Guillermo del Toro Wins Best Director for "The Shape of Water"
Del Toro pays tribute to the monsters of our past in touching Golden Globes acceptance speech.
By Ray Morse
Award season is always a time of hope for those of us who celebrate the horror genre throughout the entire year. It is a special time where, through a mere nomination of our favorite filmmakers and films, we as a fandom feel wholly represented. Recognition for an artist of our own truly feels like a victory for us all when the genre is notoriously overlooked. More importantly, to be bestowed with such an honor is often the culmination of everything these immensely talented filmmakers sacrifice in order to bring these pictures to life.
On Sunday, one such moment took place during the Golden Globes when visionary auteur, Guillermo del Toro, won Best Director for his breathtakingly-stunning creature film, The Shape of Water (in theaters now). Being no stranger to our beloved genre, Del Toro wasted no time paying his respects to the monsters that haunted the silver screens before his:
“Since childhood I’ve been faithful to monsters — I have been saved and absolved by them. Because monsters, I believe, are patron saints of our blissful imperfection. And they allow and embody the possibility of fail, and live.”
“I thank you, my monsters thank you, and somewhere, Lon Chaney is smiling on all of us.”
He continued his emotional acceptance speech, shedding light on the sheer impact these films have had on his life in saying:
“For 25 years, I have hand-crafted very strange little tales… in three precise instances, these strange stories have saved my life – once with The Devil’s Backbone, once with Pan’s Labyrinth, and now with The Shape of Water. As directors, these things are not just entries in a filmography. We have made a deal with a particularly inefficient devil, that trades three years of our life for one entry on IMDb. And these things are biography. And they are life.”
The Shape of Water also won Best Original Score for a Motion Picture. We look forward to what lies ahead for Guillermo del Toro and crew as we forge ahead toward the Academy Awards.
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