“AN EVOLUTIONARY LEAP. Evolution’s on their side.” This comment by Guillermo in his Mimic notebook sums up his second film’s key question. In Mimic (1997), New York entomologist Dr. Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino, fresh off winning her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite) inadvertently alters cockroaches’ genetic code so that they evolve into six-foot-tall creatures that mimic the appearance of human beings.
For Guillermo, Mimic had an ironically apt title, as it’s ostensibly about a creature trying to imitate something utterly alien to its nature. This was Guillermo’s fledgling attempt to shoot a studio film as a studio director, to assume the role of a commercially minded technician while maintaining his artistic core and instincts. Like many of the bugs in the film, Guillermo got squashed, in this case by the studio machine. Eventually, the film was taken away from him and recut, with sequences added by another director. For Guillermo, it was a soul-crushing experience.
In the end, he learned vital lessons for the future. Afterward, he would consistently favor artistic choices over commercial ones as he built a singular and successful career. “This is a struggle you have as an artist,” Guillermo notes. “Hellboy in Hellboy II, when he shoots the elemental, he’s shooting it because he wants people to like him. He goes, ‘Well, okay, I’m going to do the right thing for these guys to like me because they don’t like me.’ And he comes out and delivers the baby like, ‘I did a great thing,’ and they boo him and they throw stones at him. As an artist, I’ve gone through that. You say, ‘Okay, I’m going to do what people like.’ I go and do a commercial movie like Mimic, and it’s a huge hurt in my life. Then when you go and do the hard choice, there’s a reward in there.”
Thankfully, in 2011, Guillermo released a “director’s cut” of Mimic that gives audiences his version of the film (or as close to it as it’s possible to get now). Filled with unforgettable images and powerful scenes that were not in the theatrical release, Guillermo’s version includes a stunning opening sequence in a church hospital, dreamily white, its long arched hall narrow and high, with rows of patients’ beds—all children—draped in opaque fabric lit from within, like embryonic sacs or insect chrysalises.
“It was the first day of shooting of Mimic, and I thought it was a very beautiful, a very striking image,” Guillermo recalls. “It was the first image that got me into deeper trouble because some of the producers hated that image from the start. They said, ‘It doesn’t look like a real hospital. It looks like something off another planet. What are you doing? Are you making an art film out of a B-movie bug picture?’ And I said to them, ‘Well, I think they are one and the same. I think that the movie needs to be sumptuous, look beautiful, but have a real emotional sense,’ and so on and so forth. It was a losing proposition from the get-go.”
With Mimic’s restoration, one can perceive how incredibly beautiful the film is when considered shot by shot, with its rich golds and blues, its textures of brick and coursing rain. Restored to a lyrical and patient pacing, it’s now unmistakably a Guillermo del Toro film, exhibiting his attention to detail and his tendency for observed, held moments.
Even without these amendments, many of Guillermo’s dominant themes and motifs feature prominently in Mimic, notably his fascination with mechanisms and insects, which are presented almost like living mechanisms. By cloaking his creatures in protective camouflage as faux humans, Guillermo urges us to consider humans as organic mechanisms, too—this visual alignment becoming a paradox that mixes physical sameness with spiritual difference.
“Insects are really well-engineered by nature,” Guillermo observes. “They are awe-inspiring, but I don’t find them admirable in their function, socially or spiritually. And I think that’s why we fear them, because they have a complete lack of emotion. They are the true living automatons of nature. That’s why they work as symbols of so many things. . . . They’re completely alien.”
The character of the little boy Chuy (Alexander Goodwin) also raises this question of what defines humanness. Due to his autism, Chuy is unlike other people, and at first he quietly observes the giant insects and reacts with curiosity, rather than disquiet or fear. The film itself takes a similarly ambivalent perspective on the creatures, showing them in both understandable and repulsive ways.
As in Cronos, central to the story is the emotionally moving child/grandparent relationship between Chuy and the shoeshine man Manny (Giancarlo Giannini). The other main relationship is between Susan Tyler and her husband, Dr. Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam). While the human couple struggles with issues of fertility, the faux-human insects have no such difficulties or doubts and multiply at a staggering rate.
Interestingly, it was because of Mimic that the public got its first glimpse of Guillermo’s notebooks. Guillermo and Mira Sorvino were on the Charlie Rose show promoting the film. “Mira said, ‘You should show him your notebooks,’“ Guillermo recalls. “And I showed the book for the first time in that interview. I actually made a fool of myself. I think they edited it out, but I was really nervous about Rose putting a thumbprint on it. I’m very anal-retentive about my stuff. I was telling Charlie Rose, ‘Oh, give it back to me.’ And I’m like this stupid guy who had no idea how to behave in media or whatever.
Judas breed “nymph” concept by TyRuben Ellingson.
“People reacted very well on seeing the origins of those things, and eventually the notebooks became a really strong point of contact with the people that like my movies. However small that group is, it’s a very devoted, very loyal group that likes the freaky stuff I do, and they love the notebooks.”
In the notebook pages that follow, we see Guillermo first wrestling with some of the key notions and images for Mimic before the film was actively in production. Most spectacular and central of all is the image of the man prostrating himself before the godlike figure of the man-shaped insect, a shaft of sunlight sweeping diagonally across them from on high, as if God were passing judgment. This single image presents the core atmosphere of the film—mystery, awe, the unknown, the mystical, and the subtly horrific.
The Mimic notebook pages make clear that light is very important to Guillermo, as are dramatic tableaux. On certain pages, Guillermo might weigh a certain shot, a segment of storyboard, a snatch of dialogue, or how the mechanism of the insect’s face makes it appear human. Interspersed are Guillermo’s thoughts about other projects, especially Mephisto’s Bridge, an unmade film based on the novel Spanky by Christopher Fowler.
Then, like the clouds parting to reveal an epiphany, two words appear that sum up the entire structure and theme of Mimic: Doomsday/Rebirth.
Sketch by del Toro illustrating several key components of the mimic’s design—the human-like silhouette, the mode of movement, and a trail of steam, the last of which was not implemented.
• GDT: This was my first illustration [opposite] of the mimic before the film started. I wanted to make them God’s favorite creatures, angels. I wanted very much to indicate that God supported our downfall as a species.
The idea was that people in the sewers, the mole people, worshipped the mimics; they really loved them, and they aided them, and the insects didn’t kill them. It was the same idea with Chuy, the autistic kid. I wanted to have him not pose a threat to them, so they wouldn’t kill him.
At the end of the movie, I was hoping you would see the albino silhouette [below, left], which would move like a man, move exactly like a naked man. It was going to come close to the character and say, “Go. Leave.” That was the scariest possible ending for me. But I think Dimension wanted explosions. So we ended up having an explosion rather than an explosion of ideas.
A concept of the final facial architecture for the mimic, which was to be uncannily close to that of a human being, even when seen up close.
MSZ: And this image here [above] says “traced over suggestion.” What was traced over?
GDT: The idea was that you would be able to trace the body of a human over the insect silhouette. It’s almost like if you backlit this, you could see the wings, but if it was silhouetted, it would look like a man. And if you looked a little closer, it would seem like the guy had his hands in his pockets, but in reality it was just a bump in the wing. Back then CG was not that advanced, so we couldn’t do that on our budget, which was about $30 million.
And I love the idea, which we also couldn’t do, of steam escaping through the vents on the side of the head. The mimics were going to be super hot, because they were making a huge effort.
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 183
* Paper Bag Man prays to the Dark Angel.
* An evolutionary leap. Evolution’s on their SIDE
* A dog bites her to keep quiet.
* The onion without smell, smell without onion.
* ACTOR: Jhon C. Reilly: snub-nosed, rough.
* They’ve dibloxivuanded poxes: thougt so.
* POKING TRASH with stick.
* It’s FAKE POTATOES: TASTES just as good.
* Neon Sign:
JESUS SAVES ?
* I should’ve STARTED when I was younger (she’s 30!).
I’M MADLY IN LOVE WITH GUILLERMO’S FILMS. He holds to Elmore Leonard’s axiom, “Don’t ever write a villain you don’t like.” It makes for terrific drama when you’re not sure who you should be rooting for. Especially when you manage to identify—even in some small way—with the bad guy.
I think the first del Toro film that I saw was Mimic. Although it’s well known that Guillermo’s vision for the film was compromised by studio interference, there are many images from the movie that have stayed with me over the years. The idea that the “villain” of the film is not driven by evil motivations but is simply a bug that has learned to look like a man is a stunning reveal. As an audience member, you always want to ascribe an intelligence to the villain; for there to be a reason for their villainy. The cruelest trick of the natural world is that there is often no motivation for a creature’s actions save for its biological impulses. In the animal kingdom, evil is truly banal. For me, this makes the villains in Mimic even scarier.
It’s a shame that Mimic was a disappointing experience for Guillermo, but his director’s cut of the film, released in 2011, went some way to reinstating his original vision. Having worked in the movie industry as a model maker, it’s so funny to me that Hollywood is an industry where they hire people specifically for their vision and then persistently interfere with it. Fortunately for all of us, Guillermo wasn’t cowed by the experience. Quite the opposite. He’s gone on to create a powerful and singular body of work.
We first met in 2010 when I was at San Diego Comic-Con promoting MythBusters. After a sixteen-hour day, my wife, Julia, and I pulled up at our hotel to find Ron Perlman standing outside. “Look, sweetie,” I said to her, “it’s Hellboy.” In 2008 I actually walked the floor at Comic-Con in a full Hellboy costume, complete with prosthetic makeup, so needless to say I am a bit of a fan of the movie (you could say rabid). Julia pointed out that another of my heroes was standing right next to Ron—Guillermo del Toro! To this day she makes fun of the fact that I (allegedly) clambered over her to get out the door to meet him. As I was approaching, he looked at me, his ever-present smile grew twice as big, and he greeted me like an old friend. “I love your show!” he said, and gave me the biggest bear hug I’ve ever experienced. We talked briefly but enthusiastically, and as we were parting ways, he said, “Come to my man cave.”
Sketches of the human brain and heart by del Toro from Notebook 3, Page 3A.
As anyone who has seen MythBusters is aware, I too am obsessed with collecting and re-creating esoteric ephemera from movies and elsewhere, so the chance to visit Bleak House was not to be missed. I discovered, however, that I am an amateur compared to Guillermo. Bleak House is a wonder. We spent hours walking around the various rooms, trading stories, and talking about our obsessions with props and the unobtainable treasures we hope to track down or build one day.
Like Guillermo, I have a strong belief in the talismanic power of objects. Collecting and making movie props is, on one level, a way to connect with the films that inspire me. There’s a power to those objects, and my weird passion for them and the films they’re from is the engine that drives me as a maker and as a man. Feeding those passions is the engine of everything I have. Like the innate drive of the Judas bugs in Mimic, it’s simply in my nature to behave this way.
I think it’s the same for Guillermo. He spends a lot of time at Bleak House painting models and assembling pieces to put on display. Just to have them around, feeding his creativity. For us, it’s an important meditative practice. I get asked, “Why are you doing this?” and all I can say is that if I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t be nearly as happy. I also wouldn’t be me.
Sharing these passions with Guillermo has been a real joy. Since that first visit to Bleak House, we have ended up becoming patrons of each other’s collections. His enthusiasm and generosity are overwhelming and truly infectious to be around. I don’t think I’ve ever been around him when it hasn’t felt like he was having the time of his life.
BLUE NOTEBOOK PAGE 199
* Manny shining shoes in his apartment
* Someone appears by dissolve while walking along.
* Are you drunk? I—uh—oh (looks at the bottle) uh, yeah, this things, the glass is too thick.. . .
* I feel on the verge of tears, explain that 2 me. o/Could you explain to me then, why i—why I
* Shadows on paint puddle MIMIC
* Window shot droplets in FG. Foc.
* Track along a heavy textured wall “a la” nightmare
* MAGIC narrative about images without orig. AUDIO.
* Things that have been set in motion.
* Sometimes I think you don’t care . . . about anything. About image of someone who is totally distracted
* Chuy looks at a very rare and violent image (Saint Cecilia or Sacred Heart).
* Chinese man with glasses on
• MSZ: The grandfather figure in Mimic is interesting because there’s a resonance with the grandparent/grandchild relationship in Cronos.
GDT: I wanted Federico Luppi to play the character (you can see it in the art), but his English was not very good. When we talked with him, we realized he would have trouble with abundant dialogue. So we had to cut a lot of the vignettes between the grandfather and the grandson in the original screenplay. In one, he said, “This god cannot see,” and he cut his own throat. It was too much for him to see the kid that he loved sort of happily living with the insects. And the grandson didn’t react to the grandfather’s death in the script, which was doubly shocking. They were good ideas, but I don’t know if I would’ve gotten away with them even in the best of circumstances.
MSZ: That’s interesting, because in Cronos, I think of the relationship as the granddaughter observing the grandfather, as opposed to the grandfather watching the grandson.
GDT: I love the idea of somebody watching a loved one doing something unforgivable but still loving them. Or in Hellboy, I love the fact that Liz Sherman comes to terms with who she is by allowing Hellboy to be who he is. I think that’s a very beautiful love story, better than the “Beauty and the Beast” idea of the beast having to look like a prince. Instead, the princess has to accept her own bestiality so the love story can happen.
Jeremy Northam and del Toro on set. It was crucial to del Toro that Northam’s character, Dr. Peter Mann, wear glasses.
“God roach” concept by TyRuben Ellingson.
• GDT: A big, big win for me was that Jeremy [Northam] would wear glasses. The idea was that his character was a scientist—an arrogant guy who thought we could control everything. So then his glasses break, and he cannot go to the optometrist. There was a great line that we shot, when Mira Sorvino was putting the hormones all over Jeremy, and he says, “All I need is a pair of pliers.” And the problem is that they’re under the sink at home. And it just gives you an instant idea of how screwed they are. They are close to home, but the pair of pliers is just so far away. He might as well be in Moscow.
MSZ: Looking at your later work, a strong motif is the absence of eyes, including the covering up of eyes with lenses.
GDT: I like the idea, maybe because I wear glasses. But the most effective use of glasses is in Lord of the Flies, with Piggy and his broken glasses. And then you have Battleship Potemkin. Broken glasses are just a great image of downfall for me. I use it again and again. Or an aneurysm in a single eye—I love bloodshot eyes, but only on one side.
BLUE NOTEBOOK PAGE 205
* A counterfeiter quit. He couldn’t make enough money.
* LOTTIE watches Marty dance by himself.
* Martyn has an archive on LOTTIE.
* Sheets FLOAT in pool with Ray
* Ben Van Os: Orlando, Macon, Vince & Theo
* Dennis Gassner: B. Fink, Miller’s Crossing.
Jeremy’s broken glasses
* Blind, he gropes along the wall.
* No end to doubting.
* MUSIC OVER image in silence and slo-mo.
* There is no end to doubting Martyn
* Boot
* WATER drips through old planks.
* Bewitched, MARTYN watches his heater (or the hospital’s)
Electric resistance
BLUE NOTEBOOK PAGE 206
Del Toro wanted the human authorities that secure the subway to wear gas masks, rendering them disturbingly similar in appearance to the mimics.
Keyframe elaborating on this resemblance by TyRuben Ellingson.
• MSZ: What was this image of the crutch for [opposite, top]?
GDT: I’d been wanting to do an artificial limb since Cronos, to show the inhuman elements of a human character. I like the idea of showing how imperfect mankind is. The insects in Mimic were all organic, but mankind needed glasses, artificial limbs. The mimics are the perfect ones; not us.
That’s why I tried to populate the church with statues covered in plastic, almost cocooned, like the eggs of a cockroach, which are translucent. I work instinctively by finding elements that rhyme, and I just organize them in my movies as elements that echo each other, not necessarily intellectualizing the resemblances. I think that the whole of art can be summed up in the two concepts of symmetry and asymmetry. And I am very attracted to playing with both. I love symmetric images. But I also love the asymmetry of a design, like one broken glass, one bloodshot eye, one missing arm.
On Mimic, I was very into symmetry and wanted to have the guys who secure the place, the ones who wear the gas masks, look a little like the insects. So here you see me playing with that visual rhyme and the question of who is more human, the insects or the guys? Then there is this composition where I put Chuy between two insects. It’s like the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. I wanted to put Chuy in the middle and make it look like a religious icon of a holy family of the future.
Illustration from Jaime’s sketchbook by Tanja Wahlbeck.
The ghost Santi (Andreas Muñoz).
Sketch of Santi by del Toro.
Storyboard illustrations of Santi.
The undetonated bomb by Carlos Gimènez.