Cabinet of Curiosities
Page 24
GDT: I love finding beauty and symmetry in ruins, and I thought this crumbling half-pipe could look almost like a throne. I also used a circle for the throne in Hellboy II, which I think has a certain inherent magnificence. I wanted both scenes to feel operatic, if you will.
MSZ: And does the symbol on this page mean anything?
GDT: I wanted a symbol for the Kaiju organ harvester, Hannibal Chau, and I wanted it to look sort of like an Oriental character, even though it’s just his initials. So that’s an “H” and a “C.”
Del Toro had a clear idea early on that a broken, massive circular opening could serve as a symbolic throne for his reluctant hero Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam).
NOTEBOOK 5, PAGE 4
–Use very wide-angle lenses for the film. The scale of the action is not human, taking place at a height of 25 stories. Wide-angle lenses will he of great use in the struggle to get humans and Jaegers into the same frame. Ask Memo which set of lenses comes with the Epia.
–Make sure that the Scavengers’ biosuits aren’t too sci-fi.
–Colors in Raleigh’s apartment with his clothes. (?) Speak with K.
–Divide the Shatterdome “intro” into 4 different areas, offering a clear sense of the geography. The center of this geography is the main portal through which the Jaegers emerge into the bay of H.R. On the other side is the Loccent.
–The Chernobog Alpha is finally destroyed when they crush the cabin that is its heart.
–Mako and Raleigh need to fall in love in a way that is believable. Their time together is short. Their mutual gazes need to be intense right from the start. Mako is stunned by Raleigh’s apparent carelessness and he is attracted to her apparent orderliness. Together they form the perfect Ying Yang
“Elegant Scavenger”
Del Toro drew on Renaissance dress codes and historic whaling gear to keep the Kaiju scavengers in the film low-tech. Concepts of the scavenger by Kate Hawley closely followed del Toro’s direction.
MSZ: So you have a note here saying you didn’t want the scavengers to be too high-tech.
GDT: I wanted them to be like seventeenth-century whalers. Their tools of the trade are blades and wicker baskets. Everything about them is a little funky—like steam-powered or clunky. So they are really, really low-tech. Even the robots and the control mechanisms in Pacific Rim have an analog component, which for me is very important.
MSZ: And the Kaiju here?
GDT: I wanted to evoke a whale. It was going to open and have another head inside. But it ended up looking like a crocodile—Francisco Ruiz Velasco took it in a completely different direction.
MSZ: And what about the note, “Kaiju cutie?” You’ve discussed the idea of giving monsters personalities, making them somehow sympathetic.
GDT: I just thought he looked cute, you know? But I love all the Kaiju in Pacific Rim. My favorite is Leatherback, the gorilla-like one. I voiced three Kaijus in the movie, and Leatherback is the one I voiced most. Every time he moves, I’m complaining about weight. Like, I was actually saying the words, but then we distorted the sounds. I was going, “Oh, I’ve got to lose weight. Oh, I’m so heavy. I shouldn’t have eaten that last pilot.” I don’t know how much of that is in the final mix, but when I was doing the sounds, I was complaining actively and thinking, This guy really hates being out of the water, because that happens to me when I get out of a pool. I go, “Shit, I’m heavy!”
NOTEBOOK 5, PAGE 3
“KAIJU CUTIE”—
–Walls are built out of fear. They not only protect but also shut in. The leopard looks at the man from outside
–The color palette of the costumes and sets (except HK) should be very lightly saturated with grays, faded blues and shadowy blacks and ochres to respond to a pattern of VERY saturated lighting that can give the film epic stature and the feel of an adventure movie with super-saturated colors
“sensei in white suit.”
–color transition between the two “suiting” rooms in the film.
RED/WHITE
–héng-
–The scavengers are the whalers of the twenty-first century—
“scavenger”
MSZ: And what is the difference between the elegant scavenger and the regular scavenger you’ve drawn here?
GDT: Well the elegant scavenger is sort of like the head of the scavengers. In the Renaissance, you indicated your status by how much fabric you wore. The more fabric you wasted, the higher your status. So if you look at Tudor clothes, there’s layer upon layer upon layer. And I like the idea of the elegant scavenger having four or five layers to his mask and his clothing using a lot of fabric.
NOTEBOOK 5, PAGE 8
Sept. 9, 2011 A TERRIBLE DAY due to movement in the foot of the p.
–“Is there anyone else here with us . . .” she asks after having seen the prince in the palace garden in the moonlight. Eventually she finds the abandoned pelt.
–“You may wish for whatever you want, and it will be yours.” There is no limit to Beauty’s desires, the Beast has only one
–“Love him who loves you” the prince advises
–Soldiers who are RETURNING from war or GOING to war
–She finds the painting of the prince as a human.
–The Beast carves puppets and automatons. He puts on a show for her.
–Birds and monkeys—
–Gargoyles and chimney—
–The furniture moves.
–Discuss the Beast’s pelt.
–He gives her two magic rings.
–He gives her the entire key chain and warns her never to open the door to one room in particular which is locked every night and in which he leaves his abandoned pelt before going to the garden to speak with the fairy which cast a spell on him
–The specter of War needs to hover in the evil atmosphere of Beauty’s village
–The castle exists in the center of a labyrinth of trees
Del Toro wanted to invent motivational propaganda for the film’s war against alien invaders. Keith Thompson’s poster design, infused with Russian Futurist motifs, followed del Toro’s original direction but was eventually abandoned in favor of a different approach.
MSZ: So this poster [opposite] is an odd blend of monster movies, Russian Futurism, wartime propaganda. What was your thinking here?
GDT: I like Soviet and Eastern European propaganda that is very graphic. And for Pacific Rim, we decided to explore a lot of World War II references since we wanted to convey the nobility of the wartime effort in the film. So we designed bomber nose art, uniforms, and propaganda posters, although we didn’t use this one [above] in the end.
NOTEBOOK 3, PAGES 28A and 28B
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 14
* To . . . go OUTSIDE, WAIT IN WOULD . . . BE SUICIDE. Exactly . . .
* Who is X. . . Why do you need to know? Bring us something for him . . . Ah, l am . . . BANG.
* Cell phones cause cancer.
* Massacre at the drive-in.
* Gynecologist who has no nose (an accident at work).
* Who’s on first with foam rubber shit.
* Constant fire and smoke in the wind.
* Suicide on a conveyor belt.
* One of the child prisoners: Let me out, I won’t say anything.
* A little girl wanders alone in a daze. . .
* Ernie does “weightlifting” with a hunk of meat.
* Ernie hides.
MEAT MARKET
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 1
* The gynecologist alone with the lids of Campbell’s soup (or sardine) cans.
* Cricket or soccer game with “goals” made of flesh.
* Cthulu “bottled” in a glass jar and “fed” by columns in the RUINS.
* The “birth of Venus” with the shell and all but also with monsters and Bactrian camels.
HOC MOMENTUM ETIAM TRANSIBIT.
•• Originally made at 12:44 on 3/3/93.
* Fixed. Baby Ernie M/M (according to IMCINE)
>
DAY of NON-RIEL and NON-CRONOS commercial
Bertha spoke with Nacho Durán. Discouragement.
* Great Expectations. MAGWITCH: a convict, Miss Havisham (OF SATIS HOUSE), STELLA. PIP whose journey we follow to manhood. The story begins one gray afternoon in a cemetery/ “I will give you a reason to fight” to start a fight.
•• New version 2/5/95 How different!!
Notebook 3, Pages 28A and 28B.
Ernie in the Drainpipe.
** I move and realize that . . . X
* Ernie causes his enemy to slip.
A drowned man.
2nd version of. First image June 6, 1992 already Enriquito has already left and there was no Sinc.but I started editing.
GDT: Meat Market is a story that is really close to my heart. At one point, it was called Meat Market: A Love Story. It was supposed to be like Phantom of the Opera set in a huge meat processing plant. The super-commercial pitch is: “Hamlet in a meat market, by way of Phantom of the Opera.”
Ernie, our star and son of a meat-processing mogul, falls in love with Ofelia. And Ernie’s uncle has killed his father to get the meat processing plant. But Ernie has been blamed for the murder and goes and hides in the sewers full of chunks of rotting meat. Eventually, he comes back to rescue Ofelia.
And I was going to have Ron Perlman play Ernie. So I tried to write it for him. And the idea was that Ernie was this baby who had been dropped and had his face broken on the concrete. They had to put him together the best they could, and he became sort of a mixture of the Phantom of the Opera and the Frankenstein monster. If I had Ron at age thirty-five, I would endeavor to find the money to actually make it.
MEPHISTO’S BRIDGE
GDT: Mephisto’s Bridge was based on a novel called Spanky by Christopher Fowler. It was a Faustian tale about a guy who makes a deal with a devil, but the devil doesn’t want his soul, he wants his body. He says, “You have no soul, but I can use your body to live for another hundred years.”
The main character is this guy who thought he deserved everything but did nothing to get it, expecting that because he is a good guy, he should get the girl, the money, the car, the apartment. So this demon comes in and offers to help him get all that, and then he gets it and it’s unsatisfactory because he didn’t earn it. And the demon knows this, and he says, “You didn’t want the car; you wanted the respect. You didn’t want the girl; you wanted the love. You didn’t want the apartment; you wanted the reward for your efforts.”
Spanky, the demon, was this slender, almost beautiful creature that was kind of made of moving pieces when he was out of his host. It’s one of my favorite designs I’ve ever made. I wanted him to be very ornate. Right here [opposite], pre-anything, are the roots of the Faun, and the Hellboy creatures, and Hellboy himself. This is where it all comes from, this basic form.
When Spanky is in his host, a transformation occurs. For that design, we started archangels, which are represented with a mouth on each feather, or with an eye on each feather. And the idea was that each of the demon’s feathers would have an eye that represented a soul he had taken. So he was a walking epic. He was literally a lot of people together.
Mephisto’s Bridge is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written and has some of my favorite designs, too.
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 161
* Spanky with wings (?) Based on Odilon Redon.
The wings against the light, blocking the sun with “Flare”
* Someone scratches or breaks the glass in a window that they’re going to open when they remember that it’s the 9th floor!!!
* Reinforce or change the Billboard Fight A III
* Wings with layered colors or uniformly steel black, “blued” like a gun.
* Rusty pendulum clocks hanging from a sheet on the roof
Step over a cross at the b.o/ritual.
Could be of Shadow/Light.
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 173
* Lottie goes to St. Lazarus, a feather falls out, the beating of enormous wings is heard.
* White, milky eyes zombified. . . “Harryhausenly” Everyone looks at the same place.
* The apparition of Joey with computer “ripple” like intensely colored little flames and like the halo of a fire virgin.
* Joey with CGI crash marks.
* Mollusk. “Spanish Shawl” (NUDIBRANCH)
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 113
* Voice-activated light dimmer in his APT
* “I’ll race you little Faust. . .”
* Spanky has tentacle-like “legs” that “open up” into two parts.
* IF/STOP but for a MONITOR with a magazine dummy.
* Sometimes we trick people this way or the other but sometimes. . . truth is the tool to use, as simple as that”
* You’re a couple of years 2 late.
* Whole new ball game pal.
* Y’re like me, You are. . . X.
* Spanky: “Jus’ Call me a therapist”
* “Martyn, I haven’t been all bad 2 U have I?”
The texture of Spanky’s skin is “in motion.”
SQUISH!!
THE LIST OF SEVEN
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 109
* Fear: the wretched thing . . . it’ll die soon. . .
* One of the A.R.C. from “List”
* No one else’s Fingerprints at the crime scene.
* The cops in the hospital/family life or “Gimme a break pal I have X’
* The guy is thrown from the tenth story, he crashes, they scream at him “It was a mistake, go hack upstairs, but please. . . use the service stairs”
* Credit card SPANKY ZZIP-PFFT SPUT!!
* “You are not just an observer MARTYN”
* Bolas ZZUCK! tumble, fire (Burning Man)
* They hired a TOY MAKER for A.R.C.
* We open the tape with the Doyle-like professor on which he speaks to us of his vision and shows us a model of a human eye. They have jute beneath the porcelain.
* Take note, Sparks: “IS this Masonic? “Cause I’m a Catholic.”
* Sparks tries not to speak about his brother . . .
* Martyn calls or observes Lottie on CHRISTMAS DAY or he sees her with a
* Hanging from the Billboard S.
GDT: The List of Seven was based on the novel by Mark Frost. He also wrote the screenplay and produced a draft that I really like. It’s a fantastic steampunk adventure.
The story is about Arthur Conan Doyle before he writes his first Sherlock Holmes story. He gets tangled up with an occult society in Victorian London that is planning to assassinate Queen Victoria and substitute an automaton for Prince Eddy. The society is building sort of a doomsday machine in a castle in the north of the United Kingdom. And I wanted to create these Caspar David Friedrich-type ruins and Piranesian spaces.
Mark is a very good writer of characters, so Conan Doyle was a really great personality in the screenplay. I love Conan Doyle and know his biography well, so I wanted to include details like the fact that he was an ophthalmologist. And the idea was that he succeeds in the movie only when he includes Holmes as a character, which is based on a secret agent for Queen Victoria named Jack Sparks, who is like a James Bond in Victorian times with all the accoutrements and the gadgets.
Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes had a lot of the energy, which is similar to what I wanted to do with the Holmes character in The List of Seven. What I kept saying to Universal was that we didn’t need to shoot Holmes boringly. We needed to shoot him to suit the adventure. We are so used to having a passive intellectual—a guy who lives a monastic life. But for me, Holmes is a guy who is pensive and immobile for long periods—like, literally, he could stay in the same pose on a sofa for days, not even eating—but then, when he says, “Come with me, old chap,” he comes alive and it is an adventure.
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 123
* SIDE VIEW List of 7 “Doomsday Machine”
* “You are going to regret this. . .” He leaves
* “After all tha
t I’ve done for you, you refuse me a simple favor” Spanky in the library.
* The owner of the house/ severed head in a package: “I won’t allow anyone to bring that “thing” near me. It’s in the cupboard.”
* “Holmes” examines the cord, the newspapers, and the paper that’s wrapped around the package with the head in it.
THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 93
* When he sees her from the roof he cries because “she’s too beautiful”
* A motorcycle built to be driven in the drainage pipes at the M/M.
* “Scouting in the trash dumpsters for pieces.
* Dad receives a letter “Mom’s dead” from there, downhill.
* Hard to know where the hand begins . . .
GDT: The Left Hand of Darkness was an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo I did with Kit Carson. We started in ’94, and it took us about two years to write the screenplay. And then when my dad was kidnapped in ’97, I rewrote it. And all the anger I had about the kidnapping went into the Monte Cristo character. There’s a great deal of personal grief in it, and I think it’s the best screenplay I’ve ever written.
The Left Hand of Darkness is a story about vengeance, which I’m fascinated by because it is an empty act. There’s this old saying, “When you seek revenge, dig two graves—one for your enemy, and one for yourself.” I think revenge, when you enact it, ultimately leaves you empty. It makes you feel dirty afterward. And that was the choice we faced after the kidnapping. And we chose not to enact revenge.
But I thought an interesting way to personify vengeance would be to give the Count a mechanical hand that is not good for anything but killing. And he would say, “It’s hard to know where the hand begins and the gun ends.” They fuse. And the mechanical hand was solid gold and had a glass window in it so you could see the gears. This hand turned into the best part of Kroenen in Hellboy. There’s a natural evolution.