And anime has a style of violence and action that is so cartoonsih, and so outlandish, that it's not offensive... it's almost like slapstick.
But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.
But if he had chosen Bruce Willis or Jim Carrey to play Hellboy ultimately the concern becomes the star and not the character.
For Devil's Backbone I loved it but I felt very pressured but so I was neurotic on the shoot.
For eight years I did effects for other movies until I got my movie made.
Hellboy is the first movie where both ends of the spectrum are combined.
I also wanted to reinvent a breed of vampires that was not Tom Cruise in dreadlocks, languishing by the side of Brad Pitt.
I am going to mind the grosses, the opening box offices but why I am concerned with mostly is for the movie to be what I want it to be.
I like actors that are good with pantomime and that can transmit a lot by their presence and attitude more than through their dialogue.
I like John Carpenter. I like some of his films more than others.
I see horror as part of legitimate film. I don't see it as an independent genre that has nothing to do with the rest of cinema.
I started when I was eight, doing super 8 films.
I think that The Eye is a particularly Americanized take on horror.
I think there are movies that are so gigantic that you need a second unit.
I think there is a very quiet power in things that are not on screen.
I told him I would do them, I founded my own special effects company all in order to provide effects of the movie.
I wanted Blade 2 to have that almost slapstick quotient. As opposed to being blood wrenchingly realistic violence.
I was an altar boy, a spokesperson for the Virgin Mary, I was a choir boy but then at the age of 14 I discovered masturbation and all that went out the window.
I was directing before I knew it was called that.
I was part of a group that had a cinema club so every week we would project two or three movies on 16 or 35mm.
I'd grab the camera and tell people what to do, and when I was 14, someone told me that it was called directing.
I'm a lapsed altar boy.
I'm in contact with a portion of America that's not middle America, but that's where I get my information from.
In that, Blade 2 is very much like a rock concert... if it's too loud, you're too old.
It's just like a domino effect, and you have to wait for those dominos to be clicking near to you and be prepared to fall!
It's only in modern times that we have come to glorify vampirism.
Normally it takes a few years for me to watch my own movies with a little more ease.
So my father had a Super 8 camera and I would borrow it to do movies with my toys.
The other thing that I started doing for myself was, I went through my diary of ideas that I keep and made sure that the translation of the comic to the movie was good.
There are two levels of vampirism: one is the regular vampire, which is just like it has always been; and then there's the super vampires, which are a new breed we've created.
They're getting more and more experience on what to expect, and the Hellboy audience is such a faithful and fanatic audience as I am, and you have to really be very open about what you do.
Well I think effects are tools.
Well, the first thing is that I love monsters, I identify with monsters.
What happens to me is that I am first and foremost a film geek.
What was unique about Devil's Backbone's release in America is that the US was the only country where it came out six moths later than in foreign countries.
When I was a teenager there was no video in my country. Betamax came to Mexico very slowly.
When you have the intuition that there is something which is there, but out of the reach of your physical world, art and religion are the only means to get to it.
Aside from being a perfect Hellboy, he is a gentleman, a friend to die for, a great actor and - for the ladies - he has the sexiest male voice this side of Barry White. What more can one ask for?" - On Ron Perlman, 200
I remember the worst experience of my life, even above the kidnapping of my father, was shooting Mimic (1997) [del Toro's first Hollywood feature, in 1997, which was severely compromised by producer interference]. Because what was happening to me and the movie was far more illogical than kidnapping, which is brutal, but at least there are rules. Now when I look at Mimic, what I see is the pain of a deeply flawed creature that could have been so beautiful.
It would be a clich? to say that, because I am a Mexican, I see death in a certain way. But I have seen more than my share of corpses, certainly more than the average First World guy. I worked for months next to a morgue that I had to go through to get to work. I've seen people being shot; I've had guns put to my head; I've seen people burnt alive, stabbed, decapitated ... because Mexico is still a very violent place. So I do think that some of that element in my films comes from a Mexican sensibility.
The sign of a true friendship is when you can forgive success.
Became a vegetarian after seeing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) but only for four years. Currently, he's no longer a vegetarian.
Turned down a chance to direct Blade: Trinity (2004) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) to work on his dream project: Hellboy (2004).
Fought the film studios for almost seven years to get Ron Perlman for the title role in Hellboy (2004). The studio wanted a bigger name to insure the success of the movie, but del Toro thought that Perlman was the perfect choice and wouldn't make the movie if he wasn't cast.
He is friends with fellow successful Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Has a photographic memory.
1997: His father was kidnapped in Mexico and held for seventy-two days until his ransom was paid.
In a January 2007 interview on the radio program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," said that his strictly Catholic grandmother was a "Piper Laurie in Carrie (1976)" figure in his childhood. He told Gross that his grandmother would require him to mortify himself in self-punishment, in one case placing metal bottle caps into his shoes so that the soles of his feet were bloodied while walking to school. She also tried to exorcise him twice because of his persistent interest in fantasy and drawing monsters from his imagination.
His favorite movie monsters are Frankenstein's Monster and the Creature of the Black Lagoon.
In 2007, he was one of 10 Mexican Oscar-nominees. The others were Alejandro González Iñárritu, Guillermo Arriaga, Adriana Barraza, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo Navarro, Emmanuel Lubezki, Eugenio Caballero, Pilar Revuelta and Fernando Cámara.
Lost 45 lbs. while making Laberinto del fauno, El (2006), which he admitted in the DVD's video prologue.
Turned down a chance to direct I Am Legend (2007) and Halo (2009) to work on Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008).
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