Comic-Con 2006: One On One With Zack Snyder

Comic-Con 2006: One On One With Zack Snyder

July 23, 2006

IGN.Com

Steven Horn

The director of Frank Miller's 300 spends some quality time with IGN.

July 23, 2006 - The Director of 2004's Dawn of the Dead is currently busily crafting two films out of beloved works from Frank Miller and Alan Moore. At Comic-Con in San Diego, Snyder showed an amazingly gory, graphic few sequences from Frank Miller's 300, an epic tale based on the Battle of Thermopylae in which 10,000 Persian soldiers were held back by around 300 Spartan warriors.

We managed to score a few minutes with the Director just moments after about 6500 people had their minds blown.

Steven Horn, IGN FilmForce: At Comic-Con, we all just got a brief but incredible look at some sequences from 300 and there is this crazy energy in the hall. Now that you've had a chance to show it to us, how do you feel? Is there an elation or …

Zack Snyder: I feel like the movie is something else. It's not Sin City, it's not Troy. It's super violent but it's also super beautiful, it's the movie I want to see. I made a movie that I want to see, a completely selfish move. [laughs] I don't care if anyone else wants to see it, but I do. It's got nudity and sex and people getting beheaded. What's not to like? I don't get it!

IGNFF: Earlier here at the show, you were talking about how people our age, people who grew up on graphic novels are now taking these things seriously. To see these stories coming to the screen is awesome. It's a stamp of validity from Hollywood. People like you and others are stepping into the arena are really championing the cause.

Snyder: Hollywood thought for the longest time, 'how seriously do we take this thing. they've written this cute book, but what do we do with it, how do we make it into a movie?' I don't think that they understand that the dark stuff and cool stuff is what people want. Anyone can make the soft version and I think they've been doing that for a while now. The problem is they do something like Fantastic Four and it makes a lot of money…

IGNFF: Obviously this one is headed toward an R.

Snyder: [laughs] It's all the way.

IGNFF: What was your darkest day on the set?

Snyder: The darkest day was probably in the beginning, the whole 'what do you shoot, what do you cut out' question. I said, [to the studio] don't cut it out, let me do it, let me try!

IGNFF: Is that kind of control hard to come by?

Snyder: It is, and that's the awesome thing about Warner Brothers, I've got to say it's an amazing studio. They said 'ok, you know what this is. You know what it is, if we knew what it was, it wouldn't be special.' Because I come from commercials and do know my way around the camera, I said I will do it, whatever it is. Just let me loose.

IGNFF: Debbie [Snyder, Producer of the film], was telling us that you like to do a lot of the action and second unit stuff.

Snyder:Yeah, I do. [laughs] I would do every fricking shot if there was time. The problem is the unit gets all the good stuff, but in this movie all of my actors are fighting so I get to shoot it. That's how I feel about my next movie. I keep trying to squeeze the second unit down and down until they're just shooting elements. They get to do motion capture or tedious shots [laughs].

IGNFF: Do you think this will bring people more into Frank's work, much like Sin City?

Snyder: I think it's more accessible in some ways than Sin City. I am huge fan of Sin City. I've always loved that., Marv's story, especially. 300 is, by its nature, a bigger story. It's broader. It's got a love story and a fight for democracy in it. It's pretty fundamental.

IGNFF: Do you have any message for Miller fans who might be nervous about how the film might turn out?

Snyder: I don't know what Miller fan won't be nervous. They just need to ask Frank. The thing he said to me was, after he saw the movie and we were sitting down for coffee, he said 'look, that's the movie I wanted to see. It couldn't be better. It was really cool.'"

http://filmforce.ign.com