Original subtitles

Uh, hello. This is GMO Del Toro and I

welcome you to the audio commentary of

Mimic the Director's Cut.

Uh now uh let me open this commentary by

saying that everything about I'm about

to relate is exclusively my opinion and

it remains to the best of my

recollection.

You know some names will be changed uh

into producer A or producer B or things

like that and uh I'll try to take you

through what it was to make this movie

and why this movie was made. this

opening sequence which is a a sequence

uh uh we shot uh here in LA. It was a it

was a a title sequence shot designed by

Kyle Cooper of Imaginary Forces uh when

we were planning Mimic early early on. I

unfortunately went to see a movie that

was using exactly the same look we were

looking for uh that was called Seven by

David Fincher. And uh I was shocked that

I now had to lose a lot of the ideas we

had for the look of the film. But the

one thing that stuck with my mind was

how great the title sequence of that

movie was. The title sequence of seven

was impeccable and it opened a whole new

era. So, we became obsessed with the

idea of hiring the same designers, Kyle

Cooper and Imaginary Forces. Uh, that's

how I met everybody at at Imaginary

Forces, uh, including Peter Frankfurt,

with whom I would later shoot Blade 2.

This, uh, we talked about the main

quirks of the sequence. We talked about

the light moving as if they were passing

lights of cars. The motive of the eye

being repeated here and there because

it's a motive used a lot in camouflage

and mimicry by insects. And um the idea

was to make a subtle joke about what the

experience was of shooting this movie by

putting a bug with a pin through being

dragged over my credit directed by. it

can finally be revealed why why that

image is there.

Uh the origin of the movie goes back

many many years before it was shot. I

think uh three years at the very least

after Kronos I tried to have uh Devil's

Backbone shot and uh uh I couldn't get

it. They developed u um a project for

Francis Ford Copa called the left hand

of darkness or the count of Monte Cristo

set in 1800s Mexico as a gothic western

version of the count of Monte Cristo and

I developed a movie called Meesto's

Bridge based on the novel Spanky by

Chris Fowler which I adored and I

couldn't get any of them made list of

seven with Mark Frost and u then uh I

met with Bob and Harvey Weinstein at

Miramax and they had a proposal to make

which I will detail in a second.

The image that follows right now, it was

the first day of shooting of Mimic and

it very much I thought it was a very

beautiful image, a very striking image

and uh it was the first image that

started to get me into deeper trouble

you know because they uh some of the

producers hated this image from the

start. They said, "It doesn't look like

a real hospital. It looks like something

out of another planet." And what are you

doing? Are you making a an art film out

of a a B-bug movie picture? And I

thought I said to them, well, I I think

they are one and the same. I think that

uh the movie needs to be sumptuously

beautiful designed, but have a real

emotional sense and so on and so forth.

And it was a losing proposition from the

get-go. I wanted very much to design the

movie with uh very blue knights, cyan

blue knights and amber circles and amber

uh archeries to suggest that humans were

insects trapped in amber uh like this

image of her walking in the sewer and so

on and so forth. And uh I did go for a

striking look visually of the movie, but

uh this got me no friends or allies in

the process because I thought I was

going for too slow a rhythm and too uh

fancymancy

uh look for the film. But I'll give you

more details on why I think this was one

of the most important experiences of my

life. And I actually think more than

Kronos and more than the movies that I

found uh a successful triumph with in

the sense of create creative control, it

was mimic that defined very much the

ethos of the film making for me because

it was such a hard experience.

So, going back in time in 1994, I think

or 1993, again, I'm not sure of the

exact date. I met with Bob and he said,

"Well, look, we love uh Kronos. We

almost bought Kronos." And uh I love

that scene with the guy leaking the

floor of the bathroom and the strange

device and you know, he seemed to like

all the right things on the movie. and

he said, "But uh we we are doing a an

anthology um uh called Lightyear Years."

Michael Phillips was the one that had

brought me to to Bob Weinson and Michael

Phillips was producing. Michael of

course was the famous uh one of the

famous producers of Close Encounters of

the Third Kind and he was a very

celebrated producer along with his wife

or ex-wife back then Julia Phillips and

uh you know they said

find any movie any short story you like

and uh and we'll do it.

Strickler's disease came to New York. I

originally came back with a George RR

Martin story called Sand Kings, which

was the story of a guy that um becomes a

god to a little race of insects that he

tortures and and mistreats and u to a

great horror climax.

And I love that idea. And and then we

couldn't do it. And they said, "Well,

we don't have the rights. They're going

to be made on the new outer limits." uh

that story is going to be made as a one

of the new outer limits. What do you

want to do other than this? And I said,

well, if you can find anything that has

insects, I'll be happy.

Thank you, Peter.

And uh they had hired a curator for the

anthologies.

Uh I I have remembered an idea

uh a story by Donald Walheim that I had

seen called Mimic and it showed up in

the list and I said I I remember that

that story. Let me read it again. It's a

it's an original story that is very

brief,

very spooky about a man in a long

overcoat that is uh breeding his young

in his lonely apartment and it turns out

he is an insect.

Uh I took this at the departure point

and I

had recently met uh Matthew Robbins.

Matthew Robbins is the director, writer

director of um a movie I admired greatly

and I admire to this day called Dragon

Slayer which is a movie that juxtaposes

sort of real life politics and

disappointment with a dragon fable and a

sorcerer's apprentice sort of right of

passage movie.

I met with Matthew uh as my advisor in

the Sundance lab uh where I was

publishing Devil's Bagbon and he really

loved Devil's Bag and he said to me we

got to be more in contact blah blah blah

and we I came to him and I said we

should write Mimic together.

Back then we had we were being produced

by Michael Phillips, but I had convinced

Marramax to hire a producer I admired

and loved called Stuart Kornfeld who had

produced the fly for Mel Brooks and

Elephant Man and um who was a big

champion of the Bizarre and the absurd.

He is now a full partner with Ben

Stiller on on the company Red Hour. and

I still have great affection and love

for Stewie who is one of the nicest,

most brilliant men I have ever met. Uh

Stuart arranged for Matthew to be hired

and we created a short story and we got

together with an ILM artist called Ty

Ruben Ellingsson who has since gone on

to work with me on Hellboy on Hellboy 2

on Blade 2. He has designed things

especially for me in other movies. And

he just finished a little movie that

some of you may have seen called Avatar.

Now look at that uh bug in the

projection in the background. That's a

silhouette of an animated bug projected

a 2D animated silhouette projected on

the wall because we had no money for

CGI.

The CGI effects in this movie are, I

think, about 75 shots. Nowadays, a

regular movie will have over a thousand

shots. Back then, it was this was one of

those early movies of CGI. We came

shortly after uh uh Jurassic Park and uh

we we had only 70s something shots. Uh

I'll go back to the tale of how Mimic

got made. Let me talk about this scene

for a second. I wanted I love that shot.

I love how that shot is you see him

falling in the mirror and hitting the

paint can in the same shot. And I love

the idea of is starting to introduce the

fact that

the feeling we have of being God's

favorite creature, Jesus favorite

creature in this case, starts to be

undermined by the apparition of the

insects. This was important in my

original draft. I'm not saying it's

important now, but in the original

draft, the idea was to sort of

disarticulate the Jesus save uh sign to

show that nothing was sacred to these

creatures and we were not any longer in

top of the food chain. We had this uh

character of Chewy, the sort a closedin

uh little boy, a closed in little child

that u has some form of autism and is

capable nevertheless to remember every

shoe he has ever seen and he's capable

of reproducing sounds with his spoons

because he is in in and of himself a

mimic.

a child that mimics what he sees, what

he hears, and so on and so forth. Now,

back to the origin story a little bit,

but uh so we we I met with Bob, we

created a short film uh screenplay, and

he fell in love with the short film. The

anthology Light years was supposed to be

Brian Singer creating the origin of the

universe uh in a short story. uh myself

and another two or three directors that

were shifting and changing uh one of the

other shorts called Impostor got made

into a feature too with Garrison. But

when Bob read Mimic when Bob read the

moment back then it was Meera in well

the character that Meera plays the

character of Susan was in a in an

abandoned parking lot and a creature

which is essentially the scene in the

platform in the subway here. Uh, she's

standing alone in the parking lot and

the creature flies through the parking

lot, grabs her and drags her down a

tunnel. He started screaming with the

light saying, "We got to make this into

a feature. We got to make this into a

feature." And Matthew and I found a road

into making it into a feature, but

discussing the fact that we would talk

about uh human ficondity

uh slowing down and stopping and the age

of the insect dawning on. So I thought

it was appropriate to create the scene

which was removed from the original

theatrical cut of them talking about

having a baby in front of fossils.

You know they are now history. They are

now anthropological history. They they

are just a curiosity a geological

strata.

Mankind would become a fossil and

extinguished. And there was a very nice

dialogue where Manny, the shoe shine

character in the original screenplay

said, "What if God

is fed up with us with all our trouble,

with all our sins, with all the spoiling

of the earth?" Um, and he favors

insects. What if go insects are now

God's favorite creatures? And I thought

it would it was a nice idea to

juxttopose how fertile the insects are.

They're breeding in the hundreds

underground in the thousands. And these

two humans are struggling really hard to

reproduce by really unnatural means. And

by this I I think that fertility drugs

uh were no no different from her

tampering with nature in any any other

way. And it was a throwback to the old

Frankenstein idea that your creatures um

will come back to haunt you and that she

uh not being able to have a child

essentially has uh spawned all these

creatures out of her her science

experiments.

And that is if you go back to the

bathroom scene in the opening that's why

I have the insect folded sort of in a

fetal position.

Now, Josh Brolin, this was one of his

first roles. He He's one of my favorite

actors, and we got along famously on the

set. We became good friends, I believe.

And I hope he would agree. And uh I

always wanted the character of Josh to

be uh bigger in the film. And uh

unfortunately through the myriad of

rewrites we rewrote this movie so many

times his character became less and less

important.

But working with him was a real lesson

and a beauty. This piece of [ __ ]

We had we created the church under the

spoiled figures again in the in the idea

that the natural order of the sanctity

of the world and or or place in the

creation was being subverted and that

the new fathers and mothers of the world

were insects and that uh people were

treated or were treating each other like

animals. So, we had this the idea of

having this chapel in Chinatown be

masking for

a really inongruous and depressing uh

sweat shop beneath where they were

fabricating in inhuman conditions

fabricating these cheerful little uh

jackets for mass consume in the market

with the with the label proudly made in

the USA. This was all removed from

theatrical cut and it now is back. And

we reintroduce a notion that the Chinese

uh being kidnapped by the bugs called

the insects the dark angels again as if

they were God's favored creatures.

Uh when we started creating the

screenplay back when we

fleshed it out into a feature, the first

thing I asked Matthew is to get some

time to go and read my n natural history

books. I wanted real creatures that for

example had excrements that culated that

uh bred their young. I wanted to give

them real physiological functions. And

one of the things uh the first thing I

tackled is how would they get that big?

What would make them be? How would they

really evolve into that size? And I

started reading all my biology books and

I tried to give it a real biological

angle and I'm very proud to say that as

a hearsay uh one of the students of the

late Steven J. Gold uh told me that he

included as an extra point in his final

exam. He said,

"What Hollywood movie got right the

reason why insects grow could grow

larger? A, B, C, and Mimic was the right

answer?" So, you know, if Stephen J.

Gold likes it, it can't be too shabby.

The first thing I went into is well the

angle the alibi for them growing that

size would be that they would develop

lungs because insects have no lungs.

There was um a phrase originally in the

screenplay where Meera said these things

are as remote from us as an alien would

be from another planet. They have four

hearts, five hearts. They have white

blood. They have no lungs and they have

a skeleton on the outside of their

bodies. They don't care for us. They do

not have pity. They do not have empathy.

And I think that uh it was a very nice

speech that was removed. Again, a little

joke about maternity by them carrying

these mckettes, these models of giant

lar.

And the first duty in this director's

cut for me was to remove all the crap

to remove all the crap that was shot by

second unit. Uh either by uh one, two or

three, whichever. There were three

different directors of second unit. Some

of which I got rid of, some of which

Miramax kindly suggested at some point.

And uh I thought that most of the stuff

that they shot was stuff that I was

refusing to shoot. Unfortunately for me,

they also shot uh one of the scenes that

is my favorite piece of writing that we

did. Matt Greenberg and I, a later u

screenplay writer and I did and I was

very proud of that piece. But at any

rate, this movie is what uh left me with

the complete conviction, for example,

that there should be no second unit. So

what you're seeing now is almost

completely free. Uh is 95% free of

second unit crap, according to me. No

fake scares, no uh false uh uh you know

uh screams to get the people jumping. Uh

no unnecessary explanation scenes and so

on and so forth.

Uh as I said the second step was to okay

if insects develop lungs they could grow

up. Then on the design of the insects we

tried to structure the exoskeleton

uh so that they could balance better. We

made the tail a little heftier. they

would be able to stand not only on their

legs but they would be able to use the

the sort of um chittiness uh structure

of the tail as a support for when they

walk like humans. Then uh I started to

make sure that the studio understood the

difference between mimicry and

camouflage.

camouflage is uh the natural selection

process by which an insect that looks

like his surroundings will end up being

a successful species because he cannot

be spotted by predators. So you know a

leaf insect a stig bug that looks like a

branch or that looks like a leaf that's

not mimicry

that is camouflage. Mimicry is a rather

mysterious and rather creepy phenomenon

by which the an insect by some

absolutely mind-boggling process of

evolution almost decides as a specy as a

species to blend in with other bugs look

like them in some cases smell like them

mimicking their chemistry their

signature chemical signature. So there

are very creepy cases of horror tales in

mimicry. One of them is for example that

there's a spe a kind of beetle kind of

insect that uh can perfectly mimic an

ant and they go and dig into the ant

nest and live amongst the ants. Uh they

eat amongst them, they sleep amongst

them. Well, they don't know if they

sleep but but they they they they

essentially make their living amongst

the ants. All the while they are

devouring the young of the ants. They

are eating the lar and they are

essentially the enemy in disguise. That

is one of the extreme examples of

mimicry. And I wanted very much to give

that sense that there was u mimicry

going on that we that would be invisible

to the eye that they could be amongst

us. That was the most beautiful thing in

the classical movies I used to like as a

child like invasion of the body

snatchers and so forth. So there we were

just opposing then ficcondity against

the inc in incredible promiscuity of the

insect.

The second uh theme is very well

illustrated by this scene particularly

which is arrogance,

scientific uh arrogance by humans where

we think we can create all these things

and I do believe that all these things

like cellulars and microwaves and and

all these things that necessarily

unchain the most sacred aspects of uh

creation and and that that are the sleep

of reason really science uh taking

itself as the pinnacle of reason it

really produces monsters you know like

it I find it the arrogance of science to

be completely unreasonable the fact that

anything that is not provable with

quantities and numbers is deemed either

non-existent or safe so the the horrors

in this movie I wanted to have a very

primitive uh origin and a very primitive

uh almost fairy tale feel. So the kids

children bring this bug to her with this

inoffensive little sign, the weird bug

and so forth. All the while she's

talking about uh play control in the

fields and crickets and pherommones,

which is the theory that she will later

use in the subway car by uh robbing the

pherommones of the insect on themselves

to mimic the mimic in later in the

movie.

Anyway, we started uh doing mad and

production uh was officially um given a

a go and we started preparing mimic.

Uh things started deteriorating early

on. Uh, in the original draft Matthew

Robbins and I did, uh, we had the

creatures be uh, bark beetles, white oak

bark beetles from New York that nested

in Central Park and uh, they had to they

were carriers of a bacteria and they

needed to be controlled. Uh I will never

forget the day where Michael Phillips

having removed his loafers in a meeting

uh proceeded to say well if it's New

York what about cockroaches I felt uh

the world had exploded in a wave of

horror for me and right then and there I

said listen guys we shouldn't do that

because from now on we are going to be

the giant cockroach movie and there is

no way You can

go past that absolutely Zm movie

conceit. If we make it a a giant insect

and this and that, we may be able to

show that we are a smart movie. But if

the cockroach in and of itself is such a

demeaning, funny Zm movie concept uh to

create a movie around that we're uh

we're never going to outlive that.

Not to to make the long story shorter

than it needs to be, but essentially I

lost that argument throughout because

somebody in the table was very

enthusiastic about absolutely New York

cockroaches. That's the perfect

marriage. That's what every New Yorker

knows, blah blah blah. Anyway, from then

on, I was condemned to uh doing the best

giant cockroach movie ever made. Uh that

was the biggest achievement I could

aspire to on Mimic. But damn it, I tried

to do it. And so did everyone. Servino,

Dan Lton, Carol Spear, everybody worked

really hard and believed in this movie.

They believed in the underpinnings of

the screenplay, which little little by

little were undermined by further

rewrites. Um, I wanted the uh the the

first screenplay. I was happy with it.

But then uh shortly after that for

screenplay uh I was asked to look for a

rewrite partner and uh the rewrite

partner I chose was John Sales. John

Sales was is a really good screenplay

writer a really great independent

filmmaker

and he had penned two of my favorite be

movies in the genre. One of them uh you

you may know or not is called Alligator

and Alligator has a great sense of dread

in the sewers of the city and uh I

thought this was the perfect

partnership.

The screenplay that uh John Sales

generated from the draft Matthew and I

did is my favorite version of the

screenplay. Needless to say, the

screenplay was not liked as much by the

studio who wanted to further explain the

creatures. I kept saying the more we

explain them the more we rob them of

their magic. But uh explain them we did.

And by the way, the design of the sound

in this movie is done by Randy Tom at

Skywalker Sound, who is I think one of

the best, if not the best sound designer

around. And you know, he didn't do the

whole design of the movie, but he did a

hefty portion of it. And this is one of

my favorite parts of it because it's

done with very little subtle effects and

uh mixing this movie with Mike Minkler

who is one of the great mixers in the

business again was one of the distinct

pleasures in the process.

After John Sales came uh none other than

a very very nice guy called Steven

Soderberg whom I uh adored from the

get-go and who had done uh u the

quintessential independent film the

indie film movie that originated all

that is sex life and videotapes. I met

with Solderberg found him to be

incredibly dry and incredibly amusing.

He wrote a truly deranged draft that I

loved. I called him and said, "This is

the best dialogue I've ever read. This

is fantastic." But unfortunately, it had

not much to do with the movie we were

going to make. If I There's one thing

that remains of the uh Steve Soder

draft, and that is the the priest being

dragged to a small opening in the in the

movie in the prologue of the movie that

it comes from Steve. If I don't reme if

I remember correctly, at some point when

the mimics showed up in Steven's draft,

they had a baseball cap

on their heads that they had snatched

from a victim and um uh nothing else

remains. After John Sales, after Steve

Soderberg uh came other writers, the

most important of which I would say is a

a guy, adorable guy, brilliant guy

called Matthew Greenberg, who was a

lifesaver because he was a really great

ally. and um very fancy Hollywood

rewrite guy called Peter. Uh what

survives of Peter is um a couple of

beats in the elevator shaft at the end

in the dumb waiter and um uh another

thing that survives of him is a really

good line of dialogue where um Charles

Dutton's character says about the shed

in the ceiling. He says, "Why are you

asking me if I have ever seen something

like this before? Hell, I ain't never

seen something like this before. Do I

look like I've seen something like this

before? Blah blah blah. That was a very

good line. There's not much more I would

recall. But at any rate, we were rapidly

going into production. We were um

actively working. Uh we I hired um a guy

that I admired called Rick Lazerini who

used to do the Budweiser Frog

commercials. And I thought I needed not

a fancy makeup effects guy, but a guy

that could do realistic animals. And

Lazarini was the best guy around to do

duplicates of animals. He had done a

giant elephant for operation dumbrop,

the frogs, uh many a real looking

character, a dog and so on and so forth.

And he we approached the insects with

what I call the National Geographic

approach. We did not make them any

fancier.

uh there are certain horror stories that

occurred at this time that I have been

advised not to relate for for liability

reasons. So I will abstract myself and

just say that designing the creatures

became a bit of a nightmare. And uh Ty

Ruben Ellson was doing a fantastic

design job and uh we brought by

suggestion of the studio they said who

would you like to hire um to redesign

the creature? I said well I love the

creature as it is. And uh they said well

give us your dream guy. And the dream

guy I asked for was Rob Bautin who came

back and worked with Tai into

essentially just streamlining some of

the curvature in the spine of the

creature and giving them a more hunched

look and more menacing look. But I would

credit the design of the creatures

really to Tai Rubin with the help of

Robot team. But uh Rob was credited

prominently by request of the studio

more prominently so than Tai. Uh this is

a sequence I'm very proud of. I mean, I

like the way it's shot, this whole

endeavor. We'll go more into that in a

second.

But this is a movie where I started to

explore the idea of using cool light,

blue light, and juxtaposing it with

amber light um as means to create a a

visual language and a color coding.

amber being the um egg sac uh color for

the insects and uh the color of the

amniotic fluid of maternity and so on

and so forth. So you'll see it repeated

here and again with images that remind

you of an egg or encapsulating forms and

so on and so forth.

Yeah,

hold on. Is there money to be made in

this egg thing? Another clue to the

insects for me was that Carol Spear

mentioned, let's make the human world

very straight like this, you know, very

um straight lines. And now and then if

we want to remind of any curves, we do

it with oval shapes and egg shapes in

the human world to make them

encapsulated and and so on and so forth.

I think that um this language started to

uh do something for me that became or

has become crucial in my mind which is

that the visual content in a film uh

comes through the form.

At one point I was depressed and really

really sad about the movie because the

screenplay kept uh changing and changing

into a screen that that I found really

more and more Benel. I jokingly used to

say when I was a kid I used to think why

do Hollywood movies suck and I jokingly

said too after mimic I learned the

truth. I learned how why and but as the

content the written dramatury the

written material was going away. I

noticed one thing. I looked at the

monitor in my in my director's um bay

and I saw that the images were exactly

what I wanted. This is one of the movies

that I'm visually the most proud of in

terms of camera style, camera movement

and design.

And I want to thank uh every producer in

this movie that pushed me and

particularly the the fact that they

pushed me towards becoming more fluid

with the camera. I was coming from a

place where the the camera should only

move uh in the most extreme

circumstances like in Kronos most of it

is a really locked down camera here and

there and only in in certain moments we

move and I I developed the language all

of my own in in mimic uh thanks to that

pressure they said no no keep us

entertained and I didn't want to move

the camera just b in a vanal way that

just moving it for moving for movement

and sake. So, I designed a thing that I

use all the time that I call counter

movement, which is the camera um moves

in in a in an angle from one angle to

the other in either a counter movement

or a movement that creates almost a

symphonic feel. And it's a very central

camera style. I think that is is much

better expressed in Devil's Backbone, uh

which was done after Mimic. I think is

the movie that I'm the proudest of of

the camera language in. But what it it

did is it made me design all the setup

in advance uh for the rest of my films.

And it it has become the style I use. It

has become a thing that I uh uh can rely

upon that is one of my most intimate

tools and it came from suffering in this

movie. And again realizing that all the

visuals of this movie were still mind

and they were charged with content. They

were not just empty eye candy. They were

developing into what I would call

jokingly or not eye protein because uh I

do believe that content uh comes from

form. Our form is in content in film.

As this movie progressed, I uh tried to

uh uh keep the reigns of the production

as much as possible, but they uh the the

range things were happening. I remember

distinctly uh test

the mimics used to have antennas.

He's really good at that.

Oh yes. And the feedback that we got

back from u the studio was a raging um

uh phone call where they said they look

like bugs.

The mimics look like bugs. And I said

but of course we've been developing the

re creatures for a year and a half.

You've seen the designs. You've seen the

mcketts. You've seen the clay models.

You've seen everything and they are

bugs. Well, can you make them more like

aliens? I said I don't want to make them

more like aliens at this stage. You

know, we we already have functioning

puppets with radio control servant

animatronics. What do you mean redesign

them? And somebody said a really great

line. They said, "Can you make their

teeth bigger?" And I said, "Well, they

don't have any teeth." Well, show more

of their gums. I said, "They don't have

gums. They have a a multi-art mouth

system."

Well, c can you give them like crazy

hair? Well, they don't have hair. They

are insects. Anyway, I lived in this

surreal world. Uh I will go a little

more into that later, but uh that was

more or less the time when we uh

had no more Michael Phillips, no more

more no more Steuart Comil. they had

left the production and in was brought

uh another producer

called BJ Rank whom I had met through

Guarmono my my good DP friend. I must

say that the only thing I can um say of

BJ's recollection of the mimic

production in in a book that was printed

not long ago is completely inaccurate.

completely inaccurate by her own words

if I recall them correctly where after

my biggest most difficult confrontation

with the studio she drove me home and

she said to me I have never seen anyone

as collected and as cool as you remained

through all that ordeal much later in

the book uh the picture that was painted

was very different and I I want to go on

record to say that I completely disagree

and I will say no more because I don't

want to

uh create anything else out of that. But

u uh I really went through this whole

thing with a an stoic zen uh disposition

and I that's why I was able to survive.

This was a really great scene to shoot.

This had originally gone to second unit

and out of the one of the units that was

directed by Robert Rodriguez. It was he

shot seven days I think or eight days

and we had to reshoot I had to reshoot

uh most of it. Uh and I was uh able to

salvage my storyboards for this

particular scene and shoot it exactly as

I wanted. So not a single shot remains

from second unit. And it's one of my

favorite scenes I've ever shot because

we when we when I got to Hollywood I got

in one launch with a producer. He said,

"The only two things you can do in a

movie is kill a kid or kill a dog." And

that's what I did in this scene. I I

showed the mimic eating a dog, and we

mercilessly show that the mimics have no

regard for or quote unquote place in

nature.

This uh is uh the only important portion

that remains of Second Unit um uh that

was shot not by me and it was my

favorite scene. And I wrote this scene

with Matthew Greenberg. And uh it was

not shot by me. This is the only uh

remainder of a second unit u of any

important that that was done by Oladel

who came later than BJ Rank and u you

know the story with Ol

I I I won't delve much into it but I

would say that um it pains me to have

written the scene but not have um

directed it. I completely sympathize

with screenplay writers that say they

are seeing their job mutated in front of

their eyes after it leaves the page. I

have experienced it firsthand. So, you

know, but still I must say I love the

way all they shot it. Very different

than I would have. But, uh, it pains me

because it is not a little shot of

action or anything. It was a a whole

scene and to this day I love it but I

love it as a as a piece of writing and I

respect it as a piece of staging. All

they directed I had directed a movie for

Marramax called um Nightw Watch not the

night watch of Timurburg Mendotov but

one that predated it many years with um

which was based on his famous Danish

film uh that was a big box office

success. Yes,

he was quite a an intelligent man and a

good friend of my uh cinematographer on

this movie Dan Lowton who whom I found a

great partnership.

Dan Laon had shot Nightwatch and I truly

got along with him in a great way. I

wish him and I would collaborated would

have collaborated more in other movies

but uh it wouldn't be. We were very very

very bold from the get-go. I told then I

want huge slabs of black with no

information in this movie. So there are

moments in the movie where you

completely go into almost 90% of the

screen being blacked and you can barely

see the eyes of a character or the nose

of a character. And as a

cinematographer, he was unusually brave.

And uh I think that this Blu-ray

uh I hope he finds it uh much more

complimenting. We follow the color

correction that was done originally for

the print. And uh I must say in my mind

Dan Lashon is one of the great

cinematographers working out there.

Uh here we come back to the idea of uh

the desecration of whatever we hold holy

and whatever gives us our place in the

evolutionary chain and spiritual chain.

And I wanted the child to be adopted by

two mimics. So, if you watch carefully,

I tried to do a little bit of um uh

religious tablo in the in the window in

the church windows. Uh uh almost like a

um father and son and holy spirit type

of image with the two mimics surrounding

the kid. Uh I had uh used the image of

the um angels uh saints, holy figures in

um plaster figures wrapped in plastic.

I found it to be very beautiful and

strangely provoking

and I I decided to use it again in mimic

in this manner because I think it it

makes them obsolete. It makes them uh

not functional anymore. It sort of says

they don't work anymore. These are out

of order holy figures. And uh I think

that um Chewy not understanding that

he's in danger was vital to the fact

that the insects don't kill him. Why do

they not kill them if they just killed

two kids before? The explanation I had

was not only the mimicry of the spoons,

but the fact that the child doesn't uh

exude any fear chemicals. The child is

not afraid in this case. The other kids

were smelling like adrenaline, like

fear, like and the insects got them. But

Chewy is completely undanted, even

amused by Mr. Funny shoes, which is the

this figure that is wearing shoes that

he cannot figure out. You know, he can

say every brand of shoe ever made, but

with this guy, he just says funny shoes

and that's it.

Many of the scenes and quirks on the

have been restored in the in this

director's cut. One of them was the

finding of a corpse of supposedly a

child. Again, the images of maternity,

ficondity, and mimicry and so forth. Uh

that is now been restored. This is the

scene in the New York um uh plant. The

the film was edited originally by

Patrick Lucier who has gone on to become

on his own right a really good um genre

director. Patrick was a great

collaborator and a really really good

friend. Uh and uh you know he helped me

to brave it through all the adversities

of the studio and uh the myriad of

producers that came and went in this

movie.

And I I must say I uh this may be very

Catholic of me or something, but I thank

everyone. I think I learned uh a lot

from everyone in this movie. Whether it

was an ally or a foe, I learned a lot

from the Lon. I learned a lot from

Patrick Lucier, Bob Weinstein, Oliver

Born and all of them. There was

something in this movie that forced me

like the mimics to evolve into something

different.

It was perhaps not quite human if you

look at my body proportions, but

certainly

made me survive and made me find my own

voice and my own uh personality visually

and uh and it was the assistance of

everyone Carol Spear and Lon and so

forth.

One of the highlights of shooting Mimic

in Canada in Toronto was to meet

Croninberg obviously who was a huge

influence on me and Carol Spear was his

production designer and I have remained

friendly with David through the years

and the original draft of Mimik had

certain more Croninburgian moments uh

that were little by little abandoned.

This is another of the um cases in which

we use curb forms both the um mirror and

the archery behind her for example to

frame them like uh almost insect eggs or

insects trapped in amber and so forth.

What are you doing?

Let me tell you about Mera Servino that

um Meera was the main ally into helping

me get through mimic. She was

instrumental in keeping me around and uh

fought very very very bravely with

everyone uh because she had seen the

dailies of the movie. She had seen the

cut as I did it and uh both her and

Quentyn Tarantino loved what I was

trying to do. I didn't win the the

battles on the screenplay, but thanks to

Mera's alliance and and friendship, I

was able to win um the formal and visual

battles. And I was uh I kept I was kept

the director of the film throughout, but

I vowed never to allow a second unit to

uh shoot uh any action in my movies or

to shoot anything that required content

or drama of any kind. And I have kept my

that promise until now I'm I'm now 45

years old. I shot this movie when I was

33 which is a perfect age to be

crucified you know. So you know now I'm

12 years older and all all those 12

years I have kept um this alive. The

only disagreement Mera and I have uh

through the process of the movie has now

been corrected in the director's cut. Uh

she didn't want to be pregnant. Uh, and

I want her to be pregnant because I

thought it was really good that she

carried

uh almost like the hope of mankind in

her belly. I find maternity to be a

miracle to be absolutely uh

mind-boggling, you know, the a true

miracle. And I wanted her to carry that

that child through this unholy passage

through hell. And uh so now it's been

restored that magically by the director

Scott Meera is pregnant and Jerry

Northam cannot tell her she's pregnant

uh because he is not the place or the

time to do it but uh he uh he becomes

braver because he has to take his place

in the action. Uh the character um of

Peter uh that is played by Jeremy

Northam. I originally wanted uh to be

played by um Andre Brower because I

thought it would be really important

that at the end of the movie we had a

Latin kid Chewy, an American girl,

Meera, and uh an African-American

central male character uh as a hero to

say mankind survived, not the

Anglo-Saxon

wasp mankind survived. D uh uh it was a

huge battle.

I lost it. Somebody said at some point

in the process a horrible line. They

said, "America is not ready for a mixed

race couple in a major motion picture."

And I uh I was absolutely horrified and

I felt I had been bumped back into

medieval times, you know, because this

this was a very jingoistic thing. Uh,

nevertheless, then I said, well, can we

have him be a more fragile hero? And

originally I said, can we get this actor

I love called John Touturo to play him,

you know, because he is a guy that you

don't think is an action hero except me.

I think he's an action hero. I love

Jesus, you know, but uh nobody [ __ ]

with the Jesus, you know. I I think that

uh it would have been an honor to get

him, but uh uh I think I I like Jeremy

very much in the interview that they

arranged for me. He had he was just

fresh out of doing Emma uh for Miramax

and uh I met him and he wanted to play

all the all the cues of the character

that I wanted him to play. I wanted Josh

to be u uh in this draft originally. I

wanted Josh to be very fragile and and

and um Peter also to have the male

figures be more fragile than the female

figure in the movie. I thought that was

interesting. Uh but then I gave Josh

sort of this jock muscular uh can do

attitude and that's the character that

dies earlier and this mumbling guy with

spectacles survives.

Now, so so just so you know how

ridiculously disproportionate the

battles were. We argued about this guy

having glasses for

weeks and months in a row. And one day I

come back home and I'm ecstatic with joy

and and my wife says, "What? You had a

good day?" I said, "Yes, the main guy is

going to have glasses." And I considered

that it was so pathetic that I

considered that a big triumph. But uh it

was a big triumph in the context of of

things you know and I think Jeremy is um

a really great guy to work with. I

enjoyed working with him and um he was

also a great ally. One of the greatest

allies however was Charles Dutton and

probably uh at the top of my list of

actors I have enjoyed working with. He

was so smart and Charles had done some

time in prison. And uh he gave me a

really good piece of advice when when he

saw I was uh down and and really bad and

I was passing out on the set because I

had not had breakfast, lunch, dinner. I

was having low sugar moments, passing

out, screaming matches with certain

studio executives at the top of my lung

in the middle of the set. And he said to

me, "I'll tell you, man, you got to

survive this." And he said, "Because in

prison, there were two kinds of guys.

The guys that take it and the guys that

dispense it."

And I said, "And make sure as hell that

once you take it once, you take it all

the time, man. You don't don't give up."

And originally his death, his death

scene was scheduled to be shot by second

unit. And uh having have just gone

through uh the scene between Merror and

Fra Abraham, I refused to do it, but the

studio insisted.

So I must say Charles Dutton supported

me fully and said, "No way. I don't die

if this guy doesn't shoot it, you know."

So the scene was uh shot entirely again

by first unit because of that. From now

on, all the characters are uh surrounded

by circles and archeries for the rest of

the movie. They become the insects. And

one of the things you're going to find

is we start to introduce now in the

director's cut this theme of the mold

people living in the in the subways. You

know, mold people that feed on the

refues of humanity. We start to make

humans the parasites.

We start making the humans feed on the

garbage, leave on the garbage, and the

insects live in organized nests, you

know. So, little by little, we're

reversing these things. And I was trying

to become more and more medieval, you

know, to the point where I found this

hobble language that was developed

during the depression and that has been

carried all the way to the 21st century

to mark places. So I introduced that the

notion of the dark angels, the markings

on the wall. Science is disproven little

by little and we go back to the dark

ages in this movie. I was hoping I I

don't think it's all there, but I'm

explaining to you the angles I was

working. And the idea with Mera's

character was for her to finally explode

in the subway car later on, which I

designed to be like a roach motel. You

know, back in the 90s there and 80s,

there was this thing called the Roach

Motel, and it was a square long box, and

it said they check in, they never check

out. And it was glue inside and they

would poison the the roaches and and uh

the subway car becomes the roach motel.

And I had Mirror Serbino right then and

there declare I don't understand what's

going on. But everybody kept keeps

asking me what's going on. Hell, if I

know what's going on, these guys are

seven feet tall. They they have lungs.

They they're a big [ __ ] you to the

arrogance of science. And that was a

very important moment for me on the

screenplay and a moment I lost to the

studio battles. And it was a moment of

relinquishing science and embracing the

most fragile humanity.

They need to sacrifice each other and

bleed and suffer for each other. if they

are to restore the order. Um, in other

words, maybe too Catholic, but in order

to purge for arrogance, we have to go

through pain

to restore our place as creatures

favored by by the gods, you know. And I

wanted Meera to explode and have that

moment where she says, "Fuck if I know."

you know,

and and these were little moments of

second unit where I I ended up working

uh 20our shifts or 24-hour shifts in

some cases in order to direct uh or at

least be there when second unit was

directing and give the go ahead and

check the angles and so on and so forth.

Uh it became so painful and so

inefficient. I to this day can't can't

understand what second unit really works

for except if there's a pressure release

schedule then you have to consider it I

guess

at the time we were doing mimic uh I was

very much uh in favor of doing a generic

a genre plot uh but trying to treat it

with the false gravitas and earnestness

visually of a of an art film if you

would and I think that is one of the

most beautiful as I said one of the most

beautiful movies I've shot and I'm

extremely proud of all its formal

achievements and chief of that chief to

that is Carol Spear we are coming onto

perhaps my favorite set I have ever

built which is the abandoned subway

station which is based on on um one of

the grander subway stations in New York

if you go and visit it I don't know if

The IRT still allows visitors in that

station, but um when she's kidnapped by

the bug and taken to the station, uh you

will see one of the most beautiful sets

of archeries and and mosaic that is 10

times 20 times bigger than the real

station in New York. is sort of a

nightmare-esque uh size station because

I wanted the humans to look like bugs to

look really really tiny, you know. And

now we have humans moving and collecting

uh the insects excrement,

you know. This is uh this is for example

one of the bravest scenes that Lashon

shot. We only had their flashlights and

very little bounce light and a few

lights from above. Uh, but essentially

most of the frame is completely in the

dark and and I'm very very proud of this

uh this scene and I love Charles

Dutton's delivery of the Peter lift line

coming up and the idea that now we have

little bugs like uh like beetles

climbing or moving around in a mound of

excrement. I also always wondered why

monsters in the movies never took a

[ __ ] You know, I kept thinking the main

problem with Godzilla is not the

buildings he would crush, but the

immense amounts of crap he would leave

in the city in the course of Tokyo's

destruction, you know. And uh here's

where we start uh turning the tables in

the humans. This is the midpoint of the

film. And we start turning the tables on

the humans. We have them now uh

vanquished by little physical things

like you know they end up um down in the

platform and they are so puny an insect

would climb up uh a kitchen sink,

kitchen table but they are unable to

even climb. They are completely helpless

little things and they have to seek

refuge in the roach motel. This is one

of the earliest scenes we wrote, Matthew

Robbins and I, and still one of the

scenes I'm the proudest to have uh

executed exactly as it was written. The

discovery of the face in the Polaroids

by Meera. Polaroids are uh a machine

that I obsess about. They have been in

um Hellboy, Mimic, uh Don't Be Afraid of

the Dark, um a recent production I just

finished in Spain called Julia's Eyes,

and uh many many others. I mean, I I

tried to use the Polaroid as much as

possible. I love that camera. And uh

this is exactly as it was written. When

he gets kidnapped, though, I had to add

a line that um I think Oie came up with,

which I resisted as much as possible,

which was her asking the insect for the

time. I originally had written her to

approach him saying, "Peter, Peter."

Thinking it was her husband, but Ole uh

proposed that she asked for the time.

And uh the studio loved that idea. They

said, "Oh, of course, if they really

look like humans, she would ask for the

time." I thought it would be an

unvolentary chuckle. Uh but we shot it.

Now it's there forever. Uh but still the

kidnapping in the platform is a scene I

love. I we shot it over a few days and

utilizing puppets uh wire gangs and

digital effects.

Uh the two digital companies in this

movie core company was in um in Canada

and it was uh one of the finest ones and

it is one of the finest ones over there

and the other one hybrid uh which is in

French Canada. They were fantastic to

work with and uh they did the best we

could. I mean, back then, 70 shots was a

huge pipeline to feed.

But having shot this scene, I'm the

proudest of the moment she I didn't cut.

I didn't make it an action scene. I make

it a surprise moment. I made it a wow

moment. Did we just saw that? Did the

main character just got kidnapped and

run and taken into the tunnel?

and uh and uh seeing this movie back in

1997, people in this moment inevitably

cheered or laughed or chuckled or even

clapped uh uh the moment she was taken

because it was so unexpected

and uh to this day I I think it remains

effective to have chosen.

I won that battle. I I talk about all

the battles I lose and I must say every

other battle I won. I won uh most every

battle in the content and form and

storytelling of this movie and uh that

was a big battle and not to cut it like

an action scene cut it like a we are

watching it happen and it's really

really scary because of that because

it's real

and uh this is where we tried start to

turn the tables as I said and change the

proportions you know this is still a big

bug for our normal standards but they're

about to find and face the really big

bugs. And from this moment on, I make it

a clash between the human world in the

blues and the insect world in the

ambers. And the rest of the movie from

now on, it's uh visually about that

clash of the amber and the blue on

screen.

We uh we tried to we tried to

have a way of all the characters to join

together and for them to be able to each

one go through the right of passage of

becoming the bug, becoming the little

thing climbing painfully out, you know,

and uh Meera, for example, in the

incoming scene lands like a little bug

on top of a giant rusty beam of steel.

and uh and she's the trap bug

and from this moment on very much um the

movie is free of second unit. I mean it

started earlier uh but most of the

second half contains um now almost no

second unit except for uh part of Josh's

death and the reverses on Meera in that

beam. The reverse of them trying to get

her out are mine. The reverse on that

beam is one of the few things that

survives of Robert's unit along with the

shots of um Josh's death. The rest of

the action, every piece of action in the

film uh before and after that is

entirely first unit u through great

pain. It took a lot to to win that time

back, but we did. The part of Manny,

which is a a very important part for me,

was played by um Jan Carlo Janini, uh

but originally was offered to every kind

of actor, Ian Holm, who wanted to do it,

but the studio would not uh consider,

Max Bonidau, who I whom I spoke on the

phone, and he proceeded to nag me very

badly about doing fantasy films. He

said, you know, why are you making

fantasy films? you should just make

films about reality and this and that

and you know um I found it surprising

from a guy that had just finished Josh

Dread but uh you know whatever I don't

know I like the guy he's a great actor

but he was up for the Manny part another

one was Andre Gregory and there were

many other actors I tried and um I was

very happy that Jan Carlo did it because

he is a really intelligent really fun

guy to be with during the shoot This

scene uh originally we had written the

fact that she was not killed by the

insect because it heard the twin

heartbeat of the fetus inside of her and

it was curious about it. It was like the

most disgusting

u echosonogram ever made to a pregnant

woman, you know. But we got rid of that

scene. Uh and so now she's not killed uh

for uh reasons purely um based on

science of insects. Insects mostly stun

their prey and either kill it later in

the nest or they kill it uh before and

they breathe many of the ants and

insects, termites and so forth. They

breathe um fungi fungi grows from the

bodies of the victims and they don't eat

the victim, they eat the fungi. So, you

know, short of putting some fungi on

Mirror Serbino, uh we stuck by the

science as much as possible.

We originally wanted uh all that theme

of her being pregnant to gain more and

more importance. Uh but I had to leave

it sort of like a uh Rubik's cube

because I always had hoped that I could

do the director's cut that would be by

grades. um better in my estimation than

the other cut. I hope you guys agree. I

hope you do like uh this this cut better

than the the cut before. I think myself

I I love it and I feel uh I can finally

uh happily own this movie. But this

every character see this is for me a

crucial moment. You have this character

that arrogantly talks about insects and

this and that. now humbled. She is

humbled in the most brutal way. Uh the

character of Jeremy Northam will be

humbled in the most brutal way. Charles

Dutton will have to die in order to to

let the group survive. And um this was

again explored uh with more detail on

the original screenplay where we talked

about even an in if insects sacrifice

them, it really doesn't have any merit

because insects have no choice. They are

hardwired to give their life. But then

we counterpointed that in the original

screenplay to Charles Dotton who by

choice sacrifices himself and that is

what makes us human which is a theme

that I have explored again on Hellboy

one and Hellboy 2 on Pan's Labyrinth

most uh recently and and that I'm I

think it was nice to articulate in this

film you know to say choice is what

makes us human

and this is where she gets stuck in the

beam

uh like a little insect and so forth. U

the original ending of the film was not

a triumphant one and and by the original

ending I don't mean the original ending

we shot

uh if the movie was going to juxttopose

ficondity and infertility.

Originally, Matthew Robbins and I came

up with the idea of having a huge nest.

And since the single male is the one

that impregnates all the females in the

nest like in the termite colony where

there is only one king, you know, in

order uh to show that, Matthew came up

with a disgusting image which is to have

the final chase happen with uh after we

see a cluster [ __ ] literally a cluster

[ __ ] of insects in the wall and you see

the male coming after them with the

female still attached. attached to its

penis, you know. So, you had these two

twin these twin bodies in perfect

coordination running after them in the

tunnels of the subway. And I thought

that was a brilliant image, but it was

me. The studio thought it was repulsive,

repugnant, not and you know the the way

they can control you very easily is

budget. It was also sadly very expensive

and uh so it was cut from the film. But

just so you know, these were all the

little thematic details that would have

made for me a richer, a more resonant

movie out of this one. You know, the

original ending then was very different.

The original ending was them coming out

and originally I had Meera, the

character of Meera, coming down into the

subway platform and there was a beggar

uh asking for money and she she said to

him, "I don't have any change." And then

at the end she would come out all dirty

and grimy alone, no child. No child. Um,

originally there was no child and she

was alone and she was wondering and

trying to stop people like Kevin M.

McCartney at the end of the body

snatchers and she stopped one person in

the platform and she looked so bad that

she was given a coin as if she was a

beggar and then she started noticing all

the all the guys wandering in the

platform were mimics.

This scene uh this this um portion uh

was second unit and it was storyboarded

very carefully by me and a storyboard

guy called Leo Duran. I shot a few of

the shots in this sequence but uh again

this is the last remnants of uh second

unit and the last remnants I like of

second unit. That's why it's in this

cut. I really think this was the the

scene where uh Robert's work spoke the

best to his style and it helped the

movie to have him uh shoot the boards uh

that we had designed for this and uh and

I I think that's that's the reason why

it survives the same than in with the

scene. Those are the good things for all

the crap for second unit consult the

theatrical cut and you will see more

clearly the stuff that went away.

Uh, as I was saying, at the end, the

mimics kind of win the day and our

characters are or our character uh is

left humbled and semi insane wandering

in the platform of uh Grand Central

Station. And originally also we uh

echoed a lot of uh images of mannequins,

mannequins getting dressed and this and

that. And out of that, the only image

that remains is in this director's cut

is coming up. And that is the image of a

mannequin. But we we had the idea of

showing how easy is to see things that

look like humans, but they're not. You

know, we we used it. Matthew Robins and

I peppered the screenplay with this kind

of details uh here and there.

And now this is the only image that

survives of all that coming up.

Uh Charles uh brought the idea of uh

Leonard being a guy that likes to sing

sing really old um tunes that uh and he

suggested the tunes. He uh gave us the

names and and he said, you know, you got

to show this character doing something

he enjoys because he's such a grump in

the in the movie. and and we all agreed

and and it was impossible to deny

anything to Charles who was a great

ally, a great actor and now I must say a

great director. If you can uh check or

you can get access to his movie First

Time Felon which was the first movie he

did. He is a really solid director and

him and I would talk for hours about uh

directing and camera moves and so forth.

And uh for example, this is one of the

scenes that survives that has that um

sort of opposing camera work, you know,

that works into a rhythm that I'm very

very happy with. And is this little

moment coming up where the camera moves

around Charles towards Charles towards

Jeremy and so forth and then pulling the

gun in a circular dolly and uh bringing

Manny in a moving dolly. But look, this

is one dolly going to the right. next

dolly, you know, going in the same

direction, next dolly going in the same

direction, all dollies moving to the

right, pace together, and then the dolly

moving to the left to reveal Manny. And

I don't know, I mean, I think it's a

style that I ended up adopting and using

in the rest of the films. And I'm very

very happy with it.

One of my uh most cherished

collaborators also came from this mimic

turmal that is Marco Belrammy.

Marco had just done uh the music for

West Craven's Scream at Miramax and uh

he was a favorite composer of uh of

Miramax at the moment. This every time

you cut up it's me. Every time you cut

down that is Robert me.

Robert and so on and so forth. Quite

ridiculous the way second unit end up

working. Me. Robert. me.

It made no sense at the time and it

makes no sense now to me, but uh God

bless. Uh Marco, uh I I still think

Mimic is my favorite score of his. And

um I love this reversal. The bug is

barely fitting through the great. And

I'm very proud of this scene, if I may

interrupt. This is uh technically and

narratively uh a scene that was shot

over a few days and I'm really happy

about it uh formally. I think I shot it

exactly as I uh wrote it with Matthew,

but I'm also happy about it emotionally

because I always uh see in horror movies

the characters act acting completely

cool, tough characters like the cop or

the soldier. And I love Uh Don saying,

"What the [ __ ] was that?

What the [ __ ] was that?"

Like that because why? Because he's

reacting. He's a he's a burly

200 something pounds of muscle guy that

you would not [ __ ] with, but he's

[ __ ] in his pants. Every male in

this movie is [ __ ] his pants and the

female character remains the cooler.

This is something I, as I said, I wanted

to emphasize more in the beginning, but

all of them are crapping in their pants.

And I I like that. Not beyond the

formality. I like the idea that uh you

can be a male and be very scared. You

know, I I um

early early in the days, I wanted to

make Josh very brave and I wanted to

make him a gay character. You can

imagine how long that lived with the

studio.

It didn't live beyond one draft, I

think, or two. Uh, but I I love the idea

of of making the characters that are not

supposed to be super brave brave because

that's in that's the way it is in real

life. And I wanted sort of to create a

giant bug movie, but uh married by

beautiful imperfections that took away

uh the genre aspects of it, you know,

because that's what I loved. for

example, about the writing of John Sales

in Alligator or that's what I love about

the writing of Quentin Tarantino in his

movies where he has genre but all of a

sudden the imperfect conversations about

cheeseburgers or tipping a waitress or

uh something getting stuck or not

working. Those are the things that make

it real for for me in in to do that. We

did it a little. We unfortunately didn't

do it as much as I would have liked.

Now, don't get me wrong, there is in my

mind now with this director's cut. Now,

for me, I can safely say I think this is

the best incarnation of the movie in

many ways. I don't know. It would be too

much arrogance to say, oh, you know, if

they had left me alone, I would have

made a much better film and so forth. It

really isn't about that. I think that I

the ideas would have been better in the

screenplay if we had preserved some of

of the more idiosyncratic stuff in it.

But I think that as I said before,

I really believe that I learned from

both the allies and the adversaries in

this movie. And I think that the the

combination of those elements made in a

strange way with this cut a better film.

You know, I don't know uh if I would

have uh had to be if I hadn't been

pressed to to uh do this or to do that

or had to fight for every idea if I if I

would have found the stuff I found and

and uh now I can uh proudly claim the

movie and and feel good about it. And uh

it's it's full of little moments uh that

gave me craftsmanship. For example, this

whole scene was shot in the cart, real

place, real set, but then we added lines

afterwards after the audience recruited

screenings. So all of this is big first

unit blah blah blah and then it's me

with a tiny unit, no set in California

months and months and months after. I'll

tell you the shots. You know, this is

all first unit, great production. I'm

super happy. you know, a hundred people

in the crew, blah, blah, blah. And then,

you know, we need to insert a few lines

and I had to become tricky about it. And

as I said, adversity is what forced me

to find a solution. Adversity is the

mother of invention. You know, necessity

is the mother of invention. So, here we

go. Here are shots that were shot. This

h was shot months and months and months

later.

Not until it's too late.

And then uh this shot, you know, we had

no set. So uh Jeremy North became the

set,

you know,

and and then back to the first unit. I I

did it again on Blade 2. I mean, and and

again and again, and I survived even two

scenes on Blade 2 without Wesley's

knives being there that have Blade in

the scenes because of the ingenuity I

had to uh find as a tool in this in this

shooting. Now, the the face plate of the

mimic was resculpted by a really good

sculptor in Canada called Evan Penny,

who is now a really famous sculptor. His

gallery work is quite famous. Uh but uh

originally the face was much more rough

and I think that for example that

decision was a good decision. It was a

really good decision for the studio to

force me to have somebody else resculpt

the face you know. So all ego aside, I

think this was a movie where uh

collectively uh adversity helped in some

strange manner. And and this is where uh

the humans in the roach motel are forced

to resort to insect uh uh insect tactics

to to be able to explore it. you know,

uh, one of them is to rub themselves

with insect, uh, gland juice, you know,

to mimic their smell. And what I like is

now we have these tiny figures, human

figures wandering in the enormous space,

almost like human uh, human figures,

human cockroaches intruding on the giant

insect kitchen trying to get around,

trying to do menial tasks. Let's connect

a wire over here. Let's do a little

thing over there. So, you have this

change of uh scales in the movie. And um

uh we're coming to a point um in which

Manny, the character of Jan Carlo

Janini, uh dies.

I originally uh had devised the death of

Jan Carlo with Matthew Robbins in a far

more poignant way. We lost that battle

too. Uh, but I think it in the interest

of you fabricating your own more

complete quote unquote version of the

mimic movie I that could have been or

would have been uh I will tell you this

the the the moment Jan Carlo discovers

uh his child uh just like he does now. I

like this moment where he asks

permission to smoke in the middle of the

crisis. And this is a moment that um

also I like because Jeremy knows that

his wife is pregnant but can't tell her.

He can't tell her. He will tell her at

the end of the film.

And um Jan Carlo uh finds Chewy and then

the insect is that's where we discover

the giant wall of [ __ ] the insect, the

male [ __ ] all the females and the

female attached to his penis. And it was

a absolutely nightmarish moment. And the

character of Jan Carlos sees the

creatures coming for him and he uses his

razor blade to cut his own throat saying

uh God cannot see this. And I really

liked it because

I felt that he could bring the religious

angle in the movie. He could say what if

God has abandoned us? What if he has

made us not his favorite creatures

anymore? What what if these things are

taking over? And all of that is lost.

All of that is lost in the movie. And

and those are things I uh truly miss.

Now if there was a lesson to be

extracted out of mimic, a lesson that I

believe in that has become part of my

sort of credo, my uh ten commandments is

the fact that uh I would say it is

stupid to go through an experience and

blame it on the others. At the end of

the day, first of all, the director the

box stops right there. uh every battle I

lost to the studio I lost not as a

victim but as a guy that compromised

uh in order to save strategically other

stuff. So if you don't like or I don't

like any of the things that were no more

it is only myself that I have to blame.

There are no bad guys in my personal

movie. Frankly, I cannot go crying in

the shoulder and say they did me this,

they did this to me. Whatever was done

is the stuff that I thought

strategically I needed to do for the

essential stuff that I really needed to

survive and that is in this director's

cut. I think this is the essential film

that I would have like made. So, uh did

everybody screw up except me? No. I

think that the important thing is to say

we all screwed up. We we screwed up

here, we screwed up there. I think

arrogance or blindness was in everybody,

not just studio or the bad guys or this

and that. But let me tell you this, I

believe in in this dictum that I'm about

to say fully and I believe in it because

of mimic. I think success is being

allowed to [ __ ] in your own terms or

fighting to be able to [ __ ] up in your

own terms. You know, in other words,

successful success is not never [ __ ]

up. Success is [ __ ] up for the

reasons you believe in. And I think that

uh a director should not be flawless. I

think there are very few that give that

illusion. Uh Cubri is one, but if you

read very deeply into Cubri's um uh own

anecdotes, Cubri uh was a guy that

probably was internally I mean we

celebrate all the control the directors

have. We try to make them into more than

human machines, you know, but that as is

trying is like trying to explain the

pyramids in terms of Eric Bondanakin.

Oh, UFOs must have built them. Things

larger than humans must have built it.

But the great stories is that humans

built them. I don't give a [ __ ] about

the UFOs building the pyramids. I give a

[ __ ] about the guys that died doing them

that completely shot beyond any human

engineering and designing them. You

know, uh, Jim Cameron is a man that, uh,

is one of my best friends, uh,

directors, and I I I believe that what

he achieves is inhumanly big, and he

achieves an enormous degree of control,

but he does it through human terms.

Cubri, as I was saying,

the more I read about him, the more I

try to read deeper into his stuff, I

think he was a guy that was, yes, he

there were large areas that were fully

designed, fully in controlled, inhumanly

precise, but if you see all his movies,

starting with the his first movie uh

which was uh had Paul Mazerki as his

star, you see how he made out of his

mistakes

He made his virtues and that's another

dictim that I believe in. Out of your v

out of your defects, your virtues will

be born. You know, out of your defects

and and and I think Cubri was probably

constantly figuring out secretly other

stuff. I'm not saying that's the reason

why he did a 100 takes, but I would

venture that somewhere along the line

between take 20 and 20 take 50, he

figured a couple of things up. Uh or he

that's when he found out what he really

needed. There's a famous anecdote I I

don't recall if it's while he was

shooting Spartacus. I believe it was

when he was shooting Paths of Glory. And

the anecdote says that uh Kirk Douglas

injured himself himself during the

shooting of that film and production

went down

and for several weeks. Undeniably it was

a an insurance claim and Cubri sent a

beautiful beautifully revelatory letter

to Kir Douglas saying please stay sick a

couple of weeks more because I finally

figuring out the film. you know,

something of the sort. I'm sure I'm

paraphrasing it wrong, but I I think

that if if the movies I do uh advocate

for anything, they advocate to enthrone

fallibility.

I believe fallibility to be a key

instrument in artistic creation. And we

have this conservative

mentality that what great what makes

great great creators is this inhuman

sense of control. I somewhat find that

suspicious right-wingish

and strangely castrating

because you know I think the artists

that I admire the most are completely

wild and I admire them the most when

they are the wildest and more out of

control.

I much mo I like much more and admire

much more um Francisco Goya's black

paintings which he did when he was old,

deaf and neially disappointed with every

human endeavor than the paintings he did

as a court painter uh you know fully

funded fully in control you know uh I

like Salvador Deli's early paintings

because he was an outsider he was really

crazy. He was truly uh an entity. And

then when he, you know, allies allies

with the right-wing the fascist

government, he becomes enthroned as a

great surrealist, as an an established

artist, which you cannot be. You cannot

be,

you know, on the side of Franco, I don't

think, and and and and advocate anarchy

in a way. Obviously, he redefined

himself with the proper monikers, but I

think he lost the essence of his ma of

his madness. So, I would argue that

chaos to some degree and u fallibility

are really great and all this crazy uh

thinking happened

while I was shooting Mimic. I I had the

for the first time in my adult life uh

the time to reflect on what was the way

I would make movies. Uh I I I know I

don't make movies for everyone. I don't

know I I don't know who uh uh or how

wide or how loyal or how uh big the

audience that likes my movies is. I I

you know they are very vocal same as

they the people that dislike them are

vocal but I know this uh I try to uh

create things that have uh sort of the

handmade fallibility touch to themselves

and that's the other reason why I

advocate puppetry makeup effects and

physical uh plates uh rather than going

fully CG exclusively which I find a

perversely lazy way of making films. Uh,

Mimic, as I said, had 70 uh 70 75 shots

total CG. The rest of the movie is

achieved with puppetry.

And I do believe that Rick Laserini

created some remarkable puppets and uh

wonderful animatronics. And I I met many

of my future collaborators in Rick's

crew. And and uh I this is a nice

moment. I I like it because I wanted uh

this character that was again very

certain of himself and all to from now

on be blind. Is essentially a character

that

becomes blind in order to to activate

this thing. By the way, I think

physically that wouldn't work,

but it's a comic book gag. But as I was

saying, the animatronics are remarkable.

Now, each of those mimics was a pain in

the ass to move. They were as heavy as a

BW beetle. That's the type of beetle

they would resemble more closely in

weight. And they were very cumbersome to

move. But Rick achieved a sense of

nimleness with them. And the mouthpieces

in their heads are so complex.

Uh I really to this day I admire the way

uh Rick and his crew packed those heads,

those tiny insect heads with dozens of

zeros,

radiocontrolled

in order to achieve the movement of the

uh the mouth, the many parts of the

mouth, the palp, the grinders, the what

we call the pushers, you know. And in

designing the creatures, we consulted

with people in UCLA, in USC, we

consulted um uh insect biology texts.

And I must say this, we didn't give them

in spite of the studio asking for extra

weapons.

They would say, "Give me an extra

weapon. Give me something that we have

never seen in an insect." I said, "Well,

I'm giving you a scale." And and those

were battles again that were won. You

know, I must say the insects are

designed

without any flourishes that you could

not find more fanciful or equally crazy

examples in nature. And that is to me a

big triumph to not uh have designed

monster insects that look like monsters

rather than insects. The the movie that

I like the most in this respect in the

past is the movie Them. You know, I

think them succeeds admirably to

bringing um giant ants to LA in a

completely plausible way.

I wish as hell I had done something as

good as them.

I don't think we did, but I really find

that movie legendary and fabulous. And I

think that um now the tale evolves into

a different direction.

You haven't seen us yet. Don't move.

Forget about the original screenplay.

Now we had a set of problems that were

real. We had uh you know, we were

solving a a we were transversing a

labyrinth. We were transversing a maze

rather. And uh we needed to ingeniously

reconfigure the tail as the drafts

progress. I don't know exactly the

number of drafts that Mimic went

through, but we had to rewrite the tail.

I made the crucifix in Manny's hand,

a symbolic thing that she picks up. Uh,

both for her to be able to adopt the kid

and for her to be able to sacrifice her

blood, spill her blood at the end

to save the child.

You know, she has to. I didn't I didn't

want her to just fight the mimic

with bare hands. she would die. So I

wanted her to defeat him with

intelligence,

with choice. She chooses to run against

the train.

I love the way this this uh c uh steady

cam was used in this turning it around

like a POV and out of nowhere comes the

mimic and kills um Charles. And it's

really good animation and really good

puppet work. At any rate, as we were

reconfiguring the tail, um, I tried to

make several choices. The things that

save the humans are human choices.

Charles Dotton decides, chooses to

sacrifice himself for the group. Now,

Peter, uh, Jeremy Northam's character

knows that he has to stay outside of the

elevator of the dome waiter to save Mera

and the kid. He's choosing to stay

there, you know, only he can operate the

cable and get her way. So, he's

sacrificing himself again. Choice. And

finally, Meera on the platform at the

end. Um, I still don't like the uh

Ripley moment that the studio asks where

she says, "Get away from him." You know,

which I cringe every time and I'm sure

you cringe every time. Let us cringe

together. Uh but um I do love the fact

that she

cuts her hand, you know, and bleeds for

the kid and she has to scream at the

creature to call her attention, its

attention and and uh and she chooses to

to do a foolish act which is run against

the train in order to sacrifice herself

if needed to save the kid. Now uh here

comes a little anecdote. You may find it

amusing or not. It may be invisible why

I find it amusing, but originally uh

Peter just got to the end of this

pipeline and closed the door and he was

in a little cubicle and caused the

explosion

uh because the gas had been opened by

Manny. A completely different movie.

Manny opens the gas pipes, Peter blows

them up. That's gone. And we were asked

to devise a bigger alienike scene where

Peter finds the the eggs nest. So this

is completely fabricated after not after

sadly during the shoot and is shot in LA

in a power plant in LA uh that was in

misuse or in repairs and uh uh we had

very very limited budget. So, uh, I

chose the largest space in the plant to

give it a little bit of scale.

And then as we gave it scale, thanks to

Dan Lston's brilliant photography, we

decided to have all the mimics hanging

from the ceiling because that's the only

animation we could afford. You know, we

couldn't afford too many shots of the

mimics walking around. So uh I went to a

composite place and uh core core effects

generated

three models of movement of the mimic.

One hanging, one hanging and moving the

wings and one falling and flying. That's

it. There's no more than those three

models. And I personally stayed up with

the compositor uh the composer of the

image. I stayed up for 48 hours

compositing this shot. That's all. three

models repeated again and again. We

faked the perspective, but I was right

there uh drinking bad soda and eating

cookies for 48 hours to composite that

shot and the next shot where they start

to detach themselves from the ceiling.

So all in all, we were able to create

something of somewhat some scale at the

end uh with very little with very very

little and uh and um the final shots,

you know, are a complete irony with the

way we started this movie. Let me tell

you why. When we started this movie, I

said we're going to go counter to every

genre uh cliche. Yes.

And we're not going to have gunshots,

explosions,

or major action.

God laughs at man when he makes plans.

So anyway, mimic is what happened to me

while I was making other plans. Here

comes the next composite shot I was

talking to you about.

And this is one of the moment that one

this is one of the moments that I like

and I think Olive Warnol came up with

this idea and I really thank him for it.

You know the fact that we

idiosyncratically establish this lighter

established the lighter in the planning

stages

and then when it's really needed that it

works it doesn't work.

the shot of Peter landing in the water

and not this is shot in a fish tank, but

uh the next one of him diving into the

water. I I was very happy to say that we

shot it in the creature from the Black

Lagoon tank at the back lot of Universal

Studios. And what follows is the modest

explosions

of a movie that was going to have no

explosions. All right, you know, here we

go. We demolish the backlot of Paramount

in LA, you know. And again, this is

short shot short shot all first unit.

It's two setups, two setups only shot in

one night. All the explosions were shot

in one night and there was one setup of

I think six or seven cameras and one

setup of 11 to 13 cameras. That's it.

You know, two shots, one take each, one

night.

and and I really liked uh learning that,

you know, as a director. I was coming

from um shooting a really contained

little movie uh in Mexico and I was

cattle prodded anally into learning how

to shoot action, learning how to manage

patchup um uh images and so on and so

forth. So, you know, after all the

cattle proddding, I must say I, you

know, I'm like the frog that moved its

legs because it was being electrocuted.

I can say it was painful, but I sure

thank everyone for the flexibility

acquired, you know. And I think that

I can say one last thing that was good

about it. Um, after doing mimic, after

saying I will not be tempted again, I

will stick by my guns even if I screw

up. I by all accounts uh me rejecting

uh offers for Narnia or Harry Potter or

whatever is a mistake because I then go

and do a movie that grows very little

money uh in the global scheme of things

like Hellboy. But to me that that was

actually success because I was [ __ ]

up in my own terms. I was taking my own

decision

and I think uh the beauty of this was

that um after this movie uh I got I was

preparing already in preparation for

Devil's Backbone and they offered me

Blade 2 and uh they put a lot of money

on the table for me to drop Devil's

Backbone and shoot it after Blade 2 and

uh I refused to do it like that. I said,

you know, if you really want me, you

will wait for me. And I during the

process of making Blade 2, which was a

much bigger movie than Mimic with a a

massive uh star at the time, action star

at the time, I stuck to my guns and

Blade 2 is exactly the movie that David

Goyer showed me the first day and that

we wanted to shoot. uh you know and I

learned to be bolder with my experiments

in movies I did alone or produced alone

like uh or or with great partners like

Devil's Backbone or Pans Labyrinth. I

learned to be bolder there and I learned

to try to enjoy uh the quirkiness I

could bring to movies like Blade or

Mimic. I don't think my movies quite

comfortably fit

in the in the American genre as

comfortably as the studios would like

them to fit. And uh you know, Hellboy

has moments that are just almost

miniature melodrama, strange melodrama,

very odd uh quirky moments or or moments

that actually diffuse

um what they are supposed to be

promoting, you know, or devil's

backbone, which makes the ghost the

least scary thing in the movie and makes

the humans the most scary thing in the

movie. But uh that's who I am. If you

like it, I thank you for watching these

things. If you don't like it, I don't

know what the [ __ ] you're doing

listening to me. So, you know, I don't

know what to say other than that. And

and and uh and this is the the ending we

we could shoot again. Uh second day in

the Parammont lot. I love having shot

there. It's a lot that I now can spot.

You can see it in um

uh Clint Eastwood movies like what was

it called? Blood Blood work or something

like that. And you can see it in for

example the coin brothers the man who

wasn't there but having shot in the

paramount lot I now see it everywhere. I

see it in TV series. I see it and I go

ah that's the building that's the other

building. Uh it was a great experience.

this and and um very few other days I

have shot actually in Hollywood. I

always am traveling to distant lands

with strange culinary menus. Uh and uh

and shooting in Hollywood was quite

mythical.

As a second movie,

Mimic remains uh a very formative movie,

a movie that I uh couldn't have survived

alone. a movie that I survived because

of my friends, because of friends I

made. Foremost uh I I must thank uh Mera

Serbino and offer her this director's

cut and this commentary track as a big

cellically fat thank you from me. uh

because I know that uh her going against

um the powers that be uh somewhat may

have uh hindered her further career and

uh and uh being brave because you feel

that is right. Being brave is truly the

highest virtue uh I can find when the

rewards of being brave are lesser than

the ones that would come your way for um

acquiescing and and giving up. And um

and uh you know thanks to her standing

by me and my friend standing by me and

all of us uh frankly bl battling with

each other to try to make the best movie

we can. Uh we became the perfect

embodiment of this ending which is uh at

the end uh we start with these

characters standing proud above science

and above nature and uh we end up with

what I wanted somehow which is a

completely imperfect family. two really

beaten, bleeding,

uh, painridden characters with a a very

odd little child, a completely imperfect

child, uh, but embracing each other and

that imperfection, not triumphant and

waspy, but damaged and alone except for

each other. So, that's the way it ended.

And we had an imperfect child that you

have now purchased on Blu-ray or DVD.

And uh that imperfect child is somewhat

beautiful to us because it is our child.

I will leave you with two quick

anecdotes or two final comments. One is

a really funny story about one of the

producers coming to visit the set that

was um sort of if you ever seen a set, a

movie set, it's a very complex wooden

structure from the outside. And inside

it is the set. So the two uh domes and

the tube connecting them in the sewer

set. The dome where Mera is the tube and

then the dome where she kills the insect

which was essentially our only uh sewer

set.

Uh they looked from the outside like a

sort of wooden dumbbell. You know, you

had half a sphere of wood in one side, a

tube from the outside, and another half

a sphere on the other side. And this

particular producer came to visit and

looked at that and he said, "Oh, dear

God, that looks" I said, "Let me show

you the sewer sets." And he looked at

them and said, "Oh my god, that looks

like a submarine." I said, "No, no, no,

no. The set is inside." Inside? No, no,

that's horrible. You have to change it.

We have to redesign it cuz it looks like

a submarine. I said, "No, no, no. That

is the outside of the set. You should

see the inside of the set. Oh my god,

we're in deep trouble. This looks like a

Jules Burn submarine or something." And

then finally, we get inside. And the

sets looked like they needed to be. They

looked like a sewer with a tunnel and

another sewer on the other side. And uh

set producer sigh happily and said,

"Wow, this is much much better." And I

said, "Well, you know, uh, thank you.

I'm glad you like it." And he said

before leaving, "Now, you got to promise

me. You got to promise me you will not

shoot this ever from the outside." And

that that was my everyday essentially

right there. Um, uh, the final anecdote

is the ending for the whole adventure.

Uh, as we were in post-prouction, we

learned of another movie

uh that had strangely, eerily,

horrifyingly close uh thematic and uh

genre moments called Relic.

And it even sounded like the same.

Relic, mimic, relic, mimic, mimic,

relic. And uh to the point where uh we

had a they came out separated by very

little time. They came out and uh uh

there was an a satiric article in the in

the newspaper The Onion, you know, where

it says, "Man watches mimic and relic

the same week, gets hit in the head, can

remember which is which." And the

article proceeded to tear us apart both

for essentially making the same film.

And sadly

that thing and the fact that we came out

in the same weekend that Air Force One

was out

made the movie which costed around 28 or

30 million made the movie gross about 30

something million or uh something like

that in in the box office and we could

never uh feel we had um done that that

great a job that we were rewarded at the

end by any material thing. And so the

only satisfaction was to to have

survived and have the movie The

Imperfect Child. And uh uh then the

studio went on and did two more sequels

on the movie direct to video. the first

one which I I didn't take too much and

the third one which I find actually

quite appealing and much closer to the

original uh short story than even the

mimic first movie was. So it's a very

strange little movie but I like it and I

I really uh urge you if you can uh check

it out to check out Mimic 3 actually.

So, there you are, my legacy in the

giant insect genre. Sub genre. I hope

you enjoyed it. Bye-bye.