Re: RARA-AVIS: At the Movies... (Gone, Baby, Gone)

From: Curt Purcell ( curtpurcell@hotmail.com)
Date: 29 Oct 2007


> Would either the graphic novel or the film of SIN CITY have
> >survived as a straight prose story, without the visuals?

Oh for crying out loud, they're a graphic novel and a film. I appreciate good storytelling in prose as much as anyone, but since these were originally conceived for visual media, and the visuals are essentially part of the appeal, what's the point in trying to assess them "without the visuals"?

> I took the movie to be the new
> millennium's equivalent of what was once called "camp," a sort of
> surreal self parody. I loved watching Mickey Rourke play a role that
> appeared to me to be an ideal of his own public image, drawn to the
> extreme and illogical end. My impression is that the movie did the
> same to the hardboil genre itself. Sort of a slap in the face to fans
> like us that this is what we enjoy and take seriously, to which our
> only logical response must be to laugh and ask, "Is that all you got?"

I didn't take it that way at all, and neither did anyone involved, if the commentary tracks are any indication. The original graphic novels were Miller's personal distillation of the essence of the genre (at least as he saw it), and that's what excited Rodriguez about bringing SIN CITY to the screen.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 29 Oct 2007 EDT