Clive Owen and Benicio Del Toro play Dwight and Jackie Boy, respectively, in Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s Sin City. ComingSoon.net/SuperheroHype.com talked to both actors about their roles in the film, based on Miller’s graphic novels.
Owen and Del Toro talked about coming on board the project. “I was just thrilled to be asked to be involved,” said Owen. “Robert sent me the graphic novel with a 10-minute thing that he’s already filmed and it looked hugely exciting. I wasn’t familiar with Frank’s work at all, and I read the graphic novel, The Big Fat Kill, and thought it was the wildest most imaginative thing I’ve come across in ages, so I was just thrilled to be asked to be involved with it.”
“I was approached by Robert,” Del Toro said. “I think we met at the Vanity Fair thing and he said something really strange, like ‘Don’t cut your hair.’ And my hair was pretty long; I go, ‘OK.’ Then I met him here at the Four Seasons and he showed me-he had done a trailer of the opening sequence of the movie and it just looked amazing. I wasn’t familiar with the books; I was familiar with Frank’s work in Batman and stuff and since then, my preparation was really talking to the Wizard – he got that nickname, I gave (Robert) that nickname…We just walked in and everything was green and I had seen how it looked already cause he had shown me the beginning of the movie, the opening sequence. It was like being in the office of the Wizard of Oz.”
Frank Miller was greatly involved in directing the film and Owen enjoyed working with him. “Having Frank there was absolutely essential for everything. He’s the god that conjured up this sort of crazy world. I saw the film yesterday for the first time, and I have to say I think this guy is a genius. I was blown away by it. It’s that world. I felt at the end of the movie like I’d been taken to some extraordinary place I’d never been before, and I think Frank’s vision and world is that, and this guy has just gone and created it on film.”
The film was shot entirely using green screen technology. Del Toro discussed working with it. “For me, it was intimidating when you walk in and everything was green and it looked like puke. But after that it was like, it reminded me of theater-I trained as a theater actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend, one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by. So it reminded me a little bit of that and that made it fun, going back to basics in some ways for me.”
Owen’s character in the film has a distinct American accent and he was forced to learn one for the movie. “It was a concern when Robert called me to ask me to do it because it was a few weeks’ time and I started to be concerned about how much voice over there was, but Robert was very cool about it and said ‘Listen, there’s a huge amount of voice over. Don’t sweat it. Just concentrate on the dialogue. We’ve got plenty of time.’ He was so healthy about it that (I) felt completely fine about just going for it. Also, the thing about those graphic novels is it’s easy to underestimate them. Frank Miller is not only a fantastic artist, but the language he uses, the dialogue that we lifted straight from the book, is really fantastic dialogue. It has the right rhythms. It’s very smart and very witty. So, the whole thing was really easy because you’ve got such strong guidelines and the rhythm of the dialogue is dictated by what’s on the page. You read it and you know how to speak it because it’s got a very classic noir rhythm to it.”
Sin City hits theaters on April 1st.
Source: Andrew Weil
