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.
And when the Count gets the mechanical hand, he becomes the fastest gunslinger in the West, because I had set it in Mexico, so the film became kind of a steampunk, Gothic Western. But there’s a moment where the Count goes too far and becomes a monster. I wanted the audience to feel sickened at that moment by the fact that they’d been rooting for this guy for an hour and a half.
Ty’s first drawing.
First drawing in new type of notebook
“The hand of God” for Montecristo
Nineteenth Century.
Drawing: Guillermo del Toro
Original Design: TyRuben Ellingson
The move to Austin was a bitch for everyone involved.
14 aug
No doubt the need to fill all available space is Freudian and very serious
Good luck in the meeting with GH in TT—O
16
17 “ 1
Possibly painful and lethal
Date to fill
Who knows why I’m obsessed with the void.
Notes for the glove
This drawing presents new empty spaces.
Thirty-three and with debts. Leave your fears in this [?]
Bullshit to fill up space
But it gives rhythm to the image
Apparatus that the count will use
More bullshit to fill up space
Guillermo del Toro 7/18/98 Austin
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS
GDT: I’ve been trying to do At the Mountains of Madness for almost twenty years. Right after Cronos, I wrote a version of it set during the time of conquest of the New World with a bunch of conquistadors arriving at the Mayan ruins and finding another city beneath. It’s never been far away for me. In terms of imagination and the creation of worlds, it’s one of the most compelling projects. But I also think it’s a very commercial horror film.
In the notebooks, I’m really thinking about Mountains more than drawing it. The funny thing is, Lovecraft excelled at being ambiguous about the way his creatures look. The creatures that he’s very specific about, once you draw them, are kind of clunky. When you’re drawing the flying cucumbers that are the Old Ones in Mountains, you have to go, “How are we going to make this work?” But the less Lovecraft describes, the more beautiful the creature. And I think the ambiguity provides the opportunity to make them shape-shifters.
What is funny, though, is that this sketch of a character in Mountains with tentacles over his mouth predates Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean by about two years. When I saw Pirates, I was like, “OK, I’m screwed.”
E* Fetuses in jars of marmalade.
* A day hasn’t gone by in which I haven’t thought about death.
* National Geographic’s EXPLORER.
G* Hey, what about X? (grave news about someone). Well, it depends.
T* DRAGGED UNDER BY A SUBTERRANEAN RIVER.
G* Someone does something “very special” and/or receives it at once and then (saves it with, throws it among, sticks it amid, or places it among) a pile of objects or things just like it.
T* As he goes down the “subterranean river,” the explorer sees the female octopus and the ceiling littered with clusters of bones.
–Between anguish and hope, pain is the exit.
–Check out the locations for VOOI for the M.M.
–The SCARLET city in the middle of the white one.
–Green water / Scarlet and corroded walls
—Dietist: The key is to avoid eating large portions. Woman: Ah—yes that makes sense, D: Tomatoes, lettuce, celery, non-fat dairy products… W: Well-that-that’s good. But what about lunch? D: Well at lunch you can give yourself a treat. W: Sure. D: Or you’ll go crazy. W: A treat! That’s a good idea, thank you. D: You are welcome. CUT A: The woman pigging out.
—A mass hallucination. Suggestion or mass hysteria.
—An empty shell that is a ghost.
–Normally ghosts bring the living warnings or premonitions.
–The husband takes a photograph of it.
–One of the researchers is a nun.
–A ghost is visible at the edge of the photo and a phenomenon occurs that she is the only one to see.
–Record it in small NAGRA recorders to give the images depth to give a catalog to the U.
–The husband thinks that they’re radio waves or waves from a nearby CB and pleads with them to use their common sense.
–She asks for proof and it tells her: “Anna, I’m dead, tell me why?”
–An Arkham sailor
–Perhaps Pabodie, like Holly, knows how to build automatons
AFTERWORD
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MAGNIFICENCE
TOM CRUISE
I WOULDN’T SAY AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS didn’t work out—I have worked on and postponed many films before they were finally made—it’s just going to work out when it’s supposed to.
While it was painful to watch Guillermo go through the experience of having to put on hold a project that was so close to his heart, I knew he would move on to extraordinary things, and he soon did with Pacific Rim. As I told him at the time, it’s not over, it’s just on pause for now. I’m still determined to work with him, and one day it will happen.
