Blood, Guts and Ketchup

Take one Greek myth legend, add in a plenty of muscle bound heroes, mix with lashings of tomato ketchup and cook for 2 hours. It's the basic ingredients for 300, a spectacular movie and possibly the best film in years. Frank Miller's visual blood feast is a fast paced epic of big beefy men chopping each other up into little bits.

So what does our resident Hollywood critic think to all this? Eric Sandstrom straps on his leathers and thrusts his sword deep into 300. What a guy.

A "Pressed Junket" 

The grossly successful 300 came with all the "sensual gore" and "testy smell of blood" you'd come to expect from insane comic writer Frank Miller, whose violent material featured in his creations is also apparent in his novelization of Annie, where Spartans catch and kill the tyrannical Miss Hannigan.

With all the unyielding gore that battling the Spartan provides, the filmmakers had great fun fetishizing violence in 300.

"Spartans live for battle," says director Zack Snyder. "They fight as one, creating a phalanx in which each warrior's shield, protecting the men in bloody combat. (Are you as turned-on as me?) It's an orgasmic sight: the masses of blood-stained Persians, surging in to battle -- ah, during production my pants were never tighter. I'm sorry, I'll this talk about -- I'll be back in ten minutes."

Gerard Butler as Leonidas, in the now-famous Yelling at the Camera scene.

Snyder took great pride taking Frank Miller's "drawn-novel" and converted the material into a living feature film.

"Frank took an actual event and turned it into mythology, as opposed to taking a mythological event and turning it into reality; in turn, we took a comic and turned it into a sexual aid for gore fetishists," says Snyder. "Miller wanted to get at the essence, as opposed to the reality -- like Donald Rumsfeld's war policy. For example: if you go to Thermopylae, the statue of Leonidas is nude; he's got a shield and spear and a helmet and thatÙs it. When Frank saw it, you can tell it helped inspire the book's simplicity. It's also what inspired the crew to work nude."

The book attracted a legion of fans starving for bloodlust. Some of whom, would bring their own 300-brand blood to convention-conÙs to get signed; among the fans, are the filmmakers themselves.

"The beautiful thing about Frank's book, is the prose that goes along with his drawings; also, itÙs printed with the blood of nerds," notes Snyder. "It is not just an illustration; there is this poetry -- but thatÙs really included in his work with Emily Dickinson, titled, A Yellow Bastard Came Down. But the way that he structures the prose in 300, is extremely important to me; although, as it turns out, IÙve only read the ‘graphic novelÙ -- a novelization of a graphic subject."

Creator and executive producer Frank Miller on location in his Warner Bros office.

Through his passion for the material, Snyder was able to convince producer Mark Canton to get involved with development of 300, to help elevate the manÙs taste for desensitized-bloodshed.

"The director came to this project with such love for the material itself -- he goes ‘outÙ with the material, they hang out in the mall, enjoy an Orange Julius, have a really good time," says Canton. "The property itself just opened the directorÙs imagination -- just as the characters open up sternums and upper thighs with their gore-ridden spears. It's hot, hot, hot!

Snyder and Miller were both adamant about making the imagery "live on film," as they both agreed to do while on a Peyote bender.

Snyder explains, "I didn't want to make a film that looks like a photograph, but rather, to put you inside the world Frank created in the graphic novel -- we put page numbers on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and everything. This was designed specifically to piss-off the Iranian government. And it worked."

The presence of Frank Miller, who kept a close eye on the film during production, might have been intimidating for the crew, especially when he dressed as Thundarr the Barbarian and wrote stagehand's scary diatribes, but Snyder counters, "Frank was so nice and so helpful, despite his perpetual grimace. Whenever I sought his input or approval, he would say, 'Keep going, it's great. I embrace everything you're doing, just as long as the checks keep coming in, he also demanded that he'd smell the moist weaponry."

Gerard Butler, who stars as King Leonidas, reaffirms MillerÙs helpfulness, "He was so helpful, he even issued hard-onÙs to anyone who wasnÙt aroused by the violence."

The consensus says:

300 is a simplistic but stupid thrill-ride experience; full of blood, gore, bloodshed, glucose, plasma, vital fluid, and built-in movie quotes bound to be said during drunken non-alcoholic Strawberry Daiquiri IGN Excite Truck parties.

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