Broken Frontier

The Los Angeles Times ran an article yesterday on Frank Miller, in which the creator talks about the Sin City film franchise, 300, The Spirit, and the status of his next Batman comic book project, Batman: Holy Terror.

Here are a few interesting snippets...

The Spirit

Now there's a sweet satisfaction in the fact that the new Hollywood approach is to hire fan-boy directors and show fawning respect for the source material. "Sin City's" Robert Rodriguez even insisted on sharing director credits with Miller on those films (a maverick stand that cost Rodriguez his membership in the Directors Guild), and that led directly to a somewhat shocking development: Miller has now been tapped to write and direct his own film based on Will Eisner's classic noir hero "The Spirit."

One of the producers, Michael Uslan, also the producer of "Constantine" and executive producer of "Batman Begins," said the filming will start this year and that there already is intense interest from distributors given the splashy success of "300," which grossed $70 million in just its first weekend. Uslan was an executive producer on more than half a dozen superhero movies, including the Tim Burton "Batman" films, and he said Miller's relative newcomer role to Hollywood is not a problem.

"Honestly, to me, there's nobody else that could do this film. I saw him at Will Eisner's memorial service last year and I told him that I'd been turning comic books into movies for years, but that with 'Sin City' he's doing something better: He was making movies into comic books. I told him he had to make 'The Spirit.' He said there was no way he could do it. Then after three minutes he said, 'There's no way I can let anybody else do it.' "

Batman: Holy Terror

At a comic book convention in 2006, he announced that he was working on a book about Al Qaeda attacking Gotham City that would be titled "Holy Terror, Batman!" People glanced around to see if he was joking. He wasn't.

The book is still not out, and in the industry there is the general sense that the project has stalled a bit. At the W, though, Miller said about 120 pages of his Batman tale have been drawn and inked and he's starting in on the "final 50 or so." He said he plans to finish it even though he senses squeamishness by executives at DC Comics and its parent, Warner Bros. Entertainment, in sending a franchise character on a blood-quest after terrorists. The topic is clearly an uncomfortable one for him, and he gave the impression that the title, the distribution deal and the nature of the project are in flux.

Still, the plot is decidedly straightforward: "Our hero's key quote is, 'Those clowns don't know what terror is,' " Miller said. "Then he sets out to get the guys."

With the hero as terrorism avenger, Miller is pointing to the days of comics in the 1940s, when Superman, Captain America and the Human Torch were drawn taking punches at Hitler or Hirohito.

"These terrorists are worse than any villain I can come up with, and I think it's ridiculous that people in entertainment are not showing what we are up against here…. This is pure propaganda, a throwback, there's no bones about it."

Miller also said he relishes a backlash. "I'm ready," he said, "for my fatwa."

Directing his own film

Miller will need all his supporters and his strength to pull off the new role as solo director of a major Hollywood film. He surely learned a lot at the side of "Sin City's" Rodriguez, but the new job requires not just artistic antennae but also an efficient dictator sensibility.

"He can do it, absolutely," said "300's" Snyder, "because he has the respect instantly of the people around him because of his vision. I saw on the set of '300,' he won people over because he knows what he wants, and what he wants is great. He's in this unique position now where he is a brand name. Like Quentin [Tarantino], there's this perception that his take on pop culture is so singular and right that he gets to break the rules."