Frank Miller Talks 'The Spirit'

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

SCI FI Wire spoke to [Frank] Miller by telephone on Dec. 13. Following are edited excerpts from that exclusive interview. The Spirit opens on Christmas Day.

Everyone's talking about the visuals of your film, but how about the screenplay? How hard or easy was it to take the comic-book saga and adapt it into a script?

Miller: It was very difficult, actually. At first I approached Will Eisner like he was Raymond Chandler, and I then realized that he was O. Henry. He wrote very short stories, and it was a matter of adapting my favorite of his short stories and then expanding on them. My favorite of his short stories was a two-parter he did [on] Sand Saref, and I based the entire move on that. Then I extended it outward to involve his villain, the Octopus, and wonderful characters like Silken Floss and the new characters that I'd created, like Morgenstern [Stana Katic]. And, of course, Commissioner Dolan [Dan Lauria] had to be all through it.

» Comments

Patrick Boyer: Feb 13th 2009 2:44AM

The Spirit was an ok Movie,Not worth Buying but a good Movie.

Tincho: Mar 1st 2013 1:06AM

Pretty interesting stuff Bill. York Entertainment -- your old stinpomg grounds. Did you see that happen a few times at York? Scribe sells D2DVD script then goes on to sell a script intended for theater release. * * * What do you think of Inktips though? Basically $50 for 6 months -- industry people see your script (maybe). In Ian Holt's case it worked though. I'm curious if you think there's any value in it. I wonder if you couldn't put the same $50 into query letters or whatever to production companies and start building a relationship with prospective buyers that way. Signed, Curious.

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