成人快手

Frank Miller has been scribbling comics since the 70s, helping to shape superheroes from Daredevil to Batman and the X-Men character Wolverine. In the early 90s he made the transition to movies with screenplays for two Robocop sequels, which were sadly rather too mechanical. Much better is the neo-noir Sin City, which marks his directorial debut in partnership with Robert Rodriguez. Miller also adapted the script from his own series of graphic novels.

Before Robert Rodriguez came along, you turned down many Hollywood offers for the Sin City series. Why?

Well, once you get used to saying no it gets easy. I said no to Hollywood all the way, but I said yes to Austin [in Texas where Sin City was shot]. Robert [Rodriguez] had a whole different approach to how to make the movie and a whole vision of how he wanted to produce it, so it became irresistible. Then, of course, he introduces me to the actors and I was smitten.

What was the practical reality of co-directing with Rodriguez? Were you polite and took turns with each scene?

No, we didn't separate the scenes, we just jumped all over each other and drove each other crazy and had a great time. At the beginning we had discussed breaking up the three stories between us and I said I'd kind of like to do The Big Fat Kill [headlined by Clive Owen] because it's such an absurd romp. As we started working and preparing, Robert just said, "Look, you're going to be here every day, right?" And I said, "Sure," and he said, "Well, let's just tag team the whole job." As he was editing the movie and I came to kibitz [offer commentary], we were going through it and we couldn't remember who had suggested what shot. I mean it was such a brotherhood between us that it's impossible to separate us on this job.

How important do you think ideas of chivalry and honour are when dealing with film noir?

Well I think that chivalry, honour, friendship, and of course, romance are all important in film noir, as is the inner darkness of the central character and certainly the villains. What people often get wrong about noir and the reason why so many modern film noirs fall flat is that they ignore the inner darkness. They really just light it in a dark way and so you end up with kind of spookily lit, innocent stories. The great noir like the stuff with Richard Widmark and Robert Mitchum? Sure, it's lit dark but mostly they got inside your head and drove you crazy and that to me is noir. Without Sin there is no virtue so Sin City is there to find virtue as much as it does the sin.

Jessica Alba's exotic dancer classically combines sin and virtue. Did she live up to your idea of the fantasy woman?

You know my favourite moment was... Well, we worked this gal so hard that I couldn't believe she was able to hold up for hour after hour with all this dancing and once Robert said, "Cut," she just simply and elegantly fell onto her belly at the edge of the stage because there was no energy left in her. But one of the things I loved about her performance and her dancing was something that was always in my head about the character [Nancy Callahan]. It was that, sure, there's a bunch of drooling louts looking at her the whole time, but she was doing it for herself. She was just very contained and I thought that was quite lovely.

What was most exciting about your first foray behind the camera?

I really wanted to see Frodo [Elijah Wood] eat people.