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As Guillermo del Toro earned another Oscar for his 2018 sci-fi romance The Shape of Water shot in Ontario, J. Miles Dale, the film’s producer, proudly said of most key creative positions, from the production and costume designers to the sound team and editor: “They’re all Canadian.”
Now, after del Toro shot his latest creature feature, Frankenstein, on soundstages in Toronto, Dale says his creative artists and department heads not only are world-beaters but also part of “our film family.” That close-knit community of artists — many of whom are members of the Directors Guild of Canada — Ontario — follows del Toro’s long collaboration with Canadian crews on movies he shot locally.
Their challenge on Frankenstein was bringing to the big screen the horror-meister’s vision of egotistical scientist Victor Frankenstein and his monster as part of a diabolical experiment. “Look, the worst fear on a Guillermo del Toro movie is letting him down because ultimately he’s the hardest working guy on the movie,” Dale says.
With Frankenstein, an endlessly driven del Toro fulfilled a lifelong passion to adapt Mary Shelley’s classic gothic novel about Dr. Frankenstein, played in the movie by Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi as the creature he gives birth to, with Mia Goth as Elizabeth. As the lavishly shot Frankenstein lurches toward a TIFF premiere, THR sat down with Dale to talk about the local talent behind del Toro’s passion project.
You’re a big supporter of Canadian talent. Tamara Deverell, a best production design Oscar nominee for Nightmare Alley, designed Frankenstein. Talk about her contribution.
I really think of it as our film family. I’m old. I’ve been at this a long time. And a lot of these people I’ve been working with a long time. Tamara Deverell, for example. We first worked together on Blizzard in 2001, one of her first jobs as a production designer. She was an art director on [1997’s] Mimic, so she goes back with Guillermo even further.
You speak about this tight film family. But that’s reflected across an Ontario industry that has weathered the storms of the pandemic and Hollywood strikes to become a major production hub for Hollywood and other foreign producers — thanks in part to you and del Toro.
The thing I’m most proud of is having started in this business as a kid when we didn’t know much. And all these big American DPs and production designers and costume designers came up and we studied them, and we learned from them, at their feet. Now Canadian artists and talents and producers and artisans are in that league. Having watched that development of our talent pool from early days to now, it’s just remarkable to see. The level at which some of these people are working. You look at Craig Lathrop, a local production designer who got nominated for Nosferatu last year. Paul Austerberry won an Oscar for The Shape of Water. Luis Sequeira, our costume designer, is twice-nominated. Not that that’s the be-all and end-all. But it’s certainly recognition from peers at the very highest level that you’re doing something that is among the best in our industry. That’s gratifying to be able to stand with these people and say they are operating at that high level, and now they are there to train other Canadians, other Torontonians, to be doing the same thing. That’s a generational kind of passing of knowledge and a really lovely thing. I’m just happy to have been a part of it, and I think we can stand pretty tall right now where we are as an industry, and where our folks rank.
Walter Gasparovic, first assistant director on Frankenstein, is another longtime collaborator with del Toro and yourself.
Walter Gasparovic, whom I’ve done many films with, was the first AD on Mimic. You know, Guillermo first came here in 1997 with a notoriously difficult shoot with the Weinsteins on Mimic. That was only his third movie, and his first big studio movie. But the crew made an impression on him. And even though he and I didn’t know each other at that time, many of that crew were people I had worked with — Gilles Corbeil, the steadicam operator, Penny Charter, second AD. So when we came together in 2011 as Guillermo was directing Pacific Rim, he had also agreed with Universal to produce Mama. He said we’ll do it in Toronto. And he needed a producer. I had just produced Scott Pilgrim. And Edgar Wright, a good friend of Guillermo, told him about me. We met. He said, “Yeah, you produce that movie. I’ll be down the hall if you need me.” And that was the beginning of our relationship.
Jacob Elordi as The Creature and Oscar Isaac as Dr. Victor Frankenstein in ‘Frankenstein.’
Cr. Ken Woroner/Netflix
And the film family you have brought along for the ride, they must by now get del Toro’s visual and design aesthetics?
Some of my crew and some of his crew were the same crew. So in 2011, we started to build that film family. [Gasparovic] didn’t come back until Frankenstein, but Tamara came back right away on The Strain and Nightmare Alley and Cabinet of Curiosities. And then, of course, Frankenstein. Luis Sequeira, our costume designer, he and I have been working together since he was a PA on Friday the 13th in 1987. So I brought Luis in for Mama, and Guillermo liked him, and he did The Strain and The Shape of Water, Cabinet of Curiosities, Nightmare Alley. He’s part of the family.
We always hear Guillermo del Toro has high expectations for his creative talent but trusts those he brings on board, making it a tight production.
That’s what happens when you have a very easy shorthand in a group instead of a bunch of new people being thrust together. You have trust relationships that make it easy because you’ve been down the road with the same people. They trust you. You trust them. Everyone’s not kind of having to cover their ass in case something messes up.
Guillermo has been called a true visionary director. What does that mean in practical terms for Canadian creatives charged with bringing his directorial vision to the screen?
Here’s the thing. More than any other director I’ve ever worked with, he is very design-
oriented — and in a very specific way. Nothing is arbitrary, down to the color scheme, down to characters and associated colors for them. Red is a key color in the film — as in all his films. But in Frankenstein, it’s Oscar Issac’s. Red gloves, scarf and, of course, all the blood making the creature. It’s the memory of his mother in red. Whether it’s conscious or not for Victor, that’s what he gravitates to because he’s always missing his mother. For an art department, for a production designer, set decorator, costume designer and a cinematographer and hair and makeup even, having those specifics and being able to have those conversations to that degree of specificity is great. Because now you’ve got a direction to go in. And, also, he can speak about any era and any research. He knows the difference between baroque and art deco and art nouveau — and very specifically. So, where people have to go, he will steer them down research roads that will give them a direction, and then they come back.
I sense del Toro and his creatives speak their shorthand very much with visuals and backed by ample research and film references.
It’s a beautiful two-way street where, instead of a director saying, “Yeah, just give me something that is good and flashy,” he’s doing a deep dive. That’s what makes it not easier, but certainly a more fruitful relationship that’s going to lead to something better. He knows what he wants. He can show pictures. He can show drawings. He can give books of his own to say, “This is kind of what I want.” Now go and use that inspiration to kick it up a notch, because the standard is very high.
Talk about building Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, where he created a monster as part of a mad experiment on lavish sets.
We knew what Guillermo wanted to do with the lab and Victor’s workshop. We’d need a sculpture here, a painting there, these wax figures here, and all of those things. We used artists in Mexico and in France and a painter over here to do a family portrait. So having had many years to curate these ideas in his head, that bore fruit. And, of course, the novel — he also was obviously moved by the novel. The drawings of [comic book artist] Bernie Wrightson from many years ago were a big part of his visual inspiration for the movie, and they informed the production design. I really think our film stays much truer to the novel than any of the other many Frankenstein films that have been made.
Besides being a master storyteller, del Toro is also legendary for his work ethic.
Look, the worst fear on a Guillermo del Toro movie is letting him down because ultimately he’s the hardest-working guy on the movie. He never stops, and he’s going to answer any question — he answers a million a day — and he’s always the smartest guy in the room. That is just going to either make all of us better or we’ll fail and we won’t make the cut, and we won’t make be part of the film family, the film family that everyone so desperately wants to be a part of. Because he’s the best.
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