The Movie Book

These following excerpts come courtesy of Crow uber-fan, Jeanette Barcroft. My thanks!

--The Crow, the Movie, by Jeff Conner and Robert Zuckerman, pp24-25

"My initial feeling was that there were too many bad guys in the comic," said [scriptwriter, David] Schow. "We needed to single out the worst ones, differentiate them, and put them in some sort of hierarchy that we could follow as Eric tracked them down. I remember that when I told Ed Pressman that what he was really looking for was a 'Gothic, rock and roll Terminator,' Ed just lit right up. Bringing in Devil's Night was at first just to give the villains a more esoteric agenda; that plan became more nihilistic as we sought to steer their motivations away from the predictable, conventional bad-guy stuff. It also conveniently localized the film to Detroit and anchored it in reality, since fires have been set through Detroit on Devil's Night every year going back ten or twelve years."



"The first script that was shown to me really was something that was not what the comic was,"said Proyas. "We spent a lot of time really bringing it right back to the flavor of the comic book." 'Make it darker,' became the watchwords for The Crow. Urban decay, squalor, drugs, poverty, crime, and above all, a sense of hopelessness and moral outrage that could make the tiniest elements of brightness shine more significantly. Grandually, the central conflict of the film coalesced around the parallel triumvirates of Eric, Albrecht the cop, and Sarah, the little girl, versus Top Dollar, the malevolent crime lord, his Asian half-sister Myca (whose mystic bent--or bent mysticism--allows her to divine Eric's true nature), and Grange, Top Dollar's lieutenant.

Officer Albrecht was put at the scene of Eric's murder, where he forms a bond with Sarah, now reconceived as a skatepunk street kid, a bit older, and the only child of the drugged-out Darla. Various other semi-mystical or supernatural characters [e.g., the Skull Cowboy] were conceived, developed, then abandoned. Albrecht, who had originally sacrificed his life for Eric at the climax, was permitted to survive. Sarah was given a surrogate parent/sister relationship with Eric's murdered fiancee, Shelly. It was decided, contrary to the comic, that Eric comes out of his grave with only the sense he must follow the crow ... which leads him to items, places and people that can trigger the return of bursts of memory (via flashback through physical contact).

--The Crow: The Movie, by Jeff Conner and Robert Zuckerman, pages 15-16

This selection is James O'Barr describing the creation of the original comic book:

"I finished the first 40 pages back in '81 and sent photocopies to every publisher I could find. Absolutely no one was interested, which didn't surprise me that much because the thing was so confusing; it didn't start at the beginning and had lots of flashbacks. I hadn't seen anyone doing that at the time, and now I can see why. Presenting a non-linear story in 32-page segments isn't very commercial. So it sat on the shelf for seven years before I showed it to Gray Reed when he was starting up Caliber....I always saw The Crow as a fixed story, never a continuing character like in the superhero books....The first Tundra book came out in early 1991, and I had drawn the last 64 pages in 1990. They wanted to stagger the first two volumes in order to build interest for the final book, so I had a year and a half to go back and tinker with my artwork. I ended up redrawing and rewriting large chunks; pulling back on the violence, and adding more flashbacks, trying to make the story more understandable and the character more sympathetic."

Unlike other gore-drenched comics, The Crow's scenes of mayhem are balanced with flashback sequences fot the characters Eric and Shelly in happier times. Such a pure love existed between them--befopre it was curelly snuffed out by urban street thugs--that Eric returns from the grave to find justice and hunt down the gang that murdered him and his fiancee.

O'Barr explained, "With every one of the people who perpetrated the crime against him and his fiancee, he is erasing his reason for being. The closer he gets to the five killers, the less reason for his existence, and he can finally be with Shelly."

--The Crow, The Movie, by Jeff Conner and Robert Zuckerman, pp 31-32

Brandon Lee was the son of legendary film icon Bruce Lee and his wife Linda, who is of Scandinavian descent. He was born on February 1st, 1965, in Oakland, California. Brandon recounted his years in Hong Kong to interviewer Jennifer Peters: "My dad wanted me to train in martial arts and he started training me himself, literally as soon as I could walk--when I was two, one and a half. My dad originated a style that's called jeet kune do. He trained me in this style while he was alive."

After his father's untimely death at age 32, Brandon, his sister, and mother went to live in Los Angeles. He told reporter Caroline Hambrick: "I had a very normal childhood. After my father passed away, my mother was responsible for moving us out of the limelight as a very conscious act on her part. And I thank her for it very much because it did just that--it gave us a normal childhood. I never wanted another one."

It seems from the very beginning, Brandon was drawn towards performing. "Since my earliest memories, I always wanted to be an actor, and I pursued that from the time I was very young," Brandon told interviewer Wilson Goodson while on the set of The Crow. "I have really never felt that there were other paths for me. It is all I have ever wanted to do. My father was a martial artist first and that was his passion. That was what made him what he was, and he was an actor second. Not that he wasn't a very good actor, just that it was not his primary concern. To the degree that my father put his passions and his energies into the martial arts, I would only hope to be able to invest as much passion into acting."

After the usuall high school drama classes, Brandon left to attend acting classes with Lee Strasberg, later going on to study acting at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. Brandon next joined Eric Morris' American New Theater company in New York City. He followed the company's relocation to Los Angeles and appeared in their production of Full Fed Beast for playwright John Lee Hancock (Hancock later wrote Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World).

This book is an absolute boon to any fan of the Crow. Its filled with page after page of gorgeous photographs, and lots of detailed information and commentary. I cannot over-emphasize its quality and value.

It was published by Kitchen Sink Press, and is thus out of print. However, it ocasionally pops up online. Your best bet for finding a copy at any given time is to take a gander on eBay. That's where I got mine, and I got a great deal.