You cannot convince a Buddhist to become a Protestant any more than you can convince a person who embraces realism as the highest form of art that fantasy is an equally important manifestation. It's impossible.
— Guillermo del Toro
The great thing about Roald Dahl is he tackled the big questions of life without any fear of being shocking or brutal, because he knew the kids could take it.
There is beauty and humility in imperfection.
It's never hard to cast kids; it's only ever hard to direct them.
I see myself as a perennial expatriate because, frankly, I don't think I fit comfortably in any conventional form of filmmaking, and I feel at the same time, depending on the project, I fit into many different ones.
I love producing other people's work, but presenting is a very serious business. It's a marriage.
The reason there's a 'Hellboy 2' is not because the studios were passionate about the first one; it's because the numbers made sense.
If you give an actor a green screen, the shot may work, but that green screen will not inspire you on the set as a director or as an actor.
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.'
The movie has to have some essence where you connect with it. The reason I'm doing 'Blade 2' and not 'Alien 4' is because I connect with the universe of 'Blade.' I don't connect with the universe of 'Alien.' Besides, I already did 'Alien 4': It's called 'Mimic.'
It's so much easier when you're promoting a movie that you like!
I think Roald Dahl had the rarest combination of talking to kids about complex emotions, and he was able to show you that the world of kids was sophisticated, complex, and had a lot more darkness than adults ever want to remember.
In Mexico, you're close to death all the time.
I was very attracted to doing 'The Wolverine' in Japan because that's my favorite chapter in the story of Wolverine. But I'm not a superhero guy.
I'm having a lot of fun on Twitter, tweeting about books.
Any actor I admire and enjoy working with - Sergi Lopez as the bad guy in 'Pan's Labyrinth,' or the little girl who played young Mako in 'Pacific Rim,' it makes no difference - I like actors with a very strong centre.
I think that most of the monsters I dream of, I dreamt of as a child.
To me, art and storytelling serve primal, spiritual functions in my daily life. Whether I'm telling a bedtime story to my kids or trying to mount a movie or write a short story or a novel, I take it very seriously.
I wrote a screenplay for 'The Witches,' which Alfonso Cuaron was producing, but we couldn't get it made! The studio just wouldn't greenlight that movie. It's my favorite Roald Dahl book, 'The Witches,' because I grew up with my grandmother a lot of the time, and the relationship between the boy and the grandmother speaks volumes to me.
I love the entire 'Constantine' mythology, the 'Dead Man' mythology, the Alex Holland 'Swamp Thing' mythology.
I'm not that interested in recreating reality. I'm interested in recreating an emotional truth.
I love what many of my contemporaries are doing, especially people like Terry Gilliam, David Cronenberg, P. T. Anderson, and Alfonso Cuaron.
I'm fortunate enough that my personal life falls into whack with my professional life. My kids love visiting the sets; they love the monsters.
As a producer, I learned not to declare anything about a movie I'm not directing.
When I did 'Mimic,' it was such a difficult experience to try to make. Believe it or not, I did try to make a really adult giant bug movie. And then, in the course of the process, it kind of died a horrible death and gave birth to the movie that exists now, which now, in retrospect, I like. But it's not the movie I set out to do.
What is scary to me is silly to somebody else. CG isn't scary to me. It's like comedy - comedy and horror are quite similar, in that there'll always be somebody who'll say, 'I don't think that was funny.' And it's the same with things that are meant to be scary.
As a craftsman, I bust my butt as much for 'Blade 2' as I do for 'Devil's Backbone.'
Everything I do, I do it with the hope that people will watch it more than twice. Whether it's 'Pan's Labyrinth' or 'Pacific Rim' or the opening of 'The Simpsons,' I do it with that hope.
The problem with 'Don't Be Afraid of the Dark' was that it was designed to be a PG-13 movie. It was literally a horror movie for a younger generation. I was trying to do the film equivalent of teenage, young adult readers, and when they gave it an R rating, the movie couldn't sustain an R.
I would like to avoid dying if possible. I do like living! The worst, I think for me, though, would be a really bedridden death.
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.
I would have killed to do 'Beauty And The Beast' at Warners, which went away. I would have killed to do 'The Witches' at Warners that went away. God knows there are many, many of them. All I can do is diligently do the screenplay, diligently do the design work, deliver a budget, and then await a decision.
I think when we wake up in the morning, we can choose between fear and love. Every morning. And every morning, if you choose one, that doesn't define you until the end... The way you end your story is important. It's important that we choose love over fear, because love is the answer.
I don't try to sanction other people's joy in monsters. I mean, I think the fact is, humor, fantasy - you know, like fear, desire or laughter - create genres of their own: comedy, melodrama, or erotic films or horror films... The boundaries cannot be defined. It's to each his own.
I'm a huge David Fincher fan, and to me, 'Zodiac' is a masterpiece. I re-watch that movie all the time.
I have a lot of artifacts - books on witchcrafts and talismans. I have a big, big collection of original occult books from the 1800s and 1700s, and some of the oldest books on apparitions and vampires. All original printings. It's not that I'm a crazy believer, I just find it to be amazing research material.
Shooting a horror story with kids, I always explain really simply. They may be scary to watch, but they're a lot of fun to shoot. You know, the kids have a great time shooting these movies. Whether you let them watch it is another matter.
If you ask me, I alternate between truly bizarre, what you would call 'Hollywood' movies and truly bizarre, what you would call 'arthouse' movies.
More and more, as I grow older, I find myself looking for inspiration in painting, illustration, videogames, and old movies.
'Hellboy 1' was such a huge, huge overperformer on Blu-ray and ancillary markets. It was one of the first movies on Blu-ray; it has multiple editions. All the ancillary markets overperformed everywhere. And the second one did good on all ancillary markets, which now do not exist.
I'm very grateful of my life and my career and the movies I've been able to make.
I think the greatest giant insect movie ever made is 'Them!'
I don't think that Argentinian cinema is well-known outside Argentina the way it should be.
I have a schizophrenic career. I have 'Cronos' and 'The Devil's Backbone' on one hand, and then I have 'Blade 2' and 'Mimic' on the other.
For me, real life is hard work. Making movies is like a vacation for my soul.
I love to travel, anywhere in the world. Wherever it is... India... Tibet... wherever. I'll go anywhere.
I'd love to come back as the most annoying ghost ever.
I like monsters, and when the monster is a superhero, it's a byproduct. Like Hellboy, the Hulk, Man-Thing, Swamp Thing, Sandman, Constantine, Demon, Dr. Strange, Spectre, Deadman. Those are the superheroes I followed as a kid religiously.
Every project that you write about or read about, it goes through years of hard work. We write a screenplay; we design. Then you submit those and the budget, and it's out of your hands.
I had nightmares as a kid. As an adult, I have very prosaic dreams.
