Last week I went with a good friend and saw “At Home with Monsters” exhibition at Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). A really good one. Lots of materials to be seen, viewed, listened or experienced but also a lot of background story for each aspect of del Toro’s creations and obsessions.
Loved it but more than that I left inspired and eager to return to work (and by work I mean writing but also design and illustration). I told my friend that and at first, I was a bit confused by his answer. He didn’t feel inspired. He liked the exhibition, but not to that extent. How was that possible?
Well, he is into steampunk so all the Victorian stuff inspired him, but he doesn’t like horror. Not the “I’m not a fan, but it’s OK”, but he really doesn’t like horror AT ALL. How did it come to happen—one of my good friends who doesn’t like horror! Weird, eh? But true.
There are people out there who don’t like what I like and they could still be good friends and good company. Del Toro has certainly opened my eyes to things, both horrific and natural.
A good question that he asked looking at the Frankenstein part of the exhibition was how come that there are a bunch of ideas made and re-made a thousand times by Hollywood, while thousands of excellent books are never touched. Books that can give us fresh material for movies. Well, they started that with TV shows (that’s why it said we’re living in the golden age of TV), but there’s still a lot of ground to cover, both in TV and cinema (especially cinema).