Sin City: Welcome to Town

MANUTE: (Picture Here)
Nobody knows where he came from, and nobody ever will.

He serves his masters ruthlessly. Efficiently. Brutally. Mercilessly.

Pray you never meet him. The moment you do will likely be your last.

- Frank Miller
A man so immense his punch is like a freight train, Manute is at once enigmatic and lethal. He is played by Michael Clarke Duncan, who garnered an Academy Award nomination as the gentle giant in “The Green Mile” and who previously starred as The Kingpin in “Daredevil,” also based on Frank Miller’s comic. Duncan was thrilled to have the chance to embody Miller’s work again . . . but in a whole new way.
Michael Clarke Duncan: “When I first heard they were going to do everything on film exactly the way it is in the comic book, I thought they were crazy, but I’m here to tell you they’re not. This is so unlike anything anyone has done before, I think audiences will be blown away.”
Duncan sees his character as something like a modern-day myth. “Manute is the ultimate bodyguard, the guy who will take any orders. This guy, he gets sliced up, he gets shot, but he keeps coming back. He’s like a fabled creature that nobody quite understands. He always rises from the ashes and you can’t defeat him.”

HARTIGAN: (Picture Here)
Honor bound. A knight in blood-caked, grimy armor. Cop John Hartigan will sacrifice everything – his marriage, his job, his honor, his freedom, his dignity –

all for the sake of a skinny little 11 year old girl

• 
  Frank Miller
  

If there is one pure hero in Sin City, John Hartigan is it. The last honest cop in town, he’s finally about to retire. But he has a final mission: to save the 11 year-old Nancy Callahan from the clutches of the deranged Senator’s son, Roark Jr. To play Hartigan, Robert Rodriguez immediately thought of Bruce Willis.

Rodriguez: “I knew right away Bruce Willis would have to be Hartigan. I’d seen an old ‘Moonlighting’ episode that I’d kept forever on tape where he played a hard-boiled detective. It was a comedic tone but he played it very straight, and he looks great in black-and-white. So I showed him the opening scenes and before it was even over, he said ‘I’m in.’”
Meanwhile, Frank Miller was surprised by Willis’ devotion: “I’m thinking as a first-time director, Bruce Willis is going to mop up the floor with me. Instead, Bruce came in with a love of the material and was an absolute dream to work with. He understood that his character had a lot of Raymond Chandler in him. And he certainly understood Raymond Chandler’s theory that this kind of character is a modern-day knight. He gave a beautiful performance. If Mickey Rourke is the film’s Dionysus, Bruce is our Apollo.”
Willis, already a fan of Miller’s hard-boiled town, was recruited through Rodriguez’s early footage. “It was the most visually startling piece of film I’d ever seen. It was just riveting. I’d been a fan of Frank Miller’s Sin City for a long time – I’ve always been a fan of dark, poetic, hard-bitten stories -- but I didn’t think anyone could come up with a way to actually shoot them until Robert invented this new digital filmmaking style.”
Willis was also a fan of Hartigan. “When we first meet him, he’s a man who’s mostly hoping to get home to his wife and away from this city of crime. But he can’t quite do it, because there’s this one thing he hasn’t taken care of. Hartigan really stands out in Sin City because he has this high moral code and a strong, driving set of ethics. Hartigan traded away his life for the life of this young girl and that’s a powerful thing. In the war between good and evil, Hartigan falls on the right side.”

NANCY: (Picture Here)
Imagine you find your way the sleaziest saloon on the planet. The place stinks, with all the usual stinks. There's a stage. The lights come up. You expect the worst. Then out dances an Angel. Perfect. Graceful. Beautiful. A dream come true. Nancy. Nancy Callahan. She amazes.

- Frank Miller
Now known as the sweetheart of Sin City, Nancy Callahan is seen in two incarnations. First, she is an 11 year-old girl in the most dire danger. Then, she is an alluring 19 year-old exotic dancer who shines a light in the dark of the city.
Frank Miller explains: “Nancy is really the symbol of Sin City, this angel who suddenly appears in the most disturbing of places, and she is played beautifully by both Makenzie Vega (as a little girl) and Jessica Alba.”
Jessica Alba (“Honey”) was immediately moved by Nancy’s story and demeanor. “She’s drawn as this doe-eyed, sweet girl with a softer side and I wanted to do this because it’s an area I haven’t really been able to explore a whole lot. As I read the book, I cried because her story is so beautiful, it’s such a romantic love story, and I knew I had to do it. Nancy is the one person in Sin City who is very hopeful.”
“Nancy wears her heart on her shoulder and I wish I could wear mine like that a little more. It’s wonderful to play somebody who is so perfectly soft and vulnerable all the time, but also confident and strong.”
Alba also was thrilled to play scenes opposite Bruce Willis. “He’s shockingly generous for someone of his stature. He’s also incredibly good at playing the pain and struggle of knowing that you’re never going to be everything that you want to be. Hartigan’s looks are filled with love that hurts and it’s very cool.”

YELLOW BASTARD: (Picture here)
The little snot. He ought to be dead. But here he is. Back in action. And he smells awful...

- Frank Miller
At the heart of John Hartigan’s story lies his nemesis, Roark Jr. (AKA “That Yellow Bastard”), a demented sociopath who is later physically transformed into a creature as ugly, yellow and downright odorous as his personality.
Playing Roark Jr. and Yellow Bastard, under a veil of makeup, is Nick Stahl (“Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” “Carnivale”). Originally, Miller and Rodriguez were going to cast two separate actors as Roark Jr. and Yellow Bastard, but Stahl convinced Rodriguez to let him do both.
Rodriguez: “I wasn’t sure at first so I asked Nick to leave me some messages in Yellow Bastard’s distinct voice on my answering machine. In the story, the voice is the only thing that Hartigan can recognize after the transformation. I knew that if he could get the voice right, that he’d nail it, cause Nick is a terrific actor. I had actually completely forgotten about it when I started getting these really creepy messages and of course, I gave him the role.”
Stahl: “What I loved is that because Frank Miller’s story has such a heightened reality and such a larger-than-life story, there’s no real fear of going too far with something. It’s fun to play this sort of fantasy character who is so obnoxious and out for vengeance.”
Once fully transformed into Yellow Bastard, even Frank Miller was creeped out by Nick Stahl’s performance. “Nick Stahl was genuinely terrifying. I don’t know how he did everything that he did underneath all that makeup. The effects that KNB created make him look just like a horrifying drawing. I think Yellow Bastard will remind people of just how scary a comic book character can be.”

SIN CITY: How the Town Was Built

Like all towns, Sin City started with a singular blueprint: Frank Miller’s drawings and stories. With these in hand, Rodriguez looked for ways to peel the pictures right off the page and onto the screen. Rodriguez’s pioneering stance on the creative potential of digital filmmaking led to a whole new way of approaching a comic-based film.

With painting effects, costumes, makeup prosthetics and a noir black-and-white aesthetic layered over the performances, the world Miller’s forged in his Sin City drawings did not so much change as become charged with cinematic life.

Ultimately, Miller’s books laid side-by-side with frames from the film would match up in detail for detail:

[ EXAMPLE HERE]

As the cinematographer and visual effects supervisor, Rodriguez knew he would have to journey to the edges of digital filmmaking to capture the rainy, gritty, rough-edged sheen that sets apart the environs of Sin City. Rodriguez: “The trick was to capture what’s visually startling about the books. It had to be shot entirely on green screen because the visuals and lighting in Frank’s books are physically impossible.”

It was a trip Rodriguez was ready for, having pioneered similar techniques in the cutting-edge family adventure “Spy Kids.” Rodriguez used the very latest high-definition (HD) cameras to shoot actors in stylized makeup and costumes performing entirely against green screens. Later, highly skilled effects teams would be able to manipulate computer-generated backgrounds stripped right from the comic book designs to make the whole look and feel match Miller’s work.
It was a kind of daring, risky, unconventional filmmaking that excited Miller, despite being a neophyte. Miller: “What’s interesting is that the process Robert explained to me, using the green screen and everything, greatly resembles drawing. It’s really a matter of creating elements and moving them about, just as you would on a piece of paper.”
Rodriguez, who also drew comics early in life, agrees: “With the green screen, it’s as if you’re drawing the subject first, with the actor’s performance, and then you fill in the background with the computer-generated city. This process was not only familiar; it also allowed us to really focus foremost on the actors bringing the characters to life. When you don’t have to spend a lot of time on set-ups, worrying about sets that aren’t there, the performances don’t lose their momentum and stay very fresh.”
To Troublemaker
The high-tech equipment, skilled crew and creative atmosphere needed for SIN CITY were already in place at Rodriguez’s Austin, Texas Troublemaker Studios. When he and Elizabeth Avellan founded Troublemaker they planned to do just that: stir up lots of trouble in the movie-making world by creating a studio that emphasized creative freedom and wild sense of play – backed up by a talented, devoted family of crafts-people.
Rodriguez: “Having Troublemaker at our disposal really gave us a great advantage in making SIN CITY. To have the ability to work outside the studio system but to also have everything you need right there really made it possible. It’s a free-flowing place where you don’t have to ask permission to make art. At one point Francis Ford Coppola came to visit, and he said this was his dream for Zoetrope – a place where you could have different artists come together to work and experiment with different kinds of projects.”
With the latest digital equipment at his disposal, Rodriguez sees Troublemaker as a kind of real world fantasyland. Rodriguez: “The thing I always loved about being a cartoonist was that anything you could imagine, you could create there on a piece of paper in your studio apartment. Now I’m doing the same thing on this larger scale, but it’s the same creative experience. Here at Troublemaker – we’re in the studio in this one green screen room, but we can instantly make it seem like you are in the snow or in the city or places right out of your dreams.”
Green Screen
For most of SIN CITY’s diverse, accomplished cast, working with the green screen was an unusual, and eye-opening, experience. They all gathered at Rodriguez’s pioneering Austin, Texas Troublemaker Studios, where the performances were pulled off in the studio’s famously intimate playground-style setting. Here, the actors brought SIN CITY to life primarily with props and minimal sets. Sometimes even their fellow actors in the scene were only there on green screen. Their most direct line of inspiration remained Miller’s drawings in the books.
Benicio Del Toro: “In the beginning, it was kind of strange, being in this environment where everything is completely in your imagination and not really there. What I did was just stop paying attention to the green and fill in all the gaps in my mind. It turned out to be really interesting to work like that. It’s very different and refreshing. And you know it is gong to look great. That’s why I call Robert and Frank wizards – because they found ways between the drawings and the effects to turn water into wine.”
Clive Owen: “The first day was very unusual, because you feel as if you’re acting in a bubble of nothing. But then you get used to it very quickly. It starts to feel natural, and then you get a real sense of achievement when you realize that you’ve nailed the impact of a particular image from the book. The possibilities of this kind of filmmaking are very, very exciting.”
Jessica Alba: “The green screen can be quite liberating because it strips away all the stuff that can be very distracting in the background. It breaks all that down and it becomes just about performing. It’s almost like being on stage in the theatre. I think Robert is able to get amazing performances from people in part because he’s torn all the distractions away, and gets even closer to the character.”
Mickey Rourke: “I’ve never done a movie with a green screen before, but Robert made me feel very comfortable. I have so much respect for him, that I didn’t care if it was a green screen or a pink screen or whatever. He was so prepared and he’s such a down-to-earth guy with that it all made sense to me.”
Bruce Willis: “To a large degree, you wind up relying on sense memory when you’re working with the green screen. You just had to imagine all the cool stuff that was going to be there. It could get very, very strange at times. It was particularly weird to see myself in a scene with an actress who wasn’t even there that day. It also reminded me of doing ‘Pulp Fiction’ in that you don’t really know how your part is going to intertwine with everything else until the end.”
For Carla Gugino, who worked with Robert Rodriguez on “Spy Kids” and plays Lucille in SIN CITY, the green-screen was old hat. But for her, the thrill was in watching such a talented group of adult actors become initiated. “Watching the kids work with a green screen on ‘Spy Kids’ was really interesting because kids have such vivid imaginations. I thought even that it was such a freeing thing for them, it would be truly incredible for adult actors. So on this movie, we get to see the tremendous movie-making tool that digital has become.”
The rapid-fire pace and ample flexibility of shooting with HD cameras was also welcomed by the cast. Brittany Murphy: “It’s just the greatest, most extraordinary thing to be in the middle of a scene and never have to worry about how much film is left. The camera just keeps rolling all the time which really allows for a lot of creativity. We all just loved it.”
Almost everyone involved in the production had a sense of being part of some kind of shift in the future of movie-making. Rosario Dawson: “I feel like Robert and Frank were inventing a different kind of movie and they were completely in control of a new vision. What I love is that there’s no confinement to this style of filmmaking. You’re not confined by weather, by day or night, by reality, by anything. It’s just all about making an imaginary world come to life!”
Producer Elizabeth Avellan sums up: “I think Robert is helping a lot of people overcome their fear of this new filmmaking technology. They see that it’s about moving very fast and having a lot of fun. He’s creating new converts and that’s a beautiful thing to see because Robert has always loved technology. He’s always been on the cutting edge in every way possible. For him, it’s not just about bigger and bolder – it’s about streamlining the technology, and getting the most amazing results with the least money and the maximum creativity.”

Visual EFX
After the actors filmed in front of blank backgrounds, the SIN CITY effects team painstakingly brewed up the worlds they inhabit taken straight from Miller’s books.
It began with Robert Rodriguez morphing Frank Miller’s books – frame by frame, entirely as is -- into animatic storyboards. He than started developing the film’s look in the early experimental footage – a look he would continue to adjust throughout production. The idea was always to blend the photo-realistic with the graphic, but the trick was in finding the balance. By finessing the lighting and photography, Rodriguez played with variations on silhouette, shadow and extreme contrasts throughout. He also decided to add a few splashes of color to the otherwise high-contrast atmosphere.
Rodriguez: “I was just salivating to recreate these really tricky images that Frank had drawn. Everything is so stripped down, that we would do as Frank did in drawing his comics. We’d build a background, but when in doubt, we’d black it out. By stripping the backgrounds to their essentials, you get an unnatural style that feels right. Since I shot in color, we’d take the color out and make it a stark black and white, but at any time in post I could bring a color back in. You could then use color as a weapon; a really strong storytelling tool. So you have a character like Goldie who pops out with real flesh tones and blonde hair or The Yellow Bastard with his mustard-colored skin. And when I wanted to heighten a character’s pain I turned the blood red, which really brings it into the foreground, almost like a color close-up. At the same time, we could temper some of the more gruesome images, by making the blood that very cartoonish white you see in the books, which keeps it from being overwhelming. It becomes very abstract.
The background environment of Sin City was forged early on by Rodriguez’s trusted crew at Troublemaker. Then, when it came time to hire an effects house, Rodriguez made an unconventional choice. Instead of one, he would hire three – one effects house for each story. This would allow each story to subtly develop its own strong, distinctive and consistent look.
Ultimately, Hybride Technologies, who were involved in Rodriguez’s SPYkids series, worked on “The Hard Goodbye,” the tale of Marv and Goldie; Café FX, whose credits include “Sky Captain” and “Blade: Trinity,” worked on “The Big Fat Kill” or Dwight’s story; and The Orphanage, known for their innovation on “Sky Captain” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” provided visual effects for “That Yellow Bastard,” featuring the tale of Hartigan and Nancy Callahan. With more than 600 effects shots per story, each house devoted itself completely to SIN CITY alone.
The film was shot with the brand new Sony HFC-950s cameras – which currently represents the leading edge in high-caliber digital imaging. The camera, also famously used by George Lucas for this summer’s “Star Wars: Episode III,” raises the bar for cinematographic versatility.
Visual Effects producer Keefe Boerner explains the appeal of the camera. “There’s simply no way you could make a movie like this on traditional film. Robert was able to constantly make changes on-the-fly, evolving the look to match performances and vice versa. You need that kind of flexibility to go this far out on the edge.”
Because he was shooting in digital hi def video, Rodriguez shot in color using HD monitors – but tweaked one of his monitors so he could see the footage unreeling in black and white. Boerner: “We had the best of both worlds. Robert was able to create what is quite possibly the best-looking black and white film ever, but when we had need for color, we had the ability for that, too.”
Each of the effects houses would have to dig deep to satisfy Rodriguez, notes Boerner: “He kept pushing each of them go further and further – to get deeper darks and bright whites. He wanted exciting effects but also for everything to remain very stark and graphic.”
At various junctures, Rodriguez even subjected his footage to the ultimate examination. He took early footage to comic book conferences and fearlessly showed it to fans to get their reactions.
Makeup
To elicit performances right out of a pulp-comic-book universe where human features are exaggerated primal emotions rule the faces and bodies of the characters also required external inspiration. This came in the form of extensive prosthetics and makeup – under the supervision of Greg Nicotero -- along with costumes – designed by Nina Procter.
Greg Nicotero of KNB EFX has previously made seven movies with Robert Rodriguez, but SIN CITY was nothing like anything that came before. Nicotero had read the comic books on his own years before Rodriguez approached him. But he never imagined recreating the look of it out of real human faces.
Nicotero: “I was determined to capture the spirit of Frank’s drawings. So we used the books directly as our initial makeup designs for all the most stylized characters, including Marv, Yellow Bastard, Hartigan and Jackie Boy – and then we began to explore prosthetics.”
Miller and Rodriguez knew prosthetics would be necessary, but they wanted Nicotero to keep the array of broken noses, raised scars and square chins that populate SIN CITY as organic as possible. Rodriguez: “We wanted makeup that would be believable, that would give the story a visceral physicality, and that would look like real faces. We didn’t want the actors to appear lost behind masks.”
The first task to tackle was one of the toughest: turning Mickey Rourke into the behemoth Marv. Nicotero: “We did a scan of Mickey’s head and, using that, we then created five completely different facial prosthetics because we weren’t sure which one would work. We wanted to be faithful to Frank, but at the same time, we also needed to incorporate some of Mickey into it. After we had the prosthetics, we had to have poor Mickey sit in a chair for hours so that Frank and Robert could see the different looks. It was a trying process, but when we found the right one, it was unbelievable. Just to see Frank Miller’s face when he saw it was worth it all, because he has lived with these characters for 25 years, and he knows them so intimately, and to see him be moved by the transformation was really satisfying.”
Ultimately, Rourke had to spend 2 1/2 hours a day being fitted with a wig, a forehead-and-nose prosthetic, and a molded chin. Rourke: “The make-up artists were really into it. Once they get going, they always wanted to add more scars, more blood, more everything. I not only was sitting in the chair for up to 3 hours every day, but it took as long as 45 minutes to take the makeup off.”
Another key makeup element was creating Hartigan’s trademark scars on Bruce Willis’ familiar mug. Nicotero: “We used a unique technique involving fluorescent-activated make-up on top of Bruce’s scars so that when you see them on the screen they aren’t red with blood, but white, like in a comic book panel. It’s a great effect.”
Nicotero also enjoyed turning Benicio Del Toro into Jackie Boy. “Benicio is the first actor I can ever remember who came to me and said ‘I want to look even more like the way the character was in the book.’ Benicio already looks a lot like the character, so we built some very sophisticated prosthetics to make him even more Jackie Boy – squaring off his chin, making his nose longer. With that accomplished, he just brought the character completely to life.”
But the coup de grace for Nicotero was creating the decaying, devilish Yellow Bastard. Nicotero: “We began by sculpting a few different busts of the face – using Frank’s drawings – to work on getting the details right, from the wrinkles under his eyes to the shape and positioning of his ears and nose. Then we created a full-head prosthetic for Nick Stahl which was glued into place and covered with stubble.”
Nicotero didn’t stop with the head. His team then sculpted a whole chest and belly out of foam for Yellow Bastard’s nude scene. “We made this sort of foam latex appliance that Nick Stahl wears like a vest to recreate Yellow Bastard’s gross, distended belly.”
Adding to the complexity of Yellow Bastard was the fact that he is the only character whose very flesh appears in color. Nicotero: “His face, his hands, and ultimately his blood, had to be yellow of course. So we did test after test of different makeup to get the exact sickly, mustard color that is in Frank’s book.”
Ultimately Rodriguez decided to literally paint the Yellow Bastard blue, so that in post they could get a better key off of him and do a hue shift that would turn him yellow.
For Stahl, the result was a five-hour procedure to transform into his character – including getting his prosthetics glued on and being doused in blue goo from head to toe. Nicotero: “When Nick put on the whole rig he looked so much like the drawings in the book it was astounding.”
Sums up Frank Miller: “Somehow Greg Nicotero and his magicians were able to turn each actor into something very close to my drawings. And they were also able to let the actors somehow work right through these amazingly deformed faces so they could give them an astonishing amount of life.”
Costumes
Nina Procter, in her fifth movie with Robert Rodriguez, was faced with bringing SIN CITY further to life . . . in silk, cotton and leather. For the costume designer, Miller’s comic book universe provided rich inspiration. “For me, the big challenge was in trying to making the wardrobe every bit as big and bold as it is in Miller’s book. I wanted to do right by the characters and get as close to the original drawings as we could while keeping the actors happy and comfortable.”
Another challenge for Procter was using colors that would work in a largely black and white universe. “With this film, it was all about the value of color rather than the colors themselves. In order to make it look great once the effects were added, I had to look at every single costume through a black and white viewfinder. We also did a lot of high-contrast things to heighten the style -- like silver studs on black leather.”
Frank Miller was intrigued to see pen-and-ink ideas become actual fabric: “Nina and her crew worked magic. They researched the costumes that I drew, but it’s one thing to draw something with a brush on a flat piece of paper and another thing to take a real flesh and blood woman or man and make them look like that. So the costumes became a very key element in having my drawings come to life.”
Procter got a kick out of working with the trademark staples of noir – trench coats, dusters, fishnet stockings and garters – and then some. Her thoughts on some of the character’s costumes follow below.
On Marv: “Marv has three different trench coats that change throughout the story. His first coat, which is his own coat, is a little more special. It had these massive shoulders and this skirt that would fly up almost like a Superman cape. But then that coat gets torn up and he takes another coat and then another. Mickey Rourke was a real trooper, wearing all these heavy coats that were very difficult to move in, but he really made them work.”
On Hartigan: “Bruce Willis was great to work with and he really loved his wardrobe. He literally put his trench coat on and said ‘Can I have this to take home?’ His coats were designed to be lighter weight and lighter in color than Marv’s coats to set them apart. They’re more dressy and suit his character.”
On Dwight: “We wanted to ‘cowboy’ him up a little, so he’s in brown tones and wears this great duster that has an outlaw feel to it.”
On Gail: “Gail was a very fun character. She is literally all belts and fishnet, but we were able to construct her very revealing outfits in such a way that Rosario felt entirely comfortable. There’s really no nudity involved but we give the character a strong sense of nudity – I mean she has shoes that come up to the top of her leg, literally.”
Then there came Nina Procter’s favorite re-creation: Nancy. “Nancy was my biggest challenge. She is the one pure, angelic person in the whole movie and we wanted her costume to be very sexy – yet without going too far. She has to wear chaps, work ropes and spin guns in her routine and I wanted Jessica Alba to be completely comfortable about her costume so she wouldn’t have to think about it. In the end, I think she looks like as close to an angel as anything you’ll find in SIN CITY.”

SIN CITY: A Visit From Quentin Tarantino

In an unusual twist, the production of SIN CITY received a visit from another director who is no stranger to pulp territory. Quentin Tarantino (“Kill Bill,” “Jackie Brown,” “Pulp Fiction”) came to the set at Robert Rodriguez’s invitation – and was paid one dollar to shoot an extended sequence in the story “The Big Fat Kill.”
Tarantino and Rodriguez have previously worked together on such films as “Desperado,” “Four Rooms” and “From Dusk Til Dawn.” Most recently, Rodriguez composed music for Tarantino’s “Kill Bill 2” – also for the price of a dollar. But there has long been a difference of opinion between the two on whether the future of cinema lies in film or digital video. To score a point on his side, Rodriguez showed Quentin some of the experiments he had shot early on for SIN CITY.
Tarantino: “It was my first view of what this world was like and I thought ‘oh my God’ they’re actually doing the cityscapes and the silhouettes which I just love and all the lighting, and the camera angles – everything. I was interested.”
With Tarantino awed, Rodriguez made his pitch for Quentin to spend a day as “guest director.” “I knew Quentin would respond to the material and I thought it would be a great chance for him to come down to Troublemaker Studios and see how it is to work with actors in a digital realm. Plus I shoot very fast, so having him there a day was really like having him there a week. We got so much done.”
Frank Miller also thought it would be cool. Miller: “It was fascinating working with Quentin because he has such a different style from Robert. All three of us share a pop culture sensibility and a macabre sense of humor so it was a good match. We were like three kids in a tree fort having a ball.”
Ultimately, Tarantino directed the sequence from “Big Fat Kill” in which Dwight and Jackie Boy drive through the rain with Dwight convinced that the dead Jackie Boy is talking to him. Tarantino was given free reign. Rodriguez: “We really wanted Quentin’s stamp on the scene. I knew he would deliver something distinct, and he came so prepared, it made Frank and I look like bums. He had his whole shot list plotted out, an idea for a unique look, and even had Clive Owen say his voice over out loud during the scene. (Clive had to step off set for 5 minutes to memorize his monologue, something he wasn’t expecting to record until much later. He impressed Quentin by stepping back on set and saying, “I think I got it.” Clive nailed it.”)
For the actors, the sudden directorial switchover was intriguing. Benicio Del Toro: “I think Robert and Quentin are two of the most interesting filmmakers on the planet right now and for Clive and I suddenly to be sitting there in front of both of them was pretty amazing. It could have been a recipe for chaos but it worked extremely well.”
Clive Owen: “To be told that another director was coming in just to do one scene was very unusual. But then when I saw Quentin, Robert and Frank together it all made sense. They were all trying to achieve the same thing in their own way and it felt very organic and natural.”
Meanwhile, Tarantino admits he can see the merits of digital. “Robert couldn’t have picked a scene that better illustrated the uses of digital filmmaking. You have this rain pouring down on the car, you have a ton of water hitting the car, and you want to have every water drop illuminated, just the way it’s drawn. I realized if I was shooting this on film, it would take forever to get that going, and the sounds would have been ruined. But instead of being stuck with capturing everything perfectly, it became entirely about the delivery and the performance. That was a lot of fun.”
But despite the success of their collaboration on SIN CITY, Rodriguez is setting his sights higher for their next meeting. “The next thing we do together, the price doubles,” he proclaims. “It’ll be a two dollar bill after this.”