Frank Miller
Frank Miller Talks 300
"Oh, I don't know," Miller modestly said. "I think this seems to be going rather well so I'm going with it. I think it says the source is drawn. Rather than build all this stuff and spend twice as much money and maybe three times as much time, you can actually do this new hybrid that's somewhere between animation and live action. It's the closest thing to bringing a cartoon to life. People are using the magic that is actors and everything film can do. I sat there stunned at a lot of this footage. I never saw this stuff coming. Zack blew me away."
The film's epic battle scenes are what scared some humility into the artist turned filmmaker. "Before I got to the set, they were slamming along through all these battle scenes. Maybe jokingly, I thought about killing Zack. At the time, I'd become a director so I thought, 'Maybe I'll just show up, be nice to everybody, take Zack out back, pop him, leave him in the snow.' But when I saw the battle scene with the immortals and saw what Zack was orchestrating, I'm like, 'Uh, Frank, you're a puppy. Wait for a couple more pictures before you try this.'"
The characters mimic the looks of Miller's drawings, including Xerxes with all his piercings. "What I wanted out of Xerxes when I was drawing the comic book was to have one figure that would show the sheer size and exotic qualities, of a very rich, very pleasure oriented culture. As I worked on it, he just got taller and taller and more little rimlets and stuff all over him to the point where I was driving my painter out of his mind. The idea was just to get across the opulence of the Persian empire, in contrast to the very stark, severe Spartans."
As impressed as he is with the film of 300, Miller has no regrets about his original vision. "It's really apples and oranges. There's nothing I'd bring back at this point. I'm very happy with the book. But I think what this team has put together through sheer dedication and verve and humor, some little bright eyed kid is going to have a story they can't get out of their head."
300 opens to theatres on March 9th, 2007.
For the video journals, stills, trailers, posters, early review, synopsis
and movie info, head over to the 300
Movie Page.
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