Guillermo del Toro presents his favorite films and praises the Avatars of his close friend James Cameron: the video

The video channel of Konbiniwhich sees directors present their favorite films in video stores, hosted a passionate cinephile like Guillermo del Torowho talked about his, before divulging on his longtime friendship with James Cameronto whom he also owes his father’s life, and on his profound admiration for the trilogy created so far Avataron whose third episode, Fire and ashexpressed a more than enthusiastic wall. Let’s try to summarize the fundamental points of the video you find below (there are subtitles in French so if you know it you can also follow it all).

Guillermo del Toro’s favorite films

del Toro part of Interceptor: The Road Warrior Of George Millerwhich he calls “a cathedral” and “the most perfect action film ever made.” He speaks of the Australian director as a genius of staging, and says that you learn a lot by deconstructing his films and studying their shots and direction. He then places emphasis on the subliminal shots present in the film and on his way of breaking the symmetry of the image. “The action has to be chaotic enough to feel real and yet clear enough for the audience to follow.” He calls the film a masterpiece and says that if the world were about to explode it would be one of the three films he would protect with his own body. He then moves on to another film that transformed him, Taxi DriverIt was an uncle who took him to see films for older people when he was little and after 2001 A space odyssey she asked him if he understood the theme and he replied “it’s about evolution”. “Okay then, I’ll take you to see Taxi Driver.” For me, he says del Torois a monster movie, “De Niro is an anomaly. It’s a study in urban isolation and it’s very interesting to follow him. It’s very risky to follow the wrong man and we do it in Frankensteinwhere I made Victor a kind of psychopath.” And the same trick, he says, adopted by Ari Aster in Eddington. As for the ending of Taxi Driver, he considers it a triumph of ambiguity and places Scorsese among the five masters of the history of cinema to whom all directors owe a great deal, a true inventor in the field. Let’s then move on to Planet of the Apeswhich for del Toro it was “Star Wars before Star Wars.” He says that he transformed a storage room in his parents’ house in the city of monkeys and that he owned around seventy puppets from the film, with which he made the first stop-motion film in Super 8. He then adds a curiosity: the author of the film’s make-up, John Chambershe worked for the CIA and that’s who the film is about Argo. His make-up was extremely realistic, as he also worked with disfigured war veterans, making prosthetics for them. after having praised the soundtrack of Jerry Goldsmithreveals that he also loves the sequel to this film, The Other Side of the Planet of the Apeswhich is obviously inferior, but he likes the mutants who worship the bomb (“definitely speaks to a part of the American government, since there are a lot of powerful people who want the end of the world”). And then comes the part about Cameron.

Guillermo del Toro on his brotherly friendship with James Cameron and Avatars

“James is my brother,” he begins del Toro. “We became brothers 20 years ago, or rather no, 30 or 31 years ago, I met him in 1991 or 1992. We immediately bonded, I don’t know why he liked me, I know why I like him, because he is a genius. I lived at his house for a long time and we watched anime together. He introduced me to Patlabor, I introduced him to Alita. He helped me sell Cronos, no one wanted it at the time and he told me ‘I’ll help you find an agent to sell it’, which I do now, like last week when I helped distribute a stop-motion film. James has been dreaming of Avatar since I met him, he’s been talking about it since the nineties, but I can say with certainty that there are very few Americans who they created a whole mythology. There’s Lucas, the Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum and James is creating it with Avatar and he’s going to take you on a journey. He also helped me when my father was kidnapped. They say he lent me a million dollars, he hired a negotiator, he paid him $250,000, we repaid him but the day they kidnapped my father I called him and he said ‘I’ll send you a negotiator from the UK, follow his instructions. instructions’ and it was fundamental. Then he wanted to transport the ransom by plane with the US Marines, because James loves adventure. That’s why he dives to the bottom of the ocean while I go to a hamburger or taco stand.”

The other films of Guillermo del Toro’s heart.

Continuing, del Toro talks about another friend’s film, Revenant Of Alejandro Gonzales Inarrituwhich he is Cuaron they consider the most naturally talented of their trio of Mexicans. Other titles loved by del Toro are I devils Of Ken Russella censored film and almost impossible to find in its full version, which also served him in the preparation of Frankenstein (“I told Oscar Isaac he had Oliver Reed’s intonation”); The exorcist by William Friedkin, and here we are still moved to think that he was chosen by the director to support him in his latest directorial, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, where in fact he humbly acted as his production assistant, bringing him “his fruit juice, protein bars, coffee”). del Toro he continues by saying that he made sure he wasn’t cold, he helped him get in and out of the car and adds: “I loved Billy. He was such a passionate director, he had no taboos. He really didn’t give a damn about everything. At the first meeting he said to the actors: ‘You have only one task, learn the script like a theater piece, to do on the first take. If I do 20 minutes you continue’. Everyone laughed and he said ‘there’s nothing to laugh about, I’m serious. You have to shoot this film like a theater piece. And he did it” (we recommend you watch the entire video for del Toro’s testimony on the matter). After talking about how he chose Jacob Elordi for Frankenstein, del Toro talks again about Alfred Hitchcock’s films, Psycho, Suspicion, Notorious, The Woman Who Lived Twice… and Chaplin’s City Lights, Tod Browning’s Freaks, Luis Bunuel’s Children of Violence, Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan, The Two Legionnaires with Laurel and Hardy, and then talks in detail about all the Frankenstein films from Universal, Hammer and even Frankenstein Jr. In short, a real cinema lesson from a great master, whose latest work remains in very few Italian theaters and can be seen on Netflix.