CREEM ONLINE: Off Register

May 2005

Consider yourself warmly welcomed to the eighth installment of OFF REGISTER, America's only rock 'n' roll comic book column!

IN THIS ISH: The pansy perspective—The screaming banshee wail —Dick Tracy versus Marv—Motivation by obsession—Sin City is the most faithful comic book movie ever made—Headlines and monkeyshines—Mickey Rourke is the new Lee Marvin—Misshapen and misunderstood—The predictable monotonous feminist agenda—And now, it's time for a coffee

	JUNIOR (Charlie Korsmo): You know Tracy, for a tough guy, you do a lot of pansy things. DICK TRACY (Warren Beatty): Is that right?
	—Dick Tracy (1990)
	MARV (Mickey Rourke): Is that the best you can do, you pansies?
	—Sin City (2005)

It's 4:15 in the morning—my favorite time of day—and I'm on… well, God only knows how many cups of black coffee it's been since I poured the first one, and He's not telling. My trusty Nordmende has Raw Power cranked on auto-repeat, and every so often the periodic screaming banshee wail of the kitchen kettle whistle syncs up with the sound of James Williamson's guitar in a manic man-machine interface that puts Kraftwerk to shame.

But even that atonal aural assault—as perfect a soundtrack for this particular installment of OFF REGISTER as it may be—is nothing compared to what I went through half a day earlier when I caught a first showing of Frank Miller's Sin City, to use its full proper title.

And after giving the matter some seriously prolonged thought, I'm ready to publicly proclaim that Sin City is the most faithful comic book movie that's ever been made, in terms of it being true to the source material. Now having said that, please feel free to disagree with me because everybody's got their own favorite film that's based on a comic book for any number of different reasons; reasons that tend to change over time.

For example, I didn't realize how bearable the first Superman and Batman films were until I saw the ensuing ones. Conversely, I found the second Spider-Man movie to be far more engaging than its antiseptic predecessor. Hell, for all I know, you may think that the movie version of Lee Falk's The Phantom is the be all and end all. Don't laugh: up until half a day ago, my all time favorite cinematic comic book characterization was Warren Beatty's portrayal of Dick Tracy—and if you'll dry your eyes for a minute, I'll tell you why.

First of all, I didn't say that Dick Tracy was my favorite comic book movie. But despite its many grievous flaws—Madonna, her wretched songs, Al Pacino's mug-eyed performance, and not using Flattop as the main villain being chief among them—the one thing that Dick Tracy had that even the first Superman movie didn't completely adhere to was an absolute devout faithfulness to the spirit of the title character.

Sure, Christopher Reeve made for a genuine good guy in tights. But both Reeve and director Richard Donner weren't exactly huge life-long Superman fans who were on a mission to get a Superman movie made. To them it was just another clock-punching gig—one which they admittedly did an admirable job of. But there's a lot to be said for motivation by obsession, and Warren Beatty was obsessed enough about Chester Gould's comic strip to patently wait ten long years until he could finally get his vision up on the big screen.

For no matter what else stank about the movie, Beatty got the core central ideas right: he innovatively duplicated the pallet of the four color Sunday panels; he included as many of Gould's deformed criminals as he could in case there wouldn't be a sequel; and, most important of all, he played Tracy straight down the middle as a serious no nonsense cop who was impervious to temptation and couldn't be bribed under any circumstances. Beatty ensured that his Tracy was a classic heroic straight-shooter who knew the moral difference between right and wrong and was confident enough with that knowledge to remain true to himself.

And to those of you who think that Beatty's depiction of Tracy was too genteel, I say go back to the source material and have another look. Beatty didn't play Tracy as a ragged sweaty cop caught in the harrowing throes of a fiendish two-way death trap because that wasn't his intention. If anything, his gentlemanly portrayal harkens back to the much earlier Tess-wooing "Plainclothes Tracy" days of 1931. And just like Gould's Tracy, Beatty's cop resorted to gunplay only as a last resort when the chips were down and lethal force was absolutely necessary—and then he always unflinchingly tossed lead straight to the head.

Ironically, while Beatty was filming Dick Tracy—which would go on to globally earn $162,738,726 in the theatres—Frank Miller was on the first train out of Hollywood after his disillusioning stint writing Robocop II. In fact, all you need to know about how both movies were perceived at the time is by reading these two contrasting headlines which appeared in the July 1990 issue of Cinefantastique:

"Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy: In a design tour de force, the film literally transfers the comics medium to the big screen on an unprecedented scale."

"Frank Miller's Original Robocop II: Toning down the noir vision of Batman's auteur."

Small wonder that Miller's Robocop II fiasco drove him to back to comics to create Sin City a year later.

Fifteen years ago, in the June 15 1990 issue of Entertainment Weekly, Beatty made the following telling commentary regarding his decision to use makeup only on Gould's villains:

"You can't re-create a comic strip except on paper. The difference between paper and film is why I abandoned the idea of putting prosthetics on the good guys, particularly Dick Tracy. On film it couldn't be done. You'd be looking at the structure of the appliances and plastic and makeup rather than what's happening emotionally."

Oh, what a difference fifteen years can make. Because after reluctantly being dragged back into the filmic fray by co-director Robert Rodriguez—the world's most terminally obsessed Sin City fan—Miller has certainly proven that technology has now advanced to the point where performance credibility in the face of overwhelming makeup is no longer an issue.

Or has it? Beatty's pronouncement notwithstanding, appliance distraction has never really been an aesthetic issue—especially if the role is expertly essayed by a master monster actor. Indeed, as far back as 1923 Lon Chaney was rising above the torturous multiple layers of collodion he laboriously wore to successfully tug at the heart strings in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. Using and transcending "the structure of appliances and plastic and makeup" was Chaney's main area of expertise; one that has made "The Man Of A Thousand Faces" an enduring cinematic legend to this day.

But what makes Sin City even more impressive than the source material it mirrors is that the movie trumps the comic books in one critical aspect: the area of emotion that Beatty refers to in the above-noted quote.

Yes, every line of the dialogue in the film is lifted directly from the comics. Yes, every frame in the movie is an exact recreation of a panel in the comics. But no matter how involved you were while reading the original Sin City comics, your eye was always dazzled by Miller's high-contrast artwork—more often than not, at the emotional expense of the characters themselves.

And that's where the Sin City movie triumphs over the Sin City comics. When you watch the movie, you're able to get emotionally involved with the characters than you can reading the comics. The movie allows you the opportunity to more readily identify with them as they strive to put things right as the clock ticks down, even at the expense of their own lives. Actually getting to hear and see Bruce Willis' plaintive anguish as retiring detective John Hartigan is a quantum leap over Miller's literal two dimensional portrayal, even though the words and actions of both are the same.

But it's Mickey Rourke's inspired interpretation of Marv that steals the show and your heart. In the original Sin City chapters, Marv was drawn with too many defining lines that formed a nascent gnarly visage that wasn't yet fully developed. The original Marv was distinctly embryonic compared to the full-blown Marv that shows up in latter tales like "Silent Night" or "Just Another Saturday Night." And make no mistake: Rourke owns this latter-day Marv, body and soul.

Rourke's confused portrayal evokes a level of sympathy in the viewer that makes Marv the most misunderstood misshapen movie monster since Boris Karloff first appeared as the Frankenstein monster in 1931. To see Rourke make Marv come alive off the drawn page as a lumbering-yet-agile, brutal-yet-compassionate, and dense-yet-intelligent sub-sentient being is a joy to behold. And despite the heavy layers of Chaneyesque makeup that he wears as a badge of honor, the essence of Rourke the actor shines though with a compassionate light that's brighter than a thousand suns.

When I first saw a preliminary illustration of Rourke as Marv last year at a comic book convention, I hesitated for a split second and wondered whether this was a good casting decision or not. Then I remembered the surly droll Rourke of Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man and the bludgeoning brutal Rourke of Double Team and mentally nodded my agreement. I wouldn't have thought it possible at this late stage of the game, but Mickey Rourke is the new Lee Marvin.

Which is reason enough to go see Sin City. And make sure you pay full price for your ticket when you do go so that Rodriguez and Miller will have the opportunity to make another one. Because they've already said that they want to make another one. After all, there are a lot more stories left to film about the town without pity, so this would be a good time to go to your local comic book store and check out Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, Sin City: Family Values, and Sin City: To Hell And Back. And while you're at it, pick up a used copy of Steranko's seminal graphic novel Chandler and see where all the stylistic hoopla came from.

Give Rodriguez and Miller a chance and in return they'll give you the senses-shattering visual treat of a lifetime. Whatever you do, however, don't fall for the predictable monotonous feminist rhetoric that "the dialogue is ridden with clichés, the men are all weird loners, and the women are all victims." Of course they're going to say that, that's their job. Agenda-driven and blissfully uninformed about the facts, both they and their high-falutin' high-brow male counterparts have been wringing their hands and saying exact the same thing about similar authors of hard-boiled crime literature like Ian Fleming and Mickey Spillane for well over half a century now.

Let us never forget it was because of archaic blinkered do-gooder mentalities like theirs that EC publisher Bill Gaines was publicly run out of the comic book business under the pressure of a televised witch hunt cleverly disguised as a federal government senate investigation—with the end 'corrective' measure being that we've all had to suffer under the vile censorship yolk of the Comics Code Authority for the past 50 years.

But as Lee Marvin so succinctly said in The Killers: Lady, I don't have the time. And neither should you. I've already dug deep and anted up my money once to see Sin City and I plan to pony out a few more fins to see it again because this is the only comic book movie that's ever been made which lives up to its source material so faithfully that it hits hard with all the scalding force of a hot pot of coffee splashed point blank into your face.

Which reminds me: I'm about due for another cup.