Staying faithful to ‘Sin’

updated 7:28 p.m. ET March 29, 2005

NEW YORK - When Robert Rodriguez approached Frank Miller about adapting “Sin City,” he knew he needed a great pitch.

“I told him we shouldn’t insult it by turning it into a movie. We gotta take cinema and turn it into this book,” Rodriguez recalls.

But to adapt Miller’s black-and-white 2-D world of tough guys in trench coats and back-alley crooks, the duo thought they had to go to extreme lengths of digital mimicry.

The movie is based on three of Miller’s “Sin City” comic books, an extravagant noirish world of fantastical ultraviolence. Famous among comic book readers for his “Elektra” and “Daredevil” series, Miller always said Hollywood would never get its hands on “Sin City.”

“When it comes to adapting material, very, very rarely do you get ‘The Silence of the Lambs,”’ says Miller. “Usually you end up with ‘Catwoman’ — something that just uses the title and throws out the source material.”

Birds of a feather
Rodriguez, who directed the “Spy Kids” films and the famously inexpensive “El Mariachi,” felt simpatico with Miller.

The author of the book “Rebel Without a Crew,” which inveighs against large, specialized film crews, likes to operate his own camera, do his own editing and create many of the effects.

FREE VIDEO Trailer: ‘Sin City’ Robert Rodriguez adapts three Frank Miller graphic novels into a film starring Clive Owen, Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke. NEWSWEEK

“When I looked at the books and it said, ‘Drawn by Frank, inked by Frank, lettered by Frank,’ I was like, ‘I think I know this guy,”’ says Rodriguez.

So Rodriguez convinced Miller of his dedication to faithfully recreating “Sin City.” He even wanted to co-direct it with Miller — a move that made him drop out of the Director’s Guild of America since it forbids multiple directors.

Rodriguez says the decision was easy — even though he sacrificed insurance, residuals, a chance for a directing Oscar and his next scheduled project (for Paramount Pictures, which only hires DGA members).

“What’s the alternative? I won’t be able to make this movie? That’s why you get into this business — to make really cool, new, challenging cinema, not to be in a club.”

A screenplay was culled from Miller’s books practically verbatim. Storyboards were NOT made — the comic’s frames had already done the job.

Taking a chance on technology
“Sin City” — which stars Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Mickey Rourke, Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Jessica Alba and Rosario Dawson — was shot entirely with a green screen, which means the only things that are real are objects the actors touch or the cars they ride in. Everything else was later digitally inserted using special effects.

With more than 1,800 effects shots, its production is much like 2004’s “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.” That film flopped, critically and at the box office, despite its considerable style.

Style aside, “Sin City” is sure to make some people squeamish because of its extreme violence and (what some may see as) misogyny.

It’s a familiar gripe for Miller.

“Chuck Jones got criticism for violence!” Miller answers, alluding to the legendary animator who created Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote among others. “It’s one of those buzz words.”

While “Sin City” draws considerably from film noir’s cityscapes, the lighting and texture is uniquely that of a comic book — like eyes glowing in the dark.

“A lot of Frank’s lighting is not really physically possible, and that’s why we had to shoot it all on a green screen,” Rodriguez says. “But when you look at it, it doesn’t feel like an effect. ... It’s an abstraction of reality.”

To get the stark shadows of Miller’s drawings, Rodriguez not only separated the actors from the background, but often from each other to light them specially.

“Everything becomes like a painting and you’re using light the same way Frank uses ink,” Rodriguez says.

Working together, the co-directors paid obsessive attention to capturing the “Sin City” of the page, frame by frame.

“We were working with my drawings up on one camera where we would superimpose the real image and adjust it until it matched my compositions,” says Miller.

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