JA here. So I saw Pan's Labyrinth last night - not gonna review it here, this is Nathaniel's rightful place for reviews (though I may've posted a lil' something over at MNPP...) - but anyway, director Guillermo del Toro was there at the screening answering questions and, well, he's one colorful character, so I thought I'd share some insights into the man who made what is, without a doubt in my mind, the best film of 2006... oh right, not reviewing here. Ahem.Anyway, be forewarned, del Toro used a lot of, let's say, colorful language and descriptions. But without further ado -
5 Things I Learned About Guillermo del Toro:
1 - He really likes to masturbate. Like, a lot.
2 - He became a lapsed Catholic at the age of 15 standing in the morgue of an insane asylum staring at a five-foot high pile of aborted fetuses.
3 - The original sound mix of Pan's Labyrinth sounded like "a dwarf orgy at rush hour." I wish someone would've asked him why dwarves would be having their orgy at rush hour (and, um, why dwarves? Are they especially noisy in their orgy-making?), but alas.
4 - I did mention the masturbate thing, right? Cuz he talked about it for, like, a long while. And it was actually, somehow, part of the same story, above-referenced, of fetus-piles. Masturbation was the counter-point of beauty to the world's ugliness of fetus-piles. Anyway, I actually saw an old woman get up and leave mid-masturbation speech. Okay, so masturbation's covered... something else... you'll be happy to know that his priest never diddled him! Just made him look for the Virgin Mary in corpse-occupied caskets.
5 - He actually blames (or, you could say, credits) his Catholic upbringing for being the basis of his fascination with horror and monsters, because of how totally, and I quote, "fucked up" it was to convince a kid he was eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus at the altar. Apparently his church's Jesus on the crucifix was old-school, with exposed bones and what-not, and he, sanely I must say, didn't want any of that.
And a Bonus! - this one's not directly about del Toro, but I am totally right - Alejandro González Iñárritu is an asshole! Apparently he and del Toro are friends, and had been hanging out talking the entire night before last night's screening, and they were discussing subjectivity versus objectivity and their current films (I know, what dorks), and everything del Toro said that Iñárritu said was, like, a definitive asshole quote, like, right outta the Asshole Handbook. God I hate him..
