SDCC's SIN CITY PANEL

[MattBrady]

by John R. Fultz

Last Saturday at the San Diego Comic-Con International, Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez hosted a preview panel featuring their upcoming cinematic adaptation of Miller’s seminal Sin City comic. Rodriguez and Miller are co-directing the movie, which is a direct shot-by-shot remake of three SC graphic novels: “The Big Fat Kill,” “That Yellow Bastard,” and the titular story that started the comic franchise. For the movie, Miller went back and titled the original Sin City story (which introduced the semi-psychotic street-brawler Marv) as “The Hard Goodbye.”

Rodriguez started the panel by talking about his efforts at developing the Sin City movie, which began as an intense love of the graphic novel stories. Then Frank Miller joined him onstage for some anecdotes about their original meeting, before bringing out three cast members: Jamie King (Goldie), Rosario Dawson (Gail), and Jessica Alba (Nancy).

In order get the notoriously Hollywood-shy Miller interested in the project, Rodriguez filmed an adaptation of a Sin City short story entitled “The Customer Is Always Right,” following closely the exact layouts, lighting and dialogue of the story (which first appeared in one of the various SC anthology books). He then called up Miller and invited him to view this “test” footage. When Miller saw the footage, he was amazed at what Rodriguez had done, and the fact that he had hired star Josh Hartnett for the “test.” Miller was impressed, and he knew then that this would not be anything like his previous experiences with Hollywood moviemakers, who often aren’t true to the properties they adapt.

When the two later showed the “test” scene to Bruce Willis (Hartigan), he simply asked: “Is this the kind of stuff that’s in the books?” Miller and Rodriquez said it was. “I’m in,” was Willis’ reply. Thus began the process of casting one of the most star-studded movies in recent history. Soon Bencio Del Toro (Jackie Boy) joined, along with Clive Owen (Dwight), Michael Clarke Duncan (Manute), Michael Madsen (Bob), Elijah Wood (Kevin), Nick Stahl (Yellow Bastard), Brittany Murphy (Shellie), and Mickey Rourke as the series’ major fulcrum, Marv. You get the idea: mucho star-power.

Rodriguez first suggested Rourke to play Marv, but Miller was reticent at first. “You mean that skinny guy in Body Heat?” Miller asked. Rodriguez assured him that Rourke had gone through a lot of changes since those days, and that he would be perfect for the role. “You’ve got to meet him,” Rodriguez told Miller. “He is Marv.”

So Miller and Rodriguez met with Rourke, who came to the meeting carrying “that little dog that he takes everywhere.” (Rodriguez had previously directed Rourke in Once Upon a Time in Mexico.) Rourke sat down and characteristically dominated the conversation. After a few minutes of listening to Rourke go on and on about various topics, Miller took out his notebook and wrote himself a note: “Met Mickey Rourke. He is Marv.” And that was that.

Rourke has had major facial reconstruction as a result of his time in the boxing game, and his muscular body type was perfect for the Marv character. But to evoke Marv’s grotesque facial features, the actor will be wearing prosthetic makeup. As will Del Toro.

“Benicio came in after reading the book and said ‘I want to wear a prosthetic,’” recalled Rodriguez. “He said: ‘I want to look like that,’” pointing to a picture of the corrupt cop Jackie-Boy from The Big Fat Kill graphic novel. Nick Stahl will also be wearing prosthetics to portray the hideous Yellow Bastard, in addition to being completely yellow.

The bulk of the movie will be black-and-white, like the graphic novels, but spots of color will show up here and there, again just like Miller’s comics: a red dress, crimson lipstick, the Yellow Bastard, etc. Filming in color and then processing the film into black-and-white makes this possible. Some other interesting effects will include white silhouettes and even white blood against a black background. When Rodriguez says he’s sticking to the books, he means it.

Perhaps the most amazing quality about the Sin City movie is that Rodriguez and Miller are capturing the graphic stories shot-by-shot and frame-by-frame, using the graphic novels themselves as storyboards, reference sheets, and scripts all in one. Miller’s exact dialogue will be the dialogue in the movie, and the angles, backgrounds, and lighting are all coming directly from the comic pages.

Superstar director Quentin Tarantino is directing a crucial scene in the movie. One can only assume it’s the big slaughter scene that is the climax of “The Big Fat Kill.” In order to accommodate Miller and Tarantino as co-directors, Rodriguez had to resign from the Director’s Guild of America. At the panel, he didn’t seem too worried about this, since Tarantino isn’t a member of the DGA either.

While the movie will be divided into chapters, each representing a different graphic novel, all the stories’ timelines overlap, as they do in the books themselves. However, on the planned DVD version of the Sin City, each chapter will be its own individual menu feature, so viewers can watch each story separately, or watch them together as they will be in the theater version. For the individual chapter versions, extra footage will be included, since not every piece of footage will fit into a two-hour movie, said Rodriguez.

Frank Miller’s Sin City may very well be the most literal comic-to-film adaptation in history. Unlike other blockbuster comics movies (i.e. Spider-Man, X-Men), Rodriguez hopes this movie will get more people to read the graphic novels. So far, comics-based movies haven’t shown too much success at creating new comics readers. But Sin City, with it’s mature subject matter (no superheroes here), and its literal page-to-screen adaptation, may be the movie to change all that, graphically showing audiences what graphic novels can be like.

The high point of the panel occurred when Rodriguez showed a clip consisting of the original “test” scene (which he said will be the opening shot of the movie), and several snippets of partially-finished scenes featuring the main actors and characters. Security roamed about the hall, making sure nobody was filming the clip. Rodriguez said the footage will be available online in a few weeks, but the Comic-Con viewing was intended only for the true fans who were in attendance.

The scenes previewed were breathtaking, beautiful and dead-on interpretations of the comics panels. The kinky bondage gear worn by Rosario Dawson’s tough prostitute character Gail is perhaps the most racy design in the film, but Dawson said she had fun with it. “It’s my S&M superhero outfit,” she laughed.

To wind things up, the panel answered several audience questions, including the future of Sin City in comics format. “Will there be any new Sin City books?” one fan asked. “Yes,” Miller answered, eliciting cheers from the crowd. “Frank and I plan to do more Sin City movies as well,” Rodriguez added.

[Dr.Doom'sDoctor]

Good God, Why can't this movie be out already?
All I can say is WOW!

[halflingsinger]

I just did a story on this over at www.sequart.com. You've got to hand it to the boys here at Newsarama for great breaking news.

I'm always worried when i see Mickey Rourke but judging by what i hear from Newsarama, Ain't It Cool News, and Comics2Film the role of Marv is in quite capable hands. I'll just keep my eyes squinted at Rourke, though, until he proves himself.

-Mike Phillips

www.halflingmusic.com

www.sequart.com

[valmurph]

Does anyone know if this report is right about Clive Owen playing Dwight?

He's a good pick for the role I suppose but I had heard that this was Josh Hartnett's role. Is Hartnett still involved?

Is it Dwight that appears in the short story they've already filmed, ' The customer is always right' ? if so Id guess the report is wrong.

Also I wonder if its gonna be as faithful an adaptation as they say. I recently reread all three stories the movie is adapting ('Sin City', 'The Big Fat Kill' and 'That Yellow Bastard') and each one is told with lots of (brillantly written) narration from the three separate leads.

Narration in movies can be difficult to pull off - and three separate narrators weaving in and out of each other's stories could be very confusing , especially given that the movie will already be making stylistic demands on the viewer given its unique use of colours and lighting.

If they decide to keep the narration (it would be a great loss not to) I think they would be best served to tell the stories in separate and not interweaving chapters.

This might already be their approach, the coverage so far has not been clear, but the fact that they say that on the DVD you will be able to watch the stories separately suggests they plan to mix the stories up in the theatrical cut.

Telling a story out of sequence and interweaving separate plots seems really popular these days in movies like 21 grams and Eternal Sunshine, but its getting to be a bit of a cliched pretentious artistic device. Pulp Fiction, which seems to be the influence behind much of this, actually told its stories in separate and distinct chapters.

Anyway having just read Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures Im pretty cynical about Rodriguez and Miller's chances of achieving their lofty goals once Harvey and Bob at Dimension get involved in postproduction on this flick.

[shadow]

What the reports are saying is that the stories will be told back-to-back in the theatrical release, NOT interwoven. However, on the DVD, the directors can add additional footage for each "chapter" so you can watch either one seperately at, oh, say fifty minutes to an hour for each (which would run too long for a theatrical release [they said they were aiming for two hours for that]). Think of it as wether you'd like to play a single episode on an anime DVD, or "Play All" so that they run back to back w/o any credit/intro interference.