Sin City: A Dame To Kill For performed so poorly this weekend, landing in eighth place with a pathetic $6,477,000, that you have to wonder why. I was bored by it after five minutes but I figured, well, that’s me. I figured the public might give it a whirl but no. And it cost $60 to $70 million. The lesson, I suppose, is that if you’re going to crank out a sequel, do it within two or three years. Don’t wait fucking nine years, which is how long it’s been since the original, successful Sin City opened in ’05. I’d also like to think that audiences took a whiff of the trailer to the sequel and went, “Oh, God…this again? More of Miller’s misogynist old-dog sexual fantasies, which are rooted in noir cliches of the ’40s and ’50s?” My preferred fantasy is that Miller’s conservative-asshole karma, which reached its zenith when he posted that rat-ugly hate piece about the Occupy movement on his website, came back to bite him.

Either way Miller is done. For now, I mean. He doesn’t speak for the zeitgeist and the zeitgeist wants nothing to do with him. I just re-read a two-day-old Grantland profile of Miller by Alex Pappademas — it almost reads like an obit now. Nobody loves you when your movie’s a flop. Nobody makes eye contact, people stop calling, your assistant gives you neck rubs, etc. Awful. The best thing to do is to drive out to the desert and sulk.