THE SHAPE OF WATER
ACROSS SIX FILMS SPANNING 20 YEARS, DIRECTOR GUILLERMO DEL TORO AND ACTOR DOUG JONES HAVE CREATED SOME OF THE MOST OFF-THE-WALL CHARACTERS IN MODERN CINEMA. INSIDE HOLLYWOOD’S MOST FANTASTICAL KINSHIP
Director Guillermo del Toro and his go-to creature guy Doug Jones reflect on a friendship that has spanned 20 years, six movies, and more rubber than a condom factory.
alone, Guillermo del Toro and Doug Jones are a match made in heaven. One is tall and almost cartoonishly thin; the other is shorter and, by his own admission, squatter. It’s a classic combination. Little and Large. Del Boy and Rodders. The Pixar lamp and ball come to life.
Silhouettes, though, only matter if you’re a comedy duo with music halls to pack out. Instead, del Toro and Jones are judged by a different metric — their unforgettable work together on six of del Toro’s meticulously crafted fantasies. Here’s how it works: del Toro, the Mexican maestro, comes up with characters that seemingly nobody on Earth could play: ethereal, eerie, elegant. Then Jones, a 57-year-old American who doesn’t look remotely like he’s 57, somehow plays them, always buried under a layer or ten of latex, yet still able to find the grace in the grotesque; beauty in the beasts. And sometimes he just plain scares the shit out of you. They’re still a match made in heaven, but there’s also a little bit of hell in there for good measure.
The two have been working together now for 20 years, but they’ve saved the best until now. The Shape Of Water, a lavish romantic fantasy, stars Jones as an amphibian man who becomes romantically entangled with Sally Hawkins’ mute cleaning lady. Arguably del Toro’s finest film since his Oscarwinning Pan’s Labyrinth, it also features possibly Jones’ most nuanced turn for his old friend. So there was no greater time to get them together, at an LA hotel on a warm November evening, to chart the course of this crazy, beautiful, fantastical friendship.
MIMIC (1997) LONG JOHN #2
Del Toro had already fired two Doug Jones types before he found the real thing. It was roughly three weeks before Mimic — his first foray into American movies and a “horrible experience” you imagine one day might form the basis of a really good book — was due in cinemas, and del Toro was working on the last-minutest of last-minute reshoots. He needed an actor to be turned into one of the film’s giant humanoid bugs, stand on the edge of a fake roof and do a diagonal lean. Sounds simple; wasn’t. “I said, ‘Who else?’” recalls del Toro. “They said, ‘There’s this guy who’s a mime.’ I said, ‘BRING THE MIME!’”
That someone else was Jones, who was already attracting attention for convincing character work swaddled in sticky foam in the likes of Tank Girl and Hocus Pocus. He came in, latexed up, leaned to del Toro’s liking, and put the mime in Mimic. His second day was when he first properly met his director, over a working lunch. Right from the off, they were finishing each other’s sandwiches. “I ate his tortillas,” laughs del Toro. “I said, ‘Are you gonna finish that?’ A Mexican and his tortillas are never far apart.” Jones fake-grumbles: “I could have used another tortilla.” This coming from a man who could pass through the tines of a fork, and who looks like he’s never eaten a tortilla in his life.
Del Toro took a keen interest in Jones’ CV to date, reeling off make-up artists the actor had worked with. “He was unlike any director I’d met before,” says Jones. “I thought, ‘There’s an eight-year-old boy behind those eyes.’ He asked for my [business] card that day.” Jones duly obliged, and almost immediately regretted it. “I had drawn a picture of myself and had it mimeographed,” he grimaces. “It was the worst card I’d ever seen,” laughs del Toro. “It looked like one of those cartoons you get made at the beach. It said ‘Doug Jones’ and a number.” Still, it was a number he called when he needed someone to bug out for a teaser trailer “that never got used, in true Dimension/ Miramax fashion”. After another false start, in came Jones. His job: to walk on a treadmill in front of a greenscreen. “I get out there, do a walk, Guillermo yells, ‘Cut!’, throws his hands to the skies and yells, ‘Thank you, God!’” They were off to a good start.
HELLBOY (2004) ABE SAPIEN
Del Toro and Jones’ working relationship didn’t begin in earnest until 2004’s Hellboy, the director’s adaptation of his beloved Mike Mignola comic book. Again, it started with someone else getting the heave-ho from the key role of uppity fish-man Abe Sapien. “It was nothing he did,” says del Toro of the unfortunate, unnamed actor. “He was shorter than I needed, and it was my mistake.” Realising he needed someone tall and gangly for Abe, del Toro had another epiphany when Jones’ name was thrown into the ring. “I said, ‘YES! I HAVE HIS CARD!’ I still had it. There is, in all my wallets, this silly compartment where I put cards I want to remember. Doug’s was there and we called him.”
This time, Jones would be doing much more than a diagonal lean. Abe was the film’s third lead, and required the actor to form a complete character, again enclosed in a full body suit. “I’ve never been able to see or hear well on anything I’ve played for him,” laughs Jones. “But on a Guillermo del Toro film it’s well worth it.”
Jones has a process that’s worked for years. “I’ll go to a dance studio, stand in front of a mirror and say, ‘What posture is going to work for this?’ I work out some physicality, then the make-up tests start.” That test on Hellboy still sticks in his mind. “Remember it?” he asks del Toro. “You said, ‘I feel like I’m waiting for my bride to come out!’ Then we presented Abe to you, and I remember looking in the mirror and going, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever played.’ I even teared up inside the mask.”
Jones’ take on Abe was florid, employing grand hand gestures, fulfilling del Toro’s vision of a “preppy, Ivy League guy”. There was just one small issue: his complete performance wasn’t quite complete. Although he voiced the character on set, David Hyde Pierce was brought in to do the honours for the finished film. “Guillermo did me the honour of calling me ahead of time before the story broke,” recalls Jones. Del Toro demurs. “Directing means one thing: you have to be brutal sometimes,” he says. “The only thing you can do is deliver the brutal news yourself. But I would say that was the floor of our relationship.”