‘Pinocchio’ Comes to Life After Decades in the Dark and It’s Cut Out For Oscar Gold
Guillermo del Toro is a great many things: a father, a son, a masterful storyteller, and an advocate for art.
Toni Gonzales
Guillermo del Toro is a great many things: a father, a son, a masterful storyteller, and an advocate for art.
He is also incredibly patient.
He brought all of those attributes to “Pinocchio.”
“I’ve been making movies for 30 years. And I think we would all agree that it took half my life to get this one made,” Guillermo del Toro tells a Los Angeles audience seated for his latest film. “Everybody said no. For more than a decade,” he told the crowd at the film’s AFI premiere in November that included us. That is until Netflix said yes.
“Pinocchio” may have been years in the making with an at times uncertain home, but there was one absolute that remained for the director from the beginning, “It was done without any compromise,” says Guillermo. “I guaranteed to all the artists involved that we would have no studio notes, no previews and no one would f*ck with us.”
“Animation is Art. Animation is Film”
Guillermo del Toro
A few weeks later on a wet and dreary New York morning Guillermo and fellow director of “Pinocchio” Mark Gustafson are on the East Coast. They are in the city for two reasons: to open up an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art called “Crafting Pinocchio,” and to talk to a select group of critics about their latest labor of love.
A love that began decades ago. “My fascination goes back to childhood. I saw it [“Pinocchio”] when I was very young with my mother,” Guillermo says as he’s seated steps away from the new exhibit. “And I thought, this is the only movie I’ve seen in my life [at the age of seven] where it actually shows how scary it is to be a child.”
That feeling stayed with del Toro through his adulthood, through his professional accomplishments and award winning accolades. And was certainly present at a dinner many years ago with Gabriel García Márquez in Brazil. Márquez, who is himself a man of many accolades including the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature (the only Colombian to ever win the prize), and author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” said something that still sticks with del Toro. “He said to me, ‘There are about 10 to 12 figures in literature that don’t belong just to one country or one person. They are the vocabulary of human imagination.’”
Guillermo goes on, “He said, ‘That’s characters that even if you don’t know the novel, you know the story.’” Think along the lines of Frankenstein, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, and yes, Pinocchio.
“And he said, ‘They can represent anything.’” Guillermo continues to speak Márquez’s words. “They can represent the future, the past, family science, politics.’ He said, ‘They’re completely open to the voice of the singer.’” Put simply, Guillermo was ready to sing like a canary with a new story on an older character.
PUTTING HIS ‘SONG’ IN “PINOCCHIO”
As masterful as he is a storyteller, he is equally fierce in the belief that things in life come to you when they are meant to, even movies. Referring to “Pinocchio’s” on again, off again status for over a decade. “It happened at the right time. I think on a personal level, I was able to deal with how I was failed as a son and how to live with that imperfection,” he continues. “And see my father as a human being, as a guy that happened to be my father. But, he couldn’t fathom that role. No one can. The father is a figure that surpasses biology and physicality. It’s a shadow of gigantic proportions.”
Another of the several stanzas that del Toro sang into the boy made of wood.
“You have Pinocchio learning to be a boy and all the other stories, and here is Geppetto learning to be a father. And that is far more valuable I think,” says del Toro.
If Pinocchio healed the heart of the two time Academy Award winning director, then he along with Mark Gustafson used their minds to bring the beloved wooden boy life on screen. They did it using stop animation and the numbers are dizzying. “Pinocchio” took an army of animators working eight to nine hours a day over 1,000 days to shoot. “There’s a famous story of Ray Harryhausen (an animator) animating the multiple heads of the Hydra, and he worked alone,” says del Toro. “And he got a phone call, and he answered, ‘Wrong number,” and hung up. He didn’t remember where he was. He had to start over! So that’s an animator for you.”
“And to be completely candid, every f*cking shot was the hardest”
Guillermo del Toro on shooting “Pinocchio”
The process was painstaking to put it mildly. Add to that the multitude of nuances brought to each character to life. “There is a saying which I quoted yesterday by Hayao Miyazaki, ‘If you animate the ordinary, it will be extraordinary,’” says del Toro. He and the entire team were unrelenting when it came to detail. “Most of our puppets have mechanical faces. So the animators are manipulating them, you know, literally physically one frame at a time with the little allen wrenches going in ears at the tops of the heads and then pushing little paddles around,” Gustafson says.
On his side, Guillermo says animation is best when you do the following. “Animate silence, animate age, animate pains, animate the characters listening, not just the characters talking.” If a scene wasn’t working, it would be reshot – frame by frame. “And to be completely candid, every f*cking shot was the hardest”
“ I think one of those rules that really became very important to us was this notion of animating failed acts to give the world some real sense of reality,” says Gustafson. “You know, like reaching for (motions grabbing an invisible object in front of him). He comes up and he reaches for a pencil and he — no (motions reaching for another pencil).. Oh, that one’s not it. This one. Okay, this one. So all that stuff is very hard to do. It adds days, literally, to a shot.”
A SMALL ADD MAKES FOR BIG SURPRISE
While every frame in the film was meticulously crafted and planned, other elements that were not ended up being a bit of good fortune. “Ewan (McGregor) was a surprise,” says Guillermo. “I was thinking of another actor for that part, and the studio said, ‘Would you try Ewan?’” he recalls. “They said, ‘Let’s try him. He’s a great actor. What’s the worst that can happen?’ Well, the best that could happen is I think when we started hearing it, I turned to Mark and I said,”Am I crazy or is the cricket now the star of the film?”
Gustafson nods in agreement, “It was great ’cause we actually wound up sort of expanding his role when we saw how charismatic the cricket could be!”Guillermo adds, “We started saying, let’s put him in this scene and in that scene and in that scene. Pat McHale (screenplay co-writer) and I were saying, ‘Should we kill him?’ And we thought it could be great, and then we said, no. It’s actually beautiful if the cricket and Geppetto learn from Pinocchio, you know?” he says. Yet another note that’s added to Guillermo’s song of a wooden boy.
A MEXICAN MELODY HEADED TO THE OSCARS?
“Pinocchio” is receiving well deserved Oscar talk, and not just in the animation category. Early buzz has it in the Academy Awards Best Picture race. Certainly in the Best Director category where “Bardo’s” director (also a Netflix title) Alejandro G. Iñárritu is also said to be in the running. Not too shabby for the two Mexican directors and longtime friends. Both of whom have earned Best Director Oscars (del Toro for 2017’s “The Shape of Water”and Iñárritu for 2015’s “The Revenant”) along with fellow filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón who won most recently for 2018’s “Roma.”
“Because my roots are in Mexico, but my branches extend to the sky.”
Director Guillermo del Toro
“I actually loved it. When Alfonso or Alejandro make some success, I feel like I’m getting it. I love them like brothers. And I think when I was a kid, there was only one model of filmmaker from Mexico, one single model. You were dictated to do just this type of movie,” he says.
The notion is beyond comprehension to del Toro. “The language of liberation was used to oppress,” he says in a tone that is just unthinkable. “I disobeyed.” Then adds, “Because my roots are in Mexico, but my branches extend to the sky.”
“The first level of representation is if you’re in charge, don’t f*ck it up!”
Director Guillermo del Toro
In other words as Guillermo del Toro says on this wet morning in New York and on so many other occasions in the past, “Representation can be done in many, many ways. The first level of representation is if you’re in charge, don’t f*ck it up!”
“Pinocchio” stars Ewan McGregor, Finn Wolfhard, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton and Gregory Mann along with an army of animators who (rightfully so) are credited right along the cast.
“Pinocchio” is streaming on Netflix now and is in select theaters across the nation.