The design of Kroenen.
NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 37B
Glass bells for evil spirits.
–We could open with a sequence in a “mini-mart” in which 3 or 4 monsters surround the cashier and Hellboy comes in and taunts them. Then he lights or puts out a cigarette with his fingers and saves it for later. Little daggers filled with holy water. Malaysan Revenants hungry for virgin’s blood
–You should date a little more.
–Galician forests are very much like those found in Arthur Machen
–A man is called upon to rebuild a stone labyrinth
–For Wind in the Willows: PICKLED TOAD
–The mini-mart was built on an ancient cemetery.
–The disorder inside the truck bothers Hellboy: I know it’s a Garbage truck, but…
NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 13A
The Rasputin character differed markedly from the historic image of the man–a long-haired, bearded, almost ascetic monk—with which del Toro began the character design process.
–Butchered cattle for sale on M street. Blood flows down the sidewalk. Steam pours out of the coffee-roasting machines. Very hot, wet streets
–Small gas lamp used at street stalls during the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries
–Rasputin (1872–1916). His name means “crossroads.” In 1909, he becomes a member of the royal court. He travels in 1911 and sometime in 1912
–Alias “Guisha.” Letter to Ilsa. Beforehand
–Ride the body of a dead man so that he tells you his secrets
–Key for H’s glove.
–Ilsa is given a small diary In it is written eveything that will happen in the years to come. “The book of sand.”
–Photo of R.(6–1916)
–Facts are far more damaging than lies. Sometimes truth is the tool to use to bring a man down.
–Jackets for Monte Cristo.
The Rasputin character in Hellboy drawn by Simeon Wilkins.
Rasputin played by Karel Roden.
GDT: Well, that comes from the comic. I think Mike did it because he wanted to purposely imply more of a reborn magician.
You know, I read every book on him. I found fascinating theories of how he resisted death. There’s one theory that says that Prince Yusupov, who was supposed to kill him, and supposedly tried to kill him for twenty minutes, was actually giving him a blowjob. So he came out and said, “I cannot kill him!” [laughs] Well, he was trying, but it was a very slow method. [laughs] It would take a long time. Another theory was that the cyanide in the food was a small dose. There was one book that literally explained, step-by-step, how it was just a really botched attempt at both a blowjob and an assassination.
But among the facts I found that were interesting was the fact that the explosion in Tunguska Forest, the famous explosion of an object that was never recovered, was like the equivalent of an X-File in tsarist Russia. I put that in the movie, in the director’s cut. The storm came from that explosion. I tried to come up with a great backstory for Rasputin, which is not in the movie. He’s a convert, and he really believes he’s bringing about the end of the world for good, because this world is too corrupt, and so on, and so forth.
NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 36A
Del Toro knew he wanted to include a spiked pit trap in Hellboy.
–Room in which Kroenen opens the trap in the floor, leaving HB hanging from a rope. Abe, or a rucksack, falls on the spikes below
–A hospital for children of the war. “Thousands of children came through these doors in the 1930s. Bad vibe”
– Some of us are like this cylinder of wax. We can replay whatever happened.
–Open-air Chinese pharmacy with an anatomic model
–Patterns on the floors for the TOP-SHOT
– In HB’s room, the pick-up “bed” is where he saw Liz for the first time.
–Cartoons and movies are playing on HB’s televisions.
–The Baby Behemoth’s birth
–Tentacles emerge from his eye whenever anyone says “Hellboy” to him! “Child…” “Look what you have done”
The pit trap ended up claiming Kroenen (Ladislav Beran) as a victim.
GDT: There’s a piece of architecture on the top here [opposite] that I thought would be intriguing. We never made it on Hellboy.
On the right is the sort of trap door with spikes that ended up in Kroenen’s lair. I just wanted to have that really pulpish feel. I love Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu. The great thing about the Fu Manchu novels is how inventive the traps are. To this day, my favorite trap in a Fu Manchu novel is, there is one where they say, “This is his deadliest weapon.” And they go, “Oh, my God,” and then they prepare the revolvers, and they go, “At the count of three, open the door,” and they open the door. They enter, and it’s an empty room. There’s nothing. And they go, “Nothing happened.” And then all of a sudden, a giant mushroom blooms from the mouth of one of them, and the other one starts screaming, and a mushroom blooms from their noses, mouths, eyes, and they realize the room is full of spores. I love that. Anyway, that’s the spikes.
And then at the bottom, you can see a thing that is ultimately in the movie, which is like a Cthulhu creature being birthed out of the midsection of Rasputin. [laughs]
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 44
Hellboy provided an opportunity to deploy a tentacled, Cthulhu-like creature the likes of which del Toro has been drawing for years.
–What are you reading? Words, words, words. What’s it about?… ? He tells him his own story.
–You can’t take anything from me hut my life.
–Ofelia returns the jack-in-the-box engagement ring to him.
* Careful: beyond this. He: You don’t love me. Marry someone handsome.
–With the pig’s head, after looking for him in its nostrils (to be or not…) the doubt
–The traitors RG.
–I must be cruel only to be Kind.
+THE TRAP, the duel with his friend.
–The fly that accuses.
+Ernie’s farewell.
–Fight and bullets.
T* The face of daddy-God (without the shell.)
