“We have a habit of coming up with stories that involve things that we like to draw.” - Frank Miller, artist
Sin City came out in 2005 and introduced the moviegoing world to Frank Miller. The comic book artist had written many well known characters like Batman and Daredevil, but his biggest movie work was a Robocop sequel that got significantly rewritten. Since Sin City, the pages of his 300have come to cinematic life and he brought The Spirit to film as well.
Robert Rodriguez came up with a way to shoot green screen footage and turn it into the black and white images of Miller’s graphic novels. He also gave Miller his first directing gig alongside him, with guest director Quentin Tarantino on the first film. After Sin City, Miller directed The Spirit and returns to the directing chair with Rodriguez for the sequel.
It took nine years to revisit Sin City. Sin City: A Dame to Kill Forstars another ensemble of A-list actors and cameo players, and some returning favorites. Dwight, played by Clive Owen in the first film, is now played by Josh Brolin in a prequel story, in which he gets played by a Femme Fatale (Eva Green). Green’s character poster for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For was so revealing it got banned by the MPAA.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a card shark who comes to town to take on the corrupt senator. Nancy (Jessica Alba) is back with Marv (Mickey Rourke) to protect her. Rosario Dawson and Jamie King are back, while Lady Gaga, Christopher Lloyd and Ray Liotta show up as well. We spoke with Rodriguez and Miller about their return to Sin City, the film’s music and plans for Sin City 3.
SG: Did you really think they were going to put that Eva Green poster up in movie theaters? You could totally see her nipples. You can’t hang that at AMC.
Robert Rodriguez: You couldn’t see that much. I did it so quickly. We had already made everyone else’s poster and I didn’t like the poster that I had of her. Because I do those in house, I did that in my studio, so I thought let’s do one like the comic where she’s all silhouetted. Sometimes they send it to me to look at, I’m looking at it on my phone, it’s like, “It looks great.” We send it out and it gets rejected. It’s like, why? Oh, all right. We’ll darken it some more. But the studio of course goes, “Let’s say it was banned because it was sort of banned. This is better for the publicity.” It was a publicity thing.
SG: It is, and I understand she wears that outfit in the movie, and there are so many explicit scenes where she looks so glamorous. How did you light and shoot her swimming to give her that look?
RR: Wow, the swimming pool is unremarkable. It’s a little pool. She’s this big in the pool. It was like a little kiddie pool and it was light colored. It was just to have water around her because we were going to replace most of it with digital but she needed to be in water. It’s the funkiest little thing. It looks like you’re in the backyard pool tub, and it’s just to have some water interaction. It’s lit and we shoot it pretty quickly because really the work is in the effects to make it look like his drawings.
Frank Miller: I remember the moment where Dennis Haysbert was getting shot and he insisted on falling into the pool. I remember we were both quaking in terror that he was going to bust his skull open.
RR: Doing his own stunt, yeah. I thought he was going to hit his head on the bottom or the other side because it was not very deep and it’s not very wide. It’s like a hot tub sized pool.
FM: And he’s a big guy.
SG: Frank, with the different types of women in Sin City, from the femme fatale to the badass girls of old town, what is the appeal of each of those archetype?
FM: First off, they look great. They’re creatures of imagination. That’s the way my mind goes a lot of the time. One thing cartoonists tend not to admit is that we have a habit of coming up with stories that involve things that we like to draw. With me, that boiled down to gorgeous women, tough guys in trench coats and antique cars. So I explored all three.
SG: So no Quentin Tarantino guest directing this time?
RR: Oh, we thought about it but he was doing Django and there was really never a chance for him to come. We shot really quick. We shot it in 30 days.
SG: You had to recast some parts because unfortunately we lost Michael Clarke Duncan. With the role of Dwight, did you go back to Clive Owen and offer him the chance to reprise his role?
RR: The whole plan was we’d only scheduled Josh for a few days because he was only going to do the first part, and then it was going to be switched over to Clive. But, Clive wasn’t even really available for months and months and months later. So it was fine. I told Josh, “You know what, I know it’s weird, but you’re going to come in and film part of the character but then it’s going to be passed on to Clive.” And he was cool with that, so as we shot, by the third day we were like, “Why don’t you just stay and do the whole thing? I’ll call KNB. They sent me some of their generic noses and chins and maybe we can paste together a different look for you and put a wig on you.” And he was like, “Yeah, yeah, I’m down for that.” That way we have something in the can just in case Clive isn’t available later or whatever. Let’s just get it while you’re here and if it doesn’t work, we’ll use Clive. If it does work, that’d be cool if you play both parts. It was like that. It was organic like that. As soon as he started doing it, we’re like, “Oh yeah, it’s much more satisfying to see him finish the role off.” Because we didn’t know. It would be cool to just see him become Clive Owen. That was a big face change, but then we just loved him being in it. It would kind of be strange for him not to pay off the character himself and not even be part of his own third act. Again, we’re experimenting. Nobody’s ever done this before so we’re kind of feeling it out as we go.
SG: Is Dennis Haysbert really taller than Mickey Rourke?
RR: He’s really tall. Mickey Rourke’s not that tall. He just feels like the biggest guy in the room because of his personality. I think Mickey’s six feet but I think Dennis is a good 6’4”, 6’5.
FM: He’s a big man.
SG: Alexa Vega finally got her Sin City role she always wanted, didn’t she?
RR: Yeah, that’s right. She got to be in Sin City. I said, “If you come down right now, we need a Gilda and it’s going to be either a local girl or it can be you, but you have to come down here right now.” And she came down and did it.
SG: Did Lady Gaga shoot her role at the same time she did Machete Kills for you?
RR: No, once we did Machete, I saw how efficiently she could come in and out and get back on tour, and she saw it too. So I told her, “You have to be in Sin City somewhere. You’re perfect for that movie.” And I introduced her to Frank and we tried to find her a role, but every time a role that she could play pretty quickly would come up, she was on tour or something. It just happened to align near the end of the shoot where she was in Houston, like a city away from me, on tour. Joseph’s scene was coming up and there was a part for a waitress that was just going to go to a local actress. It was not a big role, but I called her up and said, “If you come right now, you can film tomorrow with Joseph.” So she showed up, brought wigs, did it, popped it off, took off again. It was great. It’s just cool to have somebody like that in your back pocket.
SG: Frank, did the success of the first Sin City movie reinvigorate the comic books?
FM: Oh yeah. Sold a ton of copies.
SG: How about creatively, as far as you writing more?
FM: Well, I kept going. It’s home to me. Yeah, it rejuvenated a lot of the character and helped focus on a lot of the attention on the series.
SG: Did this sequel do the same? Are you now pumped to write more Sin City graphic novels?
FM: Actually, I’m pumped to do another movie.
SG: Do you have one lined up?
FM: Oh yeah, but first people have to go and show us that they want to see the second one.
SG: So you’re ready to go right into Sin City 3?
FM: Oh yeah.
SG: Do you have any stories picked out for the next movie?
FM: Oh yeah.
RR: I would say a very safe bet would be “Hell and Back” because that’s a long story that would fit into a movie but you never know. People have to come see this one and if they support it, then for sure we’ll make a third one and we won’t wait nine years. It’ll be done soon.
SG: A Dame to Kill For is still three stories, but is it more interwoven like one ensemble than an anthology?
FM: I don’t think so. I think what it is is a deeper delving into what the city’s like and the kind of people who were in it. Because the first one it was established for the movie audience what Sin City was. Then we already had that down, so now we could show people what was in it.
RR: There might be more characters, but that one had Elijah Wood, Rutger Hauer. It had a bunch of people in it. This one, you have Chris Meloni, Jeremy Piven, Christopher Lloyd, Stacy Keach. There was a huge cast in this.
SG: No Danny Trejo though?
RR: Hey, you never know. In this one, there’s not but he could always make it to Sin City.
SG: Are there more touches of color in A Dame to Kill For?
RR: Oh yeah, we use a lot more color. Just places where we thought it’d be interesting, that weren’t in the book. Like Juno Temple comes down and she’s got this amazing head of red hair and I was like, “How about when you pull off the wig, you’ve got this great hair?” Frank was like, “Yeah, and while we’re at it, the pink on her teddy’s so nice, let’s add that.” So we kept trying to add color whenever we could and if it got distracting, it wasn’t revealing any story, we would pull it. But it was cool to play with that.
SG: Is the 3D even still a little bit 2D in a way because we’re still seeing layers of comic book panels?
RR: No, we shot it in 3D so people really are dimensioned. In the backgrounds, it’s just that there’s such an absence of information because it’s so black and white. Sometimes there’s just the actor and nothing but a graphic way behind them, that sometimes it feels more layered which works for a comic graphic novel look. Other times it’s richer. It depends on what’s going on but I think the 3D pops even more than in a regular movie where there’s just so much, you don’t know where to look. This is so focused because there’s an absence of information. What is there pops even more because of the 3D.
SG: How did you approach Steven Tyler to do the song?
RR: That was wild. I was writing music up to the very last minute. There was a song that Nancy danced to that we couldn’t afford. It was just too expensive to license it. So I thought I’ll write my own song. So I wrote a song really quickly and then I thought, I’d run into Steven Tyler and I go, “If I give you a song to do a vocal on, do you think you’d do it?” “Oh yeah, let me do it.” So I sang a vocal, sent it to him. He liked it, he resang it, sent it back. That was like two weeks ago. It was really recent. I changed the credits really quick and put his name in the credits, in the main titles and he was just like, “I can’t believe I’m a part of this movie!” It was really fun, but it was like that. Sometimes you’ve got to be able to just respond like that, like with Lady Gaga being in it. “Do you want to be in this movie? Because I need a song and I’ve got a song and I need somebody to sing it.” They’ve got to be ready, and then they are.
SG: The new Batman Vs. Superman movie seems to take heavy inspiration from The Dark Knight Returns. Have they reached out to you in any way?
FM: No.
SG: Have you seen any of the material they’ve released?
FM: None.
SG: Do you have any interest in it?
FM: None.
SG: Robert, with the phenomenon that Sharknado has become, are they carrying on the Grindhouse spirit?
RR: It feels more like classic Roger Corman/AIP type stuff where they have a great title and poster and that’s what drew you in. I guess that’s early Grindhouse style but it reminds me of those kinds of movies which are great. I love that kind of stuff.
