Guillermo Del Toro requests more time for acceptance speech

GUILLERMO Del Toro demanded more time for his acceptance speech while picking up the Best Director prize at the 75th Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night (Jan 7). The 53-year-old filmmaker was awarded Best Director of a Motion Picture for helming ‘The Shape of Water’ - his first Golden Globe - at the ceremony at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, but while he was in full swing the orchestra started playing, so he asked them to stop. He said: “Lower the music. It’s taken 25 years. Give me a minute. Give me a minute.” Del Toro’s request was a hit with the audience, who started clapping and cheering. He continued: “I want to mention a few fantastic women sitting on this table. Sharon, Nancy, Ofelia, Sally, Kimmy and Vanessa. Without whom I wouldn’t be here.”

Before the orchestral interruption, Del Toro joked filmmakers have made a deal with a “particularly inefficient devil” in a bid to taste success in the movie industry.

He said: “For 25 years I have handcrafted very strange little tales made of motion, colour, light and shadow.

“In three precise instances, these strange stories, these fables, have saved my life.

“Once with ‘Devil’s Backbone’, once with ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, and now with ‘Shape of Water’, because as directors, these things are not just entries in a filmography.

“We have made a deal with a particularly inefficient devil that trades three years of our lives for one entry on IMDb. And these things are biography and they are alive.”

Del Toro beat off competition from fellow Best Director nominees Martin McDonagh (‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’), Christopher Nolan (‘Dunkirk’), Ridley Scott (‘All The Money In The World’) and Steven Spielberg (‘The Post’).