Guillermo del Toro’s masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth heads back to theaters next week in 3D and 4K, reintroducing audiences to unforgettable characters like the Faun and the Pale Man, both played by genre stalwart Doug Jones.
Ahead of the film’s release in theaters October 9, Bloody FM’s The Boo Crew podcast caught up with Doug Jones for an insightful look back at his career and the many collaborations with del Toro dating back to Mimic.
Though Jones has appeared in six of del Toro’s films, it’s his dual performance in the filmmaker’s dark fantasy film that stands apart, even if del Toro had to slightly trick him to take on the film.
Jones revealed to the Boo Crew that del Toro initially gave him a screenplay in English: “I was terrified when he was offered it to me. He sent me the script in English and, ‘Read this, get back to me by tonight.‘ So I read this most beautiful script I’d ever read in my life, right? I’m wiping tears away as I close the last page like, ‘I have to be in this movie.‘ I emailed him back saying, ‘Oh my gosh, thank you so much. You’ll never know what this means to me.‘ ‘Great. It’s going to be in Spanish.‘ So I told him he got the wrong guy and there’s no way I can possibly learn paragraphs of exposition dialogue as the font in a language I don’t speak.“
“I got a translation in English, and it was beautifully worded,” Jones clarifies. “He must have done the translation himself because he’s so poetic in both languages. So, it’s going to be in Spanish? I told him surely there’s a Spanish actor that can pull this off, and he’s going to be filming in Spain and I was going to be the only American miles around. His answer was, ‘Nope, you can count to 10 for all I care. I’ll dub over it later, but you have to play the Faun.“
There was no way Jones would take that shortcut, though, and committed to the film’s language demands. “I want to give her the language that she can respond to. So I buckled down, and I had an English and Spanish translation of the script side by side, and I broke down the sentence structure. I had two years of Spanish in high school, and some of the grammar and sentence structure came back to me, and I did it all without a coach, and I was able to deliver the dialogue on set when it came.“
While Jones brings the Faun to life on screen through his voice and physicality, the actor also gives the makeup and creature FX team credit for the tricky work accomplished on the film. For those revisiting the film on the big screen, Jones notes to pay attention to the Faun’s subtle transformation throughout the film.
“The faun, I guess he was working off the mythical Pan, but he never mentioned Pan in the actual movie. It’s in the title, the English title, but the Spanish title is Le Berinto del Fano, the Labyrinth of the Faun. Pan is only mentioned in the English title and never anywhere else in the movie. He’s a keeper of the underworld, and he said he wanted me to play the ambiguity. Is he good? Is he evil? We don’t know yet. Don’t reveal it yet. He gave me notes that every time you see the fawn, he’s going to be aging backwards. So when you go back and see the movie again, my first appearance, I’m older and more gray with stormy, cloudy eyes, and one of my horns is eaten off at the end.
“Every time you see me, I’ll get a little bit more colorful, a little bit more pristine.“
“My movement then went from rickety to more smooth by the end as well. So aging backwards in a film and you’re filming it out of sequence, mind you, so you never know what scene you’re on, what day, with lots to keep track of.“
The actor also recalls the practical effects regarding his second character in the film, the child-eating Pale Man. While that creature is also practical, the Pale Man’s devouring of fairies was digital. Yet it still required some gruesome practical trickery from Jones on set.
“This is going to be disgusting,” Jones warns. “The digital effects people were on set guiding us through how this was going to work because they had to paint those fairies in later. Well, to help them get the bite, stretch, and explosion of blood, they filled two condoms with fake blood that I had to act like I was catching, catching, and then bite, stretch until it burst, and then bite and stretch until. Now I’ll tell you, condoms don’t taste delicious.
“I was actually welcoming the blood spurting out because it was at least corn syrup and sweet. It sweetened up the flavor a little bit. But yeah, del Toro gave me notes as the Pale Man to be originally when we first talked about it, to be gangly and disjointed and bounding down a hallway after her. We’re rehearsing that scene once we’re out of the table chamber and then down the hallway when she’s trying to make her final escape out of my chamber. She’s running, and we did a rehearsal, and I’m going gallopy, gallopy, gallopy, knees and elbows everywhere. He goes, ‘No, Dougie.‘ As though we had never had that talk. He says, ‘No, no, no. More like a George Romero zombie.‘ ‘Oh, well that’s a little different, isn’t it?‘ So that’s why when you see that Pale Man sequence, you’ll see, yes, I was stiffened up and more step, step, step. That slower chase was way scarier than galloping after.“
Pan’s Labyrinth will be presented theatrically for the first time by Cineverse and Fathom in 4K, and with versions available in both 3D and HDR by Barco – the dedicated HDR viewing solution offering up to 6 times higher peak luminance.
Grab your tickets from AMC Theatres, Regal, Fandango, and Fathom Entertainment, and listen to the full episode below.
