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MONTREAL — Each year, Fantasia Film Festival presents an honorary Cheval Noir Award to an influential figure in genre filmmaking, with past recipients including Tobe Hooper, Andrzej Żuławski and Ken Russell. Coincidently timed to the announcement of the Criterion special edition of his 2006 masterpiece “Pan’s Labyrinth,” this year’s prize has been given to Guillermo del Toro, who also gave a masterclass alongside the screening of a documentary in which he features, “Creature Designers: The Frankenstein Complex.” Ever the orator, the Mexican-born director spent some time with the press this afternoon to talk about his childhood as a member of the “monster kid generation,” some past challenges, and upcoming projects.

READ MORE: Criterion: A Guillermo Del Toro Trilogy Boxset, ‘Boyhood’ & More Join The Collection In October

Although the spotlight ultimately shone on the Cheval Noir honoree himself, the conversation kicked off with a discussion about the sort of practical effects at the center of ‘Creature Designers.’ Although Del Toro no longer runs an effects house, he notes that he regularly restores the various artifacts that fill his so-called Bleak House, an enormous collection of movie art and memorabilia (also to serve as an upcoming LACMA exhibit). The filmmaker also spoke about the necessary relationship between the director and the cinematographer for realizing a film’s practical effects. Specifically, he spoke of how the film is a “terrarium” to highlight the makeup, models and prosthetics. An example was provided from the television show based on the novels written by Chuck Hogan and himself, “The Strain,” in which precise lighting impacts the effectiveness of main character the Master from one episode to the next.

The filmmaker also expressed frustration at how complex, practically executed characters like Sammael and the Angel of Death from the “Hellboy” series are assumed to be CG effects. That is not to say that Del Toro has an aversion to using computer effects, saying that certain practical techniques have also historically been overused and rendered cliché: “There’s not a makeup versus CG. There’s lazy versus creative.” Each approach to special effects should be used where appropriate, as the director humorously relates that he would never have been able to build a 25-story robot for 2013’s “Pacific Rim.”

The conversation inevitably turned the notorious studio struggles over 1997’s “Mimic” and the yet-to-be-produced “At the Mountains of Madness.” For “Mimic,” he reminded the audience that the director’s cut on the Blu-ray release is the closest that film will come to approximating his vision, as most of what he imagined for the film’s climax was never shot. Beyond the elaborate creature designs that never got further than the storyboarding stage, he also mentioned that his original intentions for casting was an interracial couple, citing: “It was very important for me it was that in ’97. There were people very opposed back then, tremendously opposed. I didn’t want the white family to survive, I wanted humanity to survive.” It is easy to extend this ideal to the global survival efforts of “Pacific Rim,” or the variety of locales in which Del Toro’s films are set.

In response to a question on the unrealized H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, the filmmaker proposed: “Imagine that you had a horrible miscarriage and there are a lot of scars, and you’re still dangling a piece of placenta.” Although this sentiment may seem dramatic or insensitive, Del Toro insisted on the advanced level of pre-production on the project before it was canned: completed script, Tom Cruise set to star, James Cameron onboard as producer, special-effects tests complete and 700 storyboards drawn. To add insult to injury, the director was scouting locations in Alaska when it came to his attention that the studio was getting cold feet. Nonetheless, he seems hesitantly optimistic that the film may still happen in the future.

The conversation turned back to the specifics of Del Toro’s childhood, during which he professed to learning English through monster magazines. Of all the classic monsters, Frankenstein —specifically Boris Karloff’s performance in James Whale’s 1931 “Frankenstein” — was named as the key influence in the filmmaker’s imagination. While Del Toro believes that the Universal classic is not necessarily a faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Gothic horror, the treatment of the monster is akin to “the quintessential teenage book” in its evocation of discovering oneself: “You don’t belong, you were brought into this world by people that do not care for you. And you are thrown into a world of pain and suffering and tears and hunger, and you learn to talk. It’s an amazing book.”

With a nod to recent global events, the director notes that in this brutal world, it is the people that are monsters, and that in his films he never treats the creatures as truly monstrous. An example is given of Sergi López’s Captain in “Pan’s Labyrinth”— it is this fascist character who is the true villain of the piece, not Doug Jones’ faun or the Pale Man. Del Toro also mentioned his ambitions to adapt “Frankenstein” throughout his career, though often finding himself apprehensive. Poetically, the filmmaker remarks: “I dream I can make the greatest ‘Frankenstein’ ever, but then if you make it, you’ve made it. Whether it’s great or not, it’s done. You cannot dream about it anymore.” Certainly, this observation speaks to Del Toro’s powerful imagination as well as the pleasure (and pain) of the creative process.

The director’s upcoming feature “The Shape of Water” came up on a few occasions, although he seemed reticent to speak of the film in great detail (when asked how his themes would manifest in this new work, he became cagey). It was clear, however, that he was enthusiastic about the creative freedom of working on this smaller-scale, English-language film, set to star Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon and Richard Jenkins. “Pacific Rim 2” also was mentioned during the conference, the director’s chair for which was passed to Steven S. DeKnight following an extensive delay in production. To Del Toro, DeKnight remains the best choice for the job as he possessed the “kaiju syllabus” (namely, the passion for the core concepts) to do the first film justice.

READ MORE: Michael Shannon Joins Guillermo Del Toro’s Supernatural Romance

As a final note, the director spoke briefly about an adaptation of “Pinocchio” in the works, on which a second draft of the screenplay is currently being written. The source material is being relocated to Italy during the interwar period to be set against the rise of fascism (and likely to make a great pairing with “The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth”). Of course, the filmmaker’s goal is to incorporate darker elements of Carlo Collodi’s original story that have yet to be seen on film. Most promisingly, Del Toro recognizes commonalities between “Pinocchio” and “Frankenstein,” with both titular figures emerging from innocence and into an uncompromising world. Any project so close to this filmmaker’s heart is indeed the stuff of exciting cinema, whatever may come next.

Click here for the rest of our coverage from the 2016 Fantasia Film Festival.

