Give ‘em enough Lycanthrope

“I was always a basketball kid,” says Benicio Del Toro, reaching for another cigarette while he ponders the recent death of J.D. Salinger. “I wasn’t academic. I made it through three books in high school, The Catcher In The Rye, The Old Man And The Sea and Don Quixote. With those last two I winged it, but with Holden Caulfield I got it. The minute he started talking about phonies I got it.”

There are those that say Benicio Del Toro is a difficult interviewee. I know he once told a British broadsheet journalist that he would set his dogs upon him if he asked another personal question. And I know he recently stormed out of a Washington Times interview with the parting shot; “I’m done. I hope you write whatever you want. I don’t give a damn.”
Today, he’s settled into a couch with a packet of Dunhill cigarettes, recently returned from a morning antiquing. And I can’t get my head around such tales. It’s the second time we’ve met and, once again, I’m struck by the chasm between his tortured onscreen schtick and his own laidback demeanour.
“I’m an art guy I guess,” he smirks.
I can think of reasons why he shouldn’t be so cheerful. Last year, Che, an epic four-hour biopic of the iconic revolutionary Che Guevara and a long-term labour of love for the actor and director Steven Soderbergh was roundly ignored by the Academy and just about everyone else. As Sean Penn, the eventual Oscar winner noted: “(it) is such a sensational movie, Che. Benicio is fucking good in it. And the fact that I’m not running into these people on this awards-party circuit, it’s crazy. Maybe because it’s (Che) in Spanish, maybe the length, maybe the politics.”
“I don’t take it personally,” shrugs del Toro. “I don’t have control over any of that stuff. I might take it personally if I had control but what the hell. I can’t do anything about it.”
But it must sting just a little, having invested so many years in a project that didn’t get the recognition it deserved?
“Well, yeah, definitely. But I’m a firm believer that the good work from everyone involved in Che will find its way in the world. Movies are like time machines. I don’t want to sound pretentious but they have a life beyond the theatrical release. I can give you an example – Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. When we made that movie it was not recognised by film writers and it was not recognised by the public at that moment in time. It was like a cold shower despite a lot of effort from everyone involved. But now I get people coming up who will passionately state how much they love Fear and Loathing. And as Hunter S. Thompson said to me at the time, the book got a cold shower reception when it came out. Sometimes recognition takes a little time.”
His latest project, on paper at least, is an easier shout than the Soderbergh picture. In 2006, Mr. Del Toro approached Universal with an idea to remake The Wolfman, the classic 1941 creature feature.
A huge fan of Universal Horror, the imprint that defined genre cinema between 1923 and 1960, Del Toro was convinced that an old school horror would restore lycanthropy to its former cinematic glory. To that end, his brooding treatment of Lawrence Talbot, the character once made famous by Lon Chaney Jr., is currently opening in a cinema near you.
“He was brooding before I got there,” says Del Toro. “They called Lon Chaney Jr. the man with a thousand faces and I think he got that nickname from the original Wolfman films. Lawrence is a character who is defeated and cursed from the beginning. He’s tortured. He’s got a disease.”
Broadly speaking, The Wolfman 2010 retains the beats of the original. Lawrence, a Victorian-era stage actor is already struggling through Oedipal battles with his father (Anthony Hopkins) and romantic longings for his dead brother’s fiancée, Gwen (Emily Blunt), when a nocturnal attack transforms him into a werewolf and the proceedings take a decidedly Shakespearean turn.
“It wasn’t my idea,” laughs Del Toro. “I wish it was. I think that came from Andrew Kevin Walker. It’s that old Hamlet gag. Instead of going after his uncle, Lawrence is up against his father, but it’s that same basic idea – that by going after the father, he’s going after himself. In the original screenplay, he was a little bit cockier, a little bit edgier before he was bitten. But the studio wanted to emphasise the more noble qualities; that the guy was on a quest to find out what happened to his brother.”
Unhappily, the curse of the Wolfman appears to have struck the entire production. Since March 2006, when Universal Pictures first announced the remake with Benicio del Toro and Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker attached, the project has been blighted by “creative differences”. Mark Romanek, the original director, walked out in 2008 and the studio met with a veritable army of filmmakers – Brett Ratner, Frank Darabont, James Mangold, Bill Condon, Martin Campbell – before settling on Jumanji helmsman Joe Johnston.
There was still more tinkering to follow. Months of reshoots were required to change the beast from a two-legged werewolf into a four-legged version. Veterans Mark Goldblatt and Walter Murch were hired to do a complete re-edit. Danny Elfman’s score was rejected in favour of Paul Haslinger’s electronic musings, only to be reinstated at the last moment.
Unsurprisingly, the film’s release date – it was originally pencilled in for November 2008 - has bounced around the schedules. Late last year, the spin-off Halloween costume managed to hit shops just as the film was, once again, getting bumped into the spring release slate.
Mr. Del Toro, who weathered all these shifts as the film’s star and producer, is philosophical about this series of unfortunate events.
“Movies are never easy,” he says. “And the studio is a machine. Studio movies are different animals. Decisions take longer to get executed. The Wolfman took five months to make. We made Che – a four hour movie – in three months. For Che we travelled around five countries on a tight, tight, tight budget. The Wolfman was much slower. At the beginning I kept looking at my watch thinking “what’s going on?” There’s a sequence near the end of the movie when I’m walking down a hallway of my mansion that took two days. With Che, we’d have to do everything in an hour. I don’t remember my trailer in Che. I’m not even sure I had one. With The Wolfman I know I had a trailer because I was in it quite a bit getting four hours worth of make-up on at a time.”
The Puerto Rican born actor is particularly proud of his slap and the film’s association with make-up wizard Rick Baker.
“I was convinced that if it was going to be a homage to the original we needed make-up,” he says. “With Universal horror films you had Bela Lugosi, you had Boris Karloff, you had Elsa Lancaster. And make-up was crucial to their interpretations of the characters they played. The minute Rick Baker got involved I felt the film was real. He has the best hands in the world. He’s the new Jack Pierce and Pierce’s work was so significant you can show those monsters to a kid who has never seen any of those Universal movies and they’ll still get at least two out of three.”
He smiles; “I hope the film does well and everything but I’ll be happy if I get to be a Halloween costume.”

The Wolfman is on general release.