Mexican film genius Guillermo del Toro is responsible for some of the freakiest moments in recent cinematic history. His resumé is littered with incredible creations and mind-boggling fantasy worlds. In his most recent release, Mama, starring Jessica Chastain, he acted as executive producer and here he tells Time Out Abu Dhabi about the writing process, what makes a horror work and what it takes to create a monster.
You’ve made a career out of frightening people and making fantasy/horror films. Can you talk about what you think is scary and what you don’t think ever works in this genre?
I want to believe that there are only two things that work in horror: the things that shouldn’t be that are, and the things that should be but are not. For example, you walk into your living room and you see your dad watching TV and that’s not scary. But if I tell you that your dad died three years ago, it’s scary. So it’s a thing that shouldn’t be but is. The opposite is, for example, you walk out of your house, you open the door, and the street is not there. You’re in the middle of nowhere, just black space, and that’s scary too. It’s something that should be but is not. Basically you can derive everything in any horror movie to these little simple rules. The rest is playing with the logic of the world as we know it and dislocating it a little bit.
Tell us about when you decide to produce as opposed to when you decide to direct or write. Does it come to you or do you go out and find people?
I obviously produce things that I don’t generate; things that I can be a partner on with someone. It can be a functional partner that is just there for the financing, which I did with Splice and Vincenzo Natali, where it’s more of a friend helping a friend, or I can be involved as I was in Mama or in The Orphanage or Don’t be Afraid of the Dark and so-forth. I try to only produce things that I believe in and that I have an interest in seeing. Like The Orphanage, and Mama, I’m super glad that they exist. I’m very proud to have helped Vincenzo create Splice but it really is about doing something for the genre.
How did this particular movie come to life?
I saw the short that Andy (Muschietti, director) and Barbara (Muschietti, writer) did together. I saw it around ’07 or ’08 and I met with them in 2009 and I called them first and said, ‘Look, I saw the short and I love it, I want to come on board as producer for the feature version.’ I asked Andy and Barbara both, I said, ‘We can produce it as a European movie with zero interference. You can have the girls played by soft puppets and nobody will tell you anything or we can do it as an American movie and there will be a lot more opinions. I will be your bodyguard but the process gets a lot more political and complicated but you get bigger exposure.’ I said, ‘Those are the two flavours I can offer you’ – and they chose the bigger format. I tried to act as a buffer to preserve the idiosyncrasies of what Andy wanted to do, his style is very European. The ending of the movie is not something that is normal or common in a commercial movie. The ending of an American version of this movie would have a sweaty Jessica Chastain handcuffed with an iron bar saying ‘Come here!’ with an explosion at the end and Mama blows up in the explosion. To preserve it and keep it in character is not making it with everything all right and the girl being pro-active in a man’s way, which is what usually happens in these movies, is quite a miracle.
Did your experience as a director help you produce this movie?
As a director, it helps a lot to know that somebody believes in you. One of the great producers was this guy called Peter Frankfurt on Blade II (which del Toro directed) because he would always ask me, ‘Is everything all right, baby?’ At the end of it all, for someone to say, ‘It’s gonna be okay,’ you don’t ask any more questions because you think he knows. For a producer to believe in you gives you a lot of confidence.
In the movie itself, the actor playing Mama contorts his body into all sorts of bizarre, horrible shapes. Is that real?
He’s called Javier Botet and he’s able to basically dislocate every joint in his body. His hands can go in reverse and his knees bend backwards, he’s really pretty strange. We basically tied strings to his body and we had technicians pulling him sideways against his will. He was trying to walk normal and there were people pulling him so he looked like that. And Andy then played with the speed of the camera in the post, he accelerated him.
Finally, do you think will there be a Mama sequel?
I don’t think so, but if he (Andy) wants to do it, I’ll do it.
Mama is currently now showing in Abu Dhabi cinemas.
