Frank Miller’s “Will Eisner’s The Spirit”

Recently, a reporter over at IESB.net came across some script samples for the upcoming Frank Miller film based on Will Eisner’s comic strip ‘The Spirit.’

For those not in the know, The Spirit is a famous 40’s comic book character who starred in his own comic strip by Will Eisner, the Orson Welles of comic books. The comic itself was created as a way to sell newspapers but is now regarded as a perfect example of how comic books work. Complete with mood, layout, panel design and action sequences, Will Eisner practically invented the most elaborate and stylized comic book style ever, influencing many a young artist including Frank Miller.

The style of The Spirit, a pulp hero in a trench coat and fedora walking/running/jumping through rain-soaked cityscapes heavily Miller who has emulated Eisner in his own work in Daredevil, Batman and Sin City. After the success of Sin City and 300, Frank Miller has gained the confidence needed to develop the property as a feature film starring Gabriel Macht of the Good Shepherd as the lead, Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendez as eye candy and Samuel L. Jackson as the villainous Octopus.

The film is expected to be made in much the same manner as Sin City and 300, utilizing green screen technology, thereby saving time and money while creating a unique unreal look to the film. Apparently the film is not a period piece as many had thought, but will sport a heavy ‘pulp-style’ narration much like Sin City. Rumored to be an intensely violent film, The Spirit sounds more and more like an off-shoot of Sin City rather than an adaptation of Eisner’s work. If so, this would be a major surprise as Miller has long been recognized as an admirer of the late Will Eisner as an artist and person so it would come as a big surprise if he were to suddenly decide to warp the material he has publicly praised into a violent punch-up.

But it remains to be seen.

You can read the full article including a hilarious bathroom argument over who is the best comic book storyteller here.

The King of Kong – A Fistful of Quarters

I used to go to the Video Arcade at my local mall and wonder who the dudes were that had multiple soda cups and bags of chips sitting by the side of the machines. Some of my friends at school were urged by their parents to stay clear of the Arcade for fear of getting roped into some sordid life of ‘anything for a quarter.’ My own parents apparently believed in the ’school of hard knocks’ system, as evidenced by my interest in science fiction leading to a job at a mail order company of Star Trek knock-offs.

But I digress.

In the 1980’s, video games were king. Along with baseball tees never worn to baseball games with Rush album art printed on them, painter’s caps worn by non-painters and pop music that regaled the listener with anthems to bands that never existed… it was a confusing decade. We were living under the constant threat of a doddering idiot American President who believed in ‘trickle down’ economics and just might start a nuclear war to show the other guy he was tough enough.

Actually, that sounds like today… and my digression is certainly not taking.

In any case, the early day’s of video gaming were interesting to say the least. The early games are amongst the hardest that you can play. There is no immersion in a fantasy land, no ‘collision detection’ or high quality ‘cut scenes.’ Just a sequence of actions that the player must memorize then learn all over again when the machine throws him a sucker punch and takes him by surprise.

Seriously.

Try playing Donkey Kong yourself and see how long it takes before expletives you never knew you were capable of start spewing out of your mouth as that stupid monkey keeps taking your girl away.

In 1982, Walter Day assembled the best video game players in the world to his arcade, Twin Galaxies, for a Time Magazine photo shoot. At the shoot, Billy Mitchell decided to school his competition and began a lifestyle that embodied all of the pop song anthems that he was the best there was. And this remained the case until Steve Wiebe, an unemployed father of two, decided that he would take a shot at the record a good 20 years after it was set.

That’s where this film by Seth Gordon comes in.

The film’s producer met Wiebe while working on another project and were enthralled in the story of Wiebe’s vision quest through the world of competitive video gaming. King of Kong tells the story of Billy Mitchell (perhaps the most evil man on the planet next to Terrance Stamp’s General Zod if this movie is an accurate representation of his chacracter) and Steve Wiebe, a man on a mission that the viewer inevitably gets involved in as the movie progresses.

Trailer

Through every smug comment (a key one is where Billy compares himself to the abortion issue) and snub to the competition by Mitchell, my support for underdog Wiebe grew.

Whereas at first he seemed a sad man stuck at the tail end of a series of bad luck breaks culminating in his expertly playing a child’s drum kit and breaking the record to an ancient video game in the garage as his children begged him to stop, in the end Wiebe became the American dream personified. I cried his tears, I felt his struggles, in some ways I saw the logic in his diagrams of the Donkey Kong sequence of jumps and turns painstakingly drawn on the glass of his machine.

Apparently, there is a sequel of sorts in the works with actors (with Johnny Depp as Mitchell) playing the roles of Wiebe and Mitchell to show how the film had changed their lives, but personally, I think the real story is in reality.For instance, readers can check out the ensuing drama unfold in real time on the Twin Galaxies Official Score Board, where it can currently be seen that Steve Wiebe’s score has once again been topped by Billy Mitchell.

Steve… you gonna take that?