The one thing Guillermo del Toro hates being called: “That’s a very scary term”
The thing with making art is that you risk being perceived in a way that you don’t view yourself, but that’s just the nature of creation: once you’re finished, the work is no longer just yours, and thus, all artists run the risk of being pigeonholed, whether they like it or not.
Filmmakers in particular often find themselves placed into vague and meaningless categories, ones that reek of a lack of understanding or appreciation. Why is ‘female filmmaker’, like ‘female-fronted’, a thing? Is it just that the creative industries are so dominated by men that when a woman has made something, it has to be specifically noted? What about ‘cult director’? That might not seem as bad, but it’s still a label that pisses off certain filmmakers, like John Waters, who once told The Guardian, “I never wanted to be a ‘cult filmmaker’ because in Hollywood, that means three smart people liked it and it lost all the money it cost to make it.”
Similarly, there’s a term that Guillermo del Toro hates, even if it’s a phrase we’re surely all guilty of throwing around at times. Whatever you do, don’t call the Mexican director a ‘visionary filmmaker’, for, quite frankly, it scares him.
It’s a big phrase to parry, but admittedly, it’s one that makes sense. With movies like the gothic anti-fairytale fantasy film Pan’s Labyrinth and the bizarre love story The Shape of Water, in which a woman falls for an amphibian man, del Toro’s ideas are certainly imaginative and (don’t hate me del Toro) visionary; no one is making films like him. Still, it scares him, especially when it is placed in trailers and posters for his work. It’s a tired phrase that seems to have lost most of its meaning over time, and the filmmaker just can’t wrap his head around why he needs to be described in such a way.
“90% of the time, it means they don’t know how to market the movie. The only thing they can say is, ‘if you like the other shit this guy has done, this shit you’re going to like, it’s for you’. It’s like that famous phrase, which I’m sure I’m misquoting: ‘For the people who like this type of thing, this is the type of thing they’re going to like’,” he explained of his distaste.
To be fair, it’s a good idea to entice people by suggesting that if you liked a film the director previously made, you’ll probably like this one, yet, for del Toro, a movie shouldn’t have to be marketed this way, unable to just stand on its own. However, if anyone has the ability to advertise their film without relying on mentioning the other work they’ve done, it’s him, with an idiosyncratic style that merges the nostalgic world of childhood and fantasy with the darkness that threatens to creep in as you come to understand the gravity of the real world.
Del Toro’s movies have always occupied a specific world of their own, yet each film exists perfectly alone: you don’t need to have seen Pan’s Labyrinth or Crimson Peak to get excited for Frankenstein. So, while he has his own style nailed to a T, it’s probably best you don’t call him a visionary any time soon, because you might give him a bit of a fright, which you can honestly see as a bit of a compliment.
