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in Focus
Which allows you to express character love of fantasy translate to your personal
change as rebirth, or in the case of Pan’s life? To the way you’re raising your two
Labyrinth, a return to that womb. All of this daughters?
of course relates to your love and respect For many years I told my daughters a
for classic fairytales. bedtime story every night. Now it’s been
I think that every fairytale ever told can be months since I have done it; or I do it
broken into two categories: the child sporadically and I realise it’s a failure.
coming out of the mother and facing the
dragon (you can call it coming out of the I think you’re being too hard on yourself…
castle or the house or whatever; it’s about Parenthood is the toughest job in the
Doug Jones as the Angel of Death
coming out of the inside protected world world. It’s the only job where we all fail to
to fight the dragon), or it’s about the lost some degree (Laughs). I think a child sorts to a wildly successful much-loved
child coming home to the mother (the grows up first by identification and later trilogy of movies?
womb, the castle, the family). There are only by opposition—by rebellion. I think to I think there is a way of melding the
those two directions in every fable. It’s rare some degree, any parent will be found at narrative of The Hobbit with the larger
that you find a third variant. fault. I obsess about being a good father symphony of the trilogy. As I am phrasing it
and a good friend, but I don’t believe that to Peter (Jackson) and to Fran (Walsh) and
That’s fascinating—it makes me think of anyone does a tiptop job. to Philippa (Boyens; his co-writers) we are
when I was writing for the Lonesome Dove creating an overture for one of the largest
television series and it occurred to me there Someone way smarter than me has said, and most beloved symphonic works. They
are only two Western stories: the cowboy “We must give our children roots and wings.” are fully fluent in Tolkienesque down there.
rides out of town and runs into trouble, or But in your case, that sounds like something
trouble rides into town. A very transmutable that could crawl from your infamous notebook. The style and look of your filmmaking is so
concept. Is it fair to say that all of your films Kids come out of the box perfect—the real distinctive; do you feel compelled to adapt
are, in some ways, fairytales? job of a father or a mother is not to fuck your vision so it will match the look of the
other three films?
del Toro points Selma Blair the right direction
Not really, because there is a large gap
between the books in the first place. I think
The Hobbit came from a much more visceral
place for Tolkien so I think there’s room to
make the first movie stand on its own. It’s,
however, inevitable, and my desire, to make
sure the film conforms seamlessly to the
beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring.
Given your commitment to producing films
with other filmmakers and all the other
opportunities you have to tell your own
stories, what made you decide to make
such a massive commitment to The Hobbit?
Like everything in my life, it was instinctive.
Of all of the Tolkien works, I had only read
You know, they are. One of the great them up! I think if we could just let them The Hobbit, and I read it at the right age to
influences in my life has been fairytales and be, they would be all right. They really become imprinted by it—I was about
primal folk-myths. For many years I was are very wise, very complex entities. An eleven years old. That’s the age of fable
very confused because I’m in love with the Argentinean cartoonist once described a when you are molding your personality
aesthetics of the horror movie—the genre— child as a perfect blank page with a lot of through mythology—that’s the real age
but I’m not necessarily in love with the elbows close to an inkwell. where you discover that you don’t identify
mechanics of them. with transient characters, you identify with
Sounds like it could be a creature in your Spider-Man. You “leave behind the childish
How would you define that distinction? next movie! things,” as they say, and relate to Mowgli
Well, I love the atmosphere of the horror I think it is! (Laughs). or Tom Sawyer or Jim in Treasure Island.
film. I love the creation of the environment To me the preternaturally decent character
and the dread and the suspense, but I don’t Speaking of your next movie, what can you that is Bilbo Baggins became a true role
necessarily subscribe to the big scare, like tell us about The Hobbit? There are model for me at that age.
when someone opens a door and a cat jumps rumours that you’ll be telling the tale as a
out. To the point that in Mimic I refused two-part film. Making The Hobbit will be a big change for
to shoot those scares—they were shot by the We are definitely exploring that. As to the you—not just your work but for your whole
second unit. nature of doing it as two films, we are being life—including relocating your family to New
flexible around that. Zealand for at least two years.
Fairytales have always been the stuff of I do believe New Zealand to be
metaphors and nightmares. How does your Any concerns about making a prequel of Shangri-La. ■
www.moviescopemag.com 43
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