Robot 6
Moore: ‘It’s our fictions that drive us forward most of the time’
Alan Moore
Although it’s great fun to read Alan Moore grouse for paragraphs about the evils of Hollywood and corporate comics, Salon.com’s Andrew Firestone delivers what’s probably the best of the latest round of interviews by (mostly) avoiding those topics altogether.
He and Moore instead focus on the writer’s actual work — surprising, I know — touching upon Lost Girls, Batman: The Killing Joke, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell and, of course, Watchmen.
“I was doing it [The Killing Joke] at roughly the same time I was doing Watchmen; a lot of my storytelling ideas are identical to the ones in Watchmen,” Moore says. “I was pretty much under the influence of the other book, and also I thought that it was very, very nasty.
“I’ve got no problem with nasty scenes as long as they are for a purpose. There are some nasty scenes in Watchmen, but Watchmen is an intelligent meditation on the nature of power so it is actually talking about something which is relevant to the world in which we all live. Whereas in The Killing Joke, what you’ve got is a story about Batman and the Joker, and while it did draw interesting parallels between these two fictional characters, at the end of the day that’s all they are, fictional characters. They’re not even fictional characters that have any bearing on anyone you’re likely to meet in reality.”
You have to sit through a brief click-through ad, but you’ll be glad you did.
- March 5, 2009 @ 06:55 AM by Kevin Melrose
4 Comments
john torres
March 5, 2009 at 7:15 am
One of the giggest mistakes the producer Herb Gaines and director Zack Snyder made was giving us unknown characters played by unknown actors. Both producer and director have neither the intelligence or experience to pull something of this magnitude off successfully. Director Terry Gilliam was wise to get out while he could, he surely didn’t need another albatross hanging around his neck.
The problem with this movie is that it has very little built in following. Superman and Batman have 70 years of history, Spiderman has 45 years of continual history.The Watchmen have little connection with the buying public, and the limited market of the fanboys will denounce it when it does not follow comic book history the way it was written(just as creator, Alan Moore already has). Enough hype and TV commercials can boost ticket sales to a point, but word of mouth will destroy it before it makes it’s budget back.
Comic book writer, Alan Moore, based these characters on the then defunct Charlton characters. DC comics had bought Charlton and would not let Moore kill off the 2nd string characters they had just bought. So in effect the WATCHMEN are doppelgangers of characters who didn’t make it 40 years ago. Now the hype machine would force them down our throats as a movie.
Me, I’m going to wait and rent it for a dollar from the DVD kiosk at WAL-MART.
Sean B
March 5, 2009 at 7:47 am
I’m sorry, but WTF does that have to do with an interview with Alan Moore about his work, John? Are you just looking for any excuse to rip the film in any venue that will host your comments? It’s just amusing that you harp on the irrelevancy of the Watchmen characters to the general public when your own comments are so irrelevant to the topic of the post.
As for Moore’s comments about Killing Joke, I’ve always found it refreshing when a writer admits to the flaws in their own body of work. Say what you want about his views on Hollywood and corporate politics, but he’s at least will to approach his own work with that same critical eye when he deems it necessary.
Andrew Firestone
March 5, 2009 at 9:12 am
Thank you, kindly.
Nick Marino
March 5, 2009 at 10:10 am
if you go to the print version: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2009/03/05/alan_moore_q_a/print.html there’s no ad and you can read the whole thing on one webpage.