 MOVIES |  | UP CLOSE: GABRIEL MACHT | | 'The Spirit' star speaks of honoring Eisner and getting punchy with Frank Miller | | | By Jake Rossen | | Posted 9/19/2008 | |  | |  Like the titular character in his upcoming "The Spirit," Gabriel Macht has been a bit of an ethereal presence in recent years: The 36-year-old actor has appeared in a string of films, some noteworthy ("The Good Shepherd"), some not ("Grand Theft Parsons"). | |  If the track record of comic-to-film adaptations is any indication, that semi-anonymity is about to be blown to bits with the Christmas Day release of Frank Miller's first solo directing effort, "The Spirit," based on Will Eisner's iconic creation. Macht dished on playing the undead Denny Colt, the parade of femme fatales and a peculiar way of decorating his set trailer.
WIZARD: "The Spirit" co-stars Scarlett Johansson, Sarah Paulson and Eva Mendes, among other knockouts. Some people might think your job was to hang out with beautiful women all day. Tell me if I'm over-simplifying things.
MACHT: Of course, it was a lot of fun. All the girls were lovely. Eva would come in for two and a half or three weeks, and then Sarah would come in for a week or two, [and then] Scarlett would come in for a little bit. It was nice to have a variety of great actresses to work with.
Did Miller advise you to go and read some Eisner, or were you already a fan?
I actually didn't know about the Spirit until the audition. I bought the "best of" Spirit collections. When I got to set, Frank said, "Listen, I don't want you to look at those. I'm not crazy about the coloring." He wasn't a fan. He liked the black and white. So he gave me his best picks, and I read through all of those Spirit comics and put them up in my trailer. You couldn't see any wall. It was all comics.
Have you been able to check out any of the finished scenes, with the backgrounds added?
I saw a version with 500 visual effects in, and there were another 1,300 that were going to be laid in. It blew me away. It was phenomenal. When I've seen other films I've made in that same process, it's always like, "Oh, God, maybe this won't turn out so good." So whatever it comes back as with the 1,300 additional elements, plus the score and sound editing and mixing, it's going to blow your mind.
Are you ready for the analysis that goes along with these kinds of films?
There are already fans up in arms because your suit isn't blue.
I'm fine with that. I think that it's fine to change and adjust things. That's what Eisner would have wanted. Look at Darwyn Cooke's new Spirit comic. It's different from what Eisner did 50 years ago.
I think he would've trusted Frank with this material. Every day we'd say, "Would Will go for this? Would he buy this?" If we didn't feel like he would, we wouldn't go with it.
| |  How do you think Miller did in his first solo directing effort?
I think he did an excellent job. Every executive I talk to, I say, "You gotta hire this guy because he's amazing." He's an incredible visionary. He's so articulate in talking to his actors, his designers, talking to anyone on set from the top all the way down. He's jovial and excited to be there. He's almost like a kid in a candy shop. "Oh, man, we're making a movie, man!" He's got that kind of excitement and jazz. He knows exactly what he wants, and knows how to talk to each member of the crew in a way in which they can understand what he needs so they can make it happen. He was an excellent, excellent director, by far the most articulate director I've worked with in getting across his vision.
Any good on-set stories?
One thing we did was, we were talking about how the Spirit is physically very strong and can obviously take care of himself. He finds ways to protect himself and civilians in Central City. He'll use a manhole cover as a shield or something. He hates guns.
But there's also the sense of the Spirit being sort of clumsy. He may walk into a wall or whatever. I was talking with Frank once, and he was telling me about how he wanted this punch to look—he was hoping for the Spirit to really look like he knew what he was doing, and this punch was a deadly hit, right? So when he reached back to show me the punch, he actually hit himself in the nose. [Laughs] It was hilarious, because it was exactly what the Spirit would have done. It was just a perfect image, a metaphor for who the Spirit is.
You've got another comic adaptation, Greg Rucka's "Whiteout," coming up.
We shot on Lake Winnipeg in the middle of nowhere for [the movie's setting of] Antarctica. It was 50-below, freezing. It was an insane shoot. Then we went to Montreal and shot everything indoors. It was the hottest set I've ever been on because you'd wear all this extreme weather gear and you were working inside a studio. Even though it looks like we're shooting in Antarctica, we were sweating bullets the entire time.
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