SDCC ’10: Don’t Be Afraid of Guillermo del Toro and Troy Nixey

Guillermo del Toro is a directing and producing machine who respects the horror genre and the fans who follow it. He is someone who has an eye for young talent and he makes a point to give these people a chance so they can bring something fresh to the table. He has saddled up as a producer on the films The Orphanage, Julia’s Eye, Splice, and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, which is a remake of a 1973 television movie of the same name. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark will be released in theaters January, 21 2011 from Miramax Films. Guillermo and director Troy Nixey held a press conference to promote their endeavor at this year’s Comic-Con and here is my report.

How did you begin your relationship with Guillermo Del Toro and how did the project come about?

Troy Nixey: It started when Guillermo saw the short film that I had done. He was familiar with my comic book work. He’s always had a public e-mail address and so when I first started working on my short I sent him a couple of stills from it, and he responded back right away. It was very encouraging which was very nice. It took about five years to finish the short; there were a lot of effects shots in it. Through my friend Nick Nunziata [Associate Producer] he ripped the short and put it up on a few sites. Guillermo was in prep on Hellboy II: The Golden Army and he basically forced Guillermo to watch it. From there I got an e-mail back saying he really liked the short and Nick phoned me right away and said he wants to talk to you. You have to keep in mind that Guillermo is one of my directing idols so all of this was pretty fantastic and amazing what was going on. He said he really enjoyed the short and he had a script that he co-wrote with Mathew Robbins and he wondered if I would be interested in directing it. That was a bit of a no-brainer. He sent the script along and it was fantastic.

Was Guillermo on-set because at the time he was prepping for The Hobbit and did he give you freedom to do it your way?

Troy Nixey: Guillermo was there at times and it was a very collaborative kind of structure. They were very protective of me in the sense that I had a fantastic director of photography and a fantastic production designer. Working with all of these people to elevate the material. It was such a fantastic script and such a deep, rich script. To have someone like Guillermo there when I needed him there to bounce ideas off of him was fantastic. We shot in Melbourne so it was a very short flight for Guillermo.

What are the differences between Comics and Movies?

Troy Nixey: You are creating in a complete vacuum when you’re doing comic books, especially if you are writing them. To be able to rip out a page in your mind and to be able to put them into a movie came naturally because of the people involved. Having done a short the story telling is there. I’ve always been a storyteller. I love movies and I got into comics because movies weren’t really an option at the time that I graduated. There was always the love of film first. I honestly feel like I am much more comfortable in movies than I was in comics.

Can you talk about the casting process?

Troy Nixey: We went really early with Katie Holmes and Guy Pierce. Bailee Madison’s role was probably the toughest because we saw every girl from age eight to nine in North America. She came along towards the end because she had been working on another movie. She walked in the room and you immediately knew there was something about her because she is so engaging and so talented. We brought Katie on and she has this maternal instinct that is so strong. I think she is going to really suprise a lot of people in this movie. It was a risk for her to take something like this and the level that she brought to this movie made my job easier, because she gets the character and she just gives it to you everyday. Guy Pierce is a constant professional and was so prepared. He’s just a fantastic actor to work with. They are all different in terms of their approach, but they just worked together so well.

What kind of scary movie is this?

Troy Nixey: It’s a bit of a throwback to movies that haven’t been seen in a long time. There are a lot of people who aren’t even used to that kind of movie. You are creating the tension and you are building up to it and I think the scares in our movie build off of each other so the next scare is even worse than the one before. When people are watching it and they start murmuring and squirming in their chairs you know that it’s resonating. They are almost building that scare up like they’re waiting for it. I think that is just human instinct and so getting that first one in and showing them what it is they are able to move along with you and build off of those. I think people really enjoy it. They really enjoy being scared.

What worked in the original Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark?

Troy Nixey: Getting back to the scares. I think there is something inherently creepy about these tiny things. I think we were very respectful to that because there is a lot in the original that works and is so strong. Why rock the boat?

Guillermo del Toro: What I love about the original is the fact that these things were not big and scary they were small. They relied on the fact that no one could see them and no one would believe that they existed. I saw this movie as a kid and because it’s such a powerful movie it left an imprint on me. I saw it again as an adult and I realized that there is a second movie that I entirely made up that is not the movie you originally saw. There is room for that movie to exist and so I started writing the movie with Matthew Robbins to direct myself. One of the things I loved about it was to create these creatures the way they were in the original because that worked.

Who were your personal artistic influences and how did they help you visualize the film?

Troy Nixey: Coming from a world where you essentially are creating worlds from scratch I think from the color palette to the design of the house to working with the wardrobe of the characters was important. I really did fixate on color. I was a color Nazi when I was working on this movie. The house is all warm like autumn colors. The outisde world was all cool colors. Anytime you see anyone in the outside world that wasn’t Katie or Bailee there are wearing blues and grays and purples. That all comes from years of working with comics and design and being able to translate that to movies.

Guillermo del Toro: I was a big fan of his comic books from the first time I saw his work. I have an original piece of his art with tentacles spilling over the blankets. I wanted very much to know that guy the same way I wanted to know Mike Mignola, for example. We met and we had a good first encounter. He e-mailed me a JPEG and I wrote him back an extensive e-mail saying how great it looked and I encouraged him to finish it. When Nick Nunziata heard we were doing Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark he said, ‘”I’m going to send you that short.” I remember how great those images were and then I saw it and the sensibility was already there for a person with a world view. It was very skillfully directed. I really think one of the beauties as a producer is produce first-time filmmakers because I’d much rather see somebody bring something new to the genre than producing something that seems safe. I think Troy has a new and fresh view of the material.

Any concern about the rating going from PG-13 to an R?

Guillermo del Toro: There was one shot which is a gash in a hand and I wanted some tendons to show.

Troy Nixey: I think the movie will tell you what it needs to be. The movie just became the movie. Everyone was really supportive of that cut. Beyond that one effects shot there wasn’t any adding or subtracting.

Guillermo del Toro: Funny enough that Troy may see it like it is normal, but it’s completely abnormal for this to happen. You have a PG-13 movie contractually with a studio and then the thing comes and you get a hard R. They tell you that you cannot change anything because it’s pervasive scariness like talking about morbid obesity in a candy store. It is completely impossible to solve and then the studio supported us and said, “leave it as an R.” That is like a jaw dropping moment for me. It was beautiful to get that, it was like a badge of honor.

Do you prefer writing, producing, or directing?

Guillermo del Toro: It depends on the project. The hardest thing to do without a doubt is to write. Without a doubt the hardest job is to fill that blank page. That’s the first step and the blueprint. That’s the music on the paper. The most beautiful part of the process for me is editing because all of the bullshit is gone. You have one movie in your hand and you put it on a page. You have another movie in your head as a director. Now all you have is the movie that is left that is against budget, against an actor that never shows up, and up against a studio that is pressuring you. But finally you start thinking I’m going to build a mansion with one hundred rooms and one hundred windows and you end up with five rooms, five windows, and a bunch of bricks. That’s the editing. The reality is there and you build what you want and that is the most joyful process. Producing is great. Troy made choices in the movie that were completey against my instincts and that were entirely different than what I would do and they worked. It is the same way what Juan Antonio Bayona did with The Orphanage; he made his own proposal of what a horror movie was. I would have never thought it would have worked. I just produced a movie in Spain called Los ojos de Julia [Julia's Eyes] and Guillem Morales is the director and I was like why are you doing it this way? Then I see the movie and I realize that’s why and I’m learning. You learn a lot as a producer.

Was there any pressure to turn the movie into 3D?

Troy Nixey: There wasn’t any pressure at all on our end to do to a post-3D version.

Guillermo del Toro: We did an investigation of 3D because the studio did ask how much would it cost to be shot in 3D. This movie was going for a fraction of the cost. We wanted to preserve the ending that we wanted. We wanted to preserve the hardcore stuff. If we went overbudget or went too big we were going to start to lose those freedoms. It’s a low budget movie for the size that it is and when the studio heard the number that it would require to shoot it in 3D, they said keep it in 2D. It’s a combination of very fortunate economic timing and artistic integrity. I love 3D. I want to do it. I was not in favor of it in The Hobbit personally because at the time I thought it needed to be completely cohesive with the trilogy, but that is the only property that I was not inclined to explore it with. I think the way I do compositions. The way I do dynamics in the frame is perfectly suited for 3D. I want to do it. The next movie [At The Mountains of Madness] I do will be in 3D.

What scares you?

Troy Nixey: I think what scares me scares everyone. It’s the uncertainty of not knowing. That kind of works in terms of what this movie is. This little girl is in this horrible situation and not knowing what’s going to happen to her. She has nowhere to turn. No one that will listen to her and it keeps getting worse and worse and worse. I think that is something that we can all relate to; basically being backed into a corner and not knowing where to go.

Guillermo del Toro: There are two essences of fear and only two. One is when something that shouldn’t be is, meaning a presence. And the other one is a absence. It can work with someone walking into a empty corrider and something that should be there is not. Or something that shouldn’t be there is. That’s it. I can show you a scene of a woman in a bedroom and a seventy- year-old man walks in and it’s without context, it’s not scary, but if that is her dead father, it’s scary. Without context, like humor, horror doesn’t work. What scare me? Frankly, in real life, politicians. Operations. People who think they know what the world should be. People who say this is the way it should be, I go, holy fuck. Those things scare me. The supernatural thing. I have heard ghosts, but I have never seen ghosts. The last ghost I heard was in New Zealand. We were scouting for The Hobbit and we went into a haunted room in a hotel that was famous for having a haunted room, and of course, I asked for the haunted room. I told everyone at the party to not come fucking with me at midnight. Peter Jackson saw a ghost at his old apartment in front of the opera house. He saw a very famous apparition that is called ‘The Screaming Woman’. That is different. Around midnight to one in the morning, I started hearing a guy screaming and I went and it was coming from a window in the bathroom. I opened the window and there’s nothing but a narrow alley there. And I go, what the fuck? I go back to bed and I start hearing a woman sobbing and howling and it is coming from the same place. The rest of the night I watched episodes of The Unit. I was so fucking scared I needed some real men around me.

How much have you been influenced by the work of Guillermo del Toro?

Troy Nixey: He’s a huge influence on me, but  I think at the same time the things that influenced both of us are very similiar as well. You watch my short and you can see some of Del Toro in it as well. It is a similiar like of things and a similiar desire of things that inspire us.

Guillermo del Toro: We had the same fucked up childhood. The other idea was as a producer or director your duty is to create a beautiful horror film. Something that really resonates like in The Orphanage. They need to have a really beautiful valid aesthetic look and Troy had it in spades.

Troy Nixey: I definitely made a decision that this house was going to be beautiful because most horror movies take place in rundown houses. This house is going to be beautiful in the daytime. A place where an audience wants to be so that when you start introducing those scares then it makes you a little uncomfortable. Wait a minute, this is a really nice house. Why is this stuff happening here? You see this beautiful home. You don’t know when something is going to happen.

Guillermo del Toro: The child’s room is entirely offensive. It looks like something about of Bed, Bath, and Beyond catalog.

Troy Nixey: That was intentional as well the because the idea was this little girl comes from Los Angeles is this hip kid. You have this dad who doesn’t know her very well and his new girlfriend who hasn’t met her create this room that they think this little nine-year-old girl would love, and it’s not at all.

Guillermo del Toro: There is a particular object, a stuffed bear, who becomes very menacing.

What does it say about youif you want to bring fear to the screen?

Guillermo del Toro: My favorite novel in the world is Frankenstein and I’m going to misquote it horribly, the monster says, “I have such love in me more than you can imagine, but if I cannot provoke it, I will provoke fear.” I think as a child I was disenfranchised from everything. I was in a world that was the wrong size. Run by the wrong people with the wrong morals and the wrong rules. I felt completely outside of that. I wanted some measure of control. The reality is I feel that fear is a very spiritual emotion and in a world were we are so pragmatic and so materialistic, fear is the only emotion that allows even a sophisticated person with a iPhone and an iPad and a car, to believe in something beyond. We are such skeptics. We find it corny to believe in God and Angels or spiritual afterlife. The moment of fear makes our spirit so vulnerable that it allows us to actually believe in something beyond that; and its very beautiful.

Troy Nixey: There’s that feeling that you have once the fear is gone.

Guillermo del Toro: The wet feeling.

Troy Nixey: That’s why people skydive. Once that fear has dissipated it’s that energy that your body created and there is something stimulating about that. That’s what drives audiences to go see scary movies, so they can feel that after the scare is gone. When you see a really scary movie you come out of that movie you’re are like, yeah! It’s great to be able to give people that feeling.

Guillermo del Toro: It’s also a boundary. There is nothing that defines who you are more than boundaries. Whether you cross them or not in every aspect of your life. Horror is a really great boundary.

Have you ever seen a ghost?

Guillermo del Toro: I do seek ghosts and I would love to see one, but I would definitely crap my pants. When Danny Elfman and I were doing Hellboy II we visited the Langham Hotel and there are two rooms in that hotel that are haunted. One is haunted by a lover who committed suicide and the other was haunted by a man who that strangled his wife. I booked the wrong room. I booked the one with the strangler. Danny and I said we are going to spend the night here. We were setting the rules, no knocking, then we hear wooooooo and it’s Danny Elfman’s fucking ringtone. My testicles dropped. The rest of the night nothing happened.