Variety Screening Series - Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio!

January 11th was the screening of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and q&a for the Variety Screening Series! This was at the Harmony Gold Preview House that has a 350-seat theatre. The movie itself was enchanting, some of the audience had never seen the film in a theater, and this was followed by the q&a panel. It was hosted by Jazz Tangcay, Variety’s Senior Artisans Editior. The panel consisted of Guillermo del Toro, co-director, co-screenwriter and story, and producer, co-director, Mark Gustafson, lyricist Roeban Katz, composer, Alexandre Desplat, sound designer and supervisor, Martin Gershin, and production designer, Guy Davis. Every member had interesting perspectives on the making of the movie and there was laughs for everyone of them. Del Toro of course was an interesting storyteller. He had on a table the puppets of Geppetto and Pinocchio which he manipulated and later showed the removal of Pinocchio's face and moved the figure.  

Host, Jazz Tangcay, and the Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio panel, author’s photo. 

Del Toro spoke about the film, “Ultimately, one of things we are saying is we are doing basically the same craft of a live action film. We are shooting on real sets, we are shooting real figures displacing themselves in time and space, we are doing real set decoration, real props, (and) real cinematography which is real interesting in how it’s done. Stop motion is to live action like Ginger Rogers was to Fred (Astaire). We take the same steps he does, but backwards in heels.” His comment brought laughs to the audience. Co-director, Gustafson discussed what interested him, “I was really excited about the take he and Patrick (McHale, co-screenwriter) had on the story. This notion of what’s the value of disobedience as opposed to walking along step. That was a completely different take on Pinocchio, just flipped it on its ear. Then, it felt like to me that opened the story in a completely different way, we could go new places, and it was really worth telling again.”  

Next was production designer, Guy Davis, who also worked in the art department for Nightmare Alley (2021). He said, “I worked with my fellow production designer, Curt Enderle, who was amazing at finding all the historical reference that we then exaggerate and make unique for the characters. He also did a timeline of that town itself, so he would say in this era, there was an earthquake and this wall fell. So when you see details like say a wall with a crack or something that looks like it was patched, it actually gives it a sense of history, the same as the characters.” Gershin, sound supervisor, said about the sounds helping to build the characters, “We talked about looking at vintage puppets. We started collecting them. We started finding that they had a sort of clacky hardiness to it and we realized that wasn’t going to work especially early on when we wanted to show the fragility of Pinocchio. The big thing that we talked it’s not about a sound effect, a piece of wood, a piece of metal, it’s taking those sounds, transcending them to give Pinocchio character.”

                                                                          Guillermo del Toro with Geppetto and Pinocchio figures, photo by the author. 

Alexandre Desplat collaborated with del Toro writing the theme song for the animated series, Trollhunters (2017). He began a conversation about the songs, “He (del Toro) had a draft, a script of all the songs, it was a moment when the little boy was leaving his father. It was just a draft and we needed to build something so I introduced (Roeban) Katz to Guillermo so he could put together some ideas.” Del Toro joked about lyricist Katz living in L.A. Then, Katz added, “It was easy because you (were) there and you just tell me what to do.” Del Toro interjects and says, “The story is more accidental than that, we originally went to different composers for songs.” This included rock stars whom he said were difficult to schedule. He continued, “So I said to Alexander, `You know who is really available and cheap? Me.’” More audience laughter. Del Toro continued, “I did the lyrics of a lullaby and Alexander told me, `This is fantastic. You should compose everything.” And I go, `of course.’” Del Toro really knows how to entertain an audience. In a way, the song, “Ciao Papa” reminded me of a joyous version of Mercedes Lullaby by Javier Navarrete for Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). A fantastic night with insight into the making of one of the finest movies.