Will Eisner: A Spirited Life

By Emmett Furey, Staff Writer

Mon, April 21st, 2008 at 11:58AM PST

(Updated: Tue, April 22nd, 2008 at 1:19PM PST)

On Saturday at New York Comic-Con 2008, writer/director Frank Miller, star Eva Mendes and producers Deborah Del Prete and Michael Uslan were on hand to talk about the upcoming big screen adaptation of Will Eisner’s “The Spirit,” and CBR News was there.

MTV’s Kurt Loder moderated the “Spirit” panel, and touted Will Eisner as one of the pioneers who invented modern comics as we know them. Frank Miller himself was influenced by Eisner.

Loder asked Miller how he was able to distill 12 years of “Spirit” stories into one movie. Miller said it wasn’t a matter of distillation but one of discovery. “I started out trying to apply a novelist’s rules to the project, but found it didn’t apply at all,” Miller said. Instead, Miller started by cherry picking the elements that he thought had to be in a “Spirit” movie. Miller said working with Prete on the script was an “amazing collaboration,” and that she was both a great storyteller and had a great deal of discipline. “She was there for every show, a bulwark against the forces of darkness.”

Mendes seconded Miller’s sentiment. “She is the badass of badass female producers,” Mendes said. “We couldn’t have done it without Deborah.”

Loder asked Miller how he arrived at the look for the film. “I threw out everything Eisner did,” Miller joked. In all seriousness, “I knew if I erected a rusty monument to ‘The Spirit,’ [Eisner] would rise from the dead and strangle me.” Miller was determined that the “Spirit” movie would be as bold as the source material was when it was first published in the ‘30s. The visual look of the “Spirit” film is the natural extension of the look pioneered in the “Sin City” film, which Miller thinks lends itself to Eisner’s story. “For purists, it may be a bit of shock,” Miller admitted.

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Labels: Deborah Del Prete, Emmett Furey, Eva Mendes, Kurt Loder, Michael Uslan, MTV, New York Comic-Con, The Spirit movie, Will Eisner

Comic book fans young and old at the NY Comic Con this weekend walked out on the early premiere of the trailer for Frank Miller’s Will Eisner’s The Spirit. In an interview with MTV director Frank Miller defended his film’s look by saying that he has "forged ahead" with Eisner’s creation rather than produce what he calls "something dusty from off the shelf."

That’s all well and good, Frank… but from this trailer The Spirit looks far more like Sin City 2 than Will Eisner’s The Spirit. Not that this is a bad thing ( I fully enjoy Sin City), but… what’s the deal?

Click here to keep reading an alternative take on Frank Miller's Will Eisner's The Spirit movie trailer's first screening!

Labels: Frank Miller, MTV, New York Comic-Con, Sin City 2, The Spirit movie, Will Eisner

By Larry Carroll
MTV News
Nov 15 2007

'I am a kid in a candy store,' first-time director says of unlikely potential blockbuster.

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — You have more objects in your living room than are present on the massive soundstage housing the production of "Will Eisner's 'The Spirit.' " The director is a Hollywood newcomer, on the verge of his 51st birthday. Samuel L. Jackson is wearing a black-and-white fur coat, with similarly colored eyebrows to match. Welcome to the set of Tinseltown's most unlikely potential blockbuster.

"This is the only way I have been trained to direct, and I love it because it brings [directing] closer to the art of the page," Frank Miller explained this week, moving from his "Sin City" co-directing apprenticeship to his very own Home-Depot-size warehouse drenched in green. "I am a kid in a candy store."

The candy store is called "Will Eisner's 'The Spirit,' " based on a 67-year-old character and the decades-long friendship Miller shared with its creator. Eisner may not have lived long enough to see actors like Jackson, Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johannson and Gabriel Macht bring his eccentric characters to the silver screen, but Miller still feels his presence every day.

"I was just 13 years old when I came across Will Eisner's 'The Spirit,' published by Jim Warren, and was blown away," the graphic novelist-turned-filmmaker remembered. "I thought it was somebody new to comics, because it was so far ahead of anything else coming out. I felt it, religiously. There was one night when I picked up the latest issue of 'The Spirit,' and I was so excited, I had to stop by a lamppost in Vermont where I lived and read it on the spot. That was the Sand Saref story, which is now the basis of this movie."

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Labels: Eva Mendes, Frank Miller, Gabriel Macht, MTV, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Will Eisner's The Spirit movie