Geoff Boucher of the LA Times has been chatting to Frank Miller about his forthcoming movie based on Will Wisner's The Spirit. He chats about the unique look that the trailers show, the cartoon like violence and the large number of glamourous actresses in the mix.
"I adored Will Eisner and took a real 'Don't tread on me' approach when I came to this movie. At the same time I was willing to tread all over it. I knew Will always wanted to do something fresh and new, not some stodgy old thing that aspires to be revered. I don't want anybody to bow to this movie. I want a ripping good yarn. It is not an antique."
The film is certainly of-the-moment with its "digital back lot" approach -- it was filmed against a green screen at a production complex in New Mexico and the backgrounds and settings were added well after the acting was done. With its dramatic use of color, stylized grit and dream-time physics, it will remind some viewers of "Sin City," the 2005 film co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Miller that served as the comic-book artist's crash course in filmmaking. Unlike that film, however, "The Spirit" is laced with a fedora romance and screwball comedy sensibility that makes it a digitalized kindred soul to "Dick Tracy," Warren Beatty's 1990 film.
"It's very different than the look and feel of 'Sin City' and '300' because the source material is so different," Miller said earlier this year while taking a break from his labors at the Orphanage, a postproduction facility in San Francisco's Presidio. " 'The Spirit' is its own, full-color world."
"The Spirit" stars Gabriel Macht as the title character who starts the film as an ambitious rookie cop named Denny Colt before he dons his domino mask. The young cop is murdered but then apparently comes back from the dead -- even he's not sure how or why, but he learns that the sinister crime lord called the Octopus ( Samuel L. Jackson) has the answers he needs. The villain, meanwhile, wants to get his hands on the mystery man to exploit his back-from-the-grave ability. Some of the contours of the film are different than the old comics -- the Octopus was never even shown in the old days (he was just a pair of gloves in Eisner's panels) and Colt comes "back from the dead" with something close to invulnerability as well as with a sort of pheromone boost that makes women swoon. "The old Eisner comics were loaded with romance, beautiful and dangerous women, and that was a way to explain the sparks flying between the Spirit and every woman he meets," Miller explained.
Miller has a cast stacked with high-glamour actresses: Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes, Jaime King and Paz Vega all play beautiful women with bad intentions, while Sarah Paulson is the Spirit's frazzled girlfriend, Ellen Dolan, the proto-feminist daughter of the city police commissioner who has to contend with all the people who want to get their hands on the Spirit -- whether it's to punch him or kiss him. Another update: Spirit's girlfriend is now a surgeon, a career Miller says is a meld of nurturing heart and brainy realism.
The biggest differences between "The Spirit" and "Sin City" or "300" are the romances and the cartoon combat; the Spirit and Octopus both have a sort of Wile E. Coyote invincibility by the time they duke it out and they whack each other with cinder blocks, spanner wrenches and even a toilet with a jolly unreality that makes the film seem something like "The Mask" meets "Green Hornet." Jackson said it was a giddy time on the set filming the escalating mayhem.
"There are some great scenes where we just go at it," Jackson said, although he added that Miller found a way to keep the loopy universe true to itself. "Frank knew what he wanted to do. You look at this movie and you can tell it's his. Nobody else would make this movie this way, which is why he's doing movies now."
That may be a bit of a sore spot, though. Eisner's humanistic and often gentle, Capra-like approach to his character has many comics fans wondering why Miller -- famous for spilling vats of blood-red ink in his comics -- is taking the old man's winking Spirit into a Sin City. Miller welcomes all that.
"I'm sure when this movie comes out it will stir up a fiery debate . . .," the artist-turned-auteur said. "People have been loving the way comic books have been reaching the screen, but I don't like when everybody drinks the Kool-Aid. I like to shake things up and tell the story the best way possible. And I can tell you firsthand, that's what Will Eisner liked too."
Source: LA Times
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