This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. My guest Guillermo del Toro directed and co-wrote the new film Nightmare Alley,

a film noir set in the world of carneys and grifters. It's now playing in theaters and will be

available to stream on Hulu and HBO Max starting tomorrow, February 1st. Nightmare Alley was named one

of the 10 best films of 2021 by the American Film Institute. Del Toro is also known for his two

Hellboy films, Pans Labyrinth, and The Shape of Water, which won four Oscars, including Best Picture

and Best Director. Nightmare Alley was adapted from a bleak 1946 novel. The novel was adapted into a

1947 film starring Tyrone Power. The new movie begins in 1939, as America was coming out of the depression

and World War II was beginning. Bradley Cooper plays a man who just killed the person we later

learn with his father, buried him under the wooden floor, and set the house on fire, walking out as

flames begin to surround him. He takes a bus, gets off at the end of the line, and follows a small man

down the street to the carnival, where that man is one of the exhibits, major mosquito, the tiniest

man on record. Cooper becomes part of this traveling carnival, where folks don't care who you are,

or what you've done. He starts as part of the crew, then becomes part of the grift as the

assistant to a clairvoyant who can read minds and commune with people's deceased loved ones,

with the help of a secret code and other acts of deception. But that's small time. People

pay a quarter of 50 cents or maybe a dollar. Eventually, Cooper learns the act, passes himself

off as a spiritualist and mentalist, and becomes the headliner at Top Night Clubs for big money,

conning wealthy industrialists, doctors, and lawyers. But this is film noir, so things don't go well.

The film is rich with questions about carny con games, religion, and psychology,

and the way that the lines between them can blur. Let's start with a clip from early in the film.

Willem DeFoe plays the owner of the carnival, who's also the barker. Here he is inviting people

into the tent where the geek is, the geek who bites the heads off chickens and feeds on their blood.

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