Sin City: A Dame to Kill For – The Cast and Crew Speak!
Steve Barton
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You know you’ve arrived – not just as a filmmaker but as a human being – when President Barack Obama comes over to your pad to hang out poolside and have some lunch. Though Robert Rodriguez was coy about that bit of info slipping out at the Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For press conference in Beverly Hills last week.
He did admit he made pizza pies for the prez. “Yes, we had POTUS pizza,” he quipped.
Also on hand for the Dimension Films event were Rodriguez’s co-director, Frank Miller, and stars Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Eva Green and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Based on Miller’s Dark Horse Comics series, the sequel includes two segments derived from existing storylines A Dame to Kill For and Just Another Saturday Night plus brand-new original stories The Big Fat Kill and The Long, Bad Night. Favorite characters seen in the first film are back (with a vengeance, of course!): Alba as exotic dancer Nancy, Bruce Willis as Hartigan, Mickey Rourke as muscle Marv, and there are some new faces as well — Green as femme fatale Ava, Gordon-Levitt as lucky Johnny, and Brolin slips in seamlessly as Dwight (who was played by Clive Owen in the first film).
The sequel has Rodriguez and Miller recreating the stark, dark and contrasty look of the first flick, shooting entirely against a green screen and in 7D. The scenery was added later, and they took great care in digitally manipulating the lighting and design in post-production. “It’s like being an artist,” said Rodriguez. “You pencil out your sketch first, then you fill it in.”
For Miller’s part, he thinks the whole process is rather like reverse-engineering. “We take a movie and make it into a book.”
Q: What was it like shooting with so much green screen?
Josh Brolin: You have to find the cadence. The cadence doesn’t come to you. It’s the kind of movie you really have to dive into. You can’t manipulate the movie. And you can’t manipulate Frank Miller’s mind.
Frank Miller: Many have tried.
Miller said that although some things are ingrained – “I draw the way I draw,” regardless of whether or not he knows who might be playing certain individuals in a film – in some ways he’s evolved as a storyteller. “I am far more aware of character than I used to be,” he said.
Q: How did you newbies feel, stepping into the legendary Sin City?
Josh Brolin: I was a big fan of the first movie, but this one is different. The opportunity to be able to do it was really unnerving, but when I watched it afterwards, it was one of the few movies that I’ve done where I thought, ‘Thank God I’m in this movie. I’m really proud to be in this movie.’ I would go see a few times if weren’t in it, but because I’m in it, it would seem pretentious.
Q: What did you like best about it, Joe?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: I liked the cover page of the script, where it said, “Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller.” [What I really liked about it was] you get to become a cartoon in a way. We’re not in the real world, in Sin City.
In fact, Levitt revealed that it was totally unreal from Day One. On his very first day or work, he shot two surreal scenes, back-to-back: one with Christopher Lloyd and one with Lady Gaga!
Eva Green: Playing Ava, it was a challenge to still be believable and lie all the time… she’s so bad, so that was very fun. No conscience. No sense of right or wrong. She’s pretty evil. But it was interesting to play all these different women in one.
Though the actors had some challenges, the co-directors’ mettle was also tested. It’s not easy to top an unforgettable first film, or at least try to compare. Dashing the hopes of Starbucks scribes everywhere, Rodriguez said the secret to great writing is a great environment. “Everything around you needs to be inspiring,” he said.
Q: How has Nancy evolved since the original film?
Jessica Alba: Nancy is devastated. She’s an alcoholic, she’s still dancing, and she’s not happy about it. That wasn’t easy, all those skimpy costumes, because I’m a mom. I have two kids. I run a company. I’m not this drunk stripper, so I really had to get into that headspace of the character. But I liked playing a character who goes from being a sweet, innocent, naive victim to this very powerful warrior who takes her life into her own hands and gets revenge.
Revenge is indeed the name of the gory game in Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For. Although it’s not a horror film, the body count is just as high as any – not to mention eye-gouges, eviscerations, bludgeoning and blood (mostly white… but just as flowing as the red stuff). See for yourself when the film opens nationwide on August 22, 2014.
Following the groundbreaking film that grossed $160 million worldwide, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For reunites Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller for the next chapter in this trailblazing series.
Weaving together stunning visuals with an uncompromising, hard-boiled plot, the film promises more lurid tales from the various residents of Basin City. With a star-studded cast that includes Eva Green, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jessica Alba, Juno Temple, Josh Brolin, Jaime King, Rosario Dawson, Mickey Rourke, Jamie Chung, Lady Gaga, and Christopher Meloni, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For ensures an experience like no other!
Related News: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For archive
Synopsis
Co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller reunite to bring Miller’s visually stunning Sin City graphic novels back to the screen in SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR. Weaving together two of Miller’s classic stories with new tales, the town’s most hard-boiled citizens cross paths with some of its more reviled inhabitants. SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR is the follow-up to Rodriguez and Miller’s 2005 groundbreaking film FRANK MILLER’S SIN CITY.
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