30th Anniversary Interview with Frank Miller: The Dark Knight Returns

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Although it’s hard to believe, this year marks the 30th Anniversary of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

CBR.com sat down for a short but informative interview with Frank Miller that’s worth a read.  Here are a couple of tidbits…

When did you realize that it really was something that people were going to be talking about for decades to come? Was there a moment where you thought, “We’ve created something bigger than I ever expected”?

It was an ongoing set of surprises. You go up to bat and you take your best shot. This one turned out to be a homer. But I didn’t expect it to keep on rewarding like this. Now, it’s become apparent that it’s going to be something that we can enjoy revisiting again in the future.

 

When you see how influential your original take on Batman was, and the kinds of things that stuck forever: the way you did narrative dialogue captions over thought balloons, a lot of the approaches to the character. And now we’re seeing things like “Batman v Superman,” where we’re seeing a lot of imagery that comes directly from your pencil. What has that come to mean to you over the years? You’ve seen just how much people embraced what you did, sometimes swiped what you did?

I mean, I’ve learned a lot since doing the first “Dark Knight.” I learned a lot about life too. Instead of resenting, as I first did, when they would take some of the stuff in the movies — I resented and I thought, “Oh I’m being ripped off!” — I’ve come to realize that what I did was a piece of an overall collective work that’s evolving and changing as time goes by. I didn’t make up Batman, I just contributed to the myth. And now they’re using some of my stuff to take it in their own direction. God bless them as well.

Twilight Zone: “The Obsolete Man” [Season 2, Episode 29] / Z-View

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Twilight Zone: “The Obsolete Man” [Season 2, Episode 29]
Original Air Date: June 2, 1961

Director: Elliott Silverstein

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Burgess Meredith, Fritz Weaver and Josip Elic.


The Overview: Beware of Spoilers….

In a future totalitarian world, the government eliminates those who are no longer useful.  Romeny Wordsworth [Meredith], a librarian is determined to be obsolete and given a date for extermination.  What chance does this meek little man have against the will of the government?

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June Vigants and Jimmy Bobo

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June Vigants created the Sly as James Bonomo aka Jimmy Bobo from Bullet to the Head piece above.  June was doing sketch commissions through the mail and although I’d never met her, I liked June’s art and decided to commission a few pieces.  I wasn’t disappointed.  This is the first with more to be posted!

You can see more of June’s art here and here.

Twilight Zone: “Will the Real Martian, Please Stand Up?” [Season 2, Episode 28] / Z-View

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Twilight Zone: “Will the Real Martian, Please Stand Up?” [Season 2, Episode 28]
Original Air Date: May 26, 1961

Director: Montgomery Pittman

Writer: Charles Beaumont

Starring: John Hoyt, Jean Willes, Jack Elam, Barney Phillips, John Archer, William Kendis, Morgan Jones, Gertrude Flynn, Bill Erwinn, Jill Ellis and Ron Kipling.


The Overview: Beware of Spoilers….

On a dark, snowy night, two deputies respond to a call about a crashed spaceship.  Tracks lead to a remote dinner where seven bus passengers and the diner’s owner are waiting out the storm.  The funny thing is there were only supposed to be six passengers on the bus and strange things are starting to happen at the dinner.  Coincidence or is there an alien among them?

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Jon Jones vs Daniel Cormier on Instagram

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Jon Jones, who many consider to be the best pound-for-pound MMA fighter of all time, has a real dislike for the current champion, Daniel Cormier.  

Jones beat Cormier when they fought, but Cormier won the title when Jones was relieved of it after some bad personal decisions resulting from drugs and run-ins with the police.

Cormier and Jones will fight for the title on April 23rd.

In an effort to get under Cormier’s skin, Jones posted the photo above.  Not to be outdone, Cormier responded with the one below.

In this contest, Cormier wins by decision.

Source: MMA Fighting.

Twilight Zone: “The Mind and the Matter” [Season 2, Episode 27] / Z-View

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Twilight Zone: “The Mind and the Matter” [Season 2, Episode 27]
Original Air Date: May 12, 1961

Director: Buzz Kulik

Writer: Charles Beaumont

Starring:  Shelley Berman, Jack Grinnage and Chet Stratton.

The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…

Archibald Beechcroft [Berman] goes to work every day hating the ride in with all the people.  Once at work Beechcraft is irritated by his co-workers.  Then the ride home again among so many people.  Beechcroft feels like a cog in a broken wheel until he develops the power to make everyone disappear or be exactly like him.

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Twilight Zone: “The Silence” [Season 2, Episode 25] / Z-View

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Twilight Zone: “The Silence” [Season 2, Episode 25]
Original Air Date: April 28, 1961

Director: Boris Sagal

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring:  Franchot Tone, Liam Sullivan, and Cyril Delevanti .

The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…

Jamie Tennyson [Sullivan] loves to hear himself talk.  He has an opinion or story on or about anything.  He never shuts up.  Colonel Taylor [Tone] can no longer take the constant chatter so he bets Tennyson a fortune that Tennyson can’t go a year without talking.

The bet is made — Tennyson will live in a room at the club where he will be under constant watch.  As the months roll on and it begins to look like Tennyson might make it, Taylor goes to lengths to get him to talk… ah, but Tennyson has a trick of his own.

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Twilight Zone: “Shadow Play” [Season 2, Episode 26] / Z-View

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Twilight Zone: “Shadow Play” [Season 2, Episode 26]
Original Air Date: May 5, 1961

Director: John Brahm

Writer: Charles Beaumont

Starring:  Dennis Weaver, Harry Townes and Wright King.

The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…

When convicted murder, Adam Grant [Weaver], is sentenced to die he begins to scream that he won’t be killed again and that if he is, he will come back and it is they who will die.  A newspaper man begins to believe Grant and if what Grant says is true, if Grant dies, everyone dies.

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Twilight Zone: “The Rip Van Winkle Caper” [Season 2, Episode 24] / Z-View

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Twilight Zone: “The Rip Van Winkle Caper” [Season 2, Episode 24]
Original Air Date: April 21, 1961

Director: Justus Addiss

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring:  Simon Oakland, Oscar Beregi Jr., Lew Gallo and John Mitchum.

The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…

Four thieves steal a million dollars in gold.  Their plan is to sleep in suspended animation for 100 years and be rich when they wake up.  Of course they forgot to take into account mechanical malfunction, human greed and that they are in the Twilight Zone.

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13 Mysterious Facts About “The Maltese Falcon”

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Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 13 Mysterious Facts About The Maltese Falcon.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. IT WOULDN’T EXIST IF HIGH SIERRA HADN’T BEEN A HIT.
John Huston, son of popular stage and screen actor Walter Huston, was a successful scriptwriter for Warner Bros. in the late 1930s, earning Oscar nominations for Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940) and Sergeant York (1941). When he asked the Warners for a shot at directing, they agreed (and even let him choose the project himself), but only if his next script was a hit. That was High Sierra, starring Humphrey Bogart, directed by Raoul Walsh, and released in January 1941. Fortunately for Huston, it was a success, and the Warners kept their word. The Maltese Falcon, also starring Bogart, was shot that summer and released in the fall. It was the first of five movies Huston and Bogart would make together.

4. HUMPHREY BOGART’S ICONIC RAPID-FIRE DELIVERY WAS THE RESULT OF A STUDIO NOTE.
Detective Sam Spade had a lot of speeches, which the Warners felt tended to slow things down. They asked Huston to pick up the pace by having Bogart (and the others) talk faster. Huston, eager to please on his first film, took the note to heart and instructed everyone accordingly. When the film was a hit, the rat-a-tat pace became one of the hallmarks of film noir.

5. IT GOT AWAY WITH USING AN OBJECTIONABLE WORD, PROBABLY BECAUSE THE CENSORS WEREN’T COOL ENOUGH TO KNOW IT.
Sam Spade uses the word “gunsel” three times in reference to Wilmer, the hitman who works for Kasper Gutman, a.k.a. the Fat Man. Hammett used the same word in his novel, but only after his editor objected to the word he used first: “catamite,” which is a young man kept by an older man for sexual purposes. While Hammett’s novel identified Cairo (Peter Lorre’s character) as a homosexual and hinted at it for Wilmer and Gutman, this term was considered too explicit. Hammett replaced it with “gunsel,” which his editor assumed meant “gunslinger” or some such. But it didn’t. Gunsel—from the Yiddish word for “little goose,” and passed along in American hobo culture—was merely a synonym for “catamite,” but was too new to be familiar. Hammett got away with it in the book, and it slipped past the Production Code censors when it popped up in the screenplay. Because of Hammett’s usage, the word came to take on “gunman” as a secondary meaning. But make no mistake, it wasn’t Wilmer’s possession of a firearm that Sam Spade was referring to.

15 Incorruptible Facts About “The Shield”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 15 Incorruptible Facts About The Shield.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. THE CO-CREATOR OF LOST THOUGHT THE NETWORK WOULD CHANGE THE PILOT.
Damon Lindelof, co-creator of Lost and The Leftovers, remembered reading Shawn Ryan’s pilot script for The Shield and always waiting for Vic Mackey to become an Andy Sipowicz-type, or “a good guy despite his gruff exterior.” Instead, he read the ending where Mackey murdered an Internal Affairs rat in cold blood. “And when I read that, I thought to myself, ‘Shawn Ryan will never get this ending on the air,’” Lindelof recalled to the Chicago Tribune in 2008. (Spoiler alert: Lindelof was wrong.)

4. ERIC STOLTZ WAS OFFERED THE LEAD.
Eric Stoltz was offered the lead role and—and almost took it.

5. FX EXECUTIVES WERE NOT SOLD ON MICHAEL CHIKLIS.
The network knew Chiklis for his even-tempered roles in The Commish (1991-1995) andDaddio (2000). Against his agents’ advice, Chiklis took six months off from acting and lost 57 pounds. For his The Shield audition, he shaved his head. “When I heard his name mentioned, I thought he was wrong for the role,” Kevin Reilly, FX’s then-president of entertainment told The New York Times. “I knew him as a soft, cuddly guy physically and emotionally. He came in with this shaved head and his biceps, and he just chewed through the scene. He blew us away.’

Z-View Twilight Zone: “100 Yards Over the Rim”

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Twilight Zone: “100 Yards Over the Rim” [Season 2, Episode 23]
Original Air Date: April 7, 1961

Director: James Sheldon

Writer: Charles Beaumont

Starring:  Cliff Robertson, John Crawford, Evans Evans and Edward Platt.

The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…

Christian Horn [Robertson] is leading a wagon train out west in 1847.  Horn’s son is burning up with a high fever and unless some water is found he may die.  Horn leaves the wagon train to search for water.  When he goes over a dune he finds himself in modern times.

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13 Riotous Facts About “V for Vendetta”

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Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 13 Riotous Facts About V for Vendetta.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. ANDY AND LANA WACHOWSKI WROTE A SCRIPT FOR V FOR VENDETTA BEFORE THEY WORKED ON THE MATRIX TRILOGY.
The Wachowskis acquired the rights to V for Vendetta in the mid-1990s, then promptly wrote their own screenplay. After directing the three Matrix films, the Wachowskis weren’t interested in returning to directing right away, but they did make alterations to their Vendetta script, including moving the story forward in time and making Evey older.

5. ALAN MOORE DECLINED TO WATCH THE FILM, OR BE CREDITED ON IT.
Moore had read the screenplay and considered it “rubbish.” Moore believed DC Comics and the film industry had knowingly stolen from him. Conversely, David Lloyd praised the movie moments after he had seen it for the first time, declaring it a “fantastic representation” of the work they did, according to McTeigue.

4. IT WAS JAMES MCTEIGUE’S DIRECTORIAL DEBUT.
James McTeigue was first assistant director on the Matrix movies, as well as on Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002), and was picked by the Wachowskis to take charge. “A lot of the filmmaking process is about trust, and at the point that those guys said, ‘We want you to direct it,’ they were about trusting me to go off and give it the vision it needed to be directed with, so they kind of left me alone,” said McTeigue. “They were there if I needed them, and sometimes I’d go, ‘Hey, what do you think about this?’ and they’d put their two cents worth in, and I could either take it on board or leave it at the door.”