Cinema Hype

Cinema Hype: Good afternoon, Mr. del Toro*. It’s an honor to speak with you.

Guillermo del Toro: Good afternoon. Buenos tardes, in my mother tongue.

CH: Mr. del Toro, we’d like to begin by speaking with you about your involvement in the upcoming adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s classic Tarzan. What drew you to the film?

GdT: This is an opportunity for me and for the culture of my country. This is for the people of my native land. I’m excited to have this chance to expose audiences worldwide to the feral beauty of the rain forest as seen through the lens of nineteenth-century colonialism.

CH: How so?

GdT: Through Jane Porter. Jane claims to understand Tarzan, but doesn’t she want to strip him of the furs of the animal and force him into the starched shirts with the tiny buttons? Doesn’t she transform him into the image of a white European? Jane is the worst –ay, she claims to bring wealth and understanding, but with her, Tarzan is no longer an ape. Or a man. He is something else. A spider-monkey boy, perhaps.

CH: Have you conceived a vision for the look of the film?

GdT: The film? The film must be wild, like Tarzan himself. It must be lean, yet muscular and dripping with the perspiration. It must call out like an angry macaw. It must be glossy like Tarzan’s mysteriously well-kept hair. The film will be like a skillfully thrown spear, striking the heart of the audience with a hearty twang. Do you see?

CH: We see, Mr. del Toro. Now, how do you, as a director, identify with the character of Tarzan?

GdT: Ay, I was once at the zoo in Mexico with my family, and I was looking at the wolves–at los lobos. I was watching the wolf devour its prey, and when I looked up, mi familia was gone! I cried out; I called for my mother to return to me. “Mama! Mama!” I howled, much like an adolescent baboon. And that is how I identify with young Tarzan. Whenever I step behind the camera, I go deep inside myself and find that little boy crying, “Mama!” And my soul, it is touched.

CH: Mr. del Toro, I believe we have time for one final question. What influences can you cite to explain your interest in the Tarzan story?

GdT: When I was a young man, I saw a series of short advertisements–los anuncios–with a huge black panther slinking through the trees of the rain forest. And I thought, “What a beautiful life; what a beautiful image.” I was moved. Ay! The Yuban was delicious. The taste of the jungle, they say. It is in my heart. It is in my very blood. It will be in Tarzan.

*Kidding. Fictional. Not legally binding in any way.

Tarzan, Guillermo del Toro