Guillermo Del Toro, Troy Nixey Interview, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

Producer/co-writer Guillermo del Toro and director Troy Nixey presented an exciting first look at their new horror film “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” at San Diego’s Comic Con last weekend. Then, they sat down with us at a press conference to talk about the upcoming thriller which is scheduled to open in theaters on January 21, 2011.

“Don't Be Afraid of the Dark” is a hair-raising, spine-chilling tale of horror about a little girl (Bailee Madison) who is sent to live with her father (Guy Pearce) and his girlfriend (Katie Holmes) in the old mansion they are renovating, only to unwittingly unleash malevolent creatures bent on destroying all of them.

Guillermo and Troy talked to us about their collaboration, why they decided not to do the film in 3D, and how they sought to retain the best parts of the original film in their version. They also discussed the casting process, how they handled the hard “R” they received from the ratings board, and why they’re fascinated by fear. Guillermo also told us some entertaining stories about his ghostly encounters at a hotel in New Zealand while location scouting for “The Hobbit” and at the Langham Hotel in London while working on “Hellboy 2.” Here’s what they had to say:

Q: Troy, can you talk about how your collaboration with Guillermo began?

Troy: It started actually when Guillermo saw my short film (“Latchkey’s Lament”) that I had done. He was familiar with my comic book work and he’s always had a public email address so when I first started working on my short, I sent him a couple of stills from it. He responded back right away and was very encouraging which was nice. It took awhile. It took me five years to finish this short. There were a lot of FX shots in it. Through a friend, Nick Nunziata, who’s actually a producer on the movie, he ripped the short and put it up on an FTP site. Guillermo was in prep on “Hellboy 2” and he basically forced Guillermo to watch it. From there, I got an email back saying he really liked the short. Nick phoned right away and said “He wants to talk to you.” So he gave me his phone number. You have to keep in mind that Guillermo is one of my directing idols so all of this was pretty fantastic and amazing what was going on. He said he really enjoyed the short. He had a script that he co-wrote with Matthew Robbins and he wondered if I’d be interested in directing it. So that was a bit of a no brainer. He sent the script along and the script he sent was absolutely fantastic.

Q: What was your method of working with Guillermo? Did he give you complete freedom when you were shooting?

Troy: No, Guillermo was there at times. It was a very collaborative kind of structure. They were very protective of me in the sense that I had fantastic DPs and a fantastic Production Designer, so really working with all these people to elevate the material and there was such a fantastic script and such a deep, rich script. And, to have someone like Guillermo there when I needed him to bounce ideas off of or whatever was fantastic. He would come over at times because we shot in Melbourne so it was a very short flight.

Q: How do you think 3D is affecting comic books?

Troy: It’s interesting in terms of coming from comic books to movies. You are creating in a complete vacuum when you are doing comics, especially if you’re writing them. It’s just you. You’re writing, you’re working on a page. So, to be able then to essentially rip out those images from the page in your mind and put them into a movie, I don’t know, it’s funny, some will say it just came naturally but making movies is an art. Because of the people that are involved like the Production Designer and my DP was so wonderful, it just was sort of a natural thing that came out and obviously working and having done a short, which is really ripped from that kind of imagery that I created, the storytelling is there. I mean, I’ve always been a storyteller. I love movies and I got into comics because movies weren’t really an option at the time when I graduated. So, there was always the love of films first before comics and so when the opportunity arose to do that, I honestly feel like I’m much more comfortable in movies that I was in comics.

Q: Can you talking about the process of choosing the cast, especially actors like Katy Holmes and Guy Pearce?

Troy: We went to them very early – Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce and Bailee Madison. Bailee was probably the toughest one. I think we saw every girl age 8 to 9 in North America. She came along towards the end. She had been working on another movie. When she walked into the room, you just knew immediately there was something about her. She’s just so engaging and so talented. Bringing Katie on, she has this maternal instinct that is so strong. I think she is going to really surprise a lot of people in this movie. It was a risk for her to take something like this and the level that she brought to this movie was [amazing]. It makes your job easier when you have an actor like that who gets the character and she just gives it to you every day. And Guy Pearce is a consummate professional who is so prepared. He’s just a fantastic actor to work with. I mean, they were all different in terms of their approach but they just worked together so well.

Q: It’s getting harder and harder to scare an audience in a sophisticated way without it seeming fake and artificial. What was your agenda for the film especially when you have a savvy audience?

Troy: I think that it’s a bit of a throwback to movies that they hadn’t seen in a long time anyway. So there’s a lot of people who probably aren’t even used to that kind of movie and I think they do what I call “earn scares,” that you are creating a tension and you build up to it and build up to it and build up to it. I think that the scares in our movie build off of each other so that the next scare is even worse. When people are watching it and they start murmuring and squirming in their chairs, you know that it’s resonating. They’re almost building that scare up, like they’re waiting for it. I think that that’s just human instinct. So, getting that first one in and showing them what it is, they are able to move along with you and build off of those. I think people really enjoy being scared.

Q: Guillermo mentioned when he was writing the script that he didn’t want to touch things that he felt had worked in the original. What was it that you felt worked well in the original film that you wanted to preserve and make sure made it into your film?

Troy: Just getting back to the scares, I think there is something inherently creepy about these tiny little things. I think that we were very respectful of that. There’s a lot in the original that works, that is so strong, and why rock the boat?

Guillermo: What I loved about the original was the fact that these things were not big and scary. They were small and wickedly smart, and they relied on the fact that no one could see them and no one would believe they existed. But, the fact is, when I saw this movie as a kid, it became such a powerful movie. It left such an imprint in my imagination. Years later, I saw it again as an adult and I realized that it must happen to you now and then, when you re-read a book or re-watch a movie, you realize there’s a second movie that you entirely made up in all those years, that is not the movie you originally saw, and I thought there was room for that movie to exist. I started writing the movie originally in 1998 with Matthew Robbins to direct myself. One of the things I loved about it was to create these creatures the way they were in the original because that worked.

Q: Troy, being a comic book creator, what were some of your personal artistic influences going into your profession and how did they affect the way you visualized this film?

Troy: Coming from a world where you are essentially creating worlds from scratch, I think from the color palette to the design of the house, working in terms of wardrobe with the characters, the juxtaposition of trying to force something that doesn’t work in the context of what a house likes, I really did fixate on color. I was a color Nazi when I was working on this movie. Here’s how I broke it down: the house is all warm like autumn colors; the outside world was all cool colors. So anytime you see anyone in the outside world that wasn’t Katie or Bailee, they’re wearing blues and grays and purples. You watch. That all comes from years of working comics and design and being able to translate that to movies.

Q: What was it about Troy Nixey’s work that inspired you to bring him onboard for this project?

Guillermo: I was a big fan of the comic books already. “Jenny Finn” was the first time I saw his work, and I lost it after an original piece of art he did of Jenny Finn in the bed with the tentacles spilling over the blanket. It’s in my house now. I wanted very much to know that guy, to know him the same way that I wanted to know Mike Mignola, for example. We met and we had a good first encounter, and then he emailed me some JPEGs of his short. I wrote him back an extensive email saying how great it looked and encouraging him to finish it. And then, when he heard we were doing “Don’t Be Afraid,” he said, “I’m going to send you that short” and I remembered how great those images were. And then I saw it, and it was entirely [realized] and a sensibility was already there of a person with a world view, and it was very skillfully directed. I really think one of the duties, if you can do it as a producer, is to produce first-time filmmakers, because I would much rather see somebody bring something new to a genre than produce something that seems safe. I think Troy had a new and fresh view on the material.

Q: You mentioned you were shooting for a PG-13 rating, but the ratings board gave you an R, did you leave the film intact, or did that give you the freedom to go back and reintroduce some ideas that you had originally left out?

Guillermo: We actually did not tamper with it after that. There was one shot, which is a gash in a hand, where I wanted some tendons to show, and we agreed to tame it down. And then we just called the effects house and said, “Bring the tendons back.” Other than that, I don’t think we did anything.

Troy: No, not really. I would say that the movie will tell you what it needs to be and I think we worked that way. The movie just became the movie. But everyone was really supportive of that cut. Everyone said, “No, we don’t want to mess with the movie.” So yeah, beyond that one FX shot, there wasn’t any adding or subtracting.

Guillermo: But funny enough, Troy made it seem like it’s normal, but it’s completely abnormal that this happened. You have a PG-13 movie contractually with a studio, and then the time comes and you get a hard R and they tell you that you cannot change anything because it’s pervasive scariness, which is like talking about morbid obesity in a candy store. It’s completely impossible to solve. And then, the studio supported us. They said, “Leave it alone.” That was like a jaw-dropping moment for me, because I know, but it was beautiful to get that. It was like a badge of honor.

Q: At this point in your career, which area do you feel the most pressure – directing, writing or producing – and which one do you enjoy the most?

Guillermo: It depends on the project. The hardest thing to do without a doubt is to write. Without a doubt, the hardest job is to fill that blank page. That’s the first step. That’s the blueprint. That’s the music on the paper. And then, I think the most beautiful part of the process, for me, is editing because all the bullshit is gone. You have one movie in your head. You put it on the page. You have another movie in your head as the director. Now, all you have is the movie that is left. It’s no longer the budget or the actor that never shows up or the studio that is pressuring you. You started thinking, “I’m going to build a mansion with a hundred rooms and a hundred windows” and then you end up with five rooms, five windows and a bunch of bricks – and that’s the editing. The reality is there and you build what you want and that’s the most joyful process. Producing is great because frankly you learn. I think Troy made choices in the movie that would be completely against my instinct and that were entirely different than what I would do and they worked and they were teaching me the same way as when Antonio Bayona in “The Orphanage” made his own proposal of what a horror movie was. I would have never thought it would work and now I’ve just produced a movie in Spain called “Los Ojos de Julia” (“Julia’s Eyes”) and Guillem Morales is the director and again I came back and said “But why this? Why that way?” and then I see the movie and go “Wow, that’s why!” I’m learning. You learn a lot as a producer.

Q: What do you think of the 3D phenomenon and do you think it’s here to stay? Was there any pressure from the studio to make this a 3D film?

Troy: It’s such a classic movie in terms of that inspiration from the 70s. There wasn’t any pressure at all that I felt on our end to do a post 3D version of it.

Guillermo: We did an investigation of 3D because the studio did ask how much it would cost to be 3D. This movie was done for a fraction of the cost because we wanted to preserve the ending we wanted. We wanted to preserve the hardcore stuff we wanted. If we went over budget or we went too big, we were going to start losing those freedoms. It’s a low-budget movie for the size of production it is, and when the studio heard the number that it would require to shoot it in 3D, they said, “Keep it in 2D.” Mind you, it’s a combination of very fortunate economic timing and artistic integrity. 3D, I love it and I want to do it. I was not in favor of it for “The Hobbit” personally because, at that time, I thought it needed to be completely cohesive with the trilogy. But, that’s the only property in which I was not inclined to explore it. I think the way I do compositions, the way I do dynamics in the frame, is perfectly suited for 3D. I want to do it and the next movie I do will be in 3D.

Q: What is the essence of fear and what scares you?

Troy: It’s funny because I was asked that earlier – what scares me. I think that what scares me scares everyone. It’s just the uncertainty of not knowing and I think that that works in terms of what this movie is. There’s this little girl in this horrible situation of not knowing what’s going to happen to her. She’s got nowhere to turn, no one who will listen to her, and it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. I think that’s something that we can all relate to – basically being backed into a corner and not knowing where you’re going to go.

Guillermo: I think the essence of fear -- there are only two “on” buttons for fear, and only two, in any permutation you want. One is when something that shouldn’t be is, meaning a presence. And, the other one is an absence. It can work with someone walking into an empty corridor and something that should be there is not, or something that shouldn’t be there is. That’s it. I can show you a scene of a woman in a bedroom and a 70-year-old man walks in. Without context, it’s not scary. But, if that is her dead father, it’s scary. So, the second thing about what fear is, is those two switches in context. Without context, like humor, horror doesn’t work. Frankly, what scares me in real life is politicians, corporations and people that think they know what the world should be. People with certainty scare the shit out of me. When people say, “This is the way it should be,” I go, “Holy fuck!” Those things scare me. With supernatural things, I have heard ghosts, but I’ve never seen ghosts. The last ghost I heard was in New Zealand. We were scouting for “The Hobbit.” We went into a haunted room in a hotel that was famous for having a haunted woman. Of course, I asked for the haunted room and I told everyone in the party, “Don’t come fucking with me at midnight.”

Q: Was that the same room that Peter Jackson saw a ghost in?

Guillermo: No, no. Peter saw one in his old apartment in front of the Opera House. He saw a very famous apparition that is called The Screaming Woman. That is different. This is a nearby tunnel. I took the room and, at about midnight or 1 a.m., I started hearing a guy screaming. It was coming from a window in the bathroom, I opened the window, but there was nothing but a narrow alley there, and I go, “Oh, fuck!” So, I went back to the bed, and then I started hearing a women sobbing and howling, and I go out and it comes from the same place. The rest of the night, I watched episodes of The Unit. I was so fucking scared that I needed some real men around me.

Q: Troy’s work is so stylized and artistic and reminds me of your work. Do you think that was intentional? Does it reflect a similar sensibility or like of things that inspire both of you?

Troy: Honestly, he’s a huge influence on me, but I think that at the same time the things that influenced both of us are very similar as well. You watch my short and I think you can see some of Del Toro in it as well. I think it’s just a similar like of things, a similar desire of things that inspire us.

Guillermo: We had the same fucked up childhood. The other idea was I believe, as a producer and producer/director, your duty is to create a beautiful horror film, you know, something that really resonates as in “The Orphanage” or this or any of the other movies. They need to have a really beautiful, valid aesthetic proposal, and Troy had it in spades.

Troy: Right away I made a decision, because most horror movies take place in houses that are old, rundown houses, and I said “No.” This house is going to be beautiful in the daytime, just a place where an audience wants to be, so that when you start introducing those scares, then it makes the audience wonder “This is a really nice house. Why is this stuff happening here?” And so, it does bring a richer sort of back[story]…you’re waiting to hear the creaking things and broken windows and stuff, you’re waiting for something to happen. But you’re seeing this beautiful home and you don’t know when something is going to happen.

Guillermo: For example, the nursery or the child’s room is entirely an offensive. It looks like something out of a Bed, Bath and Beyond catalog.

Troy: That was intentional as well because the idea was that this little girl coming from Los Angeles is kind of this little hip kid. Her daddy doesn’t know her very well and his new girlfriend has never met her and they create this room that they think this little 9-year-old girl would love and it’s not at all.

Guillermo: What happens is there’s a particular object which is a stuffed bear that becomes very menacing.

Q: People usually run away from fear and view it as something negative, but yet they always want to go to the movies and see a great horror film. On the other hand, you embrace it and want to create that experience for audiences. What does that say about you guys and why are you so fascinated by fear?

Guillermo: My favorite novel in the world is Frankenstein. I’m going to misquote it horribly, but the monster says, “I have such love in me, more than you can imagine. But, if I cannot provoke it, I will provoke fear.” As a child that was disenfranchised from everything, that was in a world that was the wrong size, run by the wrong people and the wrong morale and the wrong rules, I felt completely outside of that and I wanted some measure of control, and the measure of control I found was fear. The reality is that I feel that fear is a very spiritual emotion and that in a world where we are so pragmatic and so materialistic, fear is the only emotion that allows even a sophisticated person with an iPhone and an iPad and a car and cable to believe in something beyond. We are such skeptics that we find it corny to believe in God and angels or a spiritual afterlife, but a moment of fear makes our spirit so vulnerable that it allows us to believe in something beyond that and it’s very beautiful.

Troy: For me too, there’s that feeling that you have once the fear is gone. I think that’s why people skydive. Once that fear has dissipated, it’s that euphoric energy that your body created and there’s something very stimulating about that. I’m sure that’s what drives audiences to go and see scary movies because they can feel that after the scare is gone. When you see a really scary movie, you come out of that movie, you’re like “Yeah!” You have all that surgency (?). It’s great to be able to give people that feeling.

Guillermo: It’s also a boundary, and there’s nothing that defines who you are more than boundaries, whether you cross them or not, in every aspect of your life. So, horror is a really great boundary.

Q: Are you afraid of something?

Guillermo: As I said, mainly real life. But, I do seek ghosts and I would love to see one, but I would definitely crap my pants. (Laughs) But I’m still going to look. When we were doing Hellboy 2, Mike Mignola, Danny Elfman and I … There’s a hotel in London, a very famous one called the Langham Hotel and there are two rooms in that hotel that are haunted. One is haunted by a lover that committed suicide, and the other one by a man that strangled his wife. I booked the wrong room. I wanted to book the room with the guy who threw himself out the window, but I booked the one with the strangler. Mike, Danny and I said, “We’re going to spend the night here. Two of us guys are going to go to the bar, while the other guy will stay 30 minutes alone [in the room] with the lights off.” We set the rules  -- no knocking, no moaning, no bullshit. And then, we hear “Woooo!,” and it was Danny Elfman’s fucking ringtone. My testicles dropped three stories. Those two seconds that it took for me to realize it was his fucking ringtone I tried to insert his iPhone where the sun don’t shine. That was very scary. The rest of the night, nothing happened.

Q: “The Orphanage” was such a beautiful movie to begin with, why remake it?

Guillermo: As a producer, I came on board and the first thing I did was I read the screenplay. I talked to Bayona and I told him my own take on the screenplay and he said, “That’s not the way I see the movie.” I said to him, “Fine, then I’ll produce it but the thing I want to do is remake it.”

Q: You mentioned there was a project you said you wanted to do next. Was that “The Haunted Mansion”?

Guillermo: It will be. It just has not been announced yet.

Q: I know you want to do “Frankenstein” and you’re a huge fan of Bernie Wrightson, is there a chance that you’ll try to incorporate Bernie Wrightson’s style of Frankenstein into your version?

Guillermo: Bernie Wrightson designed our “Frankenstein” already. He came and designed it. We executed it. We have all the pieces. They have been painted. We’re doing a test on Doug Jones very, very soon. Doug is the monster. We’re going to do the test on him very, very soon. We’re applying it and filming it. Bernie designed the creature and he will be the main conceptual designer of it.

Q: Have you seen the Eddie Murphy version?

Guillermo: Yes. I saw it with my daughters. I don’t like to talk about other people’s work. I just think there’s room for another one. It’s entirely different from the one I’m doing.

Q: Do you think we’ll see Doug Jones in “The Hobbit”?

Guillermo: I have no idea anymore. When I was in charge, yes.

Q: Will there be more “Hell Boy”? Yes or no?

Guillermo: I would love to. Yes.