Listening to Frank Miller always makes for an interesting trip into the mind of one of the most creative writers out there. If you're afraid of exploring the dark underbelly of our society and the thin line we walk between violence and restraint, Miller's take on the world could be a shocking experience. After collaborating and co-directing with Robert Rodriguez to bring his Sin City graphic novel to life on the big screen, Frank Miller will soon be delivering another uniquely visceral adaptation with his translation of Will Eisner's The Spirit.

While at the San Diego Comic Con this year, we hunkered down among the masses and had the chance to listen, ask, and get the goods from Frank Miller on how he's approaching The Spirit, another uniquely visceral throwback to the days of Dick Tracy and the investigative serials of the early 1930s and 40s.

FRANK MILLER: The United States ring to performance and we all unite to those actors of the movie. All of the machinery and all the energy of hundreds of people are pushed together forcing into a rectangle in certain factors facing the movie.

Can you follow-up on that? What is the limit that you can bring from prints to motion on the other hand thus succeed in the game from prints to motion? So that limits in the freedom of things.

MILLER: One thing that is harder to do in cinema is juxtapose one image next to another and have your mind feel both at the same time. They do sometimes in split screens but it feels awkward, where on the kind of page you are looking at sometimes 6, 7 or maybe even 30 images at once. Then you might not have taken them in 10 times - one thing that can't be on a comic page that effectively all is this. [laughs] There [are these] million huge moments that that or things that just require intimate control of time. You can and we did send any frame to be up in the one eye.

How much of you is in The Spirit?

MILLER: I had one really great advantage in doing this movie, was that I was able to spend 25 years of training directly from [Will} Eisner, even longer if you count the time from I have edit from who I tell you it works. The advantage he would get because otherwise I would had to argue every shot, every scene, every lasting moment. So this movie really is me translated what Will did respecting him along the way but respecting more than anything his arc, his intent. What Will brought to the job was audacity. I didn't want to do anything that felt reverent or old or precious. I wanted to take chances and I did. I think he would have been - I think he would have been proud that the kid approached to would have had balls.

Could you talk about the casting?

MILLER: The casting was a joyous process with Gary. The first and most difficult part to cast was the hero itself because the story is he was all about the hero. I didn't want him to be anybody everybody knew. I wanted to be a new face so you would come to know him as The Spirit and not as this is a vehicle for some of his camp. So we set about interviewing dozens of actors because it has to be someone who can play a hero. In movies it has gotten very bad at portraying heroes and so actors have gotten not good at playing them. Finding a hero in Hollywood was very difficult. It was the reason why actors like Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, and Clive Owen stand out so, and why they were the best of the barn is that these are qualities that you feel when they are in the room with you what you are above.

Mostly we got a generation of actors who have been taught to be sad and look to mommy for help. And Gabriel Macht, he is very promising when we call people that many times when they were close. One time Gabriel showed up and I just wanted to get a sense of something out of him. So I said, 'Gabe, just come here and sit down next to me in a bar.' We were still sitting in the same place we were and, 'Tell me about Samsara. Tell me about this woman that you knew when you were just coming of age,' and he turned away for me. Then he kind of turned back and he just talked guy to guy about this amazing woman. I realized it was the true spirit.

What is your definition of a hero is that one real?

MILLER: I am spending my whole career trying to define what a hero is, and the Raymond Chandler came up with the words I used as a motto and had by my office wall written large, which is huge. The hero, he is everything. And the story of this movie depends-- is in every scene, every shot on what it meant we got a hero. In the moral story, every character is a reflection of what’s done to the hero. So the villain is dumb kind of, and the world gut reacts to him and confronts him, finds him. This particular hero of uber man has quite a lot of ladies. He is very romantic and the so we set out to put together a cast based on oddness characters.

The decision to have your problems appear full face...

MILLER: Yeah, I thought that audience will sit down for a better part of two hours looking at a pair of gloves up against my hero, is a bit much. It is best to dive in and really show evil and give the hero some force to be reckoned with. From the beginning I wanted Samuel Jackson. I always wanted to work with him. I have always felt in him was, was this sort of character waiting to burst out. I remember joking with the other one - I think he has been restraining himself in the way he would turn around on him again. What is so wonderful about actors is that you will write a line that serves your purpose and maybe you will even think it is clever, and then they will give you a twist on it. One of them was in the trailer. You saw when he said, "Come on, toy books are always funny." I thought that that was simply a funny line. When he said it I was terrified because the he said it without a hint of humor.

Not only do you turn a man into a hero, but this wields so much power.

MILLER: One of the scenes that Eisner and I shared was the real love from powerful people to offend as icons. That in our shared love for New York City really are two things that I think found us creatively. I think that because women are so beautiful it is often easy to get distracted by that and have that be the complete reaction to them. When I met Scarlett Johannsen for lunch she was considering one of the other roles in the picture. I sat and talked with her for three hours and found her utterly fascinating, completely wrong for the part she was up for, way too young. Then I realized there was another part with Silken Floss that she would bring something to that nobody had ever seen because she was one of the funniest people I have ever met. Her comic timing is impeccable. But how is it I am sitting here having a lunch with a young Lucille Ball and nobody has noticed. I went back and rewrote the part completely for her. She took it.

There is a huge difference between the original hyper stories of The Spirit which weren't really freak sort-of-based stories. How do you translate that kind of language in ritual?

MILLER: Yeah, it was at first a little daunting. It is kind of that, "Oh, how do you do Henry the novel?" What I did was I started with my favorite ‘Spirit’ story, the same sad story, and expanded on it bringing in as much of his myth as I could. There was only so much, though there are hundreds of stories. He was a prodigious talent and mostly it was combining the same seraph story with the criminality of the octopus, that I was able to end with the world that The Spirit had of it and playing with his toys, also with the beautiful women and fascinating city. New York is a Pompeii of a city. You find it is layer after layer of city. When you are doing a story set in New York, you can steal any decade you want because they are all still alive, and I did. Here I am. (laugh)

How was today? Your movie, how did you plan the presentation and what did you think of the reaction. Did they criticize you?

MILLER: No, no they criticized me exactly the same way as Christ or St. Andrews would say.

How has this convention been transforming over the years?

MILLER: The convention has changed a great deal. If you speak at that, we would feel that we were that we were, you know, a lonely tribe that wasn't as keeping the faith, keeping the torch going for an art form that was going to fade away. And now we are, say, at the heart of entertainment. It has changed everything, this convention itself has grown from a very, very tiny set of rooms, which we called cardboard boxes and comic books and plastic bags. To this throng I made my way through.

How was it that you had to do The Spirit of the movie? I mean, did you run and say 'I want to do this'?

MILLER: No, as a matter of fact I did not do it. Mike Hughes would approach me at a memorial service for Wagner to do it and I said no absolutely not. It was too scary a project for me. Then a few seconds later I said nobody else gets to touch it. But shortly I met Deborah and we set about the nuts and bolts of what should be a ‘Spirit’ movie. I was left to come up with a story and write a screenplay. Once I did we went at tooth and nail. The very first time I sat down with Debra as my producer she spoke very bluntly. She said I am the one you are making this movie with. From then until now she is the only person that I would make it with. People ask me how much trouble with the studio, how much trouble with the vision, what is the trouble with that? I say, 'Ask her,' because I didn't even hear about it.

Are you going to combine now being a director with being a creative artist?

MILLER: I have a tough choice. How do you filter if there are so many ways to tell stories now? I deal with an awful lot - like my character's philosophy after the movie, at the end of the movie, she simply looks out into the future and says, 'Who knows what I will do?'

The stories have been marred but they are also very full on, they have humor in it.

MILLER: I think you will find plenty of humor in it.

I have to know where did the confidence to actually take this one on your own--because it was the first one that you are doing on your own.

MILLER: It seems like occasionally it was just going to jump off.

Was Robert Rodriguez helpful in that, I mean on the filming?

MILLER: Robert and I remain very good friends, but doubt no, he had none of me. He said, 'You are ready.'

What kind of movie should we expect a very technical movie or a transcription from the book? Like some scenes - when you can actually see the faces of 300...

MILLER: You are going to, but I would - but what I seek and I think you will feel is you feel yourself drawn into a romantic adventure. You will care about the fate of central city and you will care deeply about the hero. And the - I hope there is one climatic moment that will make you cry.