50 Fun Facts About Sin City (Movie)

Which director was paid one dollar to guest-direct Dwight's car ride with a corpse in Sin City?

Quentin Tarantino took the token fee for the sequence in which the dead Jackie Boy taunts Dwight from the passenger seat. The credits bill him as special guest director.

Which actor endured long sessions of heavy make-up to play the hulking avenger Marv in Sin City?

Mickey Rourke liked the part but, being claustrophobic, hated the long make-up sessions. The role marked his comeback in mainstream Hollywood, and he returned for the 2014 sequel.

Which visual style, lifted from Frank Miller's comics, made Sin City stand out on screen?

Black and white with color accents was the rule: Goldie keeps her red lips and blonde hair, and one villain turns a sickly yellow. The processing drew particular praise.

Which action star plays John Hartigan, the ageing detective framed for the crimes he stopped, in Sin City?

Bruce Willis plays the honest detective on his last night on the job. He came back in the 2014 sequel as Hartigan's ghost, watching over Nancy.

Which actress plays Nancy Callahan, the dancer John Hartigan rescued as a child, in Sin City?

Jessica Alba won MTV's Sexiest Performance award for the part. She returned as Nancy in the 2014 sequel, this time with a story of her own.

How is Marv executed in Sin City after confessing to murders he did not commit to protect his mother?

Electric chair it is, and in Frank Miller's comic Marv survives the first jolt and taunts his executioners into throwing the switch again. Wendy visits him on death row to thank him.

Which actor, fresh from playing a hobbit, is the silent cannibal killer Kevin in Sin City?

Elijah Wood never says a word as Kevin. He and the actor playing Marv never met on set: each filmed the fight against the other's stunt double.

Which district of Sin City is run by its prostitutes under a truce that keeps the law out?

Old Town governs and polices itself, and its women answer rule-breakers with lethal force. In return the officers stay away, and the mob is kept at bay.

At which European film festival did Sin City compete for the top prize and win an award for its visuals?

Cannes put the film in competition for the Palme d'Or in 2005. Robert Rodriguez went home with the Technical Grand Prize for its visual shaping.

Which subtitle did the 2014 Sin City sequel borrow from the second book in Frank Miller's series?

A Dame to Kill For arrived nine years after the original and, unlike it, flopped: it took $40.7 million against a $65 million budget.

Which British actor plays Dwight McCarthy, the man who defends Shellie from her violent ex, in Sin City?

Clive Owen shared an MTV Best Kiss nomination with the actress playing Gail. In the 2014 sequel, set before Dwight's face was rebuilt, another actor took over the part.

Which body did Robert Rodriguez quit so Frank Miller could share his credit on Sin City?

Directors Guild of America rules reserved a shared credit for established teams, and Miller had never directed before. Miller refused to take sole credit, so Rodriguez resigned.

Which independent publisher, also the home of Hellboy, first serialized Frank Miller's Sin City stories?

Dark Horse Comics ran the first story in its anthology title from April 1991. Miller had announced that he would release his work only through the independent publisher.

Which actress plays Gail, the leader of the prostitutes and Dwight's on-and-off lover, in Sin City?

Rosario Dawson returned as Gail in the 2014 sequel. By her account, Angelina Jolie was the director's first pick to play that film's femme fatale.

Which Oscar winner plays Jackie Boy, the drunken brute who keeps talking after his death, in Sin City?

Benicio del Toro spends much of his screen time as a corpse, heckling Dwight from the passenger seat as Dwight drives off to hide the body.

Which ailment troubles John Hartigan throughout Sin City and is later faked to fool Roark Junior?

A heart condition, severe angina, is forcing Hartigan into retirement as the story opens. Years later he feigns an attack so that Junior lowers his guard.

What does the jailed John Hartigan receive in an envelope when Nancy's weekly letters stop in Sin City?

A severed finger convinces him that Nancy has been found, so he confesses in order to win parole. It was bait: the Roarks wanted him to lead them to her.

In Sin City, the drunken Jackie Boy is killed by Miho before anyone learns he holds which job?

Police lieutenant Jack Rafferty was a hero to the press, so news of his death could end the truce that shields the women who killed him. Shellie had tried to warn Dwight.

In Sin City, what has been packed inside the head that Dwight trades to the mob for Gail?

Explosives turn the grisly trophy into a bomb: Dwight sets it off in a narrow alley, destroying the evidence and Gail's captors at a stroke.

Where does Dwight drive the bodies of Jackie Boy and his friends to make them disappear in Sin City?

The tar pits lie beyond the city limits among concrete dinosaur statues. Frank Miller has admitted that he invented the place mainly as an excuse to draw the dinosaurs.

Frank Miller modeled John Hartigan on which screen detective, whose surname he gave to Nancy in Sin City?

Dirty Harry Callahan, Clint Eastwood's rule-bending detective, was Miller's inspiration for Hartigan, one of the few honest officers on Basin City's corrupt force.

Which Clueless actress plays Shellie, the barmaid caught between Dwight and Jackie Boy, in Sin City?

Brittany Murphy's barmaid sets the whole story moving: she shouts a warning as Dwight leaves in pursuit of her ex, and he mishears it.

Which actor plays The Salesman, the soft-spoken hitman whose scenes open and close Sin City?

Josh Hartnett's assassin makes sure a target's last moments are happy ones before he quietly kills. His two scenes bookend the three main stories.

Which actor plays Manute, the towering mob enforcer who kidnaps Gail, in Sin City?

Michael Clarke Duncan died before production began on the 2014 sequel, so Dennis Haysbert took over as Manute. Duncan's breakout role had been in The Green Mile.

What did Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller use in place of conventional storyboards when shooting Sin City?

The comic's panels served as the shooting plan. Rodriguez called the result less an adaptation than a translation, so the film carries no screenwriting credit at all.

Which term describes how Sin City was filmed, with actors on a bare stage and the city added later?

Digital backlot shooting meant only three physical sets were built. Some scenes were filmed with stand-ins before the stars had even signed on.

Sin City co-director Frank Miller plays which on-screen figure, who points Marv toward the Roarks?

A priest is the last informant Marv questions, and Marv shoots him once he has talked. Robert Rodriguez turns up too, as a member of the SWAT team.

Before Sin City, Frank Miller's unhappy Hollywood stint was writing two sequels to which sci-fi film?

RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3 left Miller convinced he was finished with the film business. A short test scene shot by Robert Rodriguez changed his mind about adaptations.

Which famous American critic gave Sin City four stars out of four and called it brilliant?

Roger Ebert praised it as pulp noir at its most uncompromising and extreme. Not everyone agreed: a 2017 analysis of reviews ranked it among the most divisive films of recent years.

What relation is Wendy, who beats Marv and then helps him, to the murdered Goldie in Sin City?

Twin sister Wendy looks so like Goldie that Marv first dismisses her as a hallucination. One actress, Jaime King, plays both women.

In Sin City, which garments does Marv admire on the men he fights and then take for himself?

Their coats are Marv's weakness: he compliments a man on the one he is wearing just before finishing him, then walks off in it.

Frank Miller summed up Sin City's Marv as which muscle-bound hero dropped into a film noir?

Conan was the model: Miller built Marv by colliding his two biggest influences, film noir and medieval stories, in a single bruiser.

Which Sin City character is Marv's parole officer, who supplies the pills that steady his confused mind?

Lucille gets the medication through her girlfriend, a psychiatrist. She pays dearly for looking into Marv's story: she is captured, then gunned down by corrupt officers.

Which animal does the cannibal Kevin keep as a pet in Sin City, to his own eventual cost?

A wolf gets Kevin's leftovers, and Marv turns it on its master: he only knocks the animal out, then leaves the dismembered Kevin for it to eat.

What does Marv use to tether the lightning-fast Kevin to himself in their Sin City rematch?

Handcuffs cancel out Kevin's speed, the one edge he has. Marv admits that Kevin is the only person who ever managed to sneak up on him.

Kevin's lair and Roark Junior's last stand in Sin City share which kind of Roark family property?

A farm in the hills outside the city is where the Roarks keep their worst secrets, and both Marv and Hartigan end up fighting for their lives there.

Who shoots John Hartigan in the back on the docks as he rescues young Nancy in Sin City?

His own partner, Bob, has been bribed by the senator to cover up Junior's crimes. In the film Bob comes to regret it, and collects Hartigan from prison years later.

At the end of Sin City, what does John Hartigan do so the senator can never use him to reach Nancy?

He takes his own life, having first sent Nancy away with a promise to join her soon. He reasons that the senator would never stop hunting the pair of them.

Which young woman betrays her friends to the mob in Sin City after threats against her mother?

Becky escapes the shootout that follows, injured, only to meet The Salesman in a hospital elevator in the closing scene.

Which nationality are the mercenaries who ambush Dwight while he is disposing of bodies in Sin City?

Irish and ex-IRA, they are hired by the mob to seize proof of Jackie Boy's death. One flees into the sewer with the head before Dwight and Miho catch up with him.

Which three-page Sin City story did Robert Rodriguez film first as a test to win over Frank Miller?

The Customer Is Always Right pleased Miller so much that he agreed to a full-length film. The test footage went on to open the finished movie.

Which ancient battle does Dwight recall in The Big Fat Kill, a Sin City story written before 300?

Thermopylae gives Dwight his plan: draw a stronger enemy into a narrow space, as King Leonidas did. Miller went on to retell the battle itself in 300.

Frank Miller told his Sin City actor to play Dwight as a modern version of which classic private eye?

Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's hardboiled detective, was the template. Miller called Dwight the everyman of the stories, someone simply trying to do the right thing.

Which future Parks and Recreation star plays Burt Schlubb, one of two pompous hitmen, in Sin City?

Nick Offerman's Schlubb and his sidekick Klump are known as Fat Man and Little Boy, nicknames borrowed from the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

Which Will Eisner hero did Frank Miller bring to the screen alone in 2008, reusing the Sin City technique?

The Spirit was written and directed by Miller on his own, and reunited him with Jaime King from the Sin City cast.

Which actor took over as Dwight in the 2014 Sin City sequel, set before the character's face was rebuilt?

Josh Brolin plays Dwight before the surgery that gives him a new face, which is how the sequel explains its change of actor.

Which former Bond girl plays the scheming femme fatale Ava Lord in the 2014 Sin City sequel?

Eva Green's poster for the film was banned by the Motion Picture Association of America, which objected to how much her sheer gown revealed.

Which science-fiction and fantasy awards named Sin City Best Action Film and gave Marv's actor a prize too?

Saturn Awards went to the film three times over: for best action film, for the actor behind Marv, and for its extended DVD release.

Resigning over Frank Miller's credit on Sin City cost Robert Rodriguez which planned sci-fi epic?

John Carter of Mars was already his at Paramount, announced and due to shoot straight after Sin City. Resigning forced him to give it up.

Which piece of Western costume is the trademark of dancer Nancy Callahan on stage in Sin City?

Cowboy chaps sold Frank Miller on the casting: when the actress took the stage in them and danced with a lasso, he said the sight made him weep.