Guillermo del Toro is indisputably one of the most unique and interesting directors of sci-fi and horror over the past few years, and his films are best known for their incredibly meticulous sense of design and production. Speaking while promoting his new film The Shape of Water, del Toro described an incident in his childhood which might have influenced his design sensibilities later on: he saw a UFO, and he thought it basically looked like total shit.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, del Toro described the incident, which took place when he was much younger:
I saw a UFO. I know this is horrible. You sound like a complete lunatic, but I saw a UFO. I didn’t want to see a UFO. It was horribly designed. I was with a friend. We bought a six-pack. We didn’t consume it, and there was a place called Cerro del Cuatro, “Mountain of the Four,” on the periphery of Guadalajara. We said, ‘Let’s go to the highway.’ We sit down to watch the stars and have the beer and talk. We were the only guys by the freeway. And we saw a light on the horizon going super-fast, not linear. And I said, ‘Honk and flash the lights.’ And we started honking.
[It] went from 1,000 meters away [to much closer] in less than a second — and it was so crappy. It was a flying saucer, so clichéd, with lights [blinking].
There you have it, folks. If you’re some kind of alien species visiting Earth to make first contact with human beings, be wary of Guillermo del Toro. He will say your carefully crafted spaceship looks like dogshit, and you’ll be humiliated in the pages of The Hollywood Reporter decades later. Not a good look!
The Shape of Water – which is getting absolutely incredible reviews – has been out in America for a few weeks. Sadly, it’s not out in Australia just yet: it lands on the 18th of January.
