Frank Miller

Getting your book made into a movie has got to be a great event for an author. Or is it? Well if you care about money, it is. But is money all you care about? (I see you nodding over there!) But seriously, there are some writers who actually care more about their stories than money.

And Frank Miller is one of them. His success began as a comic book artist, and he was a very good one. Then he went on to write comic book stories, too. His first break into Hollywood (I think) came with the screenplay he wrote for Robocop III. I don’t think that endeavor made him into a hot commodity for the big screen, because I know he went back to comics. That was his bread and butter.

And like a lot of comic book talent, he branched off into his own comic line. Big names in comics did that, like Jim Lee, (Wildcats,) and Todd McFarlane, (Spawn) to name a couple.

But Frank Miller was tops in the genre. And he had a lot of fans, one of them a Hollywood director, Robert Rodriguez, who approached Miller with an offer to make his graphic novel, Sin City, into a movie.

Now Frank Miller knows that movie people have an arrogant attitude. They believe that they are superior to comic book writers, and they think that they have to change the stories and the characters to be worthy of the big screen. And almost invariably, the stories and the characters suffer as a result.

So Frank Miller said no. He didn’t care how much money Hollywood threw at him. Money was NOT his objective. His story was ultimate in his mind. Now how about that for a writer with integrity!

But Rodriguez told Miller that not only would he not change Miller’s story, but that he would let Miller co-direct the movie so that he would know first hand that his story was not going to be stained. Only then did Miller agree. Now there’s a writer’s writer. I never did read the graphic novel. (I haven’t read a comic since my first son was born fourteen years ago.) But I saw the movie, and it sure was great.

Frank Miller. Kudos to you.