300 is such a blast. There will be no other movie ever, that is able to combine killing children, stabbing half dead Persians and guys with swords for arms in such a cool way. Gerard Butler has teamed up with visionary director Zack Snyder to bring the ultimate historical graphic novel by Frank Miller to life. Butler plays King Leonidas, who declares war on the invading Persians, after they insult his queen and his city. Without permission from Spartas high courts, Leonidas gathers 300 of his best soldiers to battle Xerxes army of 10,000 Persians. 300 takes what Robert Rodriguez did with Sin City to the nth degree creating a colorful and sometimes even horrifying story of courage. I got a chance to talk with Snyder at the recent 300 press day in Los Angeles about what it takes to inspire an army, making fun movies for adults and his upcoming film adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Watchmen.
Check out the official website for 300
Daniel Robert Epstein: First thing, tell me about when you threw the spear perfectly into a target on set.
Zack Snyder: Who told you that, Gerry [Butler]?
DRE: Gerry told us in front of a huge crowd of people.
Zack: Im a physical guy. I like to throw rocks and I like to play soccer and football. I like to play sports and I do a lot of fighting myself. So in that scene Gerry is supposed to throw the spear at Xerxes. Gerry goes "Where should I throw it?" We have like a little thing of Xerxes head up on a stick lifted up across the stage. I grab the spear and go Like this! and I threw it. It went through the stick thing we had and it hit the back of the stage. Gerry was like "Son of a bitch".
DRE: Was that luck or focus?
Zack: I'm lucky with that sort of thing. I have skills at throwing shit.
DRE: Donal Logue told me a story about Stephen Norrington when they were doing Blade. It was the scene where Donals character is all burned in the hospital. Stephen wanted him to jump over a table a certain way. Donal was like "I can't do that, who can do that?" Then Norrington, from a standing position, just jumps the table and Donal said Something is so wrong with you both physically and mentally. That reminds me of the spear story.
Zack: I was filming a commercial with [300 stunt coordinator] Damon Caro. We've been working for a long time together. There was a scene where a guy had to leap over a hood of a car to get away from a bull that was loose in the street. The stunt guy that was going to do it went to put some pads on and I said "Oh you know what, I want him to run and leap over the hood and not touch it. I think I can do it, let me try it one time." I jumped it. I landed and rolled and got up and said "Okay thats cool, lets see how it looks." I wanted to show the stunt coordinator that it was possible. So the stuntman comes back and we totally set him up because once Damon saw that I could do it he was like "Okay you got to fuck with him because this is awesome." The guy comes back and I go "Listen I want you to jump over the hood of this car but I don't want you to touch it. I want you to clean it." He said "Thats impossible, you can't do that." He's acting all cowboy and Damon goes Maybe you should show him what you want. I did it again and he was like "Son of a bitch."
DRE: When the film shifts from the army back to the Queen in Sparta, were you looking to contrast the action?
Zack: Absolutely. Not only did you need a break in some ways from the Spartans, because its just so relentless and insane, but I also wanted to show that life back in Sparta goes on. Then as we started to work on it we ended up ramping that up and turning it into a freak show anyway. The intent originally was to show the home life. Since we don't spend that much time in Sparta at the beginning of the movie we had to check back in with that. It was also a way to do that without loading the front of the movie with Sparta and then running for a quick fight up in Thermopylae.
DRE: You dont feel bad when the Spartans die because thats what they're meant to do, how do you make people feel sympathy for people who are doing exactly what they want?
Zack: Yeah and thats why, in some ways, we avoided that sentiment or sympathy for the Spartans. It was whether or not they fulfilled the task they set out for. Thats what was at stake. I always said "We're not Spartans in the movie." They throw their kids off cliffs and beat the snot out of them. Whenever I could I tried to remind the audience, "Guess what? You're not a Spartan. It is fun to be with them and hang out with them. But it ends in death on the battlefield. Thats how that road goes.
DRE: Talking to Gerard on set as King Leonidas was intense then later seeing him again the movie was wrapped he was like a different person.
Zack: He did transform himself when we were there. He's much more relaxed and casual in his other world than he is in his Leonidas world. He was pretty intense, which is good. It was the head he needed to be in.
DRE: One of my favorite scenes is the one right before the love scene between Leonidas and the Queen Gorgo. To bring warmth and love to a scene like that is just amazing because Leonidas knew as soon as he kicked the messenger into the well that that he was going to die.
Zack: Pretty much.
DRE: Whats the mindset you want your actors in when you're doing that scene where this is the last time they're ever going to intimately touch?
Zack: I wanted Leonidas and Gorgo to be in crazy love with each other, like stupid love. With shooting a love scene, I don't know how people do it but its awkward [laughs] and weird. I'm like "Okay, throw her like this! Flip her over! Okay, Lena grab him by the face! Kiss him hard!" "Be more naked!" I don't know what you say to people. It's embarrassing, but at the same time it is part of the movie. I made this movie for adults. One of the things I think is missing from movies is fun for adults.
DRE: Yeah theres a lot of seriousness.
Zack: A lot of seriousness. A lot of "The world is fucked up, this is rated R!" I love movies like Children of Men and Pan's Labyrinth. Couldnt fucking love it more. But a fucking a fun ride where a lot of people get killed, good sex and all that doesn't exist. They want to make the movies PG-13.
DRE: They want to get the kids in.
Zack: Yeah! It's for the kids! Im like "No its not for the kids! Fuck the kids! I got some shit I want to show you!" I think thats what I wanted to do with 300. I want adults to go "Yeah! That fucking rocked!" not "Oh, I want to kill myself."
DRE: Another scene I really liked is when Leonidas is eating the apple.
Zack: Thats my favorite scene in the movie and the reason is, that is totally the movie. It tells you what kind of movie you're in. If you were wondering up until then, that scene says "Don't worry about it. Its okay. Have fun. It epitomizes the movie because you understand the sense of humor of the movie. You understand the over the topness, but it doesn't make fun of it at the same time. It is right out of Frank Miller's book. The dialogue is exactly the same as it is in the graphic novel.
DRE: I read that your cinematographer, Larry Fong, hadnt done many movies before this.
Zack: Yeah, his big thing is that he shot the premiere of Lost. Also Larry was a school buddy of mine from [Pasadena's] Art Center [College of Design]. I did some commercials and music videos with him. Art Center was really small when I went there. It was really small department and you graduate by term because everyone goes term to term theres no "year. Larry and I graduated together in the winter and our class was only three people. It was Larry Fong, me and the second unit director of Dawn of the Dead and 300, Clay Staub. That was it and those guys were all my buddies. I just said "Hey lets make a movie, that sounds cool.
DRE: Im reading this book David Carradine wrote about the making of Kill Bill. He wrote about how Quentin [Tarantino] was training with all the actors. But then halfway through the day he would go do other work. But for this film you were training right there with the actors the entire time, what made you want to do that?
Zack: I wanted to suffer with them but Id train anyway even if those guys werent working out.
DRE: I wanted to cry just looking at you guys on video.
Zack: [laughs] Yeah, you do bond with them a little bit because they're going "Help me" and you're going "No help me!" [laughs]
DRE: I'm sure you were been offered films before Dawn of The Dead but did you always have such vision for what you were creating?
Zack: I've been making TV commercials for about 15 years. I got out of school in 1991 and I went straight to work as a music video and commercial director. Then I got to the point where I was just doing commercials because I was so busy that I had no lead time. A video is short lead time and commercials are long lead time. If you do a lot of commercials you've just got no time so I just got to this place where we were just cranky and I had probably done seven years of TV commercials on every continent. It was funny because I was actually known in the commercial world for doing edgy stuff but mostly I was known for these epic landscapes.
DRE: Like car commercials?
Zack: Yeah, big giant stuff which relates to 300 in the sense that I am, in some ways, a landscape painter. It's a landscape movie, it just happens to a landscape we made up. Knowing what looks good when youre out on location is in some ways harder because you got to get the right angle. In the commercial world Im the director and cameraman so everyone relies on me to make all the decisions. You cant underestimate that discipline. When I went to do Dawn, they treated me like a rookie, like Id never done anything but I had probably shot more film than anyone on that set.
DRE: And you showed them.
Zack: Nah, I don't think showed anybody. But I certainly tried not to be an idiot. I think that was the most important thing.
DRE: Its hard to figure out what a guy like yourself might do next just because you dont have a big body of work yet. Besides adapting things like Watchmen and 300, what else are you interested in?
Zack: Im a bit of an action geek.
DRE: Is that your number one thing?
Zack: No, not at all. My instinct is that movies where people are fighting and shooting are the movies I want to see. I don't really look for a movie that has anything specific in tone, action and story. Im just looking for something that feels cool to me. Where I think about it and say "Yeah that sounds cool! I want to do that for fucking years!" As a director, you just wake up everyday for a year and go "Yeah! Thats cool!"
DRE: Can people sitting around talking be cool?
Zack: It absolutely can. Watchmen has a lot of fucking talking in it [laughs]. Dawn of the Dead had a lot of talking in it.
DRE: Talk to me about the kind of color palette you want for the Watchmen movie.
Zack: The thing about Watchmen is that I'm looking to make a movie that looks more like Taxi Driver than Dick Tracy [laughs]. People bring that up to me "Is it like Dick Tracy?" because thats colorful. Watchmen as a printed medium references comic books itself. It goes "Look, Im a comic book" and you read it, you're like "You're fucking blowing my mind!" But thats what it tries to do, it draws you in by being a comic book. I think my responsibility is to draw the audience in by saying "Look Im just a movie" and then you get in there and it fucks you up. Thats my hope anyway. It is a weird movie. When you see the trailer and you go "Okay that looks like Richard Nixon. Dude that blue guy is in fucking Vietnam, what is this?"
Theres a song you can not put in a Vietnam war movie and its Ride Of the Valkyries which should not be put it in any movie because of Apocalypse Now. But in Watchmen, you can imagine a sequence in Watchmen where Dr. Manhattan is 100 feet tall stomping through the jungles of Vietnam with Hueys all over him, zapping the Vietcong while Ride of the Valkyries is playing. It is transcendent of itself so you can reference Apocalypse Now and thats okay. It is pop culture.
Ive been drawing the storyboards and Im very careful with sequence and things like that. Theres a sequence where Rorschach shoots his grappling gun up to the window and climbs up there. I just kept pulling shots out of the book and putting them in my boards. Theres no reason not to just shoot it like that.
DRE: I can't wait to see him shoot the grappling hook into the SWAT guy.
Zack: Yeah, thats cool. When Nite Owl says "I made that for him!"
DRE: The best line of the whole book is when Rorschach says "I'm not trapped in here with you, you're trapped in here with me!"
Zack: Thats awesome. One of the things that I think is cool that in the movie there'd be a poster of Dr. Manhattan with silverware and trays floating around him and in America it would say "Superman is real and he's American." That same poster in Europe would say "God is real and he's American." Thats good shit.
DRE: Tell me about your tattoos.
Zack: [points to his right forearm] This one is my wife Debras name. This one means white and this other one means red. Thats my alert status. This one on my back has a Buddha.
DRE: Its not done though.
Zack: Nah, its not done yet but it will be black and white so Im just going to get it shaded a bit. The top of it is going to say "Present beware, future beware." [laughs]
DRE: Are you getting a new one in honor of 300 anytime soon?
Zack: I don't think so. The movie isnt that good [laughs].
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Check out the official website for 300
Daniel Robert Epstein: First thing, tell me about when you threw the spear perfectly into a target on set.
Zack Snyder: Who told you that, Gerry [Butler]?
DRE: Gerry told us in front of a huge crowd of people.
Zack: Im a physical guy. I like to throw rocks and I like to play soccer and football. I like to play sports and I do a lot of fighting myself. So in that scene Gerry is supposed to throw the spear at Xerxes. Gerry goes "Where should I throw it?" We have like a little thing of Xerxes head up on a stick lifted up across the stage. I grab the spear and go Like this! and I threw it. It went through the stick thing we had and it hit the back of the stage. Gerry was like "Son of a bitch".
DRE: Was that luck or focus?
Zack: I'm lucky with that sort of thing. I have skills at throwing shit.
DRE: Donal Logue told me a story about Stephen Norrington when they were doing Blade. It was the scene where Donals character is all burned in the hospital. Stephen wanted him to jump over a table a certain way. Donal was like "I can't do that, who can do that?" Then Norrington, from a standing position, just jumps the table and Donal said Something is so wrong with you both physically and mentally. That reminds me of the spear story.
Zack: I was filming a commercial with [300 stunt coordinator] Damon Caro. We've been working for a long time together. There was a scene where a guy had to leap over a hood of a car to get away from a bull that was loose in the street. The stunt guy that was going to do it went to put some pads on and I said "Oh you know what, I want him to run and leap over the hood and not touch it. I think I can do it, let me try it one time." I jumped it. I landed and rolled and got up and said "Okay thats cool, lets see how it looks." I wanted to show the stunt coordinator that it was possible. So the stuntman comes back and we totally set him up because once Damon saw that I could do it he was like "Okay you got to fuck with him because this is awesome." The guy comes back and I go "Listen I want you to jump over the hood of this car but I don't want you to touch it. I want you to clean it." He said "Thats impossible, you can't do that." He's acting all cowboy and Damon goes Maybe you should show him what you want. I did it again and he was like "Son of a bitch."
DRE: When the film shifts from the army back to the Queen in Sparta, were you looking to contrast the action?
Zack: Absolutely. Not only did you need a break in some ways from the Spartans, because its just so relentless and insane, but I also wanted to show that life back in Sparta goes on. Then as we started to work on it we ended up ramping that up and turning it into a freak show anyway. The intent originally was to show the home life. Since we don't spend that much time in Sparta at the beginning of the movie we had to check back in with that. It was also a way to do that without loading the front of the movie with Sparta and then running for a quick fight up in Thermopylae.
DRE: You dont feel bad when the Spartans die because thats what they're meant to do, how do you make people feel sympathy for people who are doing exactly what they want?
Zack: Yeah and thats why, in some ways, we avoided that sentiment or sympathy for the Spartans. It was whether or not they fulfilled the task they set out for. Thats what was at stake. I always said "We're not Spartans in the movie." They throw their kids off cliffs and beat the snot out of them. Whenever I could I tried to remind the audience, "Guess what? You're not a Spartan. It is fun to be with them and hang out with them. But it ends in death on the battlefield. Thats how that road goes.
DRE: Talking to Gerard on set as King Leonidas was intense then later seeing him again the movie was wrapped he was like a different person.
Zack: He did transform himself when we were there. He's much more relaxed and casual in his other world than he is in his Leonidas world. He was pretty intense, which is good. It was the head he needed to be in.
DRE: One of my favorite scenes is the one right before the love scene between Leonidas and the Queen Gorgo. To bring warmth and love to a scene like that is just amazing because Leonidas knew as soon as he kicked the messenger into the well that that he was going to die.
Zack: Pretty much.
DRE: Whats the mindset you want your actors in when you're doing that scene where this is the last time they're ever going to intimately touch?
Zack: I wanted Leonidas and Gorgo to be in crazy love with each other, like stupid love. With shooting a love scene, I don't know how people do it but its awkward [laughs] and weird. I'm like "Okay, throw her like this! Flip her over! Okay, Lena grab him by the face! Kiss him hard!" "Be more naked!" I don't know what you say to people. It's embarrassing, but at the same time it is part of the movie. I made this movie for adults. One of the things I think is missing from movies is fun for adults.
DRE: Yeah theres a lot of seriousness.
Zack: A lot of seriousness. A lot of "The world is fucked up, this is rated R!" I love movies like Children of Men and Pan's Labyrinth. Couldnt fucking love it more. But a fucking a fun ride where a lot of people get killed, good sex and all that doesn't exist. They want to make the movies PG-13.
DRE: They want to get the kids in.
Zack: Yeah! It's for the kids! Im like "No its not for the kids! Fuck the kids! I got some shit I want to show you!" I think thats what I wanted to do with 300. I want adults to go "Yeah! That fucking rocked!" not "Oh, I want to kill myself."
DRE: Another scene I really liked is when Leonidas is eating the apple.
Zack: Thats my favorite scene in the movie and the reason is, that is totally the movie. It tells you what kind of movie you're in. If you were wondering up until then, that scene says "Don't worry about it. Its okay. Have fun. It epitomizes the movie because you understand the sense of humor of the movie. You understand the over the topness, but it doesn't make fun of it at the same time. It is right out of Frank Miller's book. The dialogue is exactly the same as it is in the graphic novel.
DRE: I read that your cinematographer, Larry Fong, hadnt done many movies before this.
Zack: Yeah, his big thing is that he shot the premiere of Lost. Also Larry was a school buddy of mine from [Pasadena's] Art Center [College of Design]. I did some commercials and music videos with him. Art Center was really small when I went there. It was really small department and you graduate by term because everyone goes term to term theres no "year. Larry and I graduated together in the winter and our class was only three people. It was Larry Fong, me and the second unit director of Dawn of the Dead and 300, Clay Staub. That was it and those guys were all my buddies. I just said "Hey lets make a movie, that sounds cool.
DRE: Im reading this book David Carradine wrote about the making of Kill Bill. He wrote about how Quentin [Tarantino] was training with all the actors. But then halfway through the day he would go do other work. But for this film you were training right there with the actors the entire time, what made you want to do that?
Zack: I wanted to suffer with them but Id train anyway even if those guys werent working out.
DRE: I wanted to cry just looking at you guys on video.
Zack: [laughs] Yeah, you do bond with them a little bit because they're going "Help me" and you're going "No help me!" [laughs]
DRE: I'm sure you were been offered films before Dawn of The Dead but did you always have such vision for what you were creating?
Zack: I've been making TV commercials for about 15 years. I got out of school in 1991 and I went straight to work as a music video and commercial director. Then I got to the point where I was just doing commercials because I was so busy that I had no lead time. A video is short lead time and commercials are long lead time. If you do a lot of commercials you've just got no time so I just got to this place where we were just cranky and I had probably done seven years of TV commercials on every continent. It was funny because I was actually known in the commercial world for doing edgy stuff but mostly I was known for these epic landscapes.
DRE: Like car commercials?
Zack: Yeah, big giant stuff which relates to 300 in the sense that I am, in some ways, a landscape painter. It's a landscape movie, it just happens to a landscape we made up. Knowing what looks good when youre out on location is in some ways harder because you got to get the right angle. In the commercial world Im the director and cameraman so everyone relies on me to make all the decisions. You cant underestimate that discipline. When I went to do Dawn, they treated me like a rookie, like Id never done anything but I had probably shot more film than anyone on that set.
DRE: And you showed them.
Zack: Nah, I don't think showed anybody. But I certainly tried not to be an idiot. I think that was the most important thing.
DRE: Its hard to figure out what a guy like yourself might do next just because you dont have a big body of work yet. Besides adapting things like Watchmen and 300, what else are you interested in?
Zack: Im a bit of an action geek.
DRE: Is that your number one thing?
Zack: No, not at all. My instinct is that movies where people are fighting and shooting are the movies I want to see. I don't really look for a movie that has anything specific in tone, action and story. Im just looking for something that feels cool to me. Where I think about it and say "Yeah that sounds cool! I want to do that for fucking years!" As a director, you just wake up everyday for a year and go "Yeah! Thats cool!"
DRE: Can people sitting around talking be cool?
Zack: It absolutely can. Watchmen has a lot of fucking talking in it [laughs]. Dawn of the Dead had a lot of talking in it.
DRE: Talk to me about the kind of color palette you want for the Watchmen movie.
Zack: The thing about Watchmen is that I'm looking to make a movie that looks more like Taxi Driver than Dick Tracy [laughs]. People bring that up to me "Is it like Dick Tracy?" because thats colorful. Watchmen as a printed medium references comic books itself. It goes "Look, Im a comic book" and you read it, you're like "You're fucking blowing my mind!" But thats what it tries to do, it draws you in by being a comic book. I think my responsibility is to draw the audience in by saying "Look Im just a movie" and then you get in there and it fucks you up. Thats my hope anyway. It is a weird movie. When you see the trailer and you go "Okay that looks like Richard Nixon. Dude that blue guy is in fucking Vietnam, what is this?"
Theres a song you can not put in a Vietnam war movie and its Ride Of the Valkyries which should not be put it in any movie because of Apocalypse Now. But in Watchmen, you can imagine a sequence in Watchmen where Dr. Manhattan is 100 feet tall stomping through the jungles of Vietnam with Hueys all over him, zapping the Vietcong while Ride of the Valkyries is playing. It is transcendent of itself so you can reference Apocalypse Now and thats okay. It is pop culture.
Ive been drawing the storyboards and Im very careful with sequence and things like that. Theres a sequence where Rorschach shoots his grappling gun up to the window and climbs up there. I just kept pulling shots out of the book and putting them in my boards. Theres no reason not to just shoot it like that.
DRE: I can't wait to see him shoot the grappling hook into the SWAT guy.
Zack: Yeah, thats cool. When Nite Owl says "I made that for him!"
DRE: The best line of the whole book is when Rorschach says "I'm not trapped in here with you, you're trapped in here with me!"
Zack: Thats awesome. One of the things that I think is cool that in the movie there'd be a poster of Dr. Manhattan with silverware and trays floating around him and in America it would say "Superman is real and he's American." That same poster in Europe would say "God is real and he's American." Thats good shit.
DRE: Tell me about your tattoos.
Zack: [points to his right forearm] This one is my wife Debras name. This one means white and this other one means red. Thats my alert status. This one on my back has a Buddha.
DRE: Its not done though.
Zack: Nah, its not done yet but it will be black and white so Im just going to get it shaded a bit. The top of it is going to say "Present beware, future beware." [laughs]
DRE: Are you getting a new one in honor of 300 anytime soon?
Zack: I don't think so. The movie isnt that good [laughs].
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 25 of 25 COMMENTS
Sparta was a village. It was not a capital of Lakedaemon. There were Spartiates -- Peers, Similars, Equals, homoioi -- and there were perokoi and helots. Those people did not enjoy the same status as homoioi, and Sparta was not their "capital." And, according to the laws of Lycurgus, Spartiates could not possess money, so you're incorrect about "tribute." There was no central acropolis with a state stockpile of talents. There were only military guarantees. This is documented in the original historical texts and backed up by the scholarly work of Cartledge, Victor Davis Hanson, etc.
Again, you're confusing your time periods. The period of Spartan hegemony was AFTER the Peloponnesian War, not before it. Sparta did not conquer Athens before Thermopylae, and it only conquered Athens with Persian financial backing in order to build a fleet, thus Lysandros and the naval victory at Aegospotami.
Lysandros deposed? When? He was killed in battle after the Peloponnesian War, not deposed.
And it's not opinion that Sparta was weakened by its dependence on the helots, it is fact. That is the major, enduring reason why Sparta could not extend its military strength beyond the Hellespont, and in fact much beyond the Peloponnese. This is why the "Archidaman War" in the early years of the war with Athens was a failure -- the military had to be withdrawn seasonally, out of fear that a long campaign would spell ruin for the city-state back home if a revolt was sparked.
It's also the single biggest reason for the downfall of Sparta later in its history, when Epaminondas liberated the helots.
The bottom line is, Thermopylae set the bar ridiculously high and Sparta never lived up to it after that. It was a village and a local power, nothing more. If Sparta had the population of an Athens or a Rome -- impossible because of Lycurgan law -- it *might* have been on par with what we consider a superpower today, but it was just a village of a few thousand people, constantly dwindling.
I thought it was a good movie ... although the story still wasn't as cool as Zulu/Rorke's Drift.