Cabinet of Curiosities

by Guillermo Del Toro

  MSZ: Removing the eyes of the Pale Man and doing exactly what you did, it took guts. There’s the challenge of coming up with something new, something fresh that will resonate with an audience, but also the challenge of sticking to your guns.

  GDT: I was very sensitive about telling the guys at DDT because I was a sculptor, and I know what it takes, and I know they’d done a fantastic job, and there’s no way of rejecting it and not sounding glib. “Take it off,” you know? It’s like, “Let them eat cake.” But it was necessary. Sometimes, as a director, you have to be an asshole. Even if you’re trying not to be, you’re going to come out as one in the short term. But if the movie is worth it, it’s worth that.

  MSZ: And then there is this drawing and note about Ofelia talking and walking backward. Where does that come from?

  GDT: It’s just something I saw my daughter do. I didn’t do it in the movie. Then it goes, “Today, I’m getting the email from AA offering me XB.” I got an email, yes, I got an email from Avi Arad at Marvel, and he was offering me some big, big, big movies. I was very broke at that moment because the money for Pan’s Labyrinth hadn’t materialized. They were offering me X-Men 3, and they were offering me Fantastic Four, I think. He offered me Thor. Anyway, it was a moment where money-wise, I was tight, and I thought, “Should I leave Pan’s to do that, and then come back?” And I chose to stay. So, again, this is an important page for me.

  The storyboard panels by Raúl Monge show how the design for the Pale Man returned to a much older concept that had been haunting del Toro for years–a figure he calls the “Shadow Man”.

  GDT: Funny enough, here [opposite] is an early version of the Pale Man, in a way. This time without the eyes. At the time, I was calling him the Shadow Man, which was a soul eater. But if you look at his teeth, they are larger, but they are exactly the same shape of the teeth of the Pale Man, which are very thin and blunt.

  BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 66

  S.M.**** Montage with smoke in dissolves which create Spirit images

  S.M.**** Shadow-man, the one who eats souls.

  M/M G* Is he dead? someone asks

  BAM! BAM! BAM! Now, he is. . .

  S.M. **** The duel between Q and Carl begins in a physical way and then it becomes mental. Q poisons him, climbing onto his chest and fucking him up until Carl bursts.

  S.M.**** Q is the way he is because of something that happened to him during his childhood (Flash back)

  * Dorian’s session is telemetric

  S.M.**** Hemorrhage in their eyes when Q or Carl use their powers to the maximum.

  * Ernie’s ancestors were big shots, war heroes.

  Del Toro, here on set with Sergi López [Vidal] and Maribel Verdú [Carmen], was able to understand Vidal, having created him.

  While Vidal is obsessed with being remembered, the film and these storyboards by Raúl Monge underscore that Ofelia is the one who makes the difference that matters to the world.

  GDT: Here [opposite] it says, “My life is halfway over. Forty years and I barely have a thing of my own to leave behind. I made captain, imagine that. But my name, the only thing I have left to pass on is my name.” This was part of the speech the captain gives in Pan’s, musing about age.

  On Pan’s Labyrinth, frankly, I was thinking about these things. I don’t write the bad guys in my movies without knowing what they feel, and I understand the captain. I don’t like him—I wouldn’t want to hang out with him—but I understand him.

  I thought it would be interesting if posterity will remember the girl through little details, but no one will remember the captain because he’s so obsessed with being remembered.

  In that sense, I was also writing for Ofelia. I always go back to this quote by Kierkegaard that says, “The reign of the martyr starts with his death. The reign of the tyrant ends with it.” And I thought that was the clash at the center of the movie: a guy that is obsessed with his name being remembered, and a girl that doesn’t care. But she makes the right choices.

  NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 45B

  As the idea for the Faun evolved into a more delicate creature.

  –Not with bullets, which cost too much. We’re going to make a very clear statement about what we’re doing here.

  –The father smokes cigars while listening to the radio.

  –My life is halfway over. Forty years and I barely have a thing of my own to leave behind. I made captain, imagine that. But my name, the only thing I have left to pass on is my name.

  –They talk while she cooks rabbit for dinner. She tells him that she comes from a family of 5. 2 brothers, 3 sisters, and her parents. Her brother died at the front (PAUSE). And the other brother? Him, too. He hears the hesitation in her voice.

  –There are 3 doors in the library.

  –You leave the dirty plates in the sink on Friday and find all the crap stuck to them on Monday. That’s what I’m here for.

  –MARIA BOTTO. MARIA.

  –I saw you in the window. What do you think of me? Sir, you don’t need to know what I think. You aren’t interested in what I think, I’m sure. That man wasn’t guilty. But I’m not here to dispense justice. I’m here to bring peace. When it comes to peace, one dead man is as good as any other. The best offering for peace is what’s hanging from that tree. everyone understands that. sooner or later I’m going to hang someone that they’re.

  Del Toro recruited Doug Jones for the part, here seen performing with Ivana Baquero [Ofelia].

  GDT: This [opposite] is the restaurant bill for an Indian lunch with Joe Hill and Stephen King on the day I showed them Pan’s Labyrinth. It was one of those cheap thermal papers, so it faded, but I glued it on my notebook with the little note that Stephen King did, “We had a blast!! Steve King,” and a smiley. Because I think he is my favorite living writer. I think he is one of my favorite writers of all time. And that day I still didn’t know if he was going to like it or not, but I had just shown my movie to Stephen King, you know? So I drew the Faun on the empty paper of the faded receipt. And then beneath is a sketch for Abe Sapien’s new glasses.

  MSZ: This also speaks to the design evolution of the Faun. Earlier, it was almost like a Hellboy kind of thing—muscular with big horns.

  GDT: Definitely. And it evolved a lot even after this. DDT made an exquisite creation. I was making it bigger to hide the mechanics, and they said, “We think we can really sculpt it so that it can be the actor’s mouth. We can do that delicate a sculpture.” And I must say, without them, the Faun would not be what it is. They are masters of their art. I knew Doug Jones was the only guy to play the Faun, because his sensibility in playing Abe Sapien is amazing.

  NOTEBOOK 4, PAGE 21B

  To design the Labyrinth in the film, del Toro’s drawing.

  –Screenings P.L. WB, FD, M.P. & S.S. they need to clean it!!

  Feeling a little afraid is normal when facing something new, in a place or in a way you’ve never experienced before. But to learn something it’s necessary to surpass that fear completely.

  –Luke Goss for the role of the prince, but will need to work his eyes, forehead

  –We need Johann for something that is not the final gag?? And I know that it would be Abe who would appear before the B.P.R.D. and is loved by everyone and makes Hellboy jealous? If it was so, then Johann could be introduced in the Eurospec portion of the movie.

  –I have an irrational fear. A superstition. I fear that a terrorist act will take the world one more time. As was the case on 9/11 during Backbone.

  –Bring me BIG BABY, but Manning said—he said, to be discreet!! HB: And the silver please—and B.B. (watch out!) it’s enormous.

  –Sometimes (Abe says) with feeling an extraordinary desire to cry.

  –I know—yes??!!—Yes!! Oh God!! Oh God!! Silence—give me another beer.

  –Perhaps in the place of Goggles. Abe with new Goggles. Abe uses CONTACTS or glasses.

  NOTEBOOK 4, PAGE 14A

  –It’s impossible to find the beautiful without first explorin
g everything that is terrible. 2/14/05 Madrid.

  –They CHANGE the princess into a

  –The nano-robots are called CELLBOTS.

  –I GUESS I’M OUT.

  –He’s just about to step outside when they insult him. He closes the door quietly and turns around with a smile on his face. The camera makes a push . . .

  –We are—you see?—the fallen. HB II

  –The point of the sword moves toward his heart

  –For how long? Until you can stand on your own two feet.

  –I know what I am but I didn’t know the name others have for it. What to call it.

  –You can go up and see her. She’s resting right now.

  –A biography’s lucidity is the result of the man, the journey he takes in his final days as he unknowingly approaches his own death.

  –Thin. in front.

  –Or the proportions could be even more extreme:

  –The prince slices off Johann’s hand/arm. Protoplasm escapes out.

  –IRON SHOES.

  –Wheelchair Ghost.

  –HB imitates static while talking with Myers over the radio.

  Well.

  –Keep the mushrooms for the Toad’s lair (fig tree).

  –The real world is made of straight lines, and the world of fantasy is curved. Reality is cold. Fantasy is warm.

  –The fantasy world should feel UTERINE, INTERIOR, like the subconscious—of the girl/photo.

  GDT: Here [opposite] it says, “It’s impossible to find the beautiful without first exploring everything that is terrible.” I think this is true. I mean, this is probably a conclusion I reached there. But it’s true.

  “The real world is made of straight lines, and the world of fantasy is curved. Reality is cold. Fantasy is warm.” These are Pan’s Labyrinth ideas for the initiation pit in Portugal.

  The pit is still pretty much the same in the movie—the composition is almost the same; the labyrinth corridor in front of a pit. There are these pits in Portugal that have great alchemical and occultist symbolism, and we reproduced that shadow in the pit where the Faun lives. These are little things—details that are important for me or for my designers.

  MSZ: And what are all these little doodles? One of the figures looks like Abe Sapien smoking a cigarette. And the pig?

  GDT: Some of those are for Hellboy II—ideas that were abandoned. The guy with the cigarette is the captain, lifting weights in his undershirt with dark glasses. And the pig? They make those pigs in Mexico. They come with a little tape that you put a fly on. You put it inside, and as the fly dies, it animates the pig.

  Raúl Monge’s illustration made reference to prehistoric monuments in Portugal.

  For Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro envisioned an underground city.

  Where Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) would meet her parents in a throne room and be declared Princess Moanna.

  Raúl Monge’s sketches and storyboards.

  MSZ: This [opposite] is the underground city Ofelia goes to at the end of Pan’s Labyrinth. I have a question about that, because at the last moment, when she returns, it seems so cold and so austere. Was that your thinking?

  GDT: When she comes back, I wanted her not to embrace anyone because then it would become very sappy. So I put her father and her mother in these super-high thrones, because if we made her embrace them and then you cut to her dying, it is melodramatic in the wrong way. There is melodrama that is a little more austere, and melodrama that is a lot more syrupy, and I thought if we had them all dancing around her and embracing her, and then you cut and she’s dying, it’s really cheap. But if you hear them applaud, and she’s there but she’s alone, still alone, it’s an easier transition to her dying. So I made them sort of very high and mighty, literally.

  Of the high thrones that kept Ofelia at a distance from her parents, helping to avoid an overly melodramatic ending.

  NOTEBOOK 4, PAGE 14B

  Walk with him for the reaction shot

  –Open with the TITLE PAGE/CLOSE.

  –The exterior world is blue/Hades: Gold

  –The sky was truly blue in those days and the grass was greener—And now—Now look at what it has all become. What the world is today.

  –USE THE MIRROR—to escape/Ofelia needs to react in front of the mirrors—

  –Cages with hens in them—

  –SUNlight/Ed/CGI.

  –The Mouros live in underground cities. They’re beings related to the giants. In Galicia, it is believed that the mountains are hollow and contain underground palaces. Kingdoms.

  –The girl is THIRSTY.

  –We had dinner with Belen, Paolo Basili, Manuel Villanueva, and Alvaro at Viridiana Tuesday/2/05

  –Commemorates the 600th anniversary of the TREUCE

  –The prince is irritated by what people say to him at the auction and he gets very angry

  –They will eat the souls of all of you, infidels.

  –Manning walks through the hall with Abe Sapien/explo.

  –The prince gets his arm cut off in the story. Perhaps the BPRD keeps the arm in its museum of FREAKS. “No wonder he is pissed off.” HB.

  –There goes a pissed off fish, HB says to Abe.

  –The film begins at Christmas with PC in the snow. The demons have lost HB.

  F Porto 3/5/05 Use the sketch of Gaudí’s “Sagrada Familia” cathedral as a model.

  NOTEBOOK 4, PAGE 18A

  –In the face.

  Pillars for the duel. Travels in order:

  (1)Lilliput, (2)Brobdingnag

  (3) Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg, and Japan.

  (4) Houyhnhnms.

  –The key to the crown. Change the beginning and make it a flashback to the scene with the stack of pancakes. Return and find the book again in the library/storeroom of BPRD.

  –Abe and the princess use the “magic” escape route to reach the other side of the planet. The BPRD uses the $ media buys.

  3 keys

  –Count the number of keys.

  –One of the keys makes the water level drop and opens the locks to the ocean.

  For the battle with the giant.

  –He/she cooks dinner for Abe Sapien.

  –Upon entering a certain place, they find the remains of others who entered first.

  –One of the keys is underwater, so only Abe can fetch it.

  –Eliminate the station and trains 6–6-05 and build the interior of the Bentley to fill the plates in time for summer.

  RIVER

  Downriver.

  Fairy tales.

  Insect looks at itself in front of the book.

  While reading The Book of Crossroads, Ofelia [Ivana Baquero] inspires the insect to become a fairy.

  Del Toro’s notebook, Raúl Monge’s storyboards, and the film itself persistently refuse to declare whether this transformation is real or imagined.

  GDT: This frame here [opposite, top] is the moment in Pan’s Labyrinth where Ofelia shows the insect the illustration in the fairy tale book and it becomes a fairy. The act of magic I believe in is if you tell the world what you want out of it, the world conforms. Not if I hold a picture of a Porsche against my forehead, a Porsche’s going to come to me. Nothing as base as that. But the world is like a torrent of impressions, I think. Spiritual, physical, all of them. And we’re like a sieve. If you adjust the size of your sieve, and you declare something, you declare the size of the sieve, you start seeing reality, and interacting with reality, in a different way. I love the idea that this girl tells the bug, “Are you a fairy?” And the bug transforms for her. It’s a moment in which magic occurs, and it becomes objective.

  Pan’s, for me, responds to an original principle: that, at the end of the day, in the geological time scale, we are all insignificant. In other words, at one time or another, long after we are gone, the worst-worn pocketbook is going to mean the same as the entire oeuvre of Dickens or Shakespeare. In geological time, in five million years, we will be a stratum in the geological plate that is g
oing to be found by no one, perhaps. All we can do is change the world in small ways. No work of art is so big that it’s going to change the world, to make a difference, geologically. That’s why the Faun says Ofelia changed the world in very, very, very small ways. Like, there are people that will remember her, and there’s one little flower blooming in the fig tree because of her, because she killed the frog. It’s a tiny, tiny change, but it says she left traces of her time in the world for those who know where to look. I think that’s all of us.

  The artist only changes the world in tiny ways. To think, “Oh, my work is so important,” is misguided. Really? In what perspective? Seriously. I mean, who remembers the great poet Triceratops?

  Notebook 4, Page 40A, depicting the origins of the root creature.

  Puppets of Prince Nuada and Princess Nuala from the film’s opening sequence.

  Tooth fairy concept by Wayne Barlowe.

  A page from the book Professor Broom (John Hurt) reads to young Hellboy (Montse Ribé), illustrated by Raul Villares.

  Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) drink Tecate.

  A drawing of Hellboy overshadowed by a member of the Golden Army by Mike Mignola.

  HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY

  “I HAVE CERTAIN PROCLIVITIES,” Guillermo del Toro commented while being interviewed on the show Hollywood Shootout, just after completing Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). “I have some fetishes for certain objects and certain things, and I like to explore them again and again.”