Wired: But “real” for you is so … unreal. You set The Strain in New York. In the past, your depictions of the city, from Mimic to Blade II to Hellboy, have had a fabulous aspect.
del Toro: It comes from my first trip to New York as a child. I was walking around Central Park, and I saw one of these expensive apartment buildings. At the top was a Gothic tower, and I said to my mother, “A vampire lives there.” I wasn’t being metaphorical. Then we went into the subway and—wow! For a guy from Guadalajara, the subway is mythical. The underground of the city is like what’s underground in people. Beneath the surface, it’s boiling with monsters.
Wired Magazine 17.06
For some reason, that phrase above brought tears to my eyes the first time I read it. So badly, in fact, that I had to get up and disappear for awhile until I got myself under control. I wasn’t sure why, until I figured out that the difference between someone like Guillermo Del Toro and someone like me is that while we’re both on our slow march to death, he never stopped being a child. He never let go of the way a child sees the world; he’s still got that access to everything that changes the mundane into the phantasmagorical in a way I don’t (and maybe in a way I never did).
He’s still got dreams, and I don’t. I know what you’re all thinking, even if you’re not going to state it. “You’re not even 30 yet. You don’t have any kids or a mortgage, so why don’t you go out and chase your dreams! DLTBGYD!” No, when I even think about that kind of thing, all I can think about is all my past mistakes and misspent days and just… get paralyzed with fear that I’m going to go out, chase those dreams, and find them out of my reach. Or worse, that I’ll achieve them and be just as miserable with those dreams as I was when I still had the dream to do whatever.
(Yes, I just references both The Toasters and Less Than Jake in that paragraph. I’ve always kind of wanted to be a rude boy, but you try finding a ska band outside of California these days. Or even in California.)
Sometimes you find your niche early, excel at it, and you’re happy. Sometimes you drift along aimlessly in a sea of fear and anxiety, worrying about things you can’t control and talking yourself out of any real risk to shelter yourself from pain. Sometimes you look at what you dream of, what might be, and realize, “Hey, I’ve already tried that once, and it was a miserable failure.” Or you look at it and say, “Well, I would go do that, but it’d cost me $45,000 and I’d end up doing what exactly with that shiny new Masters degree?”
I don’t live in a world filled with endless possibilities. I live in a world where ruin and misery surrounds me on all sides. I live in a world where deviation from the designated path leads to trouble. I live in a world where education is either used for something or it is useless, where it’s better to have a job you hate than not have a job you can live on, and where reaching out leads to losing a hand.
I’m a creature of routines. We’re all creatures of habit in our own way, but none moreso than me. I drive the same way to work in the morning and I take one of three routes home. I get home, I change, I eat, I take a nap for 2 3 hours, I wake up, I work or play until 3 4AM, then I go back to bed and get up at 7 the next morning to repeat the process. I go to one movie theater. Write a post here by 1:00, write a post here before midnight, see a movie on Friday and write it up by Sunday; write the box office report on Sunday night (though occasionally I forget to do that).
I see my habits, and I see the habits of friends and loved ones as well. I can tell if something’s wrong by the grammar used in an IM. I can tell if something’s off by a sudden lack of contact whereas before it was steady. I grow to have certain expectations about the actions of others, and if they break those expectations, I just know something is wrong. Even if nothing’s wrong, I’ll invent any number of problems to ascribe to the situation and chew on them until they become a reality. It’s a blessing when it’s helpful; it’s a curse when it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Imagine you’ve got something to be worried about long enough, and you’ll end up having something to worry about (even if it’s just worrying about how much you’re worrying).
It’s kind of like a turtle in a shell. It keeps me kind of safe, but at the same time it’s a constant restriction. By the time I talk myself into breaking out of the shell or changing something, the opportunity is gone. Another chance not taken.
In a world of boom or bust, I always see the bust.
