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Both Juan Antonio Bayona and Sergio G. Sanchez wanted to make sure that THE ORPHANAGE wasn't your typical haunted house story. After agreeing to helm Sergio's script, Juan Antonio made a list of clichés and made sure that none of them entered the process of filming. Add on Guillermo del Toro as producer, and the result is one of the best movies about ghosts of the year. To promote THE ORPHANAGE, Spain's official entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, both Juan Antonio Bayona and Sergio G. Sanchez sat down with a group of reporters including the Crypt to discuss the making of this future classic and working with del Toro as producer. The following are highlights from that discussion.
Sergio, one of the things about the script is that here in the United States when filmmakers want to pay homage to other works in a genre film they tend to joke and give a wink. With THE ORPHANAGE, there is a feeling of seriousness in terms of the literary and cinematic history that was behind it. Is that something that you as a filmmaker brought to it or is it a more European point of view of bringing something within the genre? SERGIO G. SANCHEZ: Basically this was all part of the story and the movie since the movie has the elements of a classic haunted house ghost story but then you can also interpret the film as having nothing to do with the supernatural. It can all be the mental decay of a woman who is not able to cope with the loss of a child. So basically what I wanted to do was throughout the first half of the movie is put all these things that had an echo of other fairy tales, books, stories, classic gothic horror movie elements that we can all identify with. The lighthouse, the abandoned house, the orphanage, we’ve seen that a thousand times before. But then that gives you the tools for Laura the character to build up this ghost story in her mind. It’s very easy for her to dive into the ghost story because all of the elements are there for her. But then all of a sudden halfway through the movie we started stripping the story of all those elements and halfway through the movie you don’t have a villain. The movie just changes into something else, something very different or at least I hope it does. That was a reason but I never was thinking of any specific movie story. The two biggest influences were PETER PAN of course. The intention was to tell the story of PETER PAN from the point of view of the mother. I think PETER PAN is one of the most disturbing stories ever related to children. I thought if you tell the story from Wendy’s mother, than you have a horrifying story. The other was THE TURN OF THE SCREW by Henry James. Those were the only two that we were speaking about when we were making this movie. Juan Antonio, Guillermo was telling us how when he met you and about the guy who passed off your short films as his. JUAN ANTONIO BAYONA: He actually mentioned that? (Laughs) How did you meet Sergio and what was it about THE ORPHANAGE that made you want to make it your first feature film? JAB: I remember being at a short film festival and I discovered a short film called 7337. I loved that film and Sergio was the director. I asked him for material and he explained to me that the short film was the basis for a movie that he had already written. He was trying to get financing and he couldn’t get it. Because I knew Guillermo del Toro, I was able to get financing for the movie. He was so disappointed with the process of getting the financing because this was a project that no production company in Spain wanted to pick up. They told us that it was an impossible mixture of horror and drama, that there was no evil character, the kind of things that make the story different from the formula movie that we were trying to avoid. I remember telling Sergio that this is a great script. It’s very smart, very intelligent, and this is the way that it should be told. Guillermo was encouraging a lot, so we did it. Sergio, how were you able to let go being that you made small films yourself? SGS: I had been out of film school for almost seven years. I was doing all sorts of shit jobs and I basically wanted to work on anything related to film. At that point I heard so many times that this movie would never happen that I almost believed it. So I just wanted to get my foot through the door, and it’s done wonderful things for me. I’ve written two scripts, Juan Antonio did one and Guillermo took the other so I’m gonna save one for myself to do next. How did you go about casting Belen as Laura? JAB: I thought about Belen since the first moment. She is very well known in Spain. She played comedy on Spanish TV. I thought it would be great to cast Belen Rueda and put her in a situation that the audience wouldn’t expect watching her play a horror movie, an actress best known for TV comedy. I think that’s quite interesting too in a horror movie or a genre movie to put actors that you’re not used to seeing in that position. It’s a drama and she was great in THE SEA INSIDE. What I needed was a great actress. This is a very psychological story so I needed to have a strong actress in the role, and Belen was that and more. Sergio, could you talk about the conception of the scene with Geraldine Chaplin? SGS: Well the character of Geraldine Chaplin gets to put out in words the theme of the movie in that seeing is not believing, it’s the other way around. It’s basically a movie about faith and when we were working on the character it was difficult because she encapsulates everything about the movie. The character has to be ambiguous enough so that she can be inspiring but at the same time we have to be suspicious of her. That scene was very hard to do. It would’ve been easy to say that this is a ghost story so things are going to fly up in the air, it’s going to be very spectacular and we’re going to have CGI effects and it’s going to be so much fun. No, you cannot do that because everything has to have a real explanation where you have to think that maybe at the end she was faking it all. It was hard to come up with a scene that was terrifying but at the same time nothing is happening there, it’s just sounds. It’s actually Geraldine Chaplin playing a character who’s playing a character. She’s doing these things so she can scare and convince Laura. That was a big challenge also with the sound because that whole scene has to do with the point of view and the sound worked. There’s nothing there and still it’s very chilling. It’s a long sequence in the middle of the film. The movie stops there but all the things in the movie are felt in that sequence. Are you both going to continue being involved in the horror genre? JAB: Guillermo and I have been talking about putting an American movie together that will probably deal with horror and fantasy. Right now I’ve got a project in Spain that’s like a comedy with drama that deals with fantasy but not in a general way. There’s another project that’s in English and Sergio is writing the script. It’s in the works. Guillermo produces about 500 movies so does he just give you a list and you can just pick a name out of it? (Both laugh) SGS: He’s got so many projects on the table that we could find work on all the ones he doesn’t want to do, but believe me Guillermo is not going in that direction. You said your first question to Sergio after reading the script for the first time was why would Laura want to go back to the house. What did you first think was the answer? JAB: I understood the movie with the question. I asked why is she going back to the house and she’s going back to the house because she can’t deal with her present. She wants to be a child again. She wants to be a mother but this kind of mother without responsibilities. I thought there was a strong sense of psychology hidden in the story. The ghosts are in her mind and are in the house. That’s how it works for me. Would you consider the film to be a celebration of childhood or an exploration into its darker side? JAB: I grew up watching both American movies and European movies so I’m right in the middle. I used to feel that American movies are about celebrating childhood while European movies are about the darkness around childhood, so the movie is right in the middle of that. Is the genre not positively looked at in Spain that led to the difficulties in making this film? SGS: Not really. JAB: In Spain there always has been a tradition of horror movies as B movies, if you think about Jess Franco or Paul Naschy in the 70s. SGS: At some point all these movies went beyond the B movie frontier and became serious movies. JAB: One of my favorite directors was Narciso Ibanez Serrador, he did WHO COULD KILL A CHILD and LA RESIDENCIA. I don’t remember the name in English (THE BOARDING SCHOOL or THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED). Sometimes there are movies that go beyond that. Right now journalists are asking in Spain that it’s a great moment in fantasy, what’s fantastic but I think it’s always been there. Would you call it a horror movie or a missing child movie? JAB: It’s a scary movie but for me I was never was thinking about that. I wanted to feel free to let the story to the screen the best way possible. We wanted to focus on Laura’s drama. The scary sequences work so well on the script but what we did was storyboard all these sequences and try to make it as scary as possible to let the drama work better. I don’t think it’s a horror movie that works better because there are emotional elements. I think this is a drama that works better because the scary sequences puts the audience really into the story. How did Guillermo help you shape the film? JAB: I remember we sat together to talk about how the picture should be. I would talk about how we should have 10 weeks of shooting so we could build the house on a soundstage. Then he gave us a few suggestions about the story. It was funny and I’ll give you an example of how we did it. There was a moment in the making of the movie that I wanted to change the title. I wanted to call the movie WITHIN THE WALLS because I thought that was the perfect image of how Laura evolves with the house in the story while at the same time it’s a clue of the film’s end. Guillermo was giving suggestions from a script that he wrote to put into THE ORPHANAGE. I remember one day I asked him “What was the name of that movie,” and he told me “WITHIN THE WALLS” and I just went “What the fuck?” (Laughter) Will you work with Guillermo on 3993? SGS: Well the script has been written for years. I’m just waiting to meet with him so we can sit down with him and do the final changes he wants. Is the WGA strike affecting you guys at all? SGS: Spain I think is out of realm but I would be in the clear anyway because all the scripts have been written. Thank you gentlemen. SGS: Thank you all. JAB: Take care.
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