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For movie producer Michael Uslan, it has been a decade long journey to get Will Eisner\u2019s classic two-fisted, crime-fighting comics character, The Spirit, onto the big screen, but the long wait has been of his own devising.<\/p>\nFor movie producer Michael Uslan, it has been a decade long journey to get Will Eisner\u2019s classic two-fisted, crime-fighting comics character, The Spirit, onto the big screen, but the long wait has been of his own devising.<\/p>\n
\u201cI promised and swore to Will Eisner that nobody was going to touch this project if they didn\u2019t get it, if we couldn\u2019t do it the right way,\u201d stated Uslan. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve held to that promise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Uslan is speaking to a packed room at the 2nd Annual New York Comic Con. It\u2019s late February and not much has been heard about the film since it was announced last June that comic book writer and artist turned film director Frank Miller was announced as the film\u2019s director. Joining Uslan was his producing partner F. J. DeSanto to fill comic fans in on the latest news on the production.<\/p>\n
The panel opened with DeSanto reading an email message from Miller, who could not attend due to an injury he suffered while slipping on ice a few weeks earlier. Miller briefly lamented the accident, if only because it has forced him to miss out \u201con all these chances to tell everybody how much fun I get to have writing Will Eisner\u2019s The Spirit<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller also cautioned attendees on what tone he planned on setting for the film. \u201cAnd don\u2019t go expecting a nostalgic, tongue-in-cheek romp here. Remember, remember how scary Eisner got whenever he chose to. And remember how he broke your heart with the story of Sand Saref. So expect some hairpin turns, some dead-end, back alley madness of the wet kind. Get set, we\u2019re on our way to some dark places.\u201d<\/p>\n Uslan admits to being protective of the project to the point where he has turned down more than one offer from a studio not for financial reasons but due to what is commonly and euphemistically referred to as \u201ccreative differences.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have had many lucrative deals put in front of us that we\u2019ve turned down over the years,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe have dealt with people in Hollywood who have said \u2018Great, you want to do a Spirit movie? That\u2019s something we\u2019d be interested in financing and distributing. But let\u2019s get him out of this tie and jacket stuff [and into some] spandex and a cape. We\u2019ll work on some designs. And of course we really need super powers so he\u2019ll really die and come back as a ghost. It\u2019ll be supernatural.\u2019 I said \u2018That\u2019s a great idea and we can call it The Specter or Deadman.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Uslan finally found a collaborator who “got it” in Miller, when the two were having a conversation after Eisner\u2019s memorial service in New York City.<\/p>\n Uslan reported that Miller expressed some doubts about taking on the project. \u201cFrank\u2019s reaction was immediately, \u2018I couldn\u2019t do that. You expect me to do something worth of Will Eisner? I couldn\u2019t possibly do that. Who am I?\u2019 But after thinking about this for some time he came back and said \u2018I can\u2019t let anyone else do it. I\u2019ve got to do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Miller dove right into the story development process in a rather interesting way according to DeSanto.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we first started talking about the movie and ideas started to pour out of Frank\u2019s head, he would Xerox Will\u2019s graphic novels and start cutting and pasting them into some sort of order,\u201d DeSanto stated. \u201cThat\u2019s how he mapped out the initial film. I was having lunch with him about six months ago and all of a sudden he had a pile of papers on his lap and he said \u2018Ok., here\u2019s the movie.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not an origin story,\u201d DeSanto continued. \u201cWhen you meet the Spirit, he is the Spirit. The Eisner elements are in there. We\u2019ll be incorporating the logo into the background. Central City is its own world. With the technology they made Sin City<\/strong> and 300<\/strong> with, we\u2019re at a really neat point in filmmaking where we can make that world as Eisner-esque as possible. As [Frank] sorted of hinted, we\u2019re going to see some of the femme fatales that Will was so great at creating and we\u2019re going to see the Spirit get into a lot of trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Eisner told a variety of styles of stories with the Spirit comics, Uslan is quick to let fans know, perhaps a little too quick, that these other tales have not been forgotten.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we talk about a darker, edgier Spirit, we\u2019re not going to do the whimsical Spirit stories. We\u2019re not going to do Rat-Tat The Machine Gun or Gerhard Shtoball. However, that doesn\u2019t mean that when we move to some animation projects that we won\u2019t necessarily cover that then. But that\u2019s a story I\u2019m not allowed to talk about now.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got Commissioner Dolan and believe me you\u2019ll understand why he is so different from [Batman\u2019s] Commissioner Gordon,\u201d he promised. \u201cEllen Dolan will be there. Sand Saref and that magnificent romantic triangle will be there. There are villains and femme fatales sprinkled throughout that will delight you and surprise you with the way that Frank deals with them.\u201d<\/p>\n One character who will not be appearing in the film is the Spirit\u2019s sometime sidekick Ebony White, an African-American boy who, despite being one of the few such recurring characters in comics at that time, was often portrayed as a broad stereotype for Stepin Fetchit-type humor.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was Frank\u2019s choice,\u201d DeSanto elaborated on the exclusion of the character from the film. \u201cI think that Frank has said that creatively everybody can have a bad day and that that was the bad day for Will.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think what it was for Frank was less about the controversial nature of the character than it was the story doesn\u2019t lend itself to a little kid being involved in the action,\u201d added Uslan. \u201cThere\u2019s a world that he created for this movie where endangering a child like that did not make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n Although The Spirit\u2019s popularity was at its height over half a century ago, Uslan has no intentions of making the film a period piece.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was something important in our discussions with Will Eisner that he said to us. The question that I posed to Will was this- \u2018Should this be set in the 1940s? Should this bet set in the 1950s? Should this be set today?\u2019 He was kind of shocked at my question and said, \u2018I never wrote The Spirit in a nostalgic sense. Whenever I wrote it and drew it, I was always doing something that was relevant at that time. He was in the 40s in the 40s. When I was doing it in the 50s it was the 50s.There\u2019s no reason that this shouldn\u2019t be contemporary or at least timeless’,”<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what Frank is going to go for here. There\u2019s going to be a timeless feel to this. The only thing I can throw back to you is what Time Burton did in our first Batman picture where a lot of people, if you asked them, weren\u2019t absolutely sure if that movie took place in the past, present or future or some kind of mix thereof.\u201d<\/p>\n With Miller hard at work on what is hoped to be the final draft of the film, Uslan is anxious to get the production rolling. However, with Miller also involved with the Sin City sequel, he cannot guarantee when cameras will start rolling.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are really all kind-of waiting to see how all the pieces are going to fit together, but right now if I had to guess I would say we are going first [before Sin City 2<\/strong>]. Anything could change at any time. Frank\u2019s got to get up and around, feeling 100 percent. Just as a function of business, if we have so-and-so as a star and he\u2019s available on such-and-such a date than we go. If he\u2019s available three months later, we wait. So, these are all factors that have to be figured out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/Features\/FeaturesImages\/Spirit2.jpg\")
\u201cSin City<\/strong> had come out a week or two before that and I said, \u2018You know Frank, the difference between you and me, I\u2019m trying to make comic books into movies and what you\u2019ve done is you\u2019ve made a movie into a comic book. For the first time I can really, really see The Spirit being done, using this Sin City<\/strong> technology,\u2019\u201d related Uslan. \u201cImmediately, Frank had all kinds of ideas so I said \u2018You know, you\u2019ve got to write and direct this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/Features\/FeaturesImages\/Spirit3.jpg\")
Uslan stated that many of the familiar Spirit supporting cast are slated to appear in the film.<\/p>\n