Original subtitles

Mimic in its present incarnation

certainly stylistically is a movie of

mine and everybody says to me well do

you dislike mimic and I say I don't

dislike mimic what hurts me is what I

wanted to do in the same way that I

maintain that some of the best movies I

have are the movies I have not made the

screenplays that never got financed

mountains of madness or metos bridge age

or Monte Cristo. You know, the ones that

get away like any fisherman are the

biggest fishes.

In the 70s, I read a book that neatly

classified horror in two kinds. The

first kind of horror is the horror where

something from outside

attacks the group. And the second kind

of horror is the horror that comes from

within the group. Other than that then

you have infinite subcategories after

that. I mean there are thematic almost

subg genres. Haunted house, ghost story,

monster movie, Frankenstein monster. It

can be many others and it can

cross-pollinate with sci-fi,

you know, but ultimately it's about the

man-made monsters. Oh my god.

What I liked about the mimic short story

was that it was a reveal. It was not

starting uh it started almost like rare

window, you know, the Alfred Hitchcock

movie. It was about a guy spying on a

neighbor, a very strange, lanky overcoat

man, you know, and then at the end it

was the excursion into that neighbor's

apartment and finding a pod of young

ones and opening them and all these

little black um uh creatures come out

like looking like men in overcoats and

then fly out. They fly out the window.

That was a reveal. It it really

attracted me. the moment those things

opened up and you went they are the bugs

you know and mind you you may know that

from the start and so forth but the

moment is still thrilling in the movie

we combined that moment with the moment

where Serbino is kidnapped by it so it

was a really good way of addressing the

emotional thrill the jolt that you felt

reading the story

suspense is practically ally has to

exist since inception. In other words,

90% of the suspense is what you are

withholding from the audience or you are

withholding from the character.

In the case of suspense is you need to

have the audience know what's going on

but the character is unaware.

It's almost a lost art. I mean, I really

think that very few people are doing

suspense movies and very few people

maintain the suspense in movies because

studios are so eager for the audience to

understand the movie as if it was a

[ __ ] thesis or a manual. They don't

need to understand the movie. They need

to live the movie. Correct? I mean, when

is the last time you understood a movie

and said it was great because you

understood it. You know, if I I say [ __ ]

that [ __ ]

But suspense depends on them cleanly

being able to read it. That's that's

easy. But emotionally being able to to

hold. When you are executing as a

director,

suspense is all about holding the frame

and not cutting when people want to cut.

A cut is a release. Every time you cut,

you release. And it's almost like

fishing. Not cutting is reeling them in.

And every time you cut, you give them a

little bit, you know? So, it's about

that rhythm. Release, not release.

Oh god.

What's the problem?

I

think it's a kid.

Mimic is a very straight B movie idea

which is monsters that are created. When

you get a concept that is a B concept,

you need to try and execute it uh like

an A movie in terms of how delicate the

art direction needs to be. Even if the

moments themselves are still genre, you

can trace that more in my Spanish

language movies than you can in my

American movies. I try to execute it as

preciously as possible in terms of the

image design. I ask and demand or

present ideas that are uh not what you

would expect.

And with Mimic, we had no time. It's far

more straightforward. And I think I

think in some aspects it benefited from

that. It didn't get mannered in a way

that got in the way of its genre uh

needs, you know, and and I I like that.

But we try to have humans mimicking the

mimics and asking the question that is

essential to the things I do which is

what is it that makes us human and the

answer I give is always the same is

choice.

Joy listen to me.

They have Jesus on the cross

but that is not a holy place.

There was a whole subplot in the movie

about our time being over. That the

insects were not an anomaly. They were

God's plan. And Manny used to say, you

know, maybe it's not our time anymore.

Maybe God has favored the next creature.

Mr. Funny shoes.

The idea that is just the scientific

experiment was not attractive to me. I

was attracted to the fact that almost

like a fairy tale or a biblical idea of

uh God saying, "You know what? I'm done

with you guys. I'm going to give these

guys a chance." And to that ending, the

original ending in the screenplay that I

loved also before the ending of her

coming out the stairs and all that, the

male came out and finally reformed

because it was open. It was it looked

like a bug and then it survived the the

subway and it it started walking towards

a mirror in all six legs and then

started standing up and the legs folded

and the face plate folded and you

realize it was lit by a passing light of

a train and you saw a perfect naked

human silhouette and he came out of the

shadows and you saw a perfect human face

not like the other mimics he had a

perfect human face and he approached era

and pointed at her with a perfectly

formed digit and say leave

and I thought that was so scary and the

studio thought it was so not scary and

that is a battle I I I am sorry we lost

but the idea does what what is really

scary is not an explosion it's not a bog

what I find scary is that they were now

intelligent and they were now capable of

saying you can

We have restored the shreds of those

thematic things. You can spot them in

the movie. We have restored the idea of

humans exploiting humans with absolute

no regard with the sweat shop beneath

the church.

We have restored the idea of the dark

angels by the Chinese workers. We

restored the idea of the

mole people beneath the city also living

like bugs and leaving markings.

Essentially saying the guys in charge

are now the bugs. You know,

at the end of the movie, I was shooting

the attack on the subway car with the

where the bug gets split in half and I

saw the saturated ambers and I saw the

saturated blue

and I saw the deep blacks and the

texture, the rotting rich texture in the

car and I saw the fear in Charles Dton's

eyes and and I felt that's the movie. I

mean, at the end of the day, that's the

movie visually that I wanted to make.

It's free of second unit crap almost

95%. So, all you get is first unit crap.

So, if you hate the first unit crap, I'm

the guy. Come talk to me. And you say to

me you hated it, you know, I'll I'll

assume it because this incarnation I

own. I I really say this is the movie I

wanted.

The first thing you hear in Hollywood

that should give you a shudder is when

they say the rules.

We want to understand the rules. By that

they mean that in order to play a game

with the audience they have to know the

rules. And I disagree. I think that

internal logic in a movie means that

things just have to make sense in the

tail. What studios make of the rules is

they actually kind of want to castrate

that stuff and fit it in little neat

boxes, you know, and and tell you how it

is. They want to give you A to B to C to

D to E. That is horrible. But fairy tale

logic gives you A and C and assume you

don't need B and it gives you E and

assumes you know D. You know that's much

better. That's internal logic.

The rules are the castration of internal

logic. They are the systematization

unnecessarily of internal logic. Is

creating a manual for the movie

and that destroys it. And it's one of

the I must say that's one of the battles

that sooner or later

one has to have in every movie done in

Hollywood where you where you say well

these are the rules you know you better

be careful how you speak to people

you know I really think the moments that

were forced and then accepted by me

because it's impossible for a filmmaker

to say I didn't have any other choice

that's cowardice you always have the

choice of not being there of saying

goodbye, you know, in any way you want,

amicable or not, but uh that has to be

an extreme situation for that to happen.

And every change I accepted, I thought

would not destroy the movie I was

making, which was a movie that was

texturally, visually very beautiful and

with moments of fear and and the

introduction of creatures that were

biologically correct.

Hopefully when you do a movie that

responds to the model you wanted to make

the movie it changes.

Erodotus the philosopher maintained that

life is about flow and that ultimately

you never bathe in the same river twice

because the water is moving you know and

and it's flow and and I think that

movies are like that. When you meet a

movie and you're 15 and you think it's

the greatest movie on earth and you

watch it again at 30 or 40 and you go,

"What the hell was I thinking?" Or the

opposite, you meet it at 20 and you say

with enormous certainty, "What a

horrible movie." And then you meet it at

40 and you go, "What the hell was I

thinking? This is a great movie." I'm

hoping that if the movies are seen more

than once, you will have a different

experience. Because even if the movie

was not capable of change, which I tried

to make them capable of change, you

would have changed. And if not, you will

notice new things in the movie. It's not

about subconscious. I think that people

make too much about it like it really

implants a message and we are

manipulated like robots. But I do think

that you do catch a lot of things just

visually

and you get into a rhythm and a language

and an atmosphere and it's important to

codify it not because you want to

explain it on the DVD or in the Blu-ray.

I did this, I did that. Well, no. You

know, hopefully it had an effect in Pan

Labyrinth or Devil's Wagon or to some

degree in the more commercial movies,

but I think that at the end of the day,

we managed to preserve the movie I

wanted to make as much as it's ever

going to be.