It's a terrific interview.
Here are some highlights:
CCM: Is there a specific pallet to this film
like there was for Sin City?
FM: There is. It is in full color, but it’s less a
naturalistic use of color than a psychological
one, a dramatic use of color. I think color is
a very powerful dramatic weapon. You’ll see
things getting red behind people when they
get angry.
CCM: You shot The Spirit utilizing the same
green-screen technology that was used in Sin
City and 300. Are the backgrounds you’re
laying in going to have the peculiar Eisner
cityscape feel to them and also some of your
Sin City?
FM: The backgrounds in The Spirit that
Stu Maschwitz is working on are, I think,
gloriously real. They’re emotionally true to the
movie. Any Eisner fan will recognize certain
references to his work that are planted in there.
You know, as I told him from the start, we’ll do
the most magnificent sewer grate anybody has
ever seen. And we do offer water tanks galore.
But it’s a mythic city, and it’s created for film
so it is its own creation using the best talents
available.
FM: The Spirit comic looks like the 1940s because
that’s what was around him, but Eisner never
considered it to be a period piece. And one of
the many connections between Eisner and me
is our deep love of New York City, and New
York City is impossible to trap in time. It’s so
much of a Pompeii. It’s constantly rebuilding
itself, but keeping its old personality at the
same time. So as a cartoonist you want to write
stories that are fun to draw. And as a director,
you want to work on a story that’s got really
good-looking stuff. Eisner clearly felt the same
way. In writing and then shooting The Spirit,
I filled it like I did Sin City with vintage cars
and beautiful women. And the movie really is
in many ways a love letter to New York City.
FM: When I first met Sam Jackson,
I told him that I was sitting across the table
from an atom bomb and that I needed it to
only go off twice in my movie and I needed
for him to keep the radioactivity down until
his eruptions. With The Octopus,
yeah, we had a pair of gloves in the sense of
a nemesis that was kept deliberately out of
sight and undefined by Eisner. The only way
to take the work of a short story writer and
to adapt it to the long-form of a screenplay
was to flesh out his nemesis because, you
know, at first I felt that Eisner was of the
school of Raymond Chandler another
favorite novelist of mine. I realized he
really owed a lot more to O. Henry, and his
short story sensibility needed some healthy
expansion. So with Sam, I had the perfect
nemesis for The Spirit. And what I hope
to do is the kind of villain that I’ve always
wished they’d do in the Batman movies.
Sure he’s very strange and eccentric, but I
think he’s going to scare the crap out of you.
FM: We auditioned a lot of people for The
Spirit. One of my preconditions coming onto
the project was that we find someone who
was not well known to play the part. I didn’t
want it to be a vehicle for someone who was
familiar. My model, in a way, was Chris Reeve’s
Superman, meaning some actor I’d never seen
before who I got to meet as Superman. I want
the audience to meet The Spirit as The Spirit.
Gabriel stood out because, first and foremost,
Hollywood produces a great many, very good
male actors, but very, very few who are able to
portray men as men. He’s a terrifically trained
actor, and he and I sat down in his trailer the
first day he was on the set and we made a pact,
really, because I said that either we’re going to
be partners or we’re in for three long months
because Gabriel’s job was the most important
job there. He was the captain of the cast, and
in my office I had a quote from Raymond
Chandler hanging over my desk, which said,
“He is the hero. He is everything.” This sort
of story is really a piece of architecture where
everything’s built to portray the hero. And at the
center of it has to be one hell of a performance,
and I really got it out of Gabriel.
CCM: Finally, what has been the coolest
thing about making The Spirit for you?
FM: That word got used a lot on the set. I
think it might just be seeing The Spirit flip
through the air like a little boy and slide up
the roof of one side of a water tower, stumble
and then slide down the other side like a kid
playing in the snow. That’s a very
Eisner moment. The fact that we got a
take with a stumble in it made it The Spirit.
