The Customer is Always Right is a short story, part of a publication of stories entitled "The Babe Wore Red and Other Stories". The Customer is Always Right is the shortest as it is three pages. It was later re-published in the collection Booze, Babes, and Bullets.
It served as the opening sequence for the movie Sin City, which featured Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton. The sequence served as the original proof of concept footage that director Robert Rodriguez filmed to convince Frank Miller to allow him to adapt Sin City to the silver screen.
The story involves an enigmatic tryst between two nameless characters; "The Customer" and "The Salesman". They meet on the terrace of a high rise building, hinting that although they seem to be acting like strangers, they do indeed have some sort of past. It is unclear what their past involves even as they embrace in a passionate kiss.
A silenced gunshot stabs the night air to reveal that The Salesman has shot The Customer. The reader is led to believe that The Customer had fallen into a serious and difficult situation and, with no other feasible alternative, hired The Salesman to kill her. Later information given by Frank Miller on the commentary of the Recut & Extended DVD Edition states that The Customer had an affair with a member of the mafia and, when she found out, tried to break it off with him. The mafia member then swore to her that she would die in the most terrible way possible, and when it is least expected. The Customer, having connections, hires The Salesman (who is referred to as "The Lady-Killer") to kill her. In the comic The Salesman is The Colonel, as Miller has verified in the BLAM! section page 29 of the one-shot issue Sex & Violence.
Marv (Mickey Rourke) fights the cannibal Kevin (Elijah Wood) and feeds him to the wolf.
Elijah as the cannibal Kevin
FILM DESCRIPTION:
The Eisner Award-winning comic series Sin City comes to life in this live-action feature adaptation from director Robert Rodriguez and creator Frank Miller. Interweaving multiple storylines from the series' history, this violent crime noir paints the picture of the ultimate town without pity through the eyes of its roughest characters. There's the street thug Marv (Mickey Rourke), whose desperate quest to find the killer of a prostitute named Goldie (Jaime King) will lead him to the foulest edges of town. Inhabiting many of those areas is Dwight (Clive Owen), a photographer in league with the sordid ladies of Sin City, headed by Gail (Rosario Dawson), who opens up a mess of trouble after tangling with a corrupt cop by the name of Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro). Finally, there's Hartigan (Bruce Willis), an ex-cop with a heart problem who's hell-bent on protecting a stripper named Nancy (Jessica Alba). Featuring a who's who supporting cast that includes Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Devon Aoki, and Nick Stahl, Sin City promises to be one of the most direct translations from page to screen of a comic series, with shots and dialogue adapted straight from the original comic's panels. Rodriguez quit the Director's Guild when they refused to let Frank Miller co-direct the film, a deal hashed out after the two collaborators developed and shot the opening scene utilizing a green-screen process to harness the stark, black-and-white look of the books as a litmus test for the rest of the production. Quentin Tarantino was brought in and reportedly paid one dollar to direct an extended scene between Del Toro and Owen that amounts to one issue of The Big Fat Kill miniseries.
Everyone knows Robert Rodriguez‘s and Frank Miller‘s cult movie Sin City: finally, the authors have started to work on the sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Unfortunately, there have already been some problems on the set, since Jessica Alba doesn’t want to play the “hottest” scenes regarding her character, Nancy Callahan, since she doesn’t feel comfortable with her body anymore, after two children. Since she’s lately been the most talked actress of the film, we’re going to speak about her character, Nancy.
Nancy Callahan was born and raised in Basin City, lovely nicknamed Sin City, really not a good place to raise a child in. When she was only eleven, she was kidnapped by Roarke Junior, a child-raper and serial killer, whose actions were promptly covered by Senator Roarke, his father and the city’s most powerful man. Nobody thought Nancy would have come out of it alive, but, just before Roarke could begin with her, she was saved by police detective John Hartigan, who couldn’t care less of Roarke’s influence and shot the maniac’s ear, hand and genitals. Before Hartigan could finish Roarke, anyway, he was betrayed and shot by his partner, Bob, who sent him to a coma. Nancy witnessed the entire scene, and tried to tell the policemen what happened, but they declared the girl was too shocked to tell anything sensible, and discarded her story. She also tried to testify during Roarke’s trial, but Hartigan, blackmailed by the Senator, asked Nancy to step back, and to let them frame him for the raper’s actions. Faithful to her hero, Nancy agreed, but kept writing letters to John every week, for the whole eight years he was put in prison. She had to use a false name, Cordelia, since Senator Roarke was ready to kill anyone who could say something about his son, Nancy in first place. She hid for some time, and she tried to live in the darkest corners of Basin City, so that the Senator’s men couldn’t find her. At a certain point, she was assaulted by some boys, but she was saved by Marv, an ugly brute with a kind spot for ladies who would have become one of her closest friends.
Nancy grew up a beautiful woman, and started law school, so that she could become a lawyer and save her hero from jail. In order to pay her studies, however, she ended up being hired at Kadie’s Bar, a strip club (more a dive than something else). At Kadie’s, she worked as an exotic dancer, one of the tavern’s most popular ones, and she had the occasion of meeting many of the most peculiar citizens of Basin. She had many boyfriends, but her stories ended very soon: despite she tried to fall in love with some man, she couldn’t cancel her feelings towards Hartigan, who would stay her first and truest love forever. She had the occasion of meeting the (former) detective once again when he was let out of prison, after confessing all Roarke’s crimes as his own, fearing for Nancy’s safety (Roarke had sent him a girl’s finger, making him believe it was Nancy’s). The two soon found out that their reunification was part of Roarke Junior’s plan to find out Nancy’s hideout, since he had been obsessed with her since the day Hartigan denied him his pleasure with her.
Nancy Callahan is a kind woman, a rare sight in Sin City. Despite her golden heart and good character, she often finds herself involved in underground criminality’s operation, mostly because of her friendships, which go from Marv to the Old Town‘s prostitutes. With the years, she learnt how to take care of herself, and she has grown a strong instinct for survival; underneath the hard skin, anyway, there lasts a romantic spirit, the same she had when she was a scared, wounded eleven-years-old girl.
Frank Miller: 'I wasn't thinking clearly when I said those things'
After stirring up outrage lambasting Muslims and Wall Street protesters, The Dark Knight Returns creator has been awol from the comics world. He discusses the mentor who got him back on his feet, what he thinks of Donald Trump, and his new prequel to 300
Sam Thielman
Friday 27 April 2018
As far back as he can remember, Frank Miller always wanted to draw a gangster. “I decided that I wanted to make comic books when I was five years old,” the cartoonist says. “I declared to my parents that I was going to do that for the rest of my life.” He’s wearing a black T-shirt with a drawing of Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and the words “high-functioning sociopath”, a white beard that makes him look older than his 61 years, and a near-constant smile.
In photos, Miller scowls heavily into the camera, the very image of the kind of grizzled tough he might have drawn in Sin City. But in conversation he is very clearly not a sociopath: in fact, he is a little anxious and very friendly and eager to talk about all his titanically influential works: Sin City, Batman, Daredevil. After a long absence from the public eye, he is suddenly everywhere again. In March he signed a five-project deal with DC Comics that includes penning a new Superman graphic novel. He bagged another deal, with Netflix and Simon & Schuster, for an Arthurian-themed project called Cursed.
And his latest graphic novel is already underway: Xerxes, a prequel to 300, his tale of the ancient battle of Thermopylae, adapted for film by Zack Snyder in 2006. The new series is set to span the rise and fall of the Persian empire: from before the birth of the ambitious and bloodthirsty titular king, to the life of his son and the rise of Alexander. Miller is fascinated by the period. “The Spartans were strange catalysts of democracy,” he says. “They were utter fascists. They had the best land in Greece, and it was tilled by slaves and the citizens were all soldiers to defend the territory. The Athenians were the ones who gave birth to democracy, but the Spartans made it all possible.”
These are the first substantial projects Miller has had in several years, barring a halting return to comics in 2015, when he worked on a Batman graphic novel. His writing is sometimes criticised as unsubtle – his villains tend to be terribly bad and his heroes tremendously good – but his visual style is unmistakable, even as it has changed radically over his 40-year career. During a long run on Marvel’s Daredevil, his subjects’ anatomy evolved from conventional superhero fodder. His almost caricature figures in The Dark Knight Returns, posed against intricate backgrounds, made his take on Batman an instant classic. When he drew Sin City, he changed again: drowning his pages in black ink and rendering cityscapes with only flecks of light—its last arc is almost hallucinatory, a black-and-white series that explodes into full colour after the hero is pumped full of a toxin by his enemies.
Miller’s politics seemed to become more eccentric as his drawing did the same. In 2011, he published what he called “a propaganda comic”: Holy Terror, a gory tale of a caped superhero taking on al-Qaida. In one scene, the hero tortures a suicide bomber as his Catwomanish girlfriend observes that she’s “OK with that.” It’s just one of the book’s many other acts of gory revenge on Miller’s Muslims, who stone and behead people and scream, “Praise Allah!” Readers and critics responded with bafflement and anger; one critic called it “one of the most appalling, offensive and vindictive comics of all time”.
That same year, Miller went on a tirade against the Occupy Wall Street movement, describing it in a blog as “a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists … Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy. Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaida and Islamicism.” Miller was again branded a reactionary.
“My stuff always represents what I’m going through,” Miller says today. “Whenever I look at any of my work I can feel what my mindset was and I remember who I was with at the time. When I look at Holy Terror, which I really don’t do all that often, I can really feel the anger ripple out of the pages. There are places where it is bloodthirsty beyond belief.”
Does he have any regrets? “I don’t want to go back and start erasing books I did,” he replies. “I don’t want to wipe out chapters of my own biography. But I’m not capable of that book again.”
It’s worth noting that whatever his detractors may think of his politics, Miller still happily inveighs against “white, heterosexual family values” and has no interest in defending his views on Occupy Wall Street. “I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he confesses. Does he support Donald Trump? “Real men stay bald,” he says with a grin, lifting his hat to run a hand over his bare scalp.
Miller got his start in comics in the late 1970s, when he was in his early 20s, after his dad helped him move to New York City to chase his dream of making it as a comic-book illustrator. Eager to get started, he made three calls: one each to DC and Marvel, and a third to his hero: Neal Adams, whose Batman and Green Lantern comics had made him a superstar. Adams’s daughter answered the phone; Miller convinced his idol to take a look at his portfolio.
Adams credits his daughter with his decision to give Miller a chance. “Obviously she felt sorry for him because he was a skinny kid who looked like Ichabod Crane,” he says. Miller’s portfolio was “awful,” he says, laughing. “It was so bad. My heart sunk, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, one of these guys.’”
Many artists were so humiliated by the harsh feedback Adams gave that they never came back – not Miller. (“Anything but!” Miller exclaims. “It was exhilarating that my idol was that generous with his time!”)
But Miller’s subsequent success, Adams says, is not his doing. “Whatever you do, don’t say that I’m responsible for Frank Miller,” he warns. “I’ve done the same thing for a hundred guys and nobody responded the way Frank did. Nobody advanced that quickly. And I made it hard for him! If you’d gone through it, you’d have gone home crying. I never would have thought that he’d turn out to be what he is. He’s become like a son to me. I didn’t teach him any other of life’s lessons, unfortunately, and I should have. That was the bad part.”
A panel from Sin City.
Why did Miller take a years-long sabbatical from the medium he’d pursued his whole life? Adams blames the traditional trappings of fame – bad influences and alcohol. When asked about his absence, the limit to Miller’s candour is revealed. “I just got very distracted by real life,” he says. “I’d rather not go into it.” Through a publicist, he declined to respond to his mentor’s assessment.
Adams wishes he’d told Miller that life wasn’t just work. “We just talked about work. And if you don’t teach family or good health to somebody, then suddenly you turn around and go, ‘Oh, my God. We didn’t have that conversation.’ And you feel like shit, because Frank didn’t. And now he’s having to learn it.”
In part, he blames Miller’s success for the years he says his friend sacrificed to that lesson. “You cannot accept other people’s view of you. You cannot believe when other people say, ‘Oh my God, you’re great, you’re a legend.’ You cannot accept that. It’s no way to live. And as soon as you do, you start convincing yourself that you’re something that you’re not, that somehow you can drink two bottles of whiskey and nothing will happen to you.”
In his last conversation with Miller, Adams says he told his protege he was going to die. “I told him he was white trash, and I’d be surprised if he makes it for six months, because he’s taken his life and ruined it, and he said, ‘Well, I’d like to show you I’m not that way,’ and I said, ‘If you recover, I’ll see you in six months, maybe a year.’”
“‘I think of you like a son,’” Adams remembers saying, “‘and I’m gonna lose you.’” Now he believes Miller “will mend”.
Forty years in the business – even with the break – and Miller is still here, having his makeup adjusted in between sips of tea in a photography studio in Manhattan, the city that has been his most reliable and consistent source of inspiration. Perhaps the best evidence that Adams is right is also fairly simple. Frank Miller’s drawing again.
Due to an editing error, this piece conflated Sin City and 300; this has been corrected.
After His Public Downfall, *Sin City'*s Frank Miller Is Back (And Not Sorry)
Felix Pfäffli
20 AUGUST 2014
Felix Pfäffli
We see the middle-aged man crouching in pain, alone. His clothes are torn, and one eye is swelling shut, but his fists are clenched. He is a hero. He is the Batman, as drawn by Frank Miller, and he is on the T-shirt that Frank Miller is wearing.
Miller smiles. He's sitting in his studio in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. He has a red-flecked beard and gentle, watery eyes, and his longish hair peeks out from under a straw hat. He's got a bad cough from a lingering cold. But don't let his frail carriage fool you. Miller possesses a brutal, muscular worldview—of vigilantes pushed to the edge by a fallen society—that has resonated throughout popular culture over the past three decades. His 1986 breakthrough, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, recast the squeaky-clean superhero as a gritty urban warrior and helped comic-book trade paperbacks storm bookstores for the first time. He created the indie comic Sin City, a black-and-white noir anthology series that he later turned into a big-budget movie with codirector Robert Rodriguez. The film of his graphic novel 300 made Zack Synder an A-list director and engendered a spate of imposters seeking to recapture its blockbuster success. His characters are fighters, loners fueled by an inner sense of justice starkly at odds with the reality around them. They are often bloodied but always uncompromising.
Felix Pfäffli