Director Guillermo del Toro visited the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts on Friday, where he shared his advice to young creatives and his philosophy behind “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.”
Hundreds arrived nearly an hour early to line up in front of the Eileen Norris Cinema Theater in anticipation of the event. After the credits rolled on the screening of “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” del Toro took the stage with SCA professor Josh Staub for a Q&A.
Del Toro discussed his perspective on the themes of his latest feature film, reflecting on the idea that “disobedience is a virtue.”
“Ideology is something hollow that didn’t come from you; it is handed to you and you are told to obey it,” he said. “It does not nurture your soul, nor who you are, it benefits no one, but you fall in line. An idea, even if it’s a wrong idea, comes from your experience and your spiritual component and even if you’re wrong, you will grow out of that.”
To del Toro, Pinocchio represents a sense of irony that, although a puppet, he is the only one free from the ties of fascism and order. It is through this story that he seeks to inspire a sense of conscious disobedience.
“We have to be disobedient, every fucking person,” he expresses. “You cannot just assume your parents are right or teachers are right or the government is good, fuck that! You have to say ‘Why?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Why is this?’”
Although del Toro has worked across multiple animation projects, ranging from “Kung Fu Panda 2″ to “Trollhunters,” “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is his first animation endeavor as the director. Even so, he explained how, to him, “there are no boundaries” between the mediums of live-action and animation. His iconic phrase from his recent Golden Globe acceptance speech, “Animation is not a genre for kids. It’s a medium,” continues to be a constant driving force in his storytelling.
“The majority of studios in America, they just want to create babysitter movies,” he said. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to go into an industry where you’re going to be animating a fucking dancing yogurt can, and you’re going to want to commit suicide!”
Rather, del Toro hopes to see an industry where animation embraces mundane imperfections to bring art to life.
“I was watching [My Neighbor Totoro] for the first time, and when the father goes to put his shoe in, he misses the shoe, he misses the shoe, he gets the shoe in. Those two mistakes represent weeks of work, but life is contained in there,” he said. “The more gestures like that you create, the more we see actors and you stop seeing the technique, you stop seeing the CG or the 2D or the stop motion, and you start feeling for them as if they were living people.”
But what makes a del Toro film uniquely his? According to him, it all comes down to the fact that, “I’m Mexican!”
“Someone who comes from our culture as strong as ours has a nearness with death that is intimate,” said del Toro. “Anglo-Saxon culture likes to enhance success and youth and looking good and values that really make you forget death… and in Mexico, we are so aware of the nearness of death that we believe and live with a great intensity.”
He cites how the wood sprite and death in “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” as well as the monsters in “Pacific Rim” are essentially “alebrijes,” or fantastical creatures from Mexican folk culture.
In regard to his visual style, he gave a distinction between “eye candy” and “eye protein.” “Eye candy is just brief. Eye protein is telling the story through the visual medium,” said del Toro.
Before the end of the Q&A, del Toro left the aspiring filmmakers and creatives with some advice. He urged artists to find the freedom to create even when constrained, citing how, when working under the Weinstein company for “Mimic,” he found a way to dictate his unique visual style even when the studio controlled nearly everything else, from screenplay to casting to tone. “Disobedience is not a tantrum, it’s just finding your freedom in the spaces you have,” del Toro said.
For the acclaimed director, the only path towards art is to be proactive. “Only love and passion and rage will lead you to art. Fear will never lead you to art,” he said, “Being modest, scared, quiet, prudent is bullshit! You have to be true. You have to be fierce and you have to be brave and you have to risk fucking up royally because let me tell you, my only definition of success is fucking up on your own terms.”
After the event, fans funneled into a line to the lobby of the theater to meet the director, armed with everything from “Pacific Rim” posters to “Pan’s Labyrinth” DVDs to figurines of del Toro in hopes of getting an autograph.
For the many starstruck students who got to see the famed artist, they’ll be sure to be like Pinocchio, sighing, “What a day! What a day!” through the night.