Author gets high profile in ‘City’

“Sin City” hits theaters today with something that is every author’s dream: a possessory credit -- in this case for Frank Miller, who created the graphic novels from which the film is drawn. The “Frank Miller’s Sin City” that moviegoers will see on-screen, however, is not accompanied anywhere by a screenplay or writing credit.

Directors Robert Rodriguez and Miller felt that naming it “Frank Miller’s Sin City” was all that was needed because the movie is drawn directly from Miller’s graphic novels, a Dimension Films spokeswoman said.

“Robert never adapted it as a screenplay. They took the text directly from the book and that’s what the actors used,” the spokeswoman said.

It’s the kind of above-the-title profile movie directors assume all the time, but sometimes it’s afforded to high-profile authors such as Stephen King.

This might not merit much attention, except that Rodriguez felt so passionately about recognizing Miller’s singular vision that he quit the Directors Guild when the organization balked at allowing him to share directing credit. In addition to attaching the author to the title, Rodriguez also put Miller’s name before his own in the “directed by” credit.

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R. Kinsey Lowe