FILM 1756: THE SHAPE OF WATER

FILM 1756: THE SHAPE OF WATER

TRIVIA: When "The Shape of Water" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017, the screening was held in the Elgin Theatre. The interior scenes of the theater in the film were shot in the Elgin Theatre, so as the audience was watching the film, they were seeing the same theater on screen that they were sitting in.

Director Guillermo del Toro said about Sally Hawkins, "Not only was she the first choice, she was the only choice. I wrote the movie for Sally, I wrote the movie for Michael [Shannon]... Sally is - I wanted the character of Elisa to be beautiful, in her own way, not in a way that is like a perfume commercial kind of way. That you could believe that this character, this woman would be sitting next to you on the bus. But at the same time she would have a luminosity, a beauty, almost magical, ethereal."

Guillermo Del Toro wrote lengthy backstories for each of the major characters, some of them allegedly running over 40 pages long. After casting the roles, he offered them to the actors and said they could choose to utilize or ignore the backstories for their own character. The actors responded differently, with Richard Jenkins saying he ignored the backstory, stating "the only thing that matters is what happens on screen", while Michael Stuhlbarg said he read the backstory voraciously and found it helpful in his performance.

The creature design is heavily inspired by the film The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). Michael Shannon's character even says they picked it up in a river in South America, which is the setting of The Creature from the film.

One day after completing her demanding underwater scenes for this film, Sally Hawkins had to fly to London, England, to begin production on Paddington 2. Only to find out she would have to shoot underwater scenes for that film on the first day of filming.

The last name of the main character Elisa Esposito is of Italian origin, and is given to children who were abandoned or exposed.

After seeing the trailer, Kevin Smith tweeted, "Seeing something as beautiful as this makes me feel stupid for ever calling myself a 'Director.'"

One of Octavia Spencer's favorite things about the screenplay was the fact that, by letting the main couple be mute, most of the dialogue comes from a black woman and a closeted gay man. In real life, they would both have experienced oppression during the 1960s setting of the film.

Most of the characters were written with the actors in mind. Octavia Spencer said her character was reminiscent of a collaboration between her roles in The Help (2011) and Hidden Figures (2016), and that she "would have played the desk if Guillermo del Torohad asked me to."

The poem in the film is by the Persian poet Rumi : "Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with your love, it humbles my heart, for you are everywhere."

Despite visual similarities, director Guillermo del Toro denied that this film has any connections to Hellboy (2004).