Guillermo Del Toro Found ‘Nightmare Alley’s’ Godzilla In Cate Blanchett [Interview]

Guillermo Del Toro is not as prolific as some of his peers when it comes to feature films, but it’s still somewhat surprising it’s taken this long for him to work with Cate Blanchett. They both had their breakthrough moments in the mid-to-late-1990s and Blanchett could have easily stepped into the worlds of any “Hellboy” movie, “The Shape of Water,” or “Crimson Peak” without a second glance. Thankfully, the pair have finally collaborated in Del Toro’s latest epic, “Nightmare Alley,” and the result is, well, electric.

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Adapted by Del Toro and screenwriter Kim Morgan from William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel, “Nightmare” follows Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a wanderer who becomes ensconced with a traveling carnival while looking for work. And, bit by bit, he quietly uses the people around him. Clem (Willem Dafoe), the not-so-kind manager of the endeavor, Zeena (Toni Collette), the psychic who clocks Stan a mile away for who he really is, Zeena’s husband Pete (David Strathairn) who has an act Stan becomes obsessed with and Molly (Rooney Mara), a performer who naively believes Stan might truly love her. When the film revisits Stan a few years later, he’s become a popular psychic performer for the pre-WW II affluent elite of Buffalo, NY. That is until Dr. Lilith Ritter (Blanchett) enters his world.

“Cate and I had developed a project together in the past, that was a noir TV series. And we were very interested in working in that world together. And it never came to pass, but I knew that this was in her by everything [she’d done before],” Del Toro says. “It’s sort of indicated by when she plays ‘Carol’ or she plays a harder edge character, more self-contained character. I thought even in ‘Blue Jasmine’ when she’s playing the wife of Alec Baldwin, there are moments there that indicate that flintiness. That was interesting. And I wrote it with that in mind with Kim. Kim And I agreed that we were writing it for Cate.”

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Del Toro continues, “And I approached her, and I said to Bradley, ‘Look, King Kong, I need to get you your Godzilla.’ And I knew that I needed somebody of that stature to, what has been up until then, a guy that has run on unopposed for half the movie. And you need to feel when the vineyard comes in. And the other thing is, very important here, is the ramp of the movie needs to be slow, but continuous. And you need to feel ‘O.K. I get the world, I get the act. I get the guy. Now what?’ And the answer to ‘Now what?’ is Lilith, it’s Cate.”

Over the course of our interview, Del Toro reveals what made him want to tackle “Nightmare” following his Best Picture-winner “Shape of Water,” how the script was rewritten to suit Cooper’s talents, and much more.

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The Playlist: I heard Ron Perlman had spoken to you about doing something with this book, with this property around 25 years ago. Why do you think it took so long to get to the screen?

Guillermo del Toro: Well, Ron talked to me after “Cronos” about maybe adapting the book and him playing Stanton Carlisle. And he actually talked to me about the movie. And I found out that it was based on a book and I got the book because back then the movie was very hard to get. It was sort of out of print and in a legal battle. It was more legendary than available. So, I read the book and I loved the book. And when eventually I saw the movie, I had the complete certainty that the movie had left enough room to do a completely different version. Except for the basic plot beats. And we went to Fox and Fox denied us access to the material because it was a library title. So, that lay dormant, I didn’t approach it again for many, many, many years. And then Kim Morgan and I decided to write something together, and Kim suggested that we tackle “Nightmare Alley.” And we went at it knowing that it would be a hard sell both to the cast and the studio because we had an understanding of the integrity of the ending. And how the movie could only exist with the ending that you see on the screen without altering it, without adding to it. That was the only way to go. And it was a tough sell.

Do you remember how many years ago you and Kim first started to work on it?

It was after “Shape Of Water.” Around the end of that whole thing. Probably at the time of the awards night of “Shape Of Water” we were doing that.

Did you feel like you needed to cast Stanton first? Did you go to Bradley even while the film was coming together?

No. We went to Leo DiCaprio who was attached for a little bit. And then when we went to Bradley, immediately after, we had to change the screenplay and adjust it to him. It’s almost like tailoring a suit. We had to change the character to suit the person playing it.

What sort of changes do you remember making? What asked of Stanton changed when Bradley took over?

I think that the seductiveness of Stanton when he is being played by Bradley is more sort of a gravity-based, less actively playful, seductive nature that existed on the character before. He moved and talked a lot less in the first half of the movie [with Bradley]. In this new incarnation, he was less of an active guy than an observer and a calculator and a sort of a magpie that was gathering information on weak points from everybody around him. And then he puts into play in the second half of the movie.

So I heard a story from a Q&A, I wasn’t there, that you had said that when Stanton first arrives at the carnival, he’s sort of doing a little “Talented Mr. Ripley” in terms of everyone that he’s meeting at the carnival. Is that correct?

That’s correct. I mean, that’s an archetype of a con man. The sort of the imposture of a hollow man, a man that has no center and there are no boundaries for him between the truth and a lie. He can live in one, he thinks he can live in one more, as comfortable as on the other. And he utilizes Ripley or any con man in the history of mankind. He uses the knowledge and the weak points of the people around him to make them do what he wants. So, If he needs Molly, he will do Molly. If he needs Zeena, he seduces Zeena or allows himself to be seduced by Zeena, and then he can discard any of them. I think one of the things we agreed upon is that he really needed to believe, and in some ways really loved Molly, but in that limited way that the character would have. Other than that he’s using Pete’s paternal impulses to learn the secret code of the mentalism act so forth.

He may love Molly, but is he infatuated with Doctor Ritter? Is there genuine passion there? Or do you feel like he knows he’s being played and is trying to play her back?

If you ask me, I think that the feelings for Lilith are more complicated with a mother figure, even if he is seduced by her or attracted by how elegant and superior she looks, he has this love and hate relationship with the figure that cannot just be pinpointed to one sign. He has also the complexity of her appearing to be a mother figure. It’s a really interesting game the novel placed by giving him basically three female figures and three crucial father figures in the course of his exploration of self. It’s a very interesting symmetry that comes from the novel and we adopted it on the script. We were very conscious of that grammatical device.

So where do you think Zeena or Toni Collette’s character fits into that sort of triumvirate?

Well, what we thought would be great is if we showed somebody complex and adult that openly has Stanton “on the side,” whilst Pete, her husband still around and sort of knows that this is happening [and] allows it to happen. But she loves Pete and she doesn’t quite give in fully to the seduction of Stanton. She is very realistic about it. There’s a very beautiful moment between them when they say goodbye. And she’s very real-world about what they had and what they didn’t and how she knows he used her. And she says, “We both got what we wanted.” But certainly, there was a moment in which you may have hoped for Stanton to be a better person. But everybody in the movie hopes Stan could be better, but he isn’t. And I think as I said, the entire movie becomes a prologue to the last two minutes of the film. That’s why we always thought, in order for the ending to be powerful [you have to have] gained an understanding of this guy little by little, through a journey in which he does not change. The interesting thing about this character is that he doesn’t change that much until he’s faced with the truth. So, if this is who you think you are, and this is who you are, which is what I think made this movie pertinent today because we live in a world in which two entirely different narratives of the truth can be peddled in a populist way. And we are confused, and it can be political. It can be social, it can be spiritual. It’s a moment in which we are losing sight of the truth and the reality. And the way they sort of allow us to enter an arena of madness. And I think there’s a reckoning in there for a character like Stanton. At the end is a reckoning with the mirror, which is, again, a recurring symbol in the film. The film has a few recurring visual cues. Circles, mirrors, and alleys. They come into play over and over again. And it’s coded like that.

In the context of that answer, the people who work at the carnival clearly know that this “geek,” a man locked in a cage, not being given food, is being treated inhumanely. I know it’s right after the Great Depression in that respect, but why do you think they can live with looking the other way?

Basically, you have two societies we present in the movie. One is the carnival, which knows they are swindlers and knows they are there to scout the [customers] that walk into the carnival. And it’s no pretension of [that]. And Molly says, “This is the ragtag opera. Nothing is the best of anything.” And you realize that when she gets electrocuted, she really gets electrocuted. And with that pain. All of that is in the open. And they survive the pressure now by basically having a high bound society in which most of them may or may not have a criminal best. And that’s very much the way it was, at least in many of the cases. That’s why Clem says, “It doesn’t matter what you did or where you come from or what you are running away from. You can stay here.” And I think there was a dialogue that we took out where Clem says [regarding the geek], “He’s going down no matter what.” I mean, it’s a really brutal vision of life. The whole movie is, by the way, but the carnival is not idealized or magical, or whimsical. The only advantage they have over the people in the city is that they don’t pretend to be in good standing. And then you go to the city, which is a colder version of the same town, in a way, with people pretending to be decent and pretending to be classy and pretending to be refined, but being as brutal or more than the carnival.

I think I was smiling underneath my mask during the entire scene when Bradley and Cate’s character’s meet for the first time. Kate is just killing it. It’s one of the best scenes from an actress or actor I’ve seen in a long time. How did you know that Cate would be so electric with Bradley in this role?

Well, we talked. Cate and I had developed a project together in the past, that was a noir TV series. And we were very interested in working in that world together. And it never came to pass, but I knew that this was in her by everything [she’d done before]. It’s sort of indicated by when she plays “Carol” or she plays a harder edge character, more self-contained character. But I thought even in “Blue Jasmine” when she’s playing the wife of Alec Baldwin, there are moments there that indicate that flintiness. That was interesting. And I wrote it with that in mind with Kim. Kim And I agreed that we were writing it for Cate. And I approached her and I said to Bradley, “Look, King Kong, I need to get you your Godzilla.” And I knew that I needed somebody of that stature to, what has been up until then, a guy that has run on unopposed for half the movie. And you need to feel when the vineyard comes in. And the other thing is, very important here, is the ramp of the movie needs to be slow, but continuous. And you need to feel “O.K.. I get the world, I get the act. I get the guy. Now what?” And the answer to “Now what?” Is Lilith, it’s Cate.

“Nightmare Alley” is now in theaters nationwide.