here is no virtue without sin."
That's Frank Miler, the celebrated graphic novel writer and illustrator, talking about Sin City, his series of black-and-white noirish crime stories, which have made a seamless transition to the screen. Miller also co-directed the movie of Sin City with Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, Spy Kids), and the film is a faithful adaptation of Miller's dark vision: Almost every word of dialogue and every image in the movie feels lifted directly from the pages of Miller's books. Rodriguez accomplished this with stylized makeup and costumes and by shooting his actors against a green screen, then compositing in black-and-white computer-generated backgrounds, vehicles and effects to complete the illusion.
Sin City features a stellar ensemble cast, which includes Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Micky Rourke, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Brittany Murphy, Benicio Del Toro, Carla Gugino, Nick Stahl, Elijah Wood and many others. The movie interweaves three of Miller's novels, "The Hard Goodbye," "That Yellow Bastard" and "The Big Fat Kill." In each, the corrupt cops, psycho killers, murderous hookers and vulnerable innocents of Basin City collide violently and, at times, poignantly.
The following is taken from news conferences with Rodriguez and cast members and a separate interview with Miller. Sin City opened April 1.
Frank Miller, you had been burned by Hollywood before [as a writer of two Robocop sequels] and said you wouldn't go back.
Miller: No, I didn't swear I wouldn't work in Hollywood. In fact, I continued to. What I decided was that I wouldn't take my baby, Sin City, to Hollywood: that it would remain a series of books, and I wouldn't allow it to be compromised, because I was too much in love with it.
But you changed your mind.
Miller: Well, yeah. You grow up and change your mind. But the circumstances changed, too. Robert pursued me about it. He really wanted to make this movie. And he convinced me that technically it was possible. But then he had to convince me that creatively it could be done, because I was still convinced that people would try to slap happy endings on my stories and soften them and focus-group test them and all that nonsense. And it took him quite a while to convince me. I was a tough customer. ...
So I said no. I said no to Robert a number of times, but he kept asking me. I couldn't believe his persistence. So finally he invited me to visit Austin for what he called a test of one scene, with no obligation at all. And I went, and it wasn't a test. It was the first day of principal photography.
How does the film compare with the books?
Miller: They're amazingly close. I mean, we actually had a camera setup that would feature my drawings, and then we'd superimpose the filmic image on top of it, and we'd adjust the shot to match the composition. It's as faithful as anything can ever be.
It's a color movie, but it's not color like we usually think of it. And we do use black and white. We employ that to effect. And the color, I've always regarded color as a weapon in my arsenal. ... And also, because it's film and there's so much footage, and because now there's complete versatility, we're deploying color throughout in really interesting ways. But it's not your classic Cinemascope kind of look.
You actually were the co-director with Robert, and he gave up his Directors Guild of America membership when the union protested his plan to have two directors on the movie.
Miller: Yeah, wasn't that something? It's true. They told him that he couldn't share credit with me, because I'm not an established director, even [though] I've done all these comics for so long, but they said it was just the rules. And Robert and I sat down, [and] he told me all about this, and we both thought it was rather silly. And he said, "Well, maybe I'll just give you sole credit." I had to refuse that, because I didn't deserve it, with a partner as strong as he is. So he said, "OK, so I'm quitting." And he quit.
The stories have their own kind of twisted morality.
Miller: I think that in some ways it's way too easy to be cynical. The funny thing is, people who call my work cynical say, "Can you sell this kind of cynicism?" And people who find it a morality play say, "Does this kind of morality fly?" ...
It's morality in an very unpleasant place. It's a swan in a swamp.
Robert Rodriguez, can you talk about the process of making this movie?
Rodriguez: It's probably the hardest I've worked on a movie. I thought it was going to be easy. I figured, "Hey, just copy what's out of the book, and there you go." No. It was a lot of work. I think somewhere near the end I realized it's probably because it's sort of a trilogy all released the same day. So it was kind of like doing three movies at once.
Can you tell us about your collaboration with Frank Miller in terms of how the two of you worked together directing?
Rodriguez: It was very complementary. I mean, I really wanted him to be a director, rather than him just there as a writer [or] a producer, because I felt if he just came as that, they might just stick him in a corner and feed him a sandwich every once in a while. But if he was in it as a director, everybody would have to listen to him. And I wanted it to be not Robert Rodriguez's Sin City. I loved the books so much, I wanted it to be as close to something that he would do as a movie as possible.
And I was very complementary. I try not to do any contradictory directing. If he told an actor one thing, I wouldn't tell them the exact opposite, and it was more like a tag team. We just like tag, he goes in. ... He let me handle all the visual stuff. He was really there working with the actors, knowing the characters so well. He was able to tell them things. I didn't know anything about the characters. It's not all in the books. A lot of it's in his head, and they loved that. They loved being able to know where the character was going in future volumes or what he was thinking when he put it together, how it should be performed. ...
I used to be a cartoonist. [Directing is not] very different from drawing. ... [I told him,] "You're not going to have to show up with a headdress and rattles and be the director. It's really more like what you're used to doing as a cartoonist." ... And he was floored that it was so similar, and he was able to jump right in and learn how to make, basically, a Star Wars movie his first time out, and within a couple of weeks he knew how to do it.
Can you tell us about your decision to resign from the Directors Guild in order to secure a co-directing credit for Frank Miller and what the implication of that might be?
Rodriguez: I didn't know that it was against the rules until a week before we were about to shoot. And they came and said, "Well, as you know, you can't have two directors." And I said, "Really? I see two directors all the time." And they said, "Oh, those were special cases where they were already a team before they joined." "What about the guys at Pixar, aren't they co-directors?" "Oh, those aren't considered. We don't represent those as directors. They're not represented by the guild." They make, like, the best movies of anybody! It shows that their rules are so old that they didn't conform to ideas of how things are done. This movie's half animated anyway.
But we were just about to shoot, and it felt so right, it felt like such a new thing that it wasn't going to fit into a lot of rule books, so I just thought, "Rather than have them change their rules, ... I said, "Well, this is such a weird movie. It's better if I leave anyway, because I was already thinking about bringing Quentin [Tarantino] on as a 'special guest director,' and that would never fly." So it felt better just to leave. And the implications? Nothing, really. I can't do a studio movie that was developed by a studio now, but that just means, you know, I should be doing my own material. George Lucas wanted to do Princess of Mars [based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' book series] at one point, and couldn't get the rights, so he wrote Star Wars. So that's what I should do anyway.
What appealed to you about this material?
Rodriguez: I just love this material. I've always wanted to do a film noir. I love the seediness of film noir. I love the excitement of it, the visceral quality, the fact that you get to go meet people that you would never meet in your normal life and see things that you would never see. It enters your dreams. ... Films noir have always been enticing to people, and I think it's because it's the dark side of life. And people like that. It's very appealing.
Can you tell us about the casting process? There must have been other people who you had in mind for certain roles who, for whatever reason, you weren't able to get.
Rodriguez: Well I remember, originally, I had just worked with Johnny Depp [in Once Upon a Time in Mexico], so I thought about him for the part that Benicio played [Jackie Boy], and he was really into it. But this movie he was doing in Europe just kept getting pushed and pushed, and it wasn't that critical, and it wasn't one of the bigger roles, and it wasn't being shot for a while, so I had time to find somebody. And I told him ... if he couldn't do it, that was fine. And then I saw Benicio at ... the Academy Awards, with this long wolfman hair and wearing his tuxedo, and I went, "Oh, my God, that is Jackie Boy right there." So if Johnny couldn't do it, then I told Benicio, "Hey, Johnny may not be able to do it, because of his schedule. Would you be interested in doing it?" And now you look back, and he was the right [guy]. .. You never think, "Oh, I wish I could have had this person or that person."
Bruce Willis is playing a version of himself, isn't he?
Rodriguez: He's like the character. You read the character in the book, he's like that. That's why I thought of him. I thought, "This is Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis is this iconic retiring cop, the knight in shining armor." ... I couldn't think of anyone else to play him, and he was the first guy we went to, and Frank was just thrilled. He thought, "Yeah, that would be perfect." ... He looked at a couple of minutes of it and said, "I'm in." I knew that he loved films noir and would be perfect for that world. He fits really right into it.
And Mickey Rourke? He wears a lot of prosthetic makeup to look like Marv, the hero of "The Hard Goodbye."
Rodriguez: That's such an iconic look for that character. ... The angles Frank would draw, ... we tried to recreate that on an actual human. And I remember when they first did Mickey, ... it didn't quite look right. So I say, "Hey, it's got a lot more character in his face than that." I go, "Look at my friend [actor] Danny Trejo's face and model the creases after that." So he's actually got Danny Trejo's lifelines all over his face. ... But with the angularity that Marv has, because we know part of it is that look. He's supposed to be this monstrosity that couldn't even buy a woman to be with him, and that was sort of the tragedy of the character, that he's just always had a face like that, so people assume he's a criminal, so he became a criminal.
Can you tell us exactly which part that Quentin Tarantino directed and what his input was?
Rodriguez: Originally I thought there'd be more shorter stories ... within the movie when I first told him about it. [But the film] ended up being the longer ones. So I told him, "Well, you can direct one of the sequences." ... I had him basically do [a scene,] which was where Benicio and Clive are in the car together, and Benicio's got the gun barrel [stuck in his forehead], and he's talking. And that's the one where Quentin's idea was to have him speak in an outer voice for his voiceover ... to actually have him speak it out. He did something like that in Reservoir Dogs. And I thought, "Oh, that's such a great way to do it." And Clive, of course, didn't know that he was going to do this ... until the day [of shooting]. ... "Can you learn it really quick?" And Clive really impressed the hell out of him. Quentin, that's still all he talks about ... the fact that he went away for five minutes and came back, and [Clive] did the whole monologue on the cuff, ... trying to do an American accent, so he had to figure that out as well. Right there on the day.
Jessica Alba, let me ask you about your character, what made you decide to do it.
Alba: Absolutely. I wanted to do this movie because Robert Rodriguez was directing it, first and foremost. I didn't really know it was a comic book when I read the [script pages], when I saw that he was directing something. I just tell my agents every month, "What's Robert doing? I want to do something with him." And ... one of my agents has a relationship with Robert, and said, "You got an opportunity." And I was like, "Excellent." And so I took that opportunity and ran with it. I auditioned the old-fashioned way, went in for the casting director, put myself on tape, and he had to approve. And it was like a week of like, "Does he think I suck? I just don't want him to think I suck, I don't even care if I get the role, I just don't want Robert to think I suck." And he didn't think I sucked.
Rodriguez: No, wanted to meet you right away.
Alba: And he came down, and ... I read with him, and I looked at ... the graphic novel, and I saw the pictures. And I then found out that she was a stripper and that she was bottomless and topless. And you know, nudity was an option. We could have done it if we wanted to. ... Robert said that we could do it if we wanted to. And obviously it would have been more authentic. But I felt like dancing around with a lasso and chaps was going to be sexy enough, and I think being nude, for me, would have been distracting, and ... I really couldn't be bottomless. For my dad. He would really, I don't know, disown me or something. He would freak out.
Can you talk a little about how you prepared for the movie, learning the lasso, dancing?
Alba: I went to strip clubs to see how strippers do it. ... I wanted a choreographer, and Robert said no. And I was like, "Ah, OK." ... And he's like, "Just feel it. We're just going to play music, and you're going to feel it."
Rodriguez: I wanted it to come from you. I didn't want it to be dance moves. ...
She was very nervous.
Alba: My heart was beating so fast, I was so nervous. And then I had some Texans teach me how to rope and lasso.
Rodriguez: She was out there in the back, roping and spinning a gun. ... She whacked herself in the head a few times. ... [But] by the time she got to the stage she was just like a pro. We were all just watching. "Oh, the tape ran out, Robert." "Oh, OK. Let's start over. Load another tape, we'll just go."
Rosario Dawson, you had to wear an S&M getup in your role as the leader of a band of hookers.
Dawson: [I said,] "This is my costume? OK. I'll try it on." And you loved it, and it put you in character.
Brittany Murphy: She cut all of her hair off, as well.
Rodriguez: Yeah, she got her hair into that mohawk, like in the book. It's a very weird hairstyle. I said, "I don't know if you want to do it." She said, "Oh, let's go for it."
Dawson: It helped get me very in character, I have to say.
The women are characterized as mostly prostitutes, and the costumes are very revealing. And there's a lot of violence against women. If someone called this film misogynistic, how would you defend it?
Dawson: I think that's been the question: ... Are women going to want to see this, specifically, for that reason? I think, absolutely. I mean, she's standing there and, yeah, he punches her across the face. But she threatens to chop someone's pecker off. You know, all the women who are working in Old Town, we take care of ourselves. We're very in control of what we are. We know what our assets are. We make money off of it, and we call the shots, which I think is very powerful. I think it's a very even-keel sort of strength between the men and the women. You know, the guys get their balls ripped off, and the girls threaten to do it and will. I think it's a pretty tough town on both sides.
Murphy: I ... thoroughly agree with everything Rosario just said. And if you look at the undertones of Frank Miller's writing, there's a balance to everything. If you're a true fan of his work and his graphic novels, ... there's actually a great balance to his work, and there's also subtle moments. ...
Rodriguez: I think that's what really helped them come be part of the movie, is that they saw these are characters that I'm going to come play. It's not me, it's not the real world. In Sin City, the men are all criminals, the women are very strong in their own way. It's supposed to be the dark side of life there.
Clive Owen, how did you get involved?
Owen: Oh, I was just thrilled to be asked to be involved. I mean, Robert sent me the graphic novels and this sort of 10-minute [sample reel] thing that he'd already filmed, and it looked hugely exciting. I wasn't familiar with Frank's work at all, and I read that, the graphic novel, "The Big Fat Kill," and thought it was sort of the wildest, most imaginative thing I'd come across in ages, so I was just thrilled to be asked to be involved with it.
What was it like working with two directors?
Dawson: It was great having [Miller] there. ... What was amazing about it was it really stuck completely to his vision. Sin City is in his head, in his body, in how he draws. ... And ... every single thing that he wanted to do, it was like, "How would this look in your head? How would you have drawn it if this was the direction you had wanted to go with it?" And so it stayed completely true to what Sin City is and should be.
Murphy: Plus it was like having this historian there, all the time. It was really pretty extraordinary. ...
Owen: I think having Frank there was almost absolutely essential, because he's the guy that conjured up the sort of crazy world. I saw the film yesterday for the first time, and I have to say, I think this guy is a genius. I was blown away by it.
Robert, what would be your reaction to criticism that the film may be too violent?
Rodriguez: It is so over-the-top and stylized, like in the book, that's what helped temper it, that it was so black and white, so abstract, so representative, that ... it's easier to watch. ... It's the tone of it, I think, that really changes it. I never got any flak for Desperado. ... At a time when people would criticize guys like Quentin for violence in films for cutting an ear off, off camera [in Reservoir Dogs], I was mowing down people in my movies, and no one ever said anything because of the tone. And I think that's the same thing for this, that as violent as it is, like in the comic, it felt tempered by the stylization, and that's why we didn't have any trouble with the MPAA or anything, because it was so stylized. ... Young people shouldn't see it. It's a rated-R movie. ... I'm not making it for that [family] audience. ... If parents let their kids in, that's their decision, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to change how we're going to make the movie. Frank made his thing in a vacuum, what he wanted to do, and I wanted to do the exact same thing for cinema and suffer the consequences. If people don't go see it because it's R, that's fine. It's not appealing to the mass audience. It's really just about making the movie we want to make and telling the story that we want to do.
Benicio Del Toro, what did you do if anything to prepare for your character of the corrupt cop Jackie Boy? How you approached the role? And if you could talk about that sequence that I guess Tarantino directed, where you're half decapitated but you're still talking?
Del Toro: I was approached by Robert. ... I think we met at the Vanity Fair [Oscar party], ... and he said something really strange. He said, like, "Don't cut your hair." Because my hair was pretty long. He said, "Don't cut your hair." I went, "OK." And then I met him here at the Four Seasons [Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.,] and ... he had done a trailer or the opening sequence of the movie, and it just looked amazing. ... I wasn't familiar with the books. ... I was familiar with Frank's work on the Batman stuff, but you know, since then I've just, my preparation was really just talking to the wizard [his nickname for Rodriguez]. ...
And working with Tarantino?
Del Toro: We sat down and we talked about it, you know? "Is this a voiceover? Is the character going to really talk?" And Quentin would talk about: "Well, if he really talked like this, we'd lose the voice, come back down, get the voice." It was all done there on the spot.
Rodriguez: The coolest thing is I kept the camera rolling, so I've got a lot of that footage. In fact, there was one 16-minute take where I just kept rolling from the position of the real camera. It's not like behind the scenes, it's the real camera. So you get to see y'all's process. You get to see Quentin come into frame and give y'all direction, and you're like, "Oh, and aren't we? ... Screw it, yeah, we'll just improvise this." And you guys were just going off.
Del Toro: It was like organized chaos. It was just like this, two of us talking at the same time.
Rodriguez: And it was just brilliant. People are going to learn a lot by seeing that. I'm going to put that on the DVD. It's just an uninterrupted 16 minutes, and you see pieces that we use, and you see a lot of in-between and Quentin coming [in and saying], "No, I think it should be like this." And he's on camera. ... It's exciting to see you guys be that creative on the spot.
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