Shortly thereafter, Guillermo came to Los Angeles. We had dinner, and by the time we finished, it seemed like we were two guys who had known each other for thirty years. There was just this immediate ease.

The only problem was that Guillermo had sent me the script in beautifully written English, so I never imagined it was going to be filmed in another language. I didn’t know that until I met him at the Mexico City airport. A tiny lightbulb went off, and I said, “Can I ask… what language are you shooting in?” And he said, “Spanish, my friend!” I said, “You do realize I don’t speak Spanish?” And he said, “Let’s go eat!”

I went back to the hotel after a sumptuous meal and said to myself, “I’ll show him! I’m going to give this performance in perfect Spanish.” I began to prepare two of Angel’s longer speeches. I called Guillermo the following morning, not having slept, and arranged to meet him at his production office. I read the first speech. When I finished, he said nothing. So I read the second speech. I thought I was phenomenal! Again he said nothing. So finally I said, “How was that?” And he said, “That was bad, very, very bad. You sound like an idiot.” So I said, “Well, what are we going to do? We start shooting tomorrow!” And he said, “Let’s go eat!”

When filming Cronos, his first big movie, Guillermo was very humble about the responsibility he was charged with. And being somebody who has a true passion and reverence for the medium, he put a lot of pressure on himself. But once he started filming, it seemed like he had been doing it his whole life. The minute I saw the imagery, I knew I was dealing with somebody in the same class as Luis Buñuel and François Truffaut.

Cronos was the first time I experienced truly independent cinema. It was the first time I’d ever worked on a non-studio, non-mainstream movie. Since then, I’ve appeared in over forty low-budget films for first-time directors. There was a magic that took place as I watched Guillermo do his thing in a setting that didn’t involve a big corporate organization. He was surrounded by people who loved him, believed in him, and enabled him—under some very compromising conditions—to make his movie.

I give Guillermo credit for jump-starting the entire second half of my life, which I have continued to try to make about independent cinema. I give him total credit for opening my eyes to what real cinema looks like. The impact Guillermo has had on my life goes far beyond the credits on my resume. That is nothing compared to how profoundly knowing him has changed the course of my life.

MIMIC

^{Del Toro and assistant director Walter Gasparovic on the set of Mimic.}

^{A concept of one of the giant insects by TyRuben Ellingson.}

^{Sketch of a mimic profile by del Toro.}

^{Keyframe of a chase scene in the sewers by Ellingson.}

^{Judas breed “dead boy” concept by Ellingson.}

“AN EVOLUTIONARY LEAP. Evolution’s on their side.” This comment by Guillermo in his Mimic notebook sums up his second film’s key question. In Mimic (1997), New York entomologist Dr. Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino, fresh off winning her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite) inadvertently alters cockroaches’ genetic code so that they evolve into six-foot-tall creatures that mimic the appearance of human beings.

For Guillermo, Mimic had an ironically apt title, as it’s ostensibly about a creature trying to imitate something utterly alien to its nature. This was Guillermo’s fledgling attempt to shoot a studio film as a studio director, to assume the role of a commercially minded technician while maintaining his artistic core and instincts. Like many of the bugs in the film, Guillermo got squashed, in this case by the studio machine. Eventually, the film was taken away from him and recut, with sequences added by another director. For Guillermo, it was a soul-crushing experience.

In the end, he learned vital lessons for the future. Afterward, he would consistently favor artistic choices over commercial ones as he built a singular and successful career. “This is a struggle you have as an artist,” Guillermo notes. “Hellboy in Hellboy II, when he shoots the elemental, he’s shooting it because he wants people to like him. He goes, ‘Well, okay, I’m going to do the right thing for these guys to like me because they don’t like me.’ And he comes out and delivers the baby like, ‘I did a great thing,’ and they boo him and they throw stones at him. As an artist, I’ve gone through that. You say, ‘Okay, I’m going to do what people like.’ I go and do a commercial movie like Mimic, and it’s a huge hurt in my life. Then when you go and do the hard choice, there’s a reward in there.”

Thankfully, in 2011, Guillermo released a “director’s cut” of Mimic that gives audiences his version of the film (or as close to it as it’s possible to get now). Filled with unforgettable images and powerful scenes that were not in the theatrical release, Guillermo’s version includes a stunning opening sequence in a church hospital, dreamily white, its long arched hall narrow and high, with rows of patients’ beds—all children—draped in opaque fabric lit from within, like embryonic sacs or insect chrysalises.

“It was the first day of shooting of Mimic, and I thought it was a very beautiful, a very striking image,” Guillermo recalls. “It was the first image that got me into deeper trouble because some of the producers hated that image from the start. They said, ‘It doesn’t look like a real hospital. It looks like something off another planet. What are you doing? Are you making an art film out of a B-movie bug picture?’ And I said to them, ‘Well, I think they are one and the same. I think that the movie needs to be sumptuous, look beautiful, but have a real emotional sense,’ and so on and so forth. It was a losing proposition from the get-go.”

With Mimic’s restoration, one can perceive how incredibly beautiful the film is when considered shot by shot, with its rich golds and blues, its textures of brick and coursing rain. Restored to a lyrical and patient pacing, it’s now unmistakably a Guillermo del Toro film, exhibiting his attention to detail and his tendency for observed, held moments.

Even without these amendments, many of Guillermo’s dominant themes and motifs feature prominently in Mimic, notably his fascination with mechanisms and insects, which are presented almost like living mechanisms. By cloaking his creatures in protective camouflage as faux humans, Guillermo urges us to consider humans as organic mechanisms, too—this visual alignment becoming a paradox that mixes physical sameness with spiritual difference.

“Insects are really well-engineered by nature,” Guillermo observes. “They are awe-inspiring, but I don’t find them admirable in their function, socially or spiritually. And I think that’s why we fear them, because they have a complete lack of emotion. They are the true living automatons of nature. That’s why they work as symbols of so many things…. They’re completely alien.”