[Guillermo del Toro]: Not really. I have done 13 movies and I have written or co-written 42. So I'm very wellversed with the fact that I'm never going to get to make the movies I could have made. So and this was complicated because I I wanted I knew I wanted to make Imperial. I kn I knew I wanted to make it uh the 19th century and I knew I wanted to make it big and lavish and and oporatic. None of these words and none of these notions sound like a Hollywood blockbuster.

[Gilbert Cruz]: I'm Gilbert Cruz. This is the book review from the New York Times. And on today's episode, it's Guiermo Del Toro. GMO is a threetime Oscar-winning director. And this year he's nominated for his adaptation of Mary Shel's Frankenstein. That is the classic novel which tells the tale of scientist Victor Frankenstein, the monster that he creates and the many tragedies that ensue. I've been a fan of Del Toro's work for years. From Kronos, his very first movie, through titles like Blade 2, Pan's Labyrinth, Shape of Water, he is a master of mixing scares and tears, and at making monsters that are both terrifying and absolutely gorgeous to look at. His new movie, Frankenstein, is no exception. It is not an exaggeration to say that this film is the culmination of his life's work. It's a story that he has been obsessed with since he was a child. He was 7 years old when he saw the classic 1931 film version. He was only 11 when he read the book for the first time. And when we talked, I asked him to take me back to that moment.

[Gilbert Cruz]: Tell me, how did you get a copy of the book? Tell just tell me the whole story.

[Guillermo del Toro]: You know, I used to go to a supermarket near my home where I uh you would get all the expat American magazines and paperbacks from Spain and I would I would shop for horror uh uh books there and uh for horror magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland. And at that age, at 11, I pedal my bicycle to to to that store and I bought the paperback uh from a a Spanish a Spanish um publisher and that was the 1818 text um which is for me the only text uh the only version of the three versions that exist of the novel that were revised during Mary Shel's life. The 1818 is the most pure for me. is a little undisiplined, is a little ungainainely, uh is a little unrepentant, but is absolutely the one closest to the pulse of the biography of Mary Shel, the id of Mary Shel. And I read it and I I what I always felt is the creature is me.

[Gilbert Cruz]: What was it about the creature at that early age that spoke to you in in such a strong way?

[Guillermo del Toro]: I I I really believe that uh the the depth of of fear that you experience before you get into your teenage years uh is the most profound fear you will ever uh feel in your life. And every every time you are afraid or angry or full of rage as an adult is that very young child controlling you, feeling abandoned or feeling apprehensive about the future or the world. the the deepest questions at least me being raised Catholic, you know, I was raised by partially by my great aunt who I called my grandmother and she would tell me, "Look, you're going to go to purgatory no matter what for hundreds of years because of original sin." And I and I thought this is like time share but for the soul, you know, this is a a complete scam. you know there there's such a pageantry such a savagery to Catholicism and uh at 11 the questions I had about the world were very profound and and and Frankenstein uh the book downsized a lot of these questions uh the questions why the world can be savage why the world can be cruel why how can we be cruel to each other in in a way that is even now hard to explain that's why he's a singularity.

[Gilbert Cruz]: Watching your movie and revisiting the book, which I hadn't read since I was a teenager. Now, I don't know if it's just cuz I'm older, but the loneliness of it was really underscored for me. And I was able possibly in a way I wasn't as sophisticated as you as an 11year-old that I didn't see when I was younger. It's just he is so lonely. He is the only one of himself out there.

[Guillermo del Toro]: And I believe that was Mary Shel.

[Gilbert Cruz]: How how so?

[Guillermo del Toro]: I don't think Mary Shelley felt comfortable in the gender that she was uh put in by society. I think she had uh the spirit of her mother which was also uh a free spirit of great hunger for the world.

[Gilbert Cruz]: The feminist writer Mary Walencraft.

[Guillermo del Toro]: Yes. and and and you know she she had lived uh large and wild and beautifully and then basically in the eyes of her father William Goodwin Mary kills her and and in fact teaches her to read on the gravestone of her mother you know the sort of crushing feeling for her that she is motherless and somewhat fatherless that she's alone in the world and that I think that's the key for me I felt so alone at age 11 and so full of um love to give and so full of rage to dispose of. It was a very a very complicated emotional scope for somebody that young and and this you know some people find in the Bible the way to articulate their faith and their existence. I found it in this book

[Gilbert Cruz]: to quote maybe inappropriately Robert Dairo on heat when he says I am alone I am not lonely when you were a kid were you alone or were you lonely or was it both?

[Guillermo del Toro]: I think I was very lonely.

[Gilbert Cruz]: And why was that? You had this aunt or this great aunt. You had other family members but where did that come from?

[Guillermo del Toro]: I think the way you introspect the world uh and where you put it and how do you shel it and and and how it affects you. If you are overempathic, if you are if you are um if you take the suffering of others to heart and uh you you grow up with a much more somber, much more melancholic disposition, you know, and I I was definitely resonant and I was very attuned to the to the way adults told you the way the the world was uh not being truthful. you know the I saw the lies um I saw the the falsehoods.

[Gilbert Cruz]: Can you recall a moment where maybe it was religion, maybe it was something else where someone an adult who you trusted told you a thing and then you were like that is that sorry my friend that is not true like I can tell I can see it why are you lying to me?

[Guillermo del Toro]: Yeah. No. Well, it as very pointedly you can see on my movies, it started with my father. You know, my father uh you know, my father won the lottery in 1969 and he changed. He changed quite a bit. And it's not that he was at great fault. Uh I'm talking about nuances. you know, he was by all accounts and by all experience a good man, but he was not very consistent with what he said and what he did. And and I did ask him and he said, "One thing doesn't have to do anything with the other, which which was marvelous." I said, "Father, Dad, how can you be so Catholic? Uh you're part of the oppos, you know, and then you behave like this."

[Guillermo del Toro]: And he said, "Well, one thing doesn't have to do charity." For him, charity existed as a notion in the church. You know, you gave money in the church and that was charity. But charity to your fellow human beings was another matter matter altogether.

[Gilbert Cruz]: Did that make you see the world as you got older as more black and white or did you did you understand that that people people are contradictory as much as anything?

[Guillermo del Toro]: I actually love the fact that the world is not is neither black nor white in a constant way. I I think the flow the flow of the black and the white with through the gray is so liberating to understand that that's the nature of the universe is the ying and the yang revolving constantly and never ending. You know, nothing is permanent. That is really good. And what I didn't like was the the inconsistent way in which it's phrased. The nature of the world puzzled me less than the declarations the adults made about what the world was, you know. Yeah. Uh I think when you when you realize the entire nature of the world is the paradox uh we exist in a paradoxical state and anything we want to become permanent or safe or good or bad quote unquote uh is a tantrum a tantrum of the soul. Uh and that's that's the answer that I found at a at an early age on the book of Job when Job says to God why me? Why this? And the answer God gives him is why not

[Guillermo del Toro]: you know it's it's really really you know uh phenomenal to find that at an early age and and and I did I was I was raised in in Jesuit school. Mhm. So uh we had a spiritual counselor and I was very close to several priests growing up. So I I I asked these questions of them. I really I really asked the questions of uh my my ethic and spiritual advisor in Jesuit school. I said I wanted to discuss the book of Job so urgently. He just said well God made the world in you know in a world in a way that we don't have to understand. And I I I that didn't satisfy me. I I I I I found more answers later on in the Dao, you know, as a younger man.

[Gilbert Cruz]: And the fact that seems that seems deficient on that priest's part. I mean, you know, I went to a Jesuit college. The Jesuits are supposed to be smarter than this.

[Guillermo del Toro]: They they they they you know, the the great thing about the Dao, he it phrases it very much more beautifully. He says, "He who tries to use the tools of the master basically will cut himself." You know, uh they are not tools that you can handle. And and I understand the tools that make the world and and and that make the world that uh so full of paradox. The day you marry and are and celebrate is the day somebody got run over by a car. Is the day somebody lost a son? Is the day somebody gave birth to a daughter? I mean that's the nature of the world. And I understand that easier through through that phrasing.

[Gilbert Cruz]: Let's talk a little bit about that screenplay. Talk to me about when you first started, you literally the first day you started writing this. What was the first scene? Was it about structure? Was it a character? Was it dialogue? How did you start?

[Guillermo del Toro]: The first thing I I I I did start with the beginning because I wanted to I wanted I knew I wanted to show a very violent attack of the creature to the ship and I wanted the audience to say, "Well, I had never seen this before." Uh and and to find the creature monstrous and reprehensible and savage. And then I knew after going through the whole movie, you would understand. You would come back to that moment and realize, oh, that's why that violence occurred. So you would understand the other side at the end of the movie. That was my hope. And then I knew I wanted to create this sort of um almost imaginary childhood for Victor in which he was already quite an atrocious mama's boy, you know. And and because he felt slighted. Uh he would feel the old the world owed him. We are now in an era in which we can see many of the most powerful men are manchildren that feel the world owes them something that we are all paying for you know and I felt that was that felt very alive. I wanted it to feel alive in the way that the novel felt alive when Mary Shelley published it.

[Guillermo del Toro]: you know, it felt as of as of now. Uh, modern loomed very large. And as I went into the adaptation, I I I knew the romantics were and are modern. These were people that took the savor and went to war and galloped through Waterlue and and when they gave recital, they were the the tool of the devil. uh inflaming passions in young hearts and uh being in favor of death and love being fused into one. All of these things started to percolate and I and I I wanted to encompass the romantic spirit and the and the loneliness that comes with it and the doom the sense of doom and hope and uh that comes with it and the sense of graveyard poetry that comes with it. So all these things occupied my mind and that's why when we got when we started this campaign for this movie I said the only nomination that I really desire is best adapted screenplay because it I have written so much uh for decades and this is the screenplay I'm the proudest of.

[Gilbert Cruz]: You um said this is the screenplay that you are most proud of. you have written screenplays for all of your films and as you said you've you've written many more that have gone unproduced. Just tell me why you're so proud of this one.

[Guillermo del Toro]: One of one of the things I found uh people that think they know the book and that's an illusion that happens often with those characters that are so large. People think they know Pinocchio. People think they know Dracula. People think they know Frankenstein. People think they know Monte Cristo. But the mechanics that made the books what they are uh escaped them. I think that uh one of the things I wanted to do was to I knew I was going to generate 90% new dialogue. Uh but I wanted to feel of a piece with the book. So to learn I read for example volumes of letters from the nu 1800s there's a ptoa and a cadence and a and and and and a a a style to the language that takes quite a while to to try to condense

[Guillermo del Toro]: Uh I have I've been a screenplay writer for about 30 years and uh the rhythms I have as a native speaker which come from Latin languages, right? Are very are very um melodic and long. Uh uh English tends to be very percussive, you know. A modern English certainly has the ratat of Hemingway. You know, a a whole paragraph in Spanish can be said in English in four words. You know, it's is very concussive. It's very percussive. It's very rhythmic. And 19th century um uh dialogue is a mixture of both. You know, it has a certain rhythm, you know. Nobody says, "Can I have a piece of toast?" They they would say, "I hesitate to ask, but if it wouldn't be too much trouble, may I partake of a piece of your toast?" In a way.

[Gilbert Cruz]: but I want to ask you about the ending here, right? If we're talking about adaptation, if we're talking about, as you put in another interview, transmutation, you know, the ending of Shel's book is quite stark. The captain uh of the ship enters his cabin. He discovers the creature standing over Frankenstein's lifeless body. In your version, they have an exchange. Frankenstein and his creature, Frankenstein and the thing he created um talk and there's forgiveness, there's understanding, there's a reconciliation. Um why did you feel like that was the truest way for your version of the story to end?

[Guillermo del Toro]: In my in my opinion, the the dialogue that occurs in the cabin in this version is a dialogue that occurs in the eyes between the creature and Victor, you know, earlier in the book. uh where he tells him, look, this is what happened to me. And uh to me, the radical thing to do in the romantic times was to end up in a almost protoexistentialist way. in which the creature is born by the current and the distance into nothing. You know, uh that is a very uh a beautiful nailism nailism, you know. It's like a a very powerful uh very very counter to what was invogue in the world, you know. um therefore very anarctic and and to me right now the radical position uh is grace you know uh and the fact that uh we tend to believe that forgiveness is very elaborate but I think forgiveness is actually grace we want to forgive and we want to be forgiven we really long for And uh and I think that's the radical position for me. Now uh one of the things I decided very much so is if I have fused through the decades with the spirit of the book and how autobiographical it was for Mary Shel I believe to write this book. It was all her rephrasing her life. I decided I would rephrase my experience as a father and my experience as a son. And the ending has a very strong tie with my own life, you know, and uh and that is to accept the grace and the rhythms of the world to accept, you know, the movie starts with the sun rising and the captain turning his back to it and it ends with the creature facing the sun and accepting it. abandon him himself to to that current. It's a different current than the current that Shel portrayed in the ending, but it felt like look, if I am to sing this song, I'll sing it with my voice.

[Gilbert Cruz]: You know, at the um I think it was at Ken uh when they premiered Sentimental Value, Wim Trier said something like kindness is the new punk rock or tenderness is the new punk rock. You also saw it in Last Summer Superman. The idea that in times like these actually the radical thing is to be nice, is to be kind, is to forgive. Yeah. Is to forge some sort of understanding between people.

[Guillermo del Toro]: I think I I think I I I preeded it a few years ago saying emotion is the new punk and and and I I sustain it because here's the thing. Grace and hope in ignorance have no value. But grace and hope with the knowledge of the world and how it is is radical. Uh you are not doing it out of ignorance. You're doing it as a conscientious objector to the world, you know, and and I think then they have a different uh weight and gravity.

[Gilbert Cruz]: Um what is the best book that you've ever either received or given as a gift?

[Guillermo del Toro]: I would say the the Dao in the translation of Stephen Mitchell uh is one of is one of the books I I love to I discovered and I love to give and uh another great book I think it's called Wabby Sabi for artists you know I love to give that uh that I have received um I think um that almost nobody dares to buy me books but uh I would I would say I would say there's a really good book that is called Navok's butterflies which is is a collection of miscellaneia and I think Nabokov uh had a fascination with entomology and uh uh you know particularly fascinated by butterflies, but it collects loose loose uh pieces that I find very compelling, a lot more compelling than than his uh organized studies of literature, for example.

[Gilbert Cruz]: Are there any classic novels that you only just recently discovered or read for the first time?

[Guillermo del Toro]: As a young reader, I have difficulty finishing movie. [Moby Dick] Whenever whenever you hit the whailing passages as a young reader, I said, "Well, I I would be completely shipwrecked in that." And now uh like recently, you know, like a few years ago, I finished it and the whailing passages became my favorite. And uh and uh and I I I realize how much you change as a as a reader.

[Gilbert Cruz]: Is there one book that you would be okay with never being adapted into film or never being adapted again into film?

[Guillermo del Toro]: I think a guy that is very hard to adapt but very rewarding is really Bradbury. Bradbury his style is fools you as something you can past. you know, he's he he he the way he uses adjectives in an evocative way seems to be something that you can do, quote unquote, you can, you know, and when you're a young writer, you say, well, I'm going to write in the style of, yeah, sure.

[Gilbert Cruz]: I have to ask this question. I is it true that the first movie that you ever saw or that you recall seeing was the Lawrence Olivier version of Weathering Heights?

[Guillermo del Toro]: 100%. Believe it or not is full circle for me because I saw it with my mother in in a cinema downtown that is now a parking lot. Uh-huh. Uh and and and uh I remember falling there's something very victory childhood. I fell asleep on my mother's lap and I woke up to a storm, you know, in the moors or something very dramatic and uh and and I think it made me who I am. So the fact that the creature is is now in eyes is in the best word synthetically uh powerful.