Comic-Con Treats Filmmakers As Royalty

By Scott Bowles

SAN DIEGO — There was a time when Zack Snyder could walk through the Comic-Con convention of comic book devotees, picking through Watchmen graphic stories undisturbed like any other geek.

No more.

Snyder has become a member of the convention’s nerd royalty: a small corps of filmmakers who have won the grudging respect of this often haughty crowd.

“It feels a little strange, getting recognized,” says Snyder, director of the bloody epic 300 and the upcoming Watchmen, perhaps the most anticipated film of the convention. “Because this is the toughest crowd you’ll ever face.”

But those who do win the reverence of the Comic-Con faithful are usually bound for greater things. Jon Favreau, for instance, became the hit of last year’s convention with footage of Iron Man, and it has become the gold standard of Comic-Con presentations. The movie has taken in $314.5 million so far, the most of any movie this year.

Rob Cohen, on the other hand, lost the credibility he had gained with The Fast and the Furious with a weak preview of Stealth, the Jamie Foxx action film that was dead on arrival when it hit theaters in 2005.

“Any success I’ve got, you really have to give to the fans here, and they don’t give it lightly” Snyder says. “When I was first doing 300, we were thinking about what kind of magazine covers we could get. I said, ‘How about Vanity Fair?’ And the studio said, ‘You’ll be lucky to get Cat Fancy.’ But once you get acceptance here, then you can think of going out to larger audiences. They’re the gatekeepers of popular culture. You don’t pass through those gates without their permission.”

And it’s a different respect than is given in Hollywood, where box office is the bottom line. Comic-Con fans are less concerned with a movie’s profitability than its purity. Snyder, for instance, found he had won a surprising number of fans with his 2004 Dawn of the Dead, which grossed a respectable if unimposing $59 million.

“That started it all, of all things,” Snyder says. “I think when you prove you’re one of them — when you share their kind of comic-book vision, I guess — they’ll stick with you,” he says. “Until you screw it up.”

David Goyer, a screenwriter on the new Batman films and the Blade trilogy, also has found prestige here.

He concedes that you could probably hit him with your car and not recognize him. But here, “I sometimes need help just getting through the convention,” says Goyer, who is directing next year’s horror film The Unborn. “It’s kind of flattering.”

If occasionally unnerving. “Sometimes you’ll be eating and catch something in the corner of your eye and realize it’s a fan in a Joker outfit. And you just don’t know what they’re going to do.”

Still, Goyer says, it’s nice to have your work recognized. “In Los Angeles, I’m usually confused for Stanley Tucci,” he says. “Unless you’re a Steven Spielberg or George Lucas, most directors and writers never get recognized. These guys pay attention to your work.”

That’s because comic-book readers tend to be more literate, asserts Frank Miller, who has been the godfather of Comic-Con for more than a decade because of his work both in comics (Daredevil, Batman) and in films (Sin City).

“What people are finally beginning to understand is that comic books are like any other art form, and as good as just about any literature,” he says. “And no one knows their material like these guys. I’ll have people come up and ask why I drew a cape a certain color in 1985. That’s pretty daunting.”

Miller, who is directing the comic-book adaptation The Spirit with Samuel L. Jackson, says that Comic-Con fans tend toward more obscure filmmakers “because they themselves are drawn to very complex stories, stories that until a short while ago would never have gotten made into a mainstream movie.”

And they’ll turn on those who betray their roots, says Gale Anne Hurd, one of the few women who have gained acceptance at Comic-Con who aren’t named Lucy Lawless.

Hurd, who became a member of the geek elite by producing films including Terminator and Aliens, says that celebrity among “Conners” can be short-lived.

She remembers coming to Comic-Con last year with The Incredible Hulk, this summer’s reboot of the franchise that stalled with 2003′s debacle.

“We had this catch in our throat before we began the panel,” she says. “But when we showed them the footage, and they saw we were being true to the comics, they welcomed us back.

“I remember thinking, ‘Whew, they still like us.’”

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