Guillermo del Toro
CABINET OF CURIOSITIES
My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions
To Lorenza, Mariana, and Marissa, who put up with me.
FOREWORD
ODE TO A MASTER
JAMES CAMERON
THE ARTIFACT YOU HOLD IN YOUR HANDS is an unprecedented portal into the clockworks of a wondrous mind. Guillermo del Toro’s notebooks have been compared to the codices of da Vinci for good reason: Both are representations of the creative process of a genius unique in his time and perhaps in all time. There is no one out there on the film landscape to even compare him to, and in fact describing him merely as a filmmaker is far too limiting. He is an artist of enormous and precise vision who just happens to work on the most technically complex and culturally pervasive canvas of our time, the motion picture. In another age, he would have worked with egg tempera or a quill pen and made an equally great impact. Born into the late twentieth century, his brushes are lenses and animation software, his parchment a computer screen. For Guillermo, stories emerge freshly seized from the subconscious, still wet and wriggling, in a constant stream of pen drawings and tightly inscribed notes, which then form the blueprints for his films and books.
The power of his vision comes from his ability to communicate directly with our darkest places. He has the courage to squarely face that which we daily bury to get on with the ordered delusion of our lives. We are all insane to one degree or another, and the most functional of us merely hides it the best. But in our nightmares we confront the truth of our madness, fueled by fears so primal we often can’t even speak their names. That land which we fear and suppress is Guillermo’s playground. With his demonic glee at all things macabre and grotesque, he revels in that which we shun. He is the Santa Claus of the subconscious, the court jester of the id. He is our guide through the labyrinth of our worst nightmares, a Virgil much more suited to help us face hell than that sober Roman, because of his wit, irony, and, above all, his compassionate heart.
He will take us by the hand to confront the monster we all know is at the bottom of the stairs—our own mortality. He will drag forth our worst fears and hurl them up on the screen, knowing that to give substance to their twisted forms is to rob them of their power.
Guillermo’s art fearlessly confronts life in all its beauty and horror. He sees with the wonder and stark terror of a child. His notebooks are a map of the subconscious, and his films doorways into the dungeons of our dreams, allowing us to confront our own individual hearts of darkness, to do battle and emerge victorious.
Each of his films is a jeweled clockwork of stunning detail and breathtaking design. I am privileged to be among his creative confidantes, so I have seen each one emerge and grow, even the unfinished masterpieces that the world may not get to enjoy—Mephisto’s Bridge, The List of Seven, At the Mountains of Madness, and others. Though I mourn these unborn, I also know that del Toro conjures phantasms of stunning beauty and surreal horror as effortlessly as casting shadow creatures on the wall, using only a candle and hand movements. You can’t stop him. He reaches into the whirlwind of his mind and snatches drawings and bits of narrative as fast as he can, reaping only a fraction of what roars past.
This book will give you a glimpse of that whirlwind. You will be dazzled by the artist. But I fear that by his art alone you will still not know the man, so perhaps a word about his character now, in advance, if only because we suspect that our artistic idols will always disappoint us in the flesh. Nothing could be farther from the truth in Guillermo’s case.
Guillermo has been my friend, and I’m proud to have been his, for twenty-two years. I met him when he first came to the U.S. with his directorial debut Cronos, made using his dad’s credit cards in Guadalajara. I was immediately struck not only by the caliber of his work (so far superior to my own first effort) but also by his voracious appetite for life, for art, for the grotesque and beautiful in all forms, from classic literature to comics. His personality is larger than life, magnetic, profane, and utterly sincere.
As his career took off, I watched him navigate the waters of Hollywood with increasing frustration, as he tried to apply his old-world Latin honor to a business in which honor is as alien and abstract as calculus to a fish. But he remained true to his own code, to his vision, and especially to his friends, with a loyalty that is far too rare in any walk of life, let alone the film business.
He has been there for me when I needed help on my films, an honest and forthright pair of fresh eyes, and I’ve been there for him in the same capacity. It’s less that he needs my advice than that he wants to know there’s someone in his corner.
He calls me Jaimito, “Little Jim,” and I am slight next to him, in many ways. Once at his house, he challenged me to punch his SlamMan dummy as hard as I could. I did, moving it about six inches and almost breaking my wrist. He bellowed “Jaimito, you hit like a little girl!” and proceeded to smash the thing across the room with one punch. Like his namesake, the bull, del Toro is a force of nature. Amazing that the same meaty fist can inscribe such exquisitely detailed drawings and miniscule calligraphy.
I know him as a true friend, a steadfast husband, a loving father, and the most original character I’ve ever met. His genius is protean, his moral compass finely calibrated, his humor deliciously rank, his creative passion inspirational, and his work ethic a challenge to the rest of us slackers.
If he didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him, but how do you invent the impossible?
INTRODUCTION
GUILLERMO DEL TORO
THE WORLD AS CABINET
“You have to believe the magic to see it.”
FOR GUILLERMO DEL TORO, IT ALL STARTS WITH THE EYE—or, more accurately, the lens. His keen vision processes everything, judging it, molding it to his intellectual and creative purpose, turning it to his interests and obsessions, exquisite and grotesque, and crafting it into an endless procession of indelible, unique images—some on the world stage, some utterly private.
Most private of all are his phenomenal notebooks, full of pointed observations, random thoughts, sketches from life, and wondrous drawings. At first glance, they appear to resemble those of another polymath, Leonardo da Vinci. A true modern Renaissance man with stunning capacity, vast interests, and endless enthusiasm, Guillermo del Toro invites such a comparison. Like Leonardo, Guillermo is an artist with wide interests and talents who can be hired but not bought and who approaches the way he lives with a passionate aesthetic sense.