. Don't take my food. He's so skinny.
- [53:17]
Lizzie Bassett
He needs it.
- [53:18]
Chris Winterbauer
So the fawn and the pale man would be played by an American, but the rest of the principal cast was from Spanish Spain. Del Toro's a Mexican director and he's casting Spanish actors in Spain, and it presents some challenges. Del Toro wants to cast against type, at least against the type that these actors were best known for in Spain. So Lizzie, broadly speaking. Sergi Lopez, who plays Captain Vidal, was best known as a comedic actor.
- [53:41]
Lizzie Bassett
Interesting.
- [53:42]
Chris Winterbauer
Maribel Verdu, who played Mercedes, had recently done an Alfonso Cuaron film. Do you remember which one?
- [53:48]
Lizzie Bassett
No.
- [53:48]
Chris Winterbauer
Itu Mama Tambie.
- [53:50]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh, yes, of course.
- [53:52]
Chris Winterbauer
And she was known a bit for playing like, sex bombs and acting in light comedies.
- [53:56]
Lizzie Bassett
She's very beautiful.
- [53:57]
Chris Winterbauer
She's great in this movie.
- [53:58]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah.
- [53:58]
Chris Winterbauer
Aria Nagil, who plays Carmen, usually played bigger parts, more fully fleshed out characters, as you mentioned. She's a little absent, I think, obviously, necessarily so for the story.
- [54:07]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah, I think she's great in this.
- [54:09]
Chris Winterbauer
She's fantastic. Yeah. Alex angulo, who plays Dr. Ferrero, had recently played a lot of villains and obviously he's doing a heroic turn here. Del Toro even said that he had dinner with a Spanish producer who told him, you don't understand. You're casting these roles wrong because you're Mexican. And Del Toro replied, no, it's not that I don't know them, it's that I don't give a fuck.
- [54:29]
Lizzie Bassett
Nice.
- [54:29]
Chris Winterbauer
I can cast them how I want because this is a Mexican co production. The producer then waved him off and said he'd regret it. Some of the actors careers were already over and that Del Toro would end up firing them. Obviously he did not. But for the role of Ofelia, they went with an actress whose career was just starting. So they screen tested more than 300 young girls. This is very standard.
- [54:48]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah.
- [54:48]
Chris Winterbauer
For Kids, you know, we talked about Short Round when we were doing Temple of Doom recently, and they had casting calls at six major cities and saw thousands of boys. But casting director Bilba Tua saw her photo and froze. And when Vaquero did her screen test, Bilbatua's hair stood on its end.
- [55:02]
Lizzie Bassett
She's really, really good.
- [55:03]
Chris Winterbauer
So Del Toro had actually written her as a younger street urchin type, so a bit less innocent, I think, a little more street smart, resistant. I think it's so smart the way that they changed this to fit her personality. I think her innocence is so necessary for the final twist of the film to work. I'm curious if you agree.
- [55:25]
Lizzie Bassett
I agree. And I also think her look is so good. She looks like a little girl. Like, sometimes they.
- [55:30]
Chris Winterbauer
She's 11 years old.
- [55:31]
Lizzie Bassett
Right. But sometimes, even when they're casting littler girls, they'll choose ones that have sort of more mature features or expressions. And also, the way that they're dressed often can be to, you know, almost make you a little bit more comfortable and make them look a little older.
- [55:44]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah. Precocious, right? Yeah.
- [55:46]
Lizzie Bassett
They don't do that with her at all. She's very soft. She's very sweet. She looks like a little girl. And the way that they've dressed her and everything, and her hair, she's so beautiful, so cute. And. Yeah, it does. It makes it all the more heartbreaking.
- [55:58]
Chris Winterbauer
I also think that subtextually, and I'm curious if you agree with this, it reinforces the idea of Carmen's character being someone who is so desperate to protect her child from the horrors of the war and what has happened. So much so that she is willing to marry Captain Vidal. Right. In order to. That's what she's doing. She's surviving here. You know, she's found this person. And I see Ophelia as presenting as. Sheltered is the wrong word. But she is. She's innocent. And her mother has maybe helped protect her innocence, and she's escaped through fairy tales, et cetera.
- [56:28]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes. I maybe have a slightly different view on the mother. I think the mother is perhaps more selfish than you're giving her credit for. And I don't know how much of it is protecting Ophelia and how much of it is protecting her own experience and herself. Because in reality, like this is not a good position to be putting Ophelia in. Going to this place is a dangerous. No, as we learn, everything about this is not somewhere you should take your child or that you should go when you're pregnant.
- [56:55]
Chris Winterbauer
I wondered how much of that might be Vidal lying. Not lying to her, but selling her this idea. I'll protect you. Come with me. Come live here. Right. And then the true self is revealed when you arrive at the creepy mansion in the middle of nowhere, et cetera.
- [57:10]
Lizzie Bassett
Totally possible. I guess my read on this was, while I understand Carmen, I do think that she's a pretty selfish character at the end of the day, who is less capable of taking care of anyone other than herself than I think maybe it appears.
- [57:23]
Chris Winterbauer
I also think she's very important. They draw her nicely opposite Mercedes, where she embodies obey and we will survive. Right, Right. And Mercedes and the Doctor and obviously Ophelia in the end embody, no, I must do what's right, even if my blood must be spilt in order to do it. And he does such a nice job of. Of aligning these characters along that philosophical axis. And so anyways. Well, it's a great movie. Who knew? So when Vaquero auditioned, Del Toro decided to rewrite the role for her. And Vaquero says that when she went in to do her callback, her performance made del Toro's then wife cry. And del Toro offered her the part that day. And so they brought her in. Production began in the summer of 2005. It lasted three months and the money was tight. Del Toro apparently almost immediately forfeited his entire salary. And I don't know if it was was all of his points or some of his points, but points is the quote to make the budget work?
- [58:18]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh no.
- [58:19]
Chris Winterbauer
But there were things beyond his control. So two months before filming began, a massive forest fire broke out. The area was already dealing with a drought. The production had a quote moss squad that was dressing the dead dried out forest with pigment and sawdust. I do wonder if I think the color correction is pushed particularly green at the beginning of the film. And I wonder if they are fighting that a little bit.
- [58:39]
Lizzie Bassett
Bit.
- [58:39]
Chris Winterbauer
They built an irrigation system around the mill where they were shooting and they planted grass and ferns. But in order to protect the forest for more fires, the Spanish government said you can't ignite anything. Which meant no blanks in the guns and Lizzy, no squibs on the actors. So can you explain what a squib is very briefly for our audience?
- [59:00]
Lizzie Bassett
Sure. A squib is a little pouch of blood essentially that does have a tiny little explosive in it that caused causes it to explode when someone is shot. So that you get the blood appearing underneath someone's shirt or whatever. Famously, James Caan in The Godfather had hundreds of squibs all over him.
- [59:18]
Chris Winterbauer
Hundreds of squibs on his body, which
- [59:20]
Lizzie Bassett
must have hurt because it is a
- [59:21]
Chris Winterbauer
little explosive, like getting shot with a paintball or something like that, I would imagine.
- [59:25]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah.
- [59:26]
Chris Winterbauer
So Del Toro said that this was one of the most difficult parts of shooting. I had literally the actors pretending that their guns were working like children playing cowboys and Indians.
- [59:36]
Lizzie Bassett
Pew, pew.
- [59:37]
Chris Winterbauer
They were moving their hands as if their guns were shooting. I remember Sergi Lopez, who played the captain in the first or second take, he was going through the take saying bang, bang, bang, because he just didn't know what he was doing. So the gunshots and the bullet wounds would have to be done digitally.
- [59:54]
Lizzie Bassett
Wow.
- [59:54]
Chris Winterbauer
The VFX company already took a cut rate to do the movie, and now they're gonna have to add in the work. There are a lot of gunshots in this movie, and I think they look really good.
- [60:05]
Lizzie Bassett
They do.
- [60:05]
Chris Winterbauer
I didn't really notice when I was watching. I think it holds up.
- [60:08]
Lizzie Bassett
No. And the blood looks great. Like when the doctor gets shot and you see it just sort of blooming up underneath his shirt. It really looks awesome.
- [60:15]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah, that scene always gets me.
- [60:16]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah.
- [60:17]
Chris Winterbauer
The gunshots were gonna be fake, but Doug Jones's makeup and prosthetics were obviously very real. It took five hours for the fawn and six hours for the pale man to get ready to shoot. So if you think about it, if you have a 12 and a half hour day, five, you're not gonna get a shot off before lunch, basically. Unless you pre call your whole hair and makeup team, which I'm sure they did, and Doug Jones. And maybe you keep. But there are turnaround time restrictions on how much time an actor can have between rap and starting the next day. It creates a really tough logistical puzzle that you have to figure out. It also didn't help that as the faun, Jones could only see through the creature's tear ducts.
- [60:52]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh, God.
- [60:53]
Chris Winterbauer
And as the pale man. The pale man. Lizzy, where are his eyes?
- [60:56]
Lizzie Bassett
His eyes are in his hands. Palms.
- [60:58]
Chris Winterbauer
So he could only see through his hands? No, he could only see cross eyed. Through the nostrils. Yeah, the tiny little nostrils at the front. Plus, the fawn costume was extremely heavy because the horns were filled with battery packs. Oh. To operate the remote puppeteering on the face.
- [61:15]
Lizzie Bassett
Wow.
- [61:15]
Chris Winterbauer
By the way, incredible work.
- [61:17]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes.
- [61:18]
Chris Winterbauer
When they were switched on for the remote puppeteering, they would buzz so loudly that Jones could barely hear Vaquero delivering her lines in the scene with him. He also had a little tail, little fondail that made it so he couldn't sit on a regular chair. Oh, good.
- [61:32]
Lizzie Bassett
He needs his own little fawn chair.
- [61:33]
Chris Winterbauer
He'd have to lean over a modified bike with a T bar that he would lean over between takes.
- [61:39]
Lizzie Bassett
Jesus.
- [61:39]
Chris Winterbauer
Now, Lizzie, you mentioned farm animals for his performance, and Del Toro did tell him to, quote, study the back end of barn animals, which I think he does very well in this movie, how they shake flies off, how their hoofs meet the ground. But he also said channel rock stars like Mick Jagger and in a shout out to OG Labyrinth, David Bowie.
- [61:56]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah, that makes sense.
- [61:58]
Chris Winterbauer
There is some funny behind the scenes footage of Jones in the pale man suit eating Subway. And as we later learned, Jared is basically the pale man. So makes sense. At some point, Jones got sick and they lost one of the five days planned for the pale man sequence, basically because of the time that they needed in the makeup chair to prep and remove the prosthetics. Jones was only going to get three hours of sleep between two shooting days. So he wore the pale man suit back to the hotel.
- [62:25]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh, my God.
- [62:28]
Chris Winterbauer
He didn't tell anyone outside the makeup team, not even Del Toro, because this is a very expensive prosthetic suit. Yeah, they took the head and neck off, to be clear, and they took off the hands, but they left on the whole arm. They then Saran wrapped all of that and then put his clothes on top of it so that the prosthetics wouldn't stick to his clothes. It really reminds me of Robert Anglin getting Thai food with Johnny Depp dressed as Freddy Krueger when we were covering Nightmare on Elm Street.
- [62:52]
Lizzie Bassett
That is disgusting. That must have smelled so bad by the time he was out of it.
- [62:56]
Chris Winterbauer
That was a stanky pale man. It smells like what we would expect him to smell in the movie.
- [63:00]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah.
- [63:00]
Chris Winterbauer
Now, makeup effects house DDT was under enormous press. You mentioned the frog, Lizzie, earlier in this episode. So the scene with the frog was actually supposed to be very different. It was supposed to take place in a massive domed set and the frog was going to jump around. This makes sense to me and I'll teach you why in a moment. It would be a mixture of practical effects and cgi. And in the practical version, they would need to puppeteer the frog from the inside. One of the co owners of DDC would basically go inside from underneath the set, like a Jim Henson situation and puppeteer puppeteer it. And Del Toro said ahead of time that he didn't think it was going to work. The puppet was going to be too big and Too heavy to move. But DDT decided to go for it anyway. They ultimately had to outsource some of the construction of the frog because their mixing machine and oven were too small. And when they got done with the puppet, the puppeteer climbed inside and couldn't move. So if the frog couldn't move and jump around, it suddenly looked really small relative to the enormous set that they'd built. So Del Toro scrapped the set and rewrote the scene to take place in a narrow route tunnel. And then most of the sequence had to be done with CGI instead of practical effects. He later said that they worked and reworked the frog vomit shot more than any other scene. I have to say, in my opinion, this is, by the standards set by the rest of the movie, this is the weakest scene visually and narratively.
- [64:18]
Lizzie Bassett
I agree. And yet it still looks pretty good.
- [64:20]
Chris Winterbauer
I agree. I think it's still fine. It doesn't bump me. But when I read this, it made sense. Yes, it made sense, because the challenge, it feels too simple ultimately. Right. The frog is just there and she shoves the rocks. It makes more sense that, oh, it would be jumping around. She might have to try to figure out how to catch it, you know, or get its attention.
- [64:37]
Lizzie Bassett
Right.
- [64:37]
Chris Winterbauer
So this did make sense when I read it, but I don't think it hurts the movie. Ultimately.
- [64:42]
Lizzie Bassett
It doesn't.
- [64:43]
Chris Winterbauer
Now, before production wrapped, two members of DDT walked off the project, and it sounds like DDT co partner David Marti came close. He later called Pan's Labyrinth the worst experience of his movie making life. He clarified. He said, it's a very good movie, very bad experience. Oh, quote, we went bankrupt. I cried three times. I got into an argument with Guillermo, the only one in my career for the now 11 years I've known him. If I have to do another Pan's Labyrinth, I will die. We have a saying. We always have the ghost of Pan's Labyrinth behind us.
- [65:14]
Lizzie Bassett
Wow.
- [65:14]
Chris Winterbauer
To be fair, del Toro was struggling too. Was he? He claims there was a group of Spanish producers who wanted the project shut down, perhaps because his team was basically entirely Mexican and they were coming into Spain instead of using local hires and local producers producers. Del Toro also said that this group had, quote, spies among the crew who created a blog and message board to post about mistakes and problems from the shoot. One of his friends had access to the site and told him every couple days to be careful and, quote, make sure all your paperwork is impeccable and up to date, because if they can, they will shut you down.
- [65:47]
Lizzie Bassett
Who has the energy for this.
- [65:49]
Chris Winterbauer
The Spanish.
- [65:51]
Lizzie Bassett
Okay, okay.
- [65:52]
Chris Winterbauer
Now, according to Del Toro, they Only ever went 15 minutes over scan schedule. But he was stressed out of his mind. He was sleeping three hours a night, losing three pounds a week, getting immigration permits and passports for the crew, dealing with the extremely tight budget, pushing DDT beyond their limit, VFX overages, and quote, most of the crew thought we were making a strange, silly movie, end quote. But they made it through production and ran out of money.
- [66:18]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh, no.
- [66:19]
Chris Winterbauer
According to Del Toro, this is why you can still see the shadow of Jones real legs in some of the scenes with throw the font. They just ran out of VFX money at a certain point in time. Del Toro. We never saw it, we never notice it. It's fine.
- [66:35]
Lizzie Bassett
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Chris Winterbauer
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Lizzie Bassett
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Chris Winterbauer
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Lizzie Bassett
our podcast that is really just a long con to invite amazing guests onto our show and trick them into being our friends.
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Chris Winterbauer
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Lizzie Bassett
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Chris Winterbauer
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Lizzie Bassett
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Chris Winterbauer
Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. KEY and editor Bernat Villaplana had been editing throughout production. That's very normal. Although to what extent this might have been more extreme, we're not sure. And they'd been sending sequences to composer Javier Navarrete so he could start composing. Del Toro then showed an early cut to to James Cameron. Lizzy. And if you had to guess, and you're never gonna guess, but just guess, what do you think James Cameron's concern was about the film? He had one concern, one element of
- [68:28]
Lizzie Bassett
the movie, the women are not holding enough guns.
- [68:30]
Chris Winterbauer
He was fine with that. It was the violence.
- [68:33]
Lizzie Bassett
I mean, it's pretty rough.
- [68:36]
Chris Winterbauer
It jarred him because it was established as a dark fairy tale.
- [68:41]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes.
- [68:41]
Chris Winterbauer
He said that, quote, that type of torture probably took place in the Spanish Civil War War and felt too real for me. But that's also what's important about it, because this is a film about dissociation of escaping from horror into fantasy. End quote.
- [68:55]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes. And the other reason I really like it is that in many ways, it harkens back to before fairy tales were sanitized because they.
- [69:04]
Chris Winterbauer
Oh, yeah. When they were grim.
- [69:05]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes. If you've never read some of the original, both Hans Christian Anderson and Grimm fairy tales, they have been quite a bit modified in the years since those came out. Famously, it's the stepsisters trying to cut chunk of their feet off to fit into the slippers in Cinderella, as one example.
- [69:21]
Chris Winterbauer
Go read the Little Mermaid and see how it really felt to have human legs.
- [69:24]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah.
- [69:25]
Chris Winterbauer
Now, Del Toro has a separate quote in which he says he showed the film to a very famous Hollywood director or producer who said, it's great. If you could only cut the violence out, then children would go to it and it will be a success. We think that's probably James Cameron, based on their two quotes, but we don't know. On a happier note, he had an early screening with Stephen King and his son.
- [69:43]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh.
- [69:43]
Chris Winterbauer
And Del Toro called it the best screening of his. He said watching Stephen King squirm during the Pale man sequence was equivalent to an Oscar.
- [69:52]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh, that's so great.
- [69:53]
Chris Winterbauer
Sound mixing and design was happening in Mexico. Color correction was taking place in Toronto. So Del Toro was traveling between the two. And of course, at one point, the travel hard drive with the color correction for the whole movie was stolen from Del Toro's checked suitcase.
- [70:07]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh, my God.
- [70:08]
Chris Winterbauer
To be clear, I don't think any work was lost, but that was obviously an expense. They had to ship another. Drive, drive, et cetera. So In January of 2006, picture house, home of indie marketing guru Bob Burney, who we just discussed on My Big Fat Creek Wedding, who had handled the US marketing, I believe, for Itamama Tambien, for Alfonso Cuaron's film, picked up the North American rights for Pan's Labyrinth for $6 million. So, Lizzie, the budget for this movie was $19 million. And I think this sets up an important set of parameters to me that indicates obviously what the value of the film from a US or North American distribution perspective was, was so One third of the budget. $6 million is what they're spending. That checks out. I was looking at some other big foreign films, successful foreign films in the United States from a couple years prior to Pan's Labyrinth, Kung Fu Hustle. I don't know if you ever saw it.
- [70:56]
Lizzie Bassett
Oh, yeah.
- [70:56]
Chris Winterbauer
2004. 2005. Yeah. Did 20% of its business in the United States. City of God did a little more. Around 25%. And Hero with Jet Li, 2003, did over 30%. Almost a third of its business in the United States. 53 million of its $177 million. But to be clear, that's an action movie. I know. It's a histor epic with a recognizable star coming hot off the heels of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
- [71:20]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes.
- [71:20]
Chris Winterbauer
The point is, I think the expectation is this movie will do maybe a third of its business at the high end in the United States as opposed to international. It's a foreign film. It's a Spanish language film. So. Pan's Labyrinth premieres at Cannes on May 27, 2006, if you guys are interested. It apparently received a 24 minute standing ovation. At a certain point, people forgot why they were clapping and they just kept doing it. I just don't understand these ovations, but I've never been.
- [71:45]
Lizzie Bassett
I know the ovations at Cannes are ridiculous. Ridiculous.
- [71:47]
Chris Winterbauer
Maybe we'll go Lizzie, and we'll get swept up in it and we will understand.
- [71:50]
Lizzie Bassett
Someday, Chris, maybe you'll get your own 25 minute standing ovation at can, and then you'll like it a whole lot more.
- [71:56]
Chris Winterbauer
When I make Spam's Labyrinth about a killer potato and a can of Spam,
- [72:02]
Lizzie Bassett
it would be cheaper. Spam is very moldable.
- [72:04]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah, that's true. So Warner Brothers picks up the international distribution rights. I think it's interesting that a big studio picks up the international rights and it's Picturehouse, the smaller company, that picks up the domain domestic. I'm reading the tea leaves here a little bit, but to me, it suggests the expectation is this will perform better internationally than domestically.
- [72:20]
Lizzie Bassett
Well, and also, it sounds like Bob Burney picked them up prior to Cannes.
- [72:23]
Chris Winterbauer
Yes, but I'm sure I would expect that they screened the movie for a number of potential distributors. It was not simply, you know, bob Bernie gets the pick of the litter.
- [72:31]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes, but you see a reaction at Cannes and that may change.
- [72:35]
Chris Winterbauer
That's exactly right.
- [72:36]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah.
- [72:36]
Chris Winterbauer
U.S. critics loved it. In fact, it was later named best picture of 2006 by the National Society of Film Critics. Now, Del Toro Might have anticipated this. I know he comes off very modest, but he's obviously a very confident person. Kronos was a critical darling. The Devil's Backbone was a big critical hit. He always said, though, that he thought he was doing Pan's Labyrinth for a small audience. Both of those films had been, relatively speaking, for a small audience, especially relative to Blade 2 or Hellboy, for example. He said he's never pitched a movie and had someone go, oh, wow. Which makes sense. I do think when I was thinking about his filmography of all of his original movies, I could see people moving.
- [73:11]
Lizzie Bassett
Huh?
- [73:11]
Chris Winterbauer
As opposed to, oh wow. Just on the concept. And then obviously they turn out great.
- [73:15]
Lizzie Bassett
So there's a fish man, and she's in love with the fish man. And.
- [73:20]
Chris Winterbauer
And you said she masturbates in the first scene in her bathtub.
- [73:24]
Lizzie Bassett
And I'm sorry, he's a fish man.
- [73:25]
Chris Winterbauer
Okay. And then Michael Shannon just holds his wife's breast. What? I really like Shape of Water. It's an odd film, but I love it. Now, Bob, Bernie knew he had to overcome this exact problem. What's the short sales pitch for the movie? The tricky thing is getting audiences to view the film as anything more than a niche foreign film. How do you blow this thing up? Beyond art house cinema, they didn't have endless resources. So according to one source, Pan's Labyrinth's initial P and A prints and advertising budget was $8 million. Lizzie, we've talked about the general rule of thumb. One half of the production budget tacked on as marketing. That makes sense. $19 million total budget, $8 million P&A. But Pan's Labyrinth was about to go on a pretty cool run. It was courting the high profile film festivals like Toronto and the New York Film Festival, but also genre festivals. Its first premiere in an English speaking country was the London Fright Fest Film Festival in August of 2006. So it opens in Spain in October of 2006, where a lot of people involved in the production thought this is where we're going to make most of our Money. Makes nearly $2 million it's opening weekend. It would end up being the fifth highest grossing film in Spain that year. Mexico follows nine days later. Makes a lot of sense. Then a lot of European countries, South Korea, Russia, Russia. And then finally it opens in the United States and Canada in a limited release on December 29th. And then it goes wide on January 19th. It makes four and a half million, its first weekend wide in the United States. And then Lizzy. The nominees for the 2007 Academy Awards are announced on January 23, and everything changed for Pan's Labyrinth. It was nominated for five Oscars.
- [75:01]
Lizzie Bassett
Wow.
- [75:01]
Chris Winterbauer
Original screenplay, foreign language film. Not Spanish. Spain, Mexico.
- [75:05]
Lizzie Bassett
Uh oh. That's gonna piss some people off.
- [75:08]
Chris Winterbauer
Art direction, cinematography, makeup, and original score. Now, I think Del Toro was robbed by not getting a nomination on the direction front.
- [75:18]
Lizzie Bassett
I agree, but he did get screenplay.
- [75:19]
Chris Winterbauer
He did get nominated for screenplay. I will read you the other nominees. Alejandro Ingaritu. So another compatriot for Babel, which I think is exceptionally well directed. Martin Scorsese, the Departed. No problems there.
- [75:31]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah.
- [75:31]
Chris Winterbauer
Clint Eastwood, Letters From Iwo Jima. Stephen Freer's the Queen.
- [75:37]
Lizzie Bassett
No, I'll leave that one in.
- [75:39]
Chris Winterbauer
It's good.
- [75:39]
Lizzie Bassett
But to me, that one honestly deserves screenplay more than anything else.
- [75:43]
Chris Winterbauer
Sure. Paul Greengrass, United 93.
- [75:46]
Lizzie Bassett
I think the one I would take out is probably Clint Eastwood.
- [75:49]
Chris Winterbauer
Probably me too. Pan's Labyrinth made more in its second weekend of wide release in the United States than its first with an Oscar. But Bump and the marketing campaign all of a sudden became an Oscar campaign. Now, I've often thought to myself, what's so important about the Oscars? It's just a little stamp of approval from a silly group of people. Money. Yeah, money. The marketing budget cares. According to one source, the marketing budget for Pan's Labyrinth grew from $8 million to $35 million as it rounded the corner to the 2007 Oscars. And all of the sudden, Del Toro has some real muscle behind one of his dark fairy tales. On February 25, 2007, Pan's Labyrinth won the Oscars for art direction, cinematography and makeup. Very well deserved. It lost original screenplay to Little Miss Sunshine. Michael Arndt, tough. I love Little Miss Sunshine, but Pan's Labyrinth is so good.
- [76:47]
Lizzie Bassett
It is really good.
- [76:48]
Chris Winterbauer
Michael Arndt, you're a genius. I would never take anything away from you, but that's a close one for me. Original score. It lost to Babel. I don't remember that score well enough in context to comment. I just love the score in Pan's Labyrinth so much.
- [76:59]
Lizzie Bassett
Pan's Labyrinth is incredible.
- [77:00]
Chris Winterbauer
It lost best foreign language film to Germany's the Lives of Others, which I love that movie.
- [77:06]
Lizzie Bassett
That's a great year. That is incredible.
- [77:07]
Chris Winterbauer
I know. That's a good year. It's a good year.
- [77:09]
Lizzie Bassett
That's really good.
- [77:10]
Chris Winterbauer
Good year. At the Oscars, I think I saw
- [77:12]
Lizzie Bassett
both the Lives of Others and Pan's Labyrinth in theaters. Yeah, this was a year where I remember the foreign films in particular being heavily marketed.
- [77:19]
Chris Winterbauer
And Babel was not technically a foreign film, but it felt a bit like a foreign film with its structure, because it was like, oh, what if we did Crash? International Good.
- [77:26]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah. But good this time.
- [77:29]
Chris Winterbauer
Well, or better, we don't need it. People have dunked on that movie for too long. Lizzie says no. She says the donkey must continue.
- [77:35]
Lizzie Bassett
Listen, I thought Crash was good the first time I saw it, but I was probably 12.
- [77:39]
Chris Winterbauer
I did, too. Now, del Toro was actually relieved that he didn't win Best for the Day. I didn't win the Oscar for Foreign Film for Pan's Labyrinth, I was happy. Any prize that I don't win fuels the fire, and every prize I win quenches it. Picturehouse, I'm sure, was also very happy. Pan's labyrinth made $84 million worldwide. 45% came from the domestic market.
- [78:04]
Lizzie Bassett
Wow.
- [78:04]
Chris Winterbauer
The United States alone, I believe if you include Canada, it hits 50%. So that one third number we were talking about earlier, they blew right past it. It remains the seventh highest grossing foreign film in the United States.
- [78:16]
Lizzie Bassett
Wow.
- [78:16]
Chris Winterbauer
I think at the time it was released, it was the fifth, and it has since become seventh. But not everyone is happy, Lucy. The producers have said that there was negative feedback about the violence and perhaps some resentment from people in Spain that it was a Mexican production effectively telling a Spanish story. And then there was frustration amongst Mexican film critics who felt that Del Toro was part of, quote, Mexican cinema and exile. We talked about Christopher Nolan, for example, getting a somewhat similar reaction from some British film critics with the release of Memorial Memento back in the early 2000s. Still in Mexico, the movie won nine Ariel awards, including Best Picture and Best Direction. It was nominated for three more. Del Toro had plans for a third film. 3993 was the working title. It was set in Spain in 1939, which obviously would make it a prequel or spiritual successor to this film. But instead, Lizzie, he moved on to
- [79:06]
Lizzie Bassett
the Shape of water, Crimson Peak, Hellboy 2. Hellboy 2, obviously. So sorry. He's made a lot of movies.
- [79:11]
Chris Winterbauer
He has. He returned to studio work, and he has since balanced that studio work with his darker, fantastical impulses.
- [79:19]
Lizzie Bassett
And Pacific Rim. Right.
- [79:20]
Chris Winterbauer
Shortly after this, he did then Pacific Rim. Yep. And then he did finally win both Best Picture and Best Director with the Shape of Water. The Shape of Water. But, Lizzie, interestingly enough, Pan's Labyrinth remains Del Toro's last film, shot in Spanish. Wow.
- [79:36]
Lizzie Bassett
Yes. Yes. You know, we talked about this a little bit when we covered Frankenstein for all of the Oscars, but I miss him working in Spanish there's sometimes, not always. Obviously. I think he's an unbelievably talented writer and director. But in Frankenstein, one of the things that bumped me is sometimes the language can feel at times more generic or a little bit more ham fisted in a way that it does not in his Spanish language feature, which makes sense. It's your native language. Like there's going to be a different ability to handle it and manipulate it. I think if it's the language that you grew up with. Not saying that his work in English isn't incredible. It is. But I would love to see him return to a Spanish language work.
- [80:16]
Chris Winterbauer
I'm curious if any of our listeners, especially ones that are patrons, because you can comment. I'd be curious to know from Spanish speakers, specifically Spanish as a first language. I'm curious if they agree with us or if they feel differently because we're reading with subtitles, which is very different. And obviously the translations are usually pretty good, but they're not always great.
- [80:35]
Lizzie Bassett
It's always an approximation.
- [80:36]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah, it's an approximation. And oftentimes condensed slightly so you can fit it on the screen and you can read it more quickly. And I'm just curious if our Spanish speaking listeners feel that Del Toro has a way with dialogue in his Spanish films that feels more naturalistic than what they perceive in the English language or if they actually feel the same way we do. You know what I'm saying?
- [80:56]
Lizzie Bassett
And the flavor, it's not even that it's more naturalistic. Cause it actually still feels very heightened and elevated. But it's that it feels to me like there is a different mastery of it than there is when he's trying to do the same thing in English.
- [81:07]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah. And he speaks, obviously. He speaks very good English, of course. No, I would imagine, though that it's his native language, obviously, so he would be more comfortable. Yeah. And that concludes our coverage of Pan's Labyrinth. Well, Lizzy, I have to ask you, what went right.
- [81:20]
Lizzie Bassett
My God, so much. This was really fascinating. I love Guillermo del Toro. I mean, I knew that, but I didn't know how sort of magical his own life has been. It's really crazy. I mean, there's so many things that went right, but I think what went right was that he read the signs and listened to them. That, you know, he didn't just lose his journal in the taxi cab. He thought, no, I've lost myself. And I love that. I love that he sees magic in the real world. It seems just as much as he does in his movies. And I'm so glad that he took that as a sign and listened.
- [81:53]
Chris Winterbauer
Yeah, I agree. I think what it indicates to me is in his heart, he knew what he wanted to do.
- [81:59]
Lizzie Bassett
Yeah.
- [81:59]
Chris Winterbauer
And I think he could have interpreted it. Here's my guess. If that phone call had come in 30 seconds earlier, before he'd made the decision, it would have been obviously the same decision, but it would have been my notebook has been returned to me. I'm supposed to do Pan's Labyrinth. Right. And I guess my point is, like, I like that he has a romanticism to the kismet of the way that his life works. It's very fun. I agree. I would like to give mine to composer Javier Navarrete. I love the score.
- [82:29]
Lizzie Bassett
It's incredible.
- [82:30]
Chris Winterbauer
So much. It's so beautiful. The main theme is absolutely gorgeous. It transports me into the world of a child that is surrounded by danger, as we know in this movie. Never feels like it overwhelms the movie in any way.
- [82:44]
Lizzie Bassett
No, they really don't use it as much as I thought that they had.
- [82:46]
Chris Winterbauer
I think she used very spiritual and to great effect. So I think it's an amazing score.
- [82:51]
Lizzie Bassett
And I hadn't seen this since I was 17 years old and I still hummed that lullaby to my daughter when she was a baby.
- [82:57]
Chris Winterbauer
That's right. It's absolutely an earworm in the best way. All right, well, Lizzy, if folks are enjoying this podcast, can you let them know how they can support it?
- [83:06]
Lizzie Bassett
You can tell a friend or family member that what went wrong? It's pretty good. If you liked Pan's Labyrinth, give this episode a listen. You can leave us a rating or review on whatever podcast you are listening to this on that really, really does does help us. You can now on both Apple and Spotify you can subscribe and you'll get at least one bonus episode every month. Usually it's more than one bonus episode every month because we're having a lot of fun with these. They tend to be reviews of new releases coming out and if you want everything that I just mentioned and more, you can for $5 join our Patreon where you will get bonus episodes ad free feed plus a fan community. We really love talking to our patrons and yes it's is us responding to you mostly Kris, but I'm there too sometimes. And then if you want to go one step further for $50 a month you can get a full stop supporter shout out just like one of these.
- [84:11]
Chris Winterbauer
Y los monte y el bosque y la tierra soy soy adrian peng correa angeline, renee cook, ben shindelman, blaise ambrose, brian donahue brittney morris brooke cameron smith c. Grace b. Hija del rey del mundo subterraneo chris kellaher la segunde jesmuda chris leo, david friscolanti tereni del conkling don scheibel m. Zoria, evan downey, felicia g film and los teres mismos frankenstein galeni miguel los ninos de vidrios rotos el elenco y elequipo de ganar un viaje a browntown medio galgo tengona armiracion platonica y norme for chris winterbauer, james mcavoy, james jj rapido juan de wiltshire jori hill piper jose emiliano salto del giorgio karina canaba kate elrington kathleen wilson, amy augerschlager mccoy mira to ombro izquierdo lena lj malissima susan lydia house, mark persa los humanos de mariposa mateo jacobson, miguel migras, nathan ashley nathan el cuchillo rosa maria lopez jurado rural scott, oshita soman chainani, esteban winterbauer, suzanne johnson, ila familia provost, don de laz oz suenan como hos.
- [86:30]
Lizzie Bassett
All right, thank you, Chris. Well, next week we're going to venture into the dark underbelly of Chicago. Excuse me, Gotham. Because we are covering one of my favorite movies ever made, which is, I know, not an original take, but it is a fascinating story.
- [86:48]
Chris Winterbauer
Is this one of your favorite movies?
- [86:50]
Lizzie Bassett
It is. It genuinely is. Oh, I really love it.
- [86:53]
Chris Winterbauer
It's wildly entertaining.
- [86:54]
Lizzie Bassett
It's the Dark Knight, in case anyone is wondering. In which we will encounter.
- [86:57]
Chris Winterbauer
What if you were just. It's the Garbage Pail Kids movie.
- [87:00]
Lizzie Bassett
No. In which we will encounter, obviously the Nolans, but also the Weinsteins and of course Heath Ledger. I'm very excited to get into this. There's so much more behind the scenes to this movie than I realized. And it's a fascinating journey into the reinvention of Batman, but more specifically, specifically the reinvention and I think crystallization of the Joker. So I can't wait. And we will see you for the Dark Knight next week.
- [87:25]
Chris Winterbauer
I can't remember the score. I almost did the Terminator. Booooooo. Yeah, I almost did the Terminator score. I almost went dun dun dun dun dun.
- [87:33]
Lizzie Bassett
No, that is in it.
- [87:34]
Chris Winterbauer
Oh, is it?
- [87:34]
Lizzie Bassett
Isn't that when the Batmobile is.
- [87:36]
Chris Winterbauer
That's what I thought. Then I was like, no, that's the Terminator score. Yeah, well, I am so excited. I don't know his little weird laughs that he does. Very thrilled. Thank you, Lizzy. We look forward to seeing you guys next week.
- [87:48]
Lizzie Bassett
In the meantime, come back on Friday because we're doing a bit of a Heath Ledger double feature. We are doing a new format called a featurette which is just a shorter, more conversational version of a regular what Went Wrong episode about a movie that doesn't have quite enough to discuss for a regular episode format. So we are talking about 10 things I hate about you and we have a special guest joining us for that. It's a Heath Ledger kind of week, which is a nice kind of week. So come back for that and then come back for the Dark Knight on Monday.
- [88:12]
Chris Winterbauer
Until then, bye. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris
- [88:22]
Lizzie Bassett
Winterbauer, post production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Jesse Winterbauer and edited by Karen Krebs.