Most of the time - in 'Pan's Labyrinth' or 'Devil's Backbone' - I'm talking about my childhood.
Interpretation
The quote reflects an exploration of childhood experiences through art and storytelling.
Guillermo Del Toro's quote suggests that his works, such as 'Pan's Labyrinth' and 'Devil's Backbone', are deeply influenced by his own childhood memories. This highlights the importance of personal experiences in the creation of art and how they can shape narratives filled with nostalgia, wonder, and sometimes darkness, as seen in his films.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of personal experiences on creative works.
I don't try to sanction other people's joy in monsters. I mean, I think the fact is, humor, fantasy - you know, like fear, desire or laughter - create genres of their own: comedy, melodrama, or erotic films or horror films... The boundaries cannot be defined. It's to each his own.
As a director, I design every movie to be true to itself, and damn it if they like it, and damn it if they don't.
If you ask me, I alternate between truly bizarre, what you would call 'Hollywood' movies and truly bizarre, what you would call 'arthouse' movies.
But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.
The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.
When you start with Super 8, you are everything. You're the DP, the sound man, the effects guy. And what I started understanding, by working for other people, is that the best type of director is someone who rose through the ranks.
I love getting cheers. I love giving scares. Anything that really works with the audience makes me happy.
Exuberance is better than taste.
When a critic sets himself up as an arbiter of morality, a judge of the matter and not the manner of a work, he is no longer a critic; he is a censor.
A challenging economy is always good for design. It unites necessity and functionality. You are forced to be creative with poor materials.
Our utilitarian structures will mature into architecture only when, through their fulfillment of function, they become carriers of the will of the age.
Fanfiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped in a sealed bunker. They don't do it for money. That's not what it's about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction. They're fans, but they're not silent, couchbound consumers of media. The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.
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