YouSaid · the spoken record

Frank Miller

lines on the record: 90
first: 2025-10-20
most recent: 2025-10-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Now, here's the first part that I wanted to quote, and I won't do the whole thing, but there's nothing like a broken nose to clarify the mind as a creative experience. Ronan was a fascinating, exhilarating exploration, and it goes on. So why was Ronan”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I just, this is lesson six in your book, The Dark Knight Cometh, smash expectations, but here's where it starts. And there's a quote from Rudyard Kipling from if, which is, if you can meet triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. Yeah.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe some way of backing into this would be what are some examples of things that you have thrown out? How do you decide when it's time to cut your losses or get rid of something?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, if you look back at what you've ended up being happiest with or less happy with With hindsight 2020. This doesn't necessarily mean audience response, right? Not talking about market response. Like intrinsic working for you. I suppose what I'm looking for is just any thoughts for folks who have trouble throwing things away because they just have a high default level of excitement. So they get wedded to something and they're like, I'm not going to throw this away. And they have trouble killing their darlings or murdering their darlings, right? Which is another line that you like.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm going to ask you a lot more about. Which I have in my suitcase back at my hotel But before we get there, I want to talk about I believe I saw this in the book as well. Effectively, if you're boring yourself or if you're bored, you're going to bore your audience and like throw it out and start over. When do you know if something is working? And I'll pull out an example of what seems like something that was working.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How did the European and Japanese styles, so that would incorporate Lone Wolf and Cub influence then how your approach changed after then?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which made it a little less intimidating for someone who couldn't yet really read Japanese, right? So my translating burden was lower with this comic. And the art was spectacular. What blew my mind because I had read comics all the way through my childhood up to that point, and I was 15 when I got to Japan. Like you said, it was how time and space and speed and motion were depicted so differently and how they captured, say, the swing of a leg or created the effective blur was so captivating to me. It was unlike anything I had seen.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And to come back to the Japanese, a comic book that I use, it's not a well-known title, certainly outside of Japan, even within Japan. A lot of Japanese people kind of scratch their head when I tell them what it's called, which is Rokudenashi Blues, which is about high school gangs, which aren't really a thing, but they pretend like it is. And the bad kids wear different types of uniforms called Choran or anyway. But it's a hyper violent. There are a lot of fight scenes in this.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alien, good question. I mean, it would have been post Star Wars. I was just trying to think because Mobius also a lot of his artwork makes me think of Tatuin and some of these things in Star Wars. So I'm wondering what the directionality is. Yeah, okay. That's what I was trying to answer for myself because it seems so obvious when you look at it.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How did you first get exposed to, for instance, Mobius Otomo, any others you want to mention? How did you get exposed to those influences and who were, who are they?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, let's talk about picking and choosing and Specifically, I would love to hear. I lived in Japan as an exchange student and learned to read and speak Japanese largely from reading comic books”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How does that show up then in practice? Do you have, you know, the starting point? You know the end of the story. You have characters in a situation. Do you draw your way through and then figure out kind of the narrative arc? What is the proper blend for you now of?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How you actually start from step one in creating a story. And then proceed through that. It seems like also in the introduction that having a very good idea of where your story ends is a critical piece of that.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then you talk about preliminary sketches and so on. Can you expand on this and just maybe give an example of how you would do that, whether it's with a book like SinCity or any other that comes to mind?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's going to take me a second to read, but I'd love you to walk people through this after I read at least some of it. All right, everything starts with and proceeds from story, some simple story rules. Number one, start your story as late into the action as possible. End it as early into the action as possible. Two, get your hero into trouble fast that or give the hero a pressing problem to solve. I work on the spine of the story. That's a phrase that I'd love for you to define. Work on the spine of the story and figure out how it starts and ends and then roughly plot the in-between. And I'll just read one more sentence and then I'll let you kind of fill to do this. I make notes and create scenes that will advance the storyline, but allow room for digressions and narrative side streets.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, for folks who don't have any familiarity, and also because I want to better understand it, I mean, there are different approaches to making a comic. And also crafting a story, right? And so I want to pull up something that I have here.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have a lot of comics with Electra at my childhood home On Long Island to this day, polybagged with backing. Whenever I ask.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I suppose when I'm trying to unpack is, and maybe I'm overstating the importance, but was that sort of introduction of Electra an important inflection point for you in some way In what way was it important?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're going to hop around a little bit, but I mean, people need to read the book. They need to see the doc. But I know a lot of people have covered certain aspects of your bio. You first gain notoriety in the late 70s for your transformative work on Daredevil. Now, I also, and this is pulling from the book, read a bit, and this is I'm putting a character, you'll have to explain, but Electra in kind of brackets, because I'm inserting that. But now I'm quoting you. Was the true genesis of my career in comic books? Could you speak to that chapter of your life that involved Electra and what the significance of that was?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How many interactions like that? How many different visits showing him work? Did it take for him to finally say that your work was not for throwing away?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, okay, so this was actually going to be my next question, which was why do you think he agreed to let you come back? He was like, go pump gas, go back to Vermont. And you're like, let me fix it and come back tomorrow. And he's like, okay, fine.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I'm so. Fascinated by Exchange and his willingness to help for a few different reasons, right? Number one is I wonder how did this guy Muster the bandwidth to do his own work, run a business, and also mentor just that question alone. And then I also think about the sliding door moment of what if he had just had a really bad day and he was like, you're not going back tomorrow, kids. Sorry, I'm too busy, right? Like, what a different life.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Somehow you ended up in the office. You show him your work. And then, and I'll quote here, he told me just how awful my stuff was and didn't bother with using any sugar coating either. Where'd you say you were from Vermont? Go back to Vermont. Pump gas. Get married. You're no good and you never will be. End quote. I gulped this is referring to you and then asked, can I fix it and show you again tomorrow? To which Neil responds, yeah, I'll see you tomorrow. He growled. Okay. Who is Neil and why did you reach out to him?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, that's eight sleep.com for $350 off. Shipping is available to many countries worldwide one more time, eight sleep.com slash Tim. How did you, and we're going to jump around chronologically But let me see if I can find this particular paragraph from your book relates to a name that you will recognize. That is Neil Adams. So Neil was a hard taskmaster, utterly ruthless in his criticism. He was a godsend. I just want to read another paragraph. We'll get into the description of who this is, but you cold-called his office. Is that right? Okay, Cold called his office. This is when no one knows who you are. And then ultimately, I think it was his daughter who rants at the phone. She says, this is dad. We got another one”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have seems like a few different guiding phrases. Have one, of course, from the book title itself push the wall. Another one that comes to mind is defy the code.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Seems like a good time to maybe talk about Jack Kirby and how he impacted the world of comics. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I was reading, and this is straight from your book, that for a long time comics were set panels in a sense, right? And you kind of filled in the blanks to the extent that artists would sometimes get sort of pre, I don't want to say cut, but sort of outlined pages within which to place their work.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's explore other figures who have helped showcase the potential of this medium. Through innovating because I love this. Terrain because people listening may not be comic lovers, but there's some medium. That they're fascinated by. And whether it's in the realm of fiction and, let's just say novels, whether it's in film, whether it's in comics, there are things that we might take for granted now that we're not at all obvious a decade or two ago.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I love about your comics is first of all I should just point out to people that don't know anything about this world, you seem to me to be an outlier on a number of different levels, one of which is that you're very well known for your art and you are very well known for your writing. How common is that in the US comic world? In Japan, it's a little more”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if the impatience ended there. So I said that as someone who's also very impatient, it has pros and cons. And I'm wondering the visceral violence that is channeled into creating. What we see on the page in Sint City, the kinetic aspect of it is so palpable. How do you relate to anger using it the right dose, if there is a right dose, channeling it versus being controlled by it? How do you think about that fire maybe as a better way to put it within?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Amazing Toothbrush Mention this at the end of your list. How do you use the toothbrush? Because I feel like this, at least in my mind, is one of the hallmark signatures in the minds of many. Some Frank Miller artwork is this particular element. So, how do you use the toothbrush?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is a masterpiece. I mean, any one of these could be on a wall by itself, but this is sequential storytelling. And I have many questions, but one of them is about kind of aliveness and that channeling all of your energies into excellence. Because I think this came up in the documentary about you as well, American Genius, that you kind of attack the page like there seems to be a real kinetic channeling of energy. Into the PageWitch, which you can see in this particular version, the curator's collection. What did it feel like when you were making this that I'm holding?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Found some old sketches of his in one of the desks. In fact, but here's this quote even after 25 years, Frank Miller, Sin City, the hard goodbye, showcases the full potential of the comics medium, a stark, brilliant Chiroscuro. It remains a defiantly timeless, handcrafted, love letter of the days of old in an increasingly slick and digital world. I segue from the tools because when I look at some of these pages, and I'll provide some of these as B-roll and so on, looking at something like this, I'll just show that to, I mean,”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An element of chaos. So you seem to be in a sense someone who thrives in chaos or by creating certain types of chaos. And this monster that I'm holding, for those who are listening and not watching, I'm holding something in my lap that feels like it's 20 to 35 pounds. I was carrying it around walking through New York City, getting a lot of odd looks because it's a rectangle about the size of an x-ray plate you would use to take a x-ray of both lungs. It's gigantic. Then this is Frank Miller's Sin City, the hard goodbye. And I want to just open this up and I'm going to read something from right inside. This is from Jim Lee, another legend in the space, another hero of mine. For another time I used to have his job at the same college as graphic editor of the Princeton Tiger.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's then take maybe some of my props that we have here. And I'm going to go to my phone because I was reading an early copy. I've pushed the wall, my life writing, drawing in the art of storytelling. And I took a lot of highlights. And I had to take photographs of the PDF of my Kindle to look at some of them. And I wanted to go through a little list. This might seem strange, but I tend to obsess on the specifics. These are some of the tools of your trade. Blackwing graphite pencils, white paint, India black ink, liquid frisket, erasers and sable brushes, and then it goes through description of a lot more. Windsor and Newton Series seven, mostly sizes three to twelve, et cetera. Few questions that I want to ask about, including the toothbrush, my trusty Spatter Maker. What is... Liquid frisket.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And just got off the phone with our mutual friend, Robert Rodriguez. I'm sure that name is going to come up again. I'm sure that's going to come up again. And before we even get close to Robert, thank you, Robert, for the introduction. I want to pick up on something we were chatting about briefly before we started recording. And this is Aristotle. All right, why did Aristotle come into the conversation?”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the West. And I'll provide more context. After Daredevil, he went on to create some of the industry's most groundbreaking titles, including Ronin, Batman The Dark Knight Returns, and Batman Year One. So if you've seen the later Batman movies, that sort of anti-hero positioning, the imagery, a lot of it comes straight from his work. His series Sin City and the award-winning graphic novel 300 were both adapted into blockbuster films, with Miller co-directing the Sin City movies with Robert Rodriguez, who is my friend here in Austin, has been on the podcast before. Frank's upcoming memoir, Push the Wall, My Life, Writing, Drawing, and the Art of Storytelling is now available for pre-order. You can find all things Frank at FrankMiller Inc. That's I-N-K. Frank Miller Inc. com and on Instagram at FrankMillerOfficial. And without further ado, please enjoy a long-awaited for me and wide-ranging practical conversation with the one and only Frank Miller.”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers across all different disciplines. And my guest today is in a sense my lifetime, a lifetime in the making since I've been a fan since I was a wee lad and certainly many, many months in the making to do this in person with the one and only Frank Miller. Frank Miller is one of the most influential and awarded creators in entertainment, first gaining notoriety in the late 70s for his transformative work on Marvel's Daredevil. And in the world of comic books, Frank is a rare breed. He's kind of like Bo Jackson in that sense. Not only was he one of his generations probably across multiple generations, one of the most influential artists in that entire industry, but one of the most influential writers. And that is a very, very, very uncommon combination of talents, particularly”
2025-10-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #831: Frank Miller, Comic Book Legend — Creative Process, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, 300, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT