| | |  Entertainment | Books | June 2009 
Guillermo del Toro's "The Strain"
 Rick Warner - Bloomberg News
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| "The Strain"
by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan
William Morrow (401 pages, $26.99) | |
Growing up in Guadalajara, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro developed a fascination with vampires. He devoured books on the subject, drew pictures of the bloodsucking creatures and kept detailed notes on their anatomy.
Del Toro has put that knowledge to good use in "The Strain," a new vampire thriller co-authored with Chuck Hogan. The book's gory, virus-spreading vampires bear little resemblance to the romanticized versions in Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series and Anne Rice's "The Vampire Chronicles."
"I wanted to make clear that being sucked by these creatures was not pleasant," del Toro said. "My vampires are not lovable."
Del Toro, director of the Oscar-winning "Pan's Labyrinth," "Blade II" and the "Hellboy" movies, has spent the past seven months in New Zealand preparing to make two films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit."
He took a break to promote the book, the first of a planned trilogy on the vampire legend. (Part II is scheduled for publication in 2010 and Part III in 2011.)
"The Strain" opens with a plane full of dead passengers on a runway at New York's JFK airport. The investigation into the tragedy involves a host of colorful characters, including a 76-year-old billionaire investor, a Holocaust survivor who runs a Harlem pawnshop and a Centers for Disease Control doctor who's distracted by a custody battle for his son.
IDEA FOR TV SERIES
New York is also a central character in the story.
"I wanted to show the non-glamorous New York that I see every time I come here," said del Toro, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two daughters when he isn't away making movies. "There's the New York of legend and the New York of everyday life, which is a tough city that could even be blase about a vampire attack."
Del Toro said he originally envisioned "The Strain" as a limited-run TV series like HBO's "The Wire," but changed direction after the Fox network turned him down.
"I went to them with the idea and they said, 'We like it but can you make it a comedy?'" he said. "I quickly validated my parking and got the hell out of there."
Del Toro sought a co-author to give the book a realistic look and sound. Hogan is a former Boston video-store clerk who has written best-selling crime thrillers such as "The Standoff" and "Prince of Thieves."
"The America I portray in my movies is completely fictional," explained del Toro, a rotund 44-year-old whose cherubic face is framed by owlish glasses and a scraggly beard. "My New York doesn't look like New York and my characters don't talk like actual Americans. So I wanted a writer like Chuck whose books are highly believable."
'Sick Individual'
Despite their divergent backgrounds, del Toro said he and Hogan have a lot in common.
"Like me, he's a very sick individual," the director laughed. "Some of the most disturbing stuff in the book came from him, like the rat-catcher."
To get a sample of "The Strain" before reading it, you can view three short videos on the Internet. Book "trailers" are usually just interviews with the authors, but two of "The Strain" videos, directed by comic-book creator Francisco Ruiz Velasco, are more like movie trailers, with actors performing scenes.
"We want you to feel like you're stepping into a unique universe," del Toro said. "It's a good way to get people immersed very quickly."
'The Hobbit' ON THE WAY
Del Toro will now turn his attention back to "The Hobbit" movies, to be produced by Peter Jackson, director of the masterful "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. He'll be spending the next three years working on the films in New Zealand, where he'll be staying with his family in the capital city of Wellington.
"It's very civilized there," he said. "It takes 3 1/2 minutes to get from my house to work."
Del Toro has several other movies lined up after "The Hobbit," including a remake of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse-Five" and new versions of "Frankenstein" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." So where does he find the time and energy for all these projects?
"I've been working like this my whole life, except for a long time I was doing it anonymously," del Toro said. "When I was filming 'Pan's Labyrinth,' I was already writing [the outline] for 'The Strain' and 'Hellboy II.' I was also revising a 400-page Hitchcock book that was published in Spain and jump-starting an animation company."
After making his first feature, "Cronos," in 1993, del Toro went four years before releasing his next film.
"I realized it's better to have two or three irons in the fire because trade announcements are absolutely not money in the bank," he said. "If I made one film for every 20 that were announced, I'd have the filmography of Hitchock."
Rick Warner is the movie critic for Bloomberg News. |
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