Violence and the Women of “Sin City:” “Sin City” is ultra violent but the film’s shot in a way as to make it all appear so over the top and stylized that Robert Rodriguez didn’t have a problem obtaining just an R rating from the MPAA. Rosario Dawson responded to the question of the film’s violence by saying, “If you’re asking me the question of if women are going to want to see this specifically for that reason, I think absolutely. She’s standing there and yeah, he punches her across the face, but she threatens to chop someone’s pecker off. You know, like all the women who are working in Old Town, we take care of ourselves. We’re very in control of what we are, we know what our assets are, and we make money off of it. We call the shots, which I think is very powerful. I think it’s a very even keel sort of strength between the men and the women. The guys get their balls ripped off. The girls threaten to do it – and will. And I think it’s a pretty tough town on both sides.”
Green Screen Work: “It was just incredible, I think, with the green screen. You’re standing there in this outfit just completely naked and vulnerable to everything and this crazy dialogue and just going, ‘Okay, I’m just going to trust.’ And with Robert’s experience, I was kind of lucky because I came in on the very last segment of shooting so I was there three months into it. So I got to actually see a lot of other footage. I got the benefit of being able to look at it and go, ‘Okay, yeah, this does look really amazing. I’m just going to do whatever he tells me to do.’
But it was crazy because you’re doing like… You have two people standing there and you’re doing an over, over one and we would have to move, not the cameras. Normally everything moves around you and we would have to do everything to kind of go along with what the actual framing was. And they had this computer effect where he would actually take the actual framing from each, like the books themselves became the storyboards. And every single thing that we ended up shooting were exactly to the proportions and standing and distance as to what the actual frames were. So, yeah, I did the shot with like Mickey Rourke that they had shot three months earlier where I’m throwing handcuffs at him and I was never in the room. But they were able to set that up. It was just amazing.
The entire process was just magic of talent and understanding of the technology. And that’s where it really comes… You know, a lot of people are using all this technology and HD stuff in order to do really cool special effects and things like that, but they’re abusing it because they don’t understand film. They don’t understand story and they use it as a crutch rather than a tool. And this is one where he really just blew me away. It’s amazing,” said Dawson.
Rosario Dawson on Working With Clive Owen: “It was wonderful. I mean, when I saw [him] in ‘Closer’ as well afterwards, I completely understood, because [his] sense of humor is just wicked. I just had so much fun working with [him].
It’s such a crazy character and such crazy dialogue. And we both laughed about it and then went gung ho for it. I mean, I’m wearing… It was funny. The first time I walked out in my outfit and I had this robe on, everyone was being really good about covering up and stuff. I remember I was taking it off and [Clive Owen was] like [makes a face], ‘Okay, so I’ve got to act with that!’ (Laughing) I’m like, ‘Yeah, exactly! I’ve got to act with this as well.’ We’re doing these scenes and he’s backhanding me across the face… It was so amazing. He was so game, I was so game. It was awesome!”
