Frank Miller

Frank Miller (0:24)

My very first note that I wrote down, in fact, about Sin City at all, was I wrote Conan in a trench coat, because I wanted to bring out an absolutely barbaric element to an urban setting, so it would feel nothing like a cop show or a private eye story or any of that, and that it would cut loose with real savagery.

Rick Rubin (0:48)

Do you typically have a name right from the start for a character?

Frank Miller (0:52)

Marvel just leapt into my head as a name. I had different names and they all were such cliches, and they sounded like private eyes and all of that.

One day I just went, his name's Marv.

Rick Rubin (1:06)

That's great.

Frank Miller (1:07)

Like the most non tough guy name I could have come up with.

Rick Rubin (1:11)

Then the characters, would you say they flower out of the world?

Frank Miller (1:17)

I guess so. It's very vague at the first. I had to have the world for the character to emerge because there had to be a sense of what he would be up against and what place created him.

Rick Rubin (1:31)

How long would it be before there's a scene?

Frank Miller (1:34)

Well, I don't know how it is for you, but scenes leap to my head. They just bolt into my head. I usually have the very first scene of the story down before I have any idea where it's going.

Rick Rubin (1:48)

Are they typically in order like that?

Frank Miller (1:50)

It's pretty much like that. Again, getting back to Sin City because it seems to be the best example. I knew for a fact that this brute who was such a loser and so filled with self-loathing would wake up next to this goddess who had picked him up at a bar and he had had this wild night with her and had fallen passionately in love that first night that he'd wake up and she'd be dead next to him. I just knew that for a fact.

I just felt that was a savagely compelling opening. The fun came on figuring out what the hell that meant.

Rick Rubin (2:32)

It's great. You said the first note you wrote for Sin City was Marv is like Conan in a trench coat.

Frank Miller (2:39)

Yes.

Rick Rubin (2:40)

Typically, how many notes might you make before you start writing?

Frank Miller (2:45)

Straight ones all over the place.

Rick Rubin (2:47)

Lots?

Frank Miller (2:48)

Well, yes. Sometimes I'll charge ahead and then the next day, I'll write a gazillion stray notes, sometimes on post-its and different notes.

Rick Rubin (2:57)

Tell me what some other notes might sound like.

Frank Miller (3:00)

Well, the first Sex Confederacy, because I had just been to Texas and I was really struck by how forceful and intense and powerful Southern women were in these very macho states, and how they went against what most people's expectations are. I thought, okay, then let's just take this to the cartoon level, and basically have it be that Southern women have taken over the South and made it the most feminist part of America.

So it's this cartoon thinking, but I found it delicious.

Rick Rubin (3:46)

Do they usually come from things you notice in real life?

Frank Miller (3:50)

I think the best ones do.

So other things are just reactions. I find that a lot of good ideas come from seeing something, seeing somebody really screw it, just screw the pooch and go, man, if you just done this, you would have had something really cool. I'm just going ahead and doing that. And by the time it's done, nobody even would recognize it as having to, anything to do with what I was reacting to.

Rick Rubin (4:18)

Like missed opportunities.

Frank Miller (4:20)

Yes, and the creative act to me is one where you have to embrace the unpredictabilities and go down those back alleys. And there's this weird places. And what I always tell people just coming in is I always say, make mistakes, make tons of mistakes.

They're going to be your best friends.

Rick Rubin (4:42)

Do you typically write too much?

Frank Miller (4:45)

I tend to flock toward too little. When I do my second pass, I go like, okay, Frank, this is haiku.

I was thinking that I was playing guru, and this was just so good that my shit don't stink. I've got to either soften it or sweeten it or just clarify things. I mean, I criticized early on by my director I work with who complains saying, you just write too tight. And I still don't entirely agree with him, because I mean, I find that most writing that's done, particularly for the screen, is pretty damn flabby. But at the same time, he had a point that you can be so tight that it starts to feel as if you're withholding.