Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 39B}

^{Originally, Kroenen was to be kept alive through regular injections administered by a clockwork mechanism.}

–The “bad guys” emerge from mirrors or shadows.

–Post-cognitive. He knows what already happened

–Stainless steel pistons move in unison.

Abe with his water goggles and external respirator

–Railroad signals on the train or subway tracks.

–Shot of Kroenen’s syringe. Camera turns 360° and then cuts!!

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 37A}

–Huge [images of bullet cartridges] from the Samaritan

–There are idyllic photographs of Nazi youths in Kroenen’s room.

–Kroenen’s hand with flesh interface.

INTO THE FLESH

The hand is heavily adorned.

– Skull-faced mask. Room with asbestos modules.

–1920 industrial Gothic.

^{Ron Perlman posing as Hellboy with Big Baby in a publicity photo for Hellboy II.}

GDT: Well, first of all, as you can read on the top left [opposite], one of the things that I wanted to do with the Samaritan was to create huge ammo for the revolver. Huge bullets. But originally I wanted it to be an automatic weapon that would eject the shells. And we couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find a way to design it properly. But we kept the idea of the shells being huge.

Ron is a big guy. He has a huge head and huge hands, so the gun looks normal, almost, in his hands. So I had to create the Big Baby in the second movie for it to look like a big gun, and the bullets of the Big Baby are the size of a baby’s bottle, and they have a baby bottle inside.

Then there is a Kroenen hand on this page, which is literally, if you go back to the earlier drawings of The Left Hand of Darkness, the Monte Cristo hand [see page 258]. And, again, it’s a matter of “I want that image. I don’t care where it comes from.” [laughs]

Then several designs for the mask, and the idea of him having no eyelids and no lips. I wanted him to be like the embodiment of S

Then I wanted something that looked 1920s but high-tech, sort of like the Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t do it.

^{Kroenen’s lair was designed to have a 1920s high-tech, Gothic feel, reminiscent of the Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.}

^{BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 150}

^{Hearkens back to ideas del Toro explored for his semi-mechanical, lethal protagonist in an early, unmade project called The Left Hand of Darkness, an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo.}

* Shootout in a henhouse for M.C.

* In exp./storeroom hens S.

Mechanical Prince model 2714591 Pat.Pend

(1) and (2) cavities ready for eye insertion.

See ref. manual for more.

(6) Sideways gear for head movement.

(3) Crystal electromagnetic cavity w/organ

(5) Gold-Plated thoraxic shell

* “Where have you Been?” / ”Ranging over THE EARTH, from end to end. “The Lord give and the Lord takes away” “Why is life given to those who find it so bitter, they long for death but it does not come…” Book of JOB.

GDT: Over here [opposite] is Kroenen coming out of the floor like a ghost. That was a very nice idea, but we couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it, because he became physical. Originally I had this idea that he and Rasputin were able to come out of the shadows. And Rasputin does. If you watch the movie, in the mental asylum, the guard uses a flashlight, closes the door, and Rasputin comes out of the shadows.

MSZ: That’s very, very cool. And, again, you’re using very interesting palettes with the blacks punctuated by whites and reds.

GDT: Yeah. What is interesting with the pages in this notebook is that I started trying to do little compositions on each page. The blood helps now and then, as well as the little Lovecraftian symbols here and there.

MSZ: What’s this detail in the margin, underneath the blood splatter?

GDT: Those are little bells—glass bells that I saw in National Geographic or something. They are used to shoo away spirits. I thought the shape was beautiful. I drew them because I don’t like photographing stuff. That’s one thing that is very curious—I hate photographing. For many years my wife said, “Why don’t you take any family photos?” And I said to her—I know this sounds like an affectation, but it isn’t—I said, “I can’t just photograph something. I need to say what is in the frame, what is the color.” You know, contrary to Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick was such a great photographer, and he found everything. I can’t. I have to fabricate everything in the image. So whenever I see a drawing, or I’m in a museum, and I see something I like, I could take a photograph, but I do a sketch in the notebook instead.

^{The design of Kroenen.}

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 37B}

Glass bells for evil spirits.

–We could open with a sequence in a “mini-mart” in which 3 or 4 monsters surround the cashier and Hellboy comes in and taunts them. Then he lights or puts out a cigarette with his fingers and saves it for later. Little daggers filled with holy water. Malaysan Revenants hungry for virgin’s blood

–You should date a little more.

–Galician forests are very much like those found in Arthur Machen

–A man is called upon to rebuild a stone labyrinth

–For Wind in the Willows: PICKLED TOAD

–The mini-mart was built on an ancient cemetery.

–The disorder inside the truck bothers Hellboy: I know it’s a Garbage truck, but…

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 13A}

^{The Rasputin character differed markedly from the historic image of the man–a long-haired, bearded, almost ascetic monk—with which del Toro began the character design process.}

–Butchered cattle for sale on M street. Blood flows down the sidewalk. Steam pours out of the coffee-roasting machines. Very hot, wet streets

–Small gas lamp used at street stalls during the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries

–Rasputin (1872–1916). His name means “crossroads.” In 1909, he becomes a member of the royal court. He travels in 1911 and sometime in 1912

–Alias “Guisha.” Letter to Ilsa. Beforehand

–Ride the body of a dead man so that he tells you his secrets

–Key for H’s glove.