Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities

by Guillermo Del Toro

  In his twenties, the ideas developed further, as he fashioned Cronos around a most unlikely vampire. “The vampires in Blade II came from me figuring out vampirism for Cronos, and also for a pitch that was not successful for I Am Legend,” Guillermo explains. This was years before the 2007 version that was ultimately produced starring Will Smith.

  “I went to Warners,” Guillermo recalls of his I Am Legend pitch, “and I met with a junior executive, first of all, which means that no one else ever heard the pitch. It didn’t travel on. He said, ‘Arnold [Schwarzenegger] is attached as a star.’ And for me, that is the opposite of the novel because Richard Matheson makes his hero the everyman, makes a point of making him a common man, because that’s the monster. He is the monster to the vampire race because he could be any man. He’s not meant to be extraordinary. And Arnold is, in every way, extraordinary. So I am a guy who just did a movie called Cronos, a twenty-eight-year-old twerp from Mexico, and I do a pitch for I Am Legend, and I say, ‘I don’t think Arnold is right.’ Not exactly the way to get the job.”

  Fortunately for Guillermo, the work he did to develop a new kind of vampire for I Am Legend was exactly what he needed to bring a fresh take—and monster—to Blade II. Guillermo saw the challenge of the Reapers in Blade II as a series of surprises. “You think you know the Reapers. You know what they look like, and then the jaw opens. It’s a completely new shock. Then when we see them in the sewers, they’re upside down. Every time, they evolve. I think that it’s very important not to make the creatures a single entity, but have aspects of them that you discover. You need to really play with perspective and have layers that open and reveal something else.”

  At that first meeting with Goyer and Snipes, Guillermo laid his cards on the table. “I said to Wesley Snipes, ‘I don’t understand Blade at all because, if I met those vampires, I would like them. You take care of Blade; I’ll take care of the vampires.’ And that’s the way the movie was shot. I never told Wesley what Blade would do or not do, because I didn’t know. I was like, ‘Whatever makes you tick. I don’t understand you.’ But Nomak, Luke Goss’s character, I directed with all the love I could, as sort of a Frankenstein’s monster, tragic. For me, Nomak is the hero of that movie.”

  Unlike Mimic, where he submerged key aspects of his nature to try to dance to Hollywood’s tune, Guillermo deliberately made Blade II into the kind of film that would have delighted his teenage self. And so Blade II is exuberant, vivid, unrestrained. Feelings are intense, actions full-out, colors comic-book lurid.

  The same goes for his Blade II notebook. A pasteboard of youthful enthusiasm, these pages chart the evolution of the Reapers from their earliest incarnation many years before into a spectacular, near-final design for Blade II. Also featured are snatches of dialogue, discarded vampire guard uniforms, colorful tattoos, Gothic architecture, drawings of the Prague sewers, suggested action sequences, and thoughts for composing shots.

  In the end, only the smallest percentage of what Guillermo had in mind was put into Blade II. But seven years later, he and Chuck Hogan collaborated on The Strain trilogy of novels, painting a grim vision of the vampire apocalypse Guillermo had been meditating on for decades. “I’m very surprised and happy that they were successful,” Guillermo says of the books, “because I wrote them with Chuck, I wrote them for our own pleasure, and I wrote them because I wanted to put all that stuff on paper.”

  Concepts illustrating how a Reaper disintegrates when hit with silver nitrate- and garlic-infused bullets by Mike Mignola.

  Concepts of Nomak’s fight with the security guards by Mike Mignola.

  Caliban Industries autopsy doctor concept by Mike Mignola.

  Storyboards by del Toro.

  Wesley Snipes as Blade in a publicity photo for the movie.

  NOTEBOOK3, PAGE 24A

  –When Nyssa enters the lair in Blade, her temperature is -30° and she avoids UV damage to her eyes thanks to the fact that she wears special goggles with mechanical irises that close shut to keep it from reaching her retinas. Blade turns on a UV reflector strong enough to light up an entire stadium and the camera receives the “flow” full on. They’re silhouettes fighting with 100% backlight.

  Sometimes life offers us “tragedies” so that we might learn from them. God sends us the message hut never the dictionary.

  Long, narrow teeth

  “Scud” gives Whistler a set of false teeth, with two silver and two gold teeth. After this kind gesture, the old man develops a certain affection for the young man. The film depicts Blade’s enlightenment

  • GDT: When I went into Blade II, I was very afraid. I was very afraid because I’m not a hip guy. I’m not a guy that is aware of the latest MTV music or whatever. The way that I find I’m very current is in manga, anime, and video games. I went to Mike De Luca and I said, “You realize I’m the most unhip motherfucker you can hire?” And he said, “That’s fine.” He said, “We want you to bring other stuff, not that.”

  I started to think I needed to make this movie different than the rest, because the movies I’ve done, they can either be movies that look like they’re signed by an eight-year-old director or by an eighty-year-old director. I think Cronos is my oldest guy movie. It’s the point of view of a very old guy. Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, sort of in the same way. They have that sense. Hellboy is like an eight-year-old movie, and Hellboy II is the same thing. It’s me at a very young age.

  On Blade II, I said, “I need to be a teenager, so this needs to be a six-pack-and-a-pizza kind of movie.” Like the kind of thing I would have loved to see when I was that age—almost like a musical of violence. I started ciphering some stuff that comes from manga and saying, “Well, I want the iris glasses,” which will eventually also find their way into Abe Sapien, and a really fetishistic rubber suit. For example, when you see the design of the suit on the right [opposite], it has a center that is rolled silk with a center medallion that is very Japanese.

  TyRuben Ellingson refined the concept.

  Del Toro envisioned iris glasses as central components of the lightproof outfits Nyssa and Asad wear during their initial confrontation with Blade.

  Del Toro played with the idea of basing some of the Bloodpack costumes on samurai armor but abandoned many of the details for Blade II,

  Eventually applying them to the design of Prince Nuada in Hellboy II.

  In the end, I couldn’t do it in this movie, but this exact color and pattern are found on Prince Nuada in Hellboy II. I like very much the fact that you can have a look that is very armored, but the true design of a really good warrior is to have a very, very exposed area. Now, what a lot of the Japanese samurai did is they layered the silk so dense that it would take longer to cut through the silk than it would take to cut through the armor. It’s a very curious notion.

  But as I started investigating this for Blade II, the teeth of Chupa on the left came to me. He has two golden teeth. He was going to be a Mexican vampire. Eventually, we cast a nice guy called Matt Schulze, who is as Mexican as a hot dog, y’know?

  And you can see the idea of the row of lights on the right, next to Nyssa.

  And there [opposite], next to the armored figure, is the corroded concrete wall that ended up in the church.

  The little eye is more or less the beginning of how we started playing with the contact lenses of the Reapers.

  NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 24B

  –It hides in your spinal cord and then it migrates along your nerves.

  –Speed Bumps by cuts to give “speed”

  –Bite and then run away FAST.

  –We’ve been training in the abstract, but as of tomorrow things get real. You wanna know just how real? I’ll tell ya . . . It’s my guess that a lot of us won’t make it through the day.

  –“Stray dogs growl at Chupa in alley

  Wall in HOP.

  –Everybody wears goggles for daylight.

  –Low [?] for sunlight.

  –Light [?] frame.

&n
bsp; –Reinhardt CORNERS HIMSELF by punching light holes in the ceiling.

  Make the iris smaller or much bigger.

  Long and thin teeth.

  My eyes without your eyes aren’t eyes at all. They’re two lonely holes—.

  NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE25A

  –There are things in life which are beautiful. To enjoy them is heaven. Not being capable of it, that’s Hell

  –It is impossible to outwit a stupid person. They never realize that they’ve been outwitted.

  –You need space? Well, asshole, look out the window, see all that space? Well, so, go get the fuck outta here.

  –Even I’ve been infected by time.

  –You can choose a destiny. I was born into one.

  –I’ve known you a long time, watch you become a man over the years I thought I knew who you were. So did I. But there’s something inside.

  –Scud watches I. CH. Talk ’bout it.

  –When the sword stops, the air “blows” his/ her hair.

  –The fight, use their leg to break beams

  To stand up. Blood pack.

  • GDT: Here [above] you can see a lot of stuff that made it, and a lot of stuff that didn’t. On the left, I really wanted speakers that were four stories high in the party place, but we couldn’t afford them.

  And you can see me insisting on a Gothic architecture door! [laughs]

  That shot of the sliding feet that is described there is in the movie. It’s in the fight on the scaffolding.

  And the gold artificial spinal cord is in the movie in the House of Pain.

  The figure on the ground was an idea for how I could introduce one of the Bloodpack. I wanted one of them to be really petulant. When Blade arrives, he’s lying on the floor, and he gets up, which is directly stealing from Mad Max.

  The suit on the right [opposite] didn’t make it, but this is what I wanted the vampire guards to wear. You can see how I’m echoing the helmet I became obsessed with for Abe Sapien with the asymmetry thing.

  To the left of the vampire guard suit, you can see the bomb that Blade attaches to the head of Reinhardt.

  MSZ: And what’s this guy making the muscles?

  GDT: I wanted a guy that was shaped like that to be part of the Bloodpack, but I couldn’t find him.

  NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 25B

  –Talk with carol about the elevator’s design—.

  –Beam splitter

  –Roman bath scene for Damaskinos

  –Lighthammer becomes a Reaper.

  –Pin “sewing machine.” ID machine.

  –Nyssa appears blurry and in slow motion to Blade, her blood in ROSTRUM—

  –Red, Blue, Green, Amber.

  –Flechette for Rheinhardt’s head—

  * * *

  Douglas N

  Jhonson B

  “Healer” C

  * * *

  –Base code:

  Dry Leaves/ Wind

  3 cameras on fan

  R 4 45° medium.

  Short and long

  High/Low LC

  Frame

  skip.

  Vam

  Speed

  MUD!! when Verlaine dies because of L.hammer

  Eye with pupil that contracts.

  Del Toro originally wanted to have Nomak feast on the head of a helmeted guard as if it were a soft-boiled egg.

  NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 26A

  –Is this closure? As close as its gonna get . . .

  –Panicked crowd reveals Reaper latched on Priest. BAM!! BAM!! It turns around.

  –Someone is DRAGGED away.

  –Speak urgently with Carol about the possibility of a tunnel like this:

  –For the 4 WAY INTERSECTION

  –Large goggles, 22 FPS TATTOO

  Use negative space!!

  Blood cascades out in SLOW MOTION in the wind

  – Use the G CALVE [?] in the scene with Segura—.

  While this particular scene didn’t make it to the film, Nomak (Luke Goss) adopted a similar pose while finishing off Priest (Tony Curran).

  • GDT: Some stuff here [above] made it into Blade II; some stuff didn’t.

  On the bottom of the page is a very brutal moment I wanted to put in the film—of Nomak with a broken helmet of a guard, eating him like a boiled egg. I couldn’t quite get it, though.

  And I just liked the pose of this figure [on left] for one of the Bloodpack.

  I wanted one guy to have a crash test dummy tattoo because I thought it would be, like, really hardass.

  The rest didn’t make it. Little ideas about scares, or fight techniques. The little box there, with the face in it—that’s a cheat that I like to do. I haven’t done it much, but the idea is that if the audience sees negative space on the right, they expect something to come out on that side. The idea was to use a shadow because it makes it doubly intriguing—you know, the audience immediately says, “Oh, something’s going to come out of the shadows there.” So you get them scared that something is going to come out from the right, and then it comes from the left.

  I did it in this movie, but I did it really, really badly. It doesn’t work. You can see it in the House of Pain. When Nyssa enters and she hears a noise, Nomak comes from the other side. But I think we were, like, half a day late. Instead of doing a really great sequence, we had to do it in one shot. So I failed miserably. [laughs] But, you know, one day I’ll do it right.

  MSZ: And is that someone being decapitated by two swords?

  GDT: Yeah, it’s a move I wanted Blade to make, which was to do like a twist around a guy, and after he lands, the head comes off. We didn’t do it.

  The guy on the next page [opposite], I wanted him to be part of the Bloodpack, with that red tattoo, sort of tribal. And again, I drew the gold spinal cord, in case I forgot.

  NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 26B

  –Gold spinal column with ribs

  Black fabric for Chupa

  Light comes from above

  –Slow motion with strobe lights (72) (48) (8)

  –Very shallow focus, with things entering and exiting the visual field

  Marble.

  –Timing for the big fight that begins with the sound of an ice cube falling into a glass with liquid in it—.

  –Sound is meant for a GRIPE

  –Even I have now been infected by time . . .

  –Chain link fences on both sides.

  –220° to give a little “[?]” and at 12 or at 8 FPS (print at 8 FPS?).

  –When you die you turn to dust

  –Perhaps give Chupa a cowboy hat and make all his clothes black.

  –Ultra slow motion for the bite

  NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 27 A

  –1/2 Dissolve spanking for Reapers.

  –They go crazy with pain like B.R.P.

  –Film some of the fights at 22 fps with variations in the shutter: 45°, 90°. Do some tests

  –The Reapers should move on all fours like apes, but they need to make very high-pitched sounds, like squealing pig-people.

  –The call of the Reapers should be like the trailing breath of a human laugh: cackle-cackle

  –The Prague sewers are oval in shape, not round, and they’re made of concrete. There are carvings on the bricks.

  –The oldest vampire’s lair should look much older than the rest of the building in which it is located.

  –Look for a memorable detail for Scud and one for Whistler: perhaps he finds his wedding ring behind a moldy machine.

  Nyssa (Leonor Varela) plays cat and mouse with a Reaper in the sewers. The Prague sewers, which served as the underground Location for Blade II, were scouted extensively by del Toro and other members of the film crew.

  • GDT: This is the drawing [opposite] I did based on some photographs of the Prague sewers, which have a very vaginal feel. We scouted the sewers for the movie. It was a really unforgettable experience.

  MSZ: What made it unforgettable?

  GDT: I love urban exploration. I used to do it a lot as a kid in Guadalaja
ra. And there’s a thing that you find in sewers, a white mucus that is really, really thick, and it hangs in stalactites in sewers, and it is literally like huge cultures, bacteria cultures, like a living mucus.

  So in Prague, when we went, it was the biggest amount of mucus I’ve ever seen. Mike Mignola and I entered, and it smelled like old yogurt, and it was like they had shot a porn film with Godzilla. It was incredible, complex. There were, like, traceries and alcoves of mucus. And just going through the sewers and seeing the domes, the big areas, the small areas, the narrow areas, it was fantastic. I asked a sewer worker in Prague, I said, “Do a lot of people scout?” And he said, “No, nobody comes in here that doesn’t have to.” There was an area where they opened it up and he said, “We’ll wait for you outside.”

  Concept of Priest’s transformation into a Reaper by Mike Mignola.

  Del Toro’s concept for the Reapers, based in Eastern European vampire folklore, was carefully protected as the film moved toward production.

  • GDT: This drawing [opposite] was made because we didn’t want to give any drawings to anybody, so when we were budgeting, I would show this drawing, or I would do a new drawing on a piece of paper for each of the makeup guys that were budgeting. Finally, the guy that did it was Steve Johnson. He’s one of the best. I think he did phenomenal work. Obviously my drawing is very similar to the final one, but very different. I think the final one is so much better.

  MSZ: Why didn’t you want to give the drawings to people?

  GDT: Because we thought that it was a really unique idea. It’s very hard to think of a unique vampire, and I felt that I had arrived at a really good idea with the Reapers. I didn’t want it to end up showing up six months later in Buffy. Like, “Oh.”