Breathing life into a stark graphic style

In what could be the geek convergence event of 2005, director Robert Rodriguez is bringing Frank Miller’s “Sin City” graphic novels to the big screen with a cast that includes Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Mickey Rourke, Rosario Dawson, Alexis Bledel and Jessica Alba. The film is being shot on high-definition digital video on Rodriguez’s soundstages in Austin, Texas, and to achieve the pulp-noir, high-contrast black-and-white look of Miller’s comics, much of the background will be green-screened in later.

“It’s a real stylized thing,” explained Rodriguez, “and the backgrounds a lot of times are totally unrealistic, but that’s how Frank drew them. If you were to look at reality, snow wouldn’t photograph that way at night -- nothing would look like that -- but that’s the way he drew it.

“When I saw his books, they were just so striking and I thought, ‘Man, if I could use the technology that I’ve been learning to translate this to the screen the way he drew it, it would make other movies look like dinosaurs.’ You look closely and realize it’s not even possible to light something that way, it’s just a graphic trick of pen and ink.”

Rodriguez gained notoriety when he resigned from the Directors Guild so he could share credit for the film with Miller. Rodriguez says that although he wrote the adaptation, drawn from three of Miller’s many “Sin City” books, it was important that Miller be on board (and on-set) as a collaborator.

“This is more of a translation than an adaptation,” says Rodriguez. “His work in these books is so dead-on. They were really right just the way they were. We could have changed a lot of things, but that wouldn’t have made it better.”

Though the two had never met before this project, Rodriguez, who writes, directs, produces, shoots and scores his films, says he had a feeling they would get along. “When I looked at his book and it said drawn, inked, lettered and written by Frank Miller, I thought, ‘I know this guy.’ ”