Guillermo del Toro
Most of the time - in 'Pan's Labyrinth' or 'Devil's Backbone' - I'm talking about my childhood.
I've been going through immigration all my life, and I've been stopped for traffic violations by cops, and they get much more curious about me than the regular guy. The moment they hear my accent, things get a little deeper.
Insects are living metaphors for me. They are so alien and so remote and so perfect, but also they are emotionless; they don't have any human or mammalian instincts. They'll eat their young at the drop of a hat; they can eat your house! There's no empathy - none.
The way they control a population is by pointing at somebody else - whether they're gay, Mexican, Jewish, black - and saying, 'They are different than you. They're the reason you're in the shape you're in. You're not responsible.' And when they exonerate you through vilifying and demonizing someone else, they control you.
I think the greatest giant insect movie ever made is 'Them!'
When you start with Super 8, you are everything. You're the DP, the sound man, the effects guy. And what I started understanding, by working for other people, is that the best type of director is someone who rose through the ranks.
I think that The Eye is a particularly Americanized take on horror.
Mike Mignola's 'Hellboy' was influenced by Lovecraft big time. He wanted to make his monsters Lovecraftian. But I think many other films have been influenced by Lovecraft - like 'Alien,' which is almost an outer-space version of 'At The Mountains Of Madness.'
In the case of 'Shape Of Water,' I want it to feel like a song. I wanted people to come out of the movie humming the movie.
I believe that we, every day, 24-7, all the days of our lives, we are, all of us, agents of construction and agents of destruction.
I loved when the superhero genre crosses with horror. Morbius. Those are the guys I gravitated towards. Blade. So for me, to be interested in doing a superhero movie, it would need to be on the dark side or a Jack Kirby property. Kamandi, Demon, Mr. Miracle - I love any Kirby.
For Devil's Backbone I loved it but I felt very pressured but so I was neurotic on the shoot.
I don't think that Argentinian cinema is well-known outside Argentina the way it should be.
Well, the first thing is that I love monsters, I identify with monsters.
I think there is a very quiet power in things that are not on screen.
I don't think there is life beyond death. I don't. But I do believe that we get this clarity in the last minute of our life. The titles we achieved, the honors we managed, they all vanish. You are left alone with you and your deeds and the things you didn't do.
I'm a lapsed altar boy.
For eight years I did effects for other movies until I got my movie made.
What happens to me is that I am first and foremost a film geek.
When I was a teenager there was no video in my country. Betamax came to Mexico very slowly.
I was part of a group that had a cinema club so every week we would project two or three movies on 16 or 35mm.
I see horror as part of legitimate film. I don't see it as an independent genre that has nothing to do with the rest of cinema.
Hellboy is the first movie where both ends of the spectrum are combined.
The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on.Collection: Butterfly
The only thing you can do as an artist is to come to the world, see what no one is doing, and leave behind one or two things that wouldn’t have happened without you.Collection: Artist
I love monsters. If I go to a church, I'm more interested in the gargoyles than the saints. I really don't care much about the idea of normal - that's very abstract to me. I think that perfection is practically unattainable but imperfection is right at hand. So that's why I love monsters: because they represent a side of us we should actually embrace and celebrate.Collection: Thinking
In a world where we are so pragmatic and materialistic, fear is the only emotion that allows even a sophisticated person to believe in something beyond.Collection: Believe
You have to believe the magic to see it.Collection: Believe
You only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.Collection: Responsibility
If you're not operating on an instinctive level, you're not an artist.... Reason over emotion is bullshit, absolute bullshit... We suffocate ourselves in rules. I find fantasy liberating.Collection: Artist
There is beautiful in the grotesque.Collection: Beautiful
The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.Collection: Kings
Any legend, any creature, any symbol we ever stumble on, already exists in a vast cosmic reservoir where archetypes wait. Shapes looming outside our Platonic cave. We naturally believe ourselves clever and wise, so advanced, and those who came before us so naïve and simple...when all we truly do is echo the order of the universe, as it guides us.Collection: Wise
I have a sort of a fetish for insects, clockwork, monsters, dark places, and unborn thingsCollection: Dark
You live and die two or three times making a movie. First, you write it, and the first pivotal moment comes when you can get it made. The second is in the process of making it, when the movie reveals itself to you, its flaws and its virtues. Then the most unnerving moment is when that movie is then launched into the world. It’s like bringing your kid to the first day at school and somebody points out that it has bowlegs, it is cross-eyed, or it’s gorgeous. You feel very exposed.Collection: School
"What makes a man a man?" a friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins? The way he comes to life? I don't think so. It's the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them.Collection: Men
You can always go back to not making any money, and then you get the freedom. And I'm going to continue doing it, because it really is a fantastic sense of liberation.Collection: Fantastic
I think we live our lives seeking the shortest route, the closest parking space - everything quick, cheap, fast. And it's not better. Two-thirds of the satisfaction of getting something is the process of getting it.Collection: Thinking
There's nothing that defines who you are more than boundaries, whether you cross them or not, in every aspect of your life, and horror is a really great boundary.Collection: Horror
In real life, what scares me is politicians, corporations and people that think they know what the world should be.Collection: Real
You can't explain success in retrospect. The moment you leap into the void, that moment is impossible to negate, after success.Collection: Retrospect
People tend to think that big things only happen to big people ... I think that is not true. The small decisions we make every day define who we are and define the world around us. ... But I bet to you there is a decision every day in your life where you affect somebody else.Collection: Thinking
Power revealed is power sacrificed. The truly powerful exert their influence in ways unseen, unfelt. Some would say that a thing visible is a thing vulnerable.Collection: Powerful
There are men who bloom in chaos. You call them heroes or villains, depending on which side wins the war, but until the battle call they are but normal men who long for action, who lust for the opportunity to throw off the routine of their normal lives like a cocoon and come into their own. They sense a destiny larger than themselves, but only when structures collapse around them do these men become warriors.Collection: War
You give yourself to the world for people to either praise or destroy.Collection: People
I think that is the ultimate cowardice, when someone makes your choices for you in an institutional way. And you just say, "Well, I have no other option."Collection: Thinking
When the monster has a dimension that allows you to humanize it, that's the route I usually want to go.Collection: Monsters
For me, lost causes are the only ones that are worth fighting for. The other stuff is not worth fighting for.Collection: Fighting
There's something worse than not making a movie. It's doing it for the wrong reasons. Then you end up putting three, four, five years of your life into it and you come out with a thing that you're not proud of.Collection: Years