Uslan and DeSanto Catch the Spirit (PW.com)

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By Douglas Wolk

Publishers Weekly

12/15/2008

From February through April, DC's The Spirit series will have a guest writing team: Michael Uslan and F.J. DeSanto, the producers of the Frank Miller-directed Spirit movie that's opening this month. Uslan hasn't written many comics since he became the producer of the Batman movies (aside from the Batman graphic novel Detective No. 27 a few years ago), but he wrote stories for The Shadow, Beowulf, Detective Comics and other series back in the early '70s, when, as he put it at a recent interview in New York, "I was a Junior Woodchuck at DC Comics. They didn't have the term 'intern' then, but it was me and that skinny kid—what was his name?—Paul... Levitz! Levitz! I don't know what happened to him, but he was a Woodchuck too."

The difficulty with creating new Spirit comics, DeSanto noted, is that the character is so closely identified with Eisner: "It's not like Batman, where you have 70 years of Batman stories by so many different creators that you can do The Dark Knight or you can do the Brave and the Bold cartoon—it's Eisner, and that's it." So, before they started writing, he and Uslan made a list of elements of Eisner's work they had to incorporate into every Spirit story.

"They had to have cinematic storytelling, influenced heavily by Hitchcock," Uslan said. "In terms of the heart of the story, they had to be influenced by Frank Capra. There had to be humanity in these stories. They had to be character-driven. Eisner's humor had to be there. Eisner's violence quotient had to be there. Eisner's over-the-top villains had to be there, and Eisner's femme fatales"—the three issues Uslan and DeSanto have written are built around Plaster of Paris, Silken Floss and Lorelei, all of whom also appear in the movie, and they're connected by a plot involving Eisner's foremost villain, the Octopus. Drawn by the former Shadowpact team of Justiniano and Walden Wong, they're full of other little nods to Eisner's work; the first page of their first issue echoes the first page of the classic Spirit story "Ten Minutes."

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Michael Uslan and F.J. DeSanto on Will Eisner's The Spirit (IGN.com)

Comics2Film.com: Flipping through Comic Book Movies with F.J. DeSanto

By Rob M. Worley
September 19, 2007
Comics2Film.com

The process of developing comic book properties independently became refined as Michael Uslan and F.J. DeSanto navigated the Hollywood waters in an effort to launch the upcoming movie based on Will Eisner's 'The Spirit.' Although it predates the Comic Book Movies umbrella, Uslan and DeSanto have been working for years to create a movie that is true to Eisner's comics.

Just as Hollywood was slow to spark to Uslan's vision of Batman as a moody, mature film, they've also had trouble "getting" into 'The Spirit'. Uslan rejected offers to make the character supernatural, or to put him in a costume. Things changed when Uslan walked into a meeting at an independent company called Odd Lot Entertainment:

"Years ago, he met Deborah Del Prete and told her, 'I have the single greatest comic book creation in the history of man.' She looked at him and said, 'Oh, you have 'The Spirit?' And the skies opened and the sun shone through and the choir sang, because we found someone who understood," DeSanto said. Once Del Prete's team got involved, Uslan and DeSanto began courting legendary comics creator Frank Miller in hopes of him taking his first solo turn behind the camera. After some initial reluctance, Miller signed on to write and direct the film, which sees Uslan producing and DeSanto co-producing.

"I think Frank felt confident that people who truly loved Will's material were behind this film", DeSanto says, "and that helped him overcome any reservations he might have had about coming onboard the project. The advantage Michael and I have is that we have one foot in the world of movies and the other in the world of comics, manga and anime. The relationships he and I have built over the years in both give us access to people and properties others normally couldn't get. There's a trust and respect for the properties and people see that and understand, and that's the foundation Comic Book Movies is being built upon."

While the lid of secrecy on the movie is tight, DeSanto's enthusiasm is high. "I'm so honored and thrilled to be involved with this film. I can't say much about it, but Frank's gonna knock it out of the park. The people that are involved with it all get it, all love it, and all know the material. There are a lot of 'Will is looking down at us' conversations. We know he's watching and we know he's sitting on Frank's shoulder sometimes giving him a hard time. But that was their thing, their dynamic."

DeSanto believes that "getting it" is a big part of what makes the Comic Book Movies operation work. Whatever film grows out of their efforts, fans can rest assured they'll approach it with a sense of protective custody about the source material.

"Michael and I are fans. We are of that ilk. We both taught ourselves to read at an early age from comic books. We're not some Hollywood guys who went, 'Oh my God, this comic book thing is taking off!', but on the flipside, we're not just fanboys who just go and set up movies" DeSanto enthuses. "Michael has been doing it for 30-plus years. I've been extremely lucky to have him as a mentor, to see how to inspire the same kind of passion in the hearts of people we want to partner with and even how to keep momentum up when obstacles arise. Michael says it best when he says we're living in a golden age of comic book movies, and now Comic Book Movies, the company, is determined to bring our fellow fans what we all want."

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