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What do you think this says about your visual style?
Frank Miller: “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 as it could be while using the magic that is actors and everything film can do. I sat here stunned at a lot of this footage. I never saw this stuff coming. Zack blew me away.”
Zack Snyder: “Also, for us, I think that it’s hard when you look at the graphic novel and you think about the philosophy of like, ‘Let’s make this into a movie,’ when you have a book that never presupposes a visual approach. It may be in the text, but I think that when the text is an image you have an obligation to respect that. That’s kind of why, for me anyway, why the movie looks like that.”
Now that Sin City and 300 are on the screen, how would you feel about Ronin or The Dark Knight Returns?
Frank Miller: “You know what? (Laughing) It just takes a phone call.”
Watchmen, Cobalt 60 and The Spirit – are we going to see these in green screen or shot on regular sets?
Frank Miller: “The Spirit is going to be green screen.”
Zack Snyder: “Cobalt I don’t know about, as far as what we’ll do with it. But as far as Watchmen goes, it’s going to be somewhere in between.”
Frank Miller: “A hybrid of a hybrid.”
Zack Snyder: “Yes, exactly. Crazy though that might seem.”
Zack, how did you convince people you were the guy to bring this project to life?
Zack Snyder: “I think that’s a credit to Warner Bros and all the guys there. I feel like they never doubted for a second. I was like, ‘Dawn wasn’t that good, guys.’ You know? I didn’t bring it up because I thought it might dissuade them (laughing).
I think they felt that I was so clear with my passion for this. I’ve got to say that the thing about Dawn is that in attitude, it’s all about tone. Dawn is all about the tone of the movie. When I was making the film the studio was actually kind of mad. Universal was kind of mad at me because there wasn’t a lot of doves or wind. They’re like, ‘You’re a commercial director. Make it look like a commercial. Why does it look like this?’ I said, ‘It’s just not appropriate. This is like a cult movie; it should look like a cult movie not like a Hollywood slick freak-out. It should be a love letter to the original movie, not a copy or mock of the original movie.’ That’s kind of what I was trying to do. They’re just like, ‘Okay, you’re thinking about it way too hard.’ (laughing) And so I just feel like the thing with the guys at Warner Bros, they said, ‘Okay, we get the movie.’ I feel like they got the movie to the point where they were ready to bank on not particularly what I shot there, but the tone and that I understood what I was making. I think that’s different. Does that make any sense? I’m not sure it does. I can talk in circles – that’s how I got the movie made.”
What other Frank Miller property would you like to tackle?
Zack Snyder: “Me? Frank Miller? He’s tackling all the Frank Miller properties. I stole one. I lucked out. “
