From Spin to Sin

So I mentioned “Sin City” last time around.
Over the weekend I was reading some information on IMDb that I found especially interesting, all of which add to my general sense of excitement about the movie and my desire to see it when it finally arrives.
For the first interesting thing, I have to go back in time more than ten years.
The year, in fact, is 1990. The movie “Robocop II” hits the theaters, with a screenplay by Frank Miller.
Yes, that’s the same Frank Miller who later went on to write the various Sin City stories that are the basis for the movie.
The movie was so-so at best. Certainly it didn’t live up to my expectations for a movie written by Frank Miller.
The worst was yet to come, though, in the form of “Robocop III,” the screenplay for which also had Miller’s name on it.
To put it mildly, the movie was terrible.
I’ve since learned that the screenplays that were used for the movie were radically altered from what Frank first submitted, by many hands other than Frank’s, and I’ve been assured by various people who’ve read his original work, that, had Frank’s work been filmed unaltered, the movies would have been vastly superior.
The whole experience left a bad taste in Frank’s mouth, and he turned his back on Hollywood, steadfastly refusing to sell the rights to any of his work for a film treatment.
Enter director and Sin City fan Robert Rodriguez, who, without either Frank’s knowledge or permission, hired Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton to film one of the Sin City stories entitled “The Customer is Always Right.”
After completing it, he showed it to Frank saying that, if he liked it, the short would be the opening sequence to a Sin City movie, and if he didn’t like it, well, he had a short film that he could keep and do with what he liked.
Obviously, Frank liked it, and the original short is included in that trailer I provided a link to a while back (though the odds are the trailer is gone by now).
What I also learned is that, assuming that the movie does well, Rodriguez intends to make many Sin City films, adapting other stories to the big screen.
In making the upcoming one, though, Rodriguez ended up resigning from the Director’s Guild of America. Why? Because he wanted Frank to be credited as co-director, and because Frank isn’t a member of the DGA, that would be against DGA rules. Apparently becoming a member of the DGA is a hassle, so to get around the rule, Rodriguez resigned.
It goes to show just how committed he is to the project, which bodes well for its quality, I think.
Like “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” Sin City is being shot entirely without sets. All of the backgrounds are being added digitally.
However, unlike "Sky Captain," Sin City is also being shot on High Definition digital cameras, rather than on film, so it can be considered the first fully-digital (excluding the actors, of course) feature “film.”
All of these things, I think, add to the underlying quality of the material to make it something that I’m eagerly anticipating.
On a slightly related note, I read a brief interview with actress Carla Gugino, who plays the role of “Lucille,” a parole officer in the Sin City movie. The interview had more to do with her role in a Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall,” but it did touch briefly on her role in Sin City. She’s quoted as saying, “I hold a gun, clad only in a G-string and shadows.”
My response to that is “Mmm…Carla Gugino.”
I dig Carla Gugino. A lot.
I haven’t seen too many of her movies, though I have seen a few.
She’s probably most known for her role as the mom in the “Spy Kids” movies (which were, sadly, also directed by Sin City’s Robert Rodriguez), which I haven't seen.
The first time I ever noticed her was when she stripped down to her bra in “Snake Eyes,” and ever since, whenever I do happen to see a movie that she’s in, I take notice.
She doesn’t seem to photograph too well, though, or at least not always. She never looks “bad” (as far as I’m concerned, at least), but she seldom looks as beautiful as she does in motion.
In something of an amusing twist, one of her first big breaks was on the TV series, “Spin City.”
I actually (very) briefly dated a girl who looked a bit like a younger, less voluptuous version of Carla Gugino. Oddly enough, I seem to recall her mentioning a movie on our first date that (I later discovered) starred none other than Carla Gugino.
Obviously things with that girl didn’t work out, though I never found out why. After what seemed like a really auspicious (nearly 8 hour long) first date, she just continually failed to return my calls, and ultimately I just gave up.
I had nearly given up even before our second (and last) date, despite how well the first one had gone.
Towards the end of that first date, as she was driving me home (at the time, I didn’t have a car or a license), eschewing tact, out of the blue she said, “Are you going to call me?”
I told her that, in fact, I had every intention of calling her, and she said, “Good, because I had a really good time, and I’m sick of going out with a guy once, having a good time, and never hearing from him again.”
She made me assure her again that I would call before the date ended.
And, being (for the most part) a man of my word, I did call her. She wasn’t home, so I left a message.
I didn’t hear back from her, so I gave it a couple of times again. I got her machine.
I found out, eventually, that she was out of town, as she had injured herself and gone home to her parents’ place to recuperate.
So, when she came back to town, we eventually arranged to get together.
It was an odd date, occurring during my lunch hour (at the time, I worked in the evening), and it ended up being something of a double date.
The date didn’t go well. I was on a date with three people who worked together, in a bar for the first time in the seven months (at that time) since I’d quit drinking, while karaoke was being performed. Because the three of them worked together, they inevitably began talking about work, and since I didn’t work with them, I couldn’t really join in.
So the date wasn’t exactly a smashing success.
Still, though I thought she had lost interest in me after that lousy evening of me sitting there like a lump, since I had nothing to contribute to the conversation, and I could barely hear anyway, when we parted at the end of it, she said ran her hand down my arm, and in a voice that I felt in my left pocket, she said, “Call me.”
So I did, and invariably got her machine, and never got a call back.
The really irritating thing was that the person who’d set us up in the first place, and who worked with her at his second job, and with me at his primary job, kept reporting back to me that she claimed to still be interested whenever he confronted her about me, and that she wasn’t blowing me off.
But never returning my calls and getting me off the phone as soon as possible whenever I did actually get a hold of her strikes me as an odd way to not blow someone off…
But oh well.
(As an aside, the co-worker who had set us up in the first place, was one of the people who went on that craptacular double date. It’s worth noting, though, that his companion for the evening was NOT his girlfriend, with whom he lived and had a daughter.)
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Carla Gugino clad only in a G-string and shadows…
Damn, I’m really looking forward to Sin City.