The movie Bruce Willis could talk about for hours and still not do it justice: “It’s just amazing”
After his breakout performance in Die Hard, Bruce Willis quickly became the king of the action movie, playing weathered tough guys with a dash of cynicism and cheek that rounded the edges of the otherwise terrifying characters. With a knack for sarky one-liners and a ‘grin and bear it’ attitude towards the many physical demands of independent filmmaking, Willis is known for his roles in Pulp Fiction, The Sixth Sense and Split. But Willis still has endless praise for one director in particular, the rebel of Hollywood, Robert Rodriguez.
After finding his love for filmmaking after being asked to tape his school football games, Rodriguez quickly got his hands on a camera and began making short films, submitting them to local competitions and festivals in Texas.
During his time at university, he also discovered his passion for cartooning and comics, creating his own comic strip called Les Hooligans, loosely based on his siblings. But after some success with his early short Bedhead, Rodriguez raised $7,000 through paid medical trials to shoot the action comedy El Mariachi in 1992, which grossed over $2million and led him to become the poster boy for independent filmmaking and one of the Hollywood success stories of the 1990s.
Rodriguez detailed the challenges and production of the film in his book Rebel Without a Crew, which has become a bible to other aspiring filmmakers and creatives who wish to replicate the level of success he achieved with El Mariachi. Rodriguez formed a friendship and creative partnership with Quentin Tarantino, working together on From Dusk Till Dawn, which led to his work with Bruce Willis.
After discovering Frank Miller’s Sin City comic, Rodriguez knew early on that he wanted to adapt the slick and grungy story for the screen. His agent phoned Willis and told him about the idea, which intrigued him, so he arranged a meeting at his house.
Willis said: “He brought me three minutes of Sin City footage to watch. It was kind of a test of the technique they’d come up with, featuring Josh Harnett. He brought Frank Miller with him and had it on a little DVD. I was working nights and was just getting up, so I was kind of half awake. About a minute in, I hit pause and said, ‘Whatever happens after this, in the next couple of minutes of this scene, I just want to let you know, I’m in!’ Then we watched the second couple of minutes of it. It’s just amazing – I could talk for hours and hours about it and still not do it justice”.
The film was approached as a modern-day film-noir, with an impressive translation of Miller’s visual style to the screen through the use of new digital technology that allowed them to exaggerate the contrast and darkness of the world and mirror the exact images of the original comic. Rodriguez and Willis were praised for their ability to recontextualise the comic book world within the medium of film, perhaps influencing the many adaptations that followed over the next decade.
