Would you share your popcorn with Guillermo del Toro?
The Oscar-winning filmmaker was admittedly a little hungry Saturday night as he and Jacob Elordi arrived at an IMAX screening of Frankenstein in central London.
The director and his Creature were invited to the British Film Institute (BFI)’s IMAX theater to detail the making of del Toro’s spin on the horror classic, which hit Netflix Nov. 7 after a limited theatrical release.
After gratefully accepting a handful of popcorn from the fans in front of him, del Toro spoke about how he came to love Frankenstein and why this story in particular has shaped him as an artist.
In the wake of the enormous news that Netflix will acquire Warner Bros. in a deal worth $82.7 billion on Friday — and with fears swirling around how this will shape the industry and future of theater-going — del Toro said “there’s no substitute” for seeing films on the big screen.
“Make no mistake: fairy tales [and] horror stories are parables,” he began to interviewer Edith Bowman. “They speak of things we cannot name. That’s their power. They speak of things the way a song speaks when the music and the lyrics make no sense. That’s the power of cinema. And I think the beauty of seeing it here is you have a big screen showing big ideas. For people that see them on their phone… it takes 38,000 of those little things to form a screen,” he added.
“There’s no substitute. I’m very happy that you’re here. Of course, you can see it at home, and the food will be perhaps better, [but] you will have this experience collectively, all of you.”
Guillermo del Toro and Jacob Elordi at a BFI IMAX screening of ‘Frankenstein.’
Millie Turner/BFI
He continued, stressing the human-made nature of the movie: “We wove the fabric. The fabric on the main characters is not bought in a store. We made it, we wove it, we printed it, we aged it, we tinted it. The embroidery in the veils is done by hand. Every veil is embroidered by hand… Everything is done to sustain this feeling that you’re seeing something thematically and artistically done by a group [of people].”
“[We’re] not trying to make eye candy, [but] eye protein,” he laughed.
Del Toro revealed that, upon watching James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), he felt “struck by God.” The director said: “I finally understood what religion meant after so many years as a Catholic — Frankenstein’s Creature made sense to me.”
He likened the feeling of finishing the film, a project symbolic of his life’s work, as an experience similar to postpartum depression. “I feel like one of those fishes that lays the eggs and dies,” he laughs. “Now, what the fuck do I do? But that’s not bad. I mean, postpartum depression happened… Everything on all my movies led to this. If any of you know my movies — Shape of Water, Cronos, Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth — all of them are practice for this movie in many, many ways.”
Elordi heaped praise on his director as he spoke about the significance of embodying such an iconic character of the horror genre. “It’s been my intention to do a performance like this since I was 13 years old,” the Australian actor began.
When asked how he prepared for each take, he replied: “It was probably a combination of the focus of that deliberate effort combined with somebody that facilitates it, that indulges that intensity towards the process, that tells me that I’m doing the right thing and that this is worth spending a lifetime building.”
“This is the only way to make movies — by hand,” Elordi declared, “and it’s the only thing that should be digested. It’s the only thing that’s healthy for an audience, I think, and as an actor, that’s the only universe that I want to be a part of, one where every single person is an artist… The idea that art and creativity is life or death… Guillermo gave me the wind in my sails to keep making movies until I’m dead.”
Del Toro added, chuckling: “It’ll take a long time.” As he departed, he teased audiences with one hint as to what’s coming next: “The next one is stop motion. Back to stop motion,” said the film legend, whose last project in stop motion animation was 2022’s Pinocchio.
Frankenstein is streaming globally on Netflix.