I wonder if this movie had anything to do with the Disney/Miramax divorce.
'Sin City' brings a touch of evil to the screen
In the screen adaptation of Frank Miller's noir graphic novel
'Sin City,' everyone is bad -even the good guys
BY TOM BEER
Tom Beer is a freelance writer.
March 27, 2005
They sometimes call Las Vegas "Sin City," but that little hamlet in the Nevada desert is Disney World compared to the hellhole that sprang straight from Frank Miller's imagination.
"Sin City" is the title that Miller gave his cult comic-book series of the early 1990s, the tawdry, salacious depiction of which will spill onto the big screen Friday in a film he co-directed with Robert Rodriguez.
In Miller's Sin City, even the good guys are hard-drinking brutes with a barely restrained lust for the kill. The femmes fatales wield cigarettes like weapons, have legs up to there and breasts straight out of a teenage boy's fevered dream. The prostitutes are armed and dangerous, and they police the red-light district themselves - no cops allowed. Corrupt politicians are in cahoots with the church (jointly harboring pedophiles and serial killers); the town's sleazy bars are just brawls waiting to happen. In other words, "Sin City" takes the tropes of pulp fiction and film noir, crosses them with the outsized surrealism of the comics, and spikes it all with a toxic dose of horror-movie violence and sadomasochistic kink. It ain't pretty. But if you don't have the stomach for it, then stay the hell out.
Aggressive and faithful
Miramax, which produced the $40 million flick, is betting audiences will clamor to get in: "Sin City" is one of the most aggressively promoted movies of the spring, with an all-star cast that includes Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy, Benicio Del Toro and Nick Stahl. As helmed by Rodriguez ("El Mariachi," "Spy Kids") and Miller (on his first foray into film directing), it might well rank as the most faithful comic book adaptation ever: The actors were shot against green screen and the backdrops created digitally, often matching up panel for panel with the original comic - all in an effort to reproduce Miller's distinctive chiaroscuro lighting and skewed perspectives.
"Nobody's ever come this close to being this faithful," says the newly minted director by telephone two weeks before the "Sin City" opening. Miller, who also wrote the classics "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" and "Ronin," should know: Both "Daredevil" and "Elektra," recent movies based on two other Miller tales, sorely lacked the visual style and zest of the originals. And his last tour of duty in Hollywood - writing the screenplay for "RoboCop 2" - found the fiercely independent Miller at odds with the studio. So when Rodriguez first approached him about the possibility of adapting "Sin City," Miller had a one-word answer: No.
"I took an instant liking to Robert," Miller says, "but I turned him down. I just couldn't see it being done. I was afraid the endings would be changed and the whole thing made much nicer. It'd be shown to focus groups who'd say it was too violent." It wasn't until Rodriguez invited Miller down to his Texas studio to film a test scene (at the director's own expense) that he clinched the deal. As Miller recalls it, he arrived in Austin to find actors Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton already on the set.
Getting pulled along
"Test, my --, this was the first day of principal photography," Miller says with a laugh. "Robert has a way of setting things in motion and pulling people along. After a day of directing and working with the actors, I was the one saying, 'When do we start casting?'"
One of Rodriguez's innovations was to fashion the movie from three different "Sin City" stories. In the first tale, a big lug named Marv, played by Rourke, seeks the killers of a prostitute who gave him one night of ecstasy. In the second tale, Dwight (Owen) inadvertently brings a crooked cop into Old Town - the prostitute's quarter - and sets off a bloody turf war when the man is killed. In the last story, Hartigan, a jaded yet moral cop played by Willis, sacrifices everything to save an 11-year-old girl kidnapped by a psychopath.
Rodriguez was so committed to Miller's involvement in the film that he resigned from the Director's Guild of America, which would not allow him to share directing credit with a novice. Miller says: "We split the duties rather gracefully, I thought. It just seemed to work naturally. Each of us had his favorite characters, his favorite scenes."
Tarantino guest-directs
Things got even more unorthodox when Rodriguez pal Quentin Tarantino showed up to "guest direct" one memorable scene: a surreal conversation between Dwight (Owen) and Jackie Boy (Del Toro) - the latter happens to be dead, incidentally - as they speed down a rain-slicked highway.
Actress Brittany Murphy, who plays Shellie, a tough-cookie cocktail waitress, says that the three alpha dogs managed to avoid a Hollywood-style clash of egos. "They all got along like little boys in the sandbox," Murphy says, "playing with their Ninja Turtles and having a great time. They were so cute."
Wasn't Murphy the least bit intimidated at having Shellie's creator on the set and able to critique her every move? "God, no; I asked him so many questions. It was like Yoda sitting right there next to you the entire time."
Miller, in turn, found that he loved working with actors - something unexpected for an artist used to playing God with his characters. "It was my favorite part of the job," he says. "I found the actors to be very clever, very intelligent. They thought about their parts very deeply. ...
"And to see Bruce Willis as Hartigan? I was like a 6-year-old boy," Miller says with undisguised glee.
No doubt Miramax hopes that "Sin City" has the makings of a franchise. After all, there are four more published "Sin City" tales that could be filmed and probably dozens more at large in Miller's brain. And Miller himself? He's now gung-ho about the cinematic art form and ready for his next directorial challenge. "Hey, if they want 'Sin City 2,'" he says, "all they have to do is snap their fingers."
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