Director's approach: no guts, no glory

Throughout a long, busy career as a commercial director, Zack Snyder harbored an unfulfilled desire. He wanted to make a movie out of a Frank Miller graphic novel. Now he has -- with "300," a film that couples live action with extensive visual effects and which opened Friday.

"All along I've been a huge graphic-novel fan," says Snyder. "I love fantasy art and I love Frank Miller. I was familiar with '300' but I thought it was a fantasy to think I would direct this. So it just gestated as a fun idea. Look, I'm a commercial director and I have aspirations to direct this giant sword-and-sandal flick as my first film?"

But Snyder figured that if he could get a chance, he'd do a good job with "300 ." "I thought I'd be all right if I could get Frank's tone in the movie," Snyder explains. "I wanted to make an R-rated movie that was hard but that was fun and enjoyable and in some ways morally bizarre."

Miller is an influential writer/artist whose tough style made popular such characters as Daredevil and Elektra, reinvigorated Batman as a "dark knight" and created the noirish "Sin City" series. All of those are well-known, partly because they've been made into movies -- Miller even co-directed last year's violent "Sin City" with Robert Rodriguez to maintain creative control.

But 1999's "300" is a lesser- known work, a stylized retelling of the battle of Thermopylae . In the tale from ancient Greece, an outnumbered band of warrior-class Spartans led by King Leonidas -- just 300, in this film -- made a heroic stand against a much larger army of invading Persians under the command of Emperor Xerxes. (When Snyder speaks of the Spartans being "morally bizarre," he refers to how his film shows Spartans throwing a Persian messenger down a well and then finishing off wounded Persians after a battle.)

Snyder, 41, has developed a reputation within the advertising world for commercials that combine offbeat twists with visual splendor. He has won two Clios, among other awards. In one of his most memorable ads, shot in the Yukon for Jeep, three men toss a Frisbee between mountaintops. When it falls into a crevasse, they race to their Jeeps to retrieve it.

Such work has proved rewarding. He and his third wife, Deborah, and three dogs live in a renovated modernist Pasadena home that faces westward, overlooking a park and the rich California sunsets. He's trim and energetic, with a youthful face and the word "Deborah" tattooed on one arm. For this interview, he sits in the kitchen wearing a cap while the late-afternoon sun streams through a wall of glass and into the room. His phones constantly ring -- one on a kitchen counter reveals 32 missed calls.

Born in Green Bay, Wis., Snyder grew up in Connecticut and attended a Greenwich prep school where his parents were dorm supervisors. His mother was raised in Pittsfield and his parents and sister still live there. He studied painting at Heatherlies School in London and came to Pasadena in 1986 to study film at Art Center College of Design.

When Snyder started looking for movies to make, he visited producer Gianni Nunnari, for whom he had done an Italian industrial-lighting commercial starring Robert De Niro. "He came to visit me and saw that graphic novel," Nunnari says during a phone interview. "He said, 'Gianni, I love Frank Miller, that's my kind of stuff.' "

Nunnari said he either had the rights or was close to acquiring them and also knew Miller, who wanted a film that wouldn't dilute his content. "Zack said, 'I'm the guy who can make it exactly like a graphic novel,' " Nunnari says.

That was the start of Snyder's five-year effort to get "300" filmed. It got easier after Snyder directed a successful remake of George Romero's horror film "Dawn of the Dead" in 2004, which got respectful reviews and earned almost $60 million. "Then people became very interested in Zack," Nunnari says. "But he was in love with this project and told them, 'If you want to make a movie with me, you need to do "300." ' " Warner Bros. ultimately agreed, with Nunnari one of the producers and Snyder directing and sharing a screenwriting credit.

Snyder's R-rated film is halfway between battlefield realism and hallucinatory surrealism. It has creatures and characters seemingly out of old monster movies rather than history, but also elaborate, blood-spattered sequences of war and a somber rape scene.

While the film uses real actors, most scenes were shot on interior sets in front of a green screen. Some 1,300 visual-effects shots were added afterward during a year of post-production and Snyder used a special process to bring out consistently vivid colors.

In the exaggerated world of "300," the Spartans, led by Leonidas (Gerard Butler) have hard, sculpted torsos and wear tight black briefs. Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), on the other hand, is depicted as a pampered man - child, wearing jewels and body piercings , and carried about on a golden throne by slaves.

It was enough, Snyder jokes, to have some who saw it early wonder if the film actually is a conservative take on the glory of war. Indeed, he notes, some wonder if it's about President Bush's Iraq War with the Spartans symbolizing Americans. He laughs about that but also concedes there is a place where "300" intersects with post-9/11 American politics. (Miller, who could not be reached for comment, has a reputation in some quarters as a conservative.)

"People have jumped to the conclusion that I've been paid by the US government to make this propaganda film," Snyder says. "I don't think it is. I didn't make it that way. Someone asked me, 'Are your politics the same as Frank's?' And I said, 'When I'm making Frank's book into a movie, Frank's point of view is my point of view. It's not my job to edit it out.' "

One of his next projects -- tentatively scheduled to begin filming later this year -- is an adaptation of Alan Moore's classic 1985 graphic novel "The Watchmen." Moore's tale is of anti-superheroes struggling to make sense of "what's human inside the superhero," according to Snyder. (The film version of Moore's "V for Vendetta," set in a fascistic England, was released last year.)

"It couldn't be more politically different from '300,' " Snyder says of "Watchmen." "In some ways, it's the opposite and I love that personally. I feel both Frank and Alan Moore are these incredible artists in their field."