Saturday, March 11, 2006

The New York Times writes about Alan Moore vs the film of V For Vendetta:

Last year, when Mr. Moore received a phone call from Larry Wachowski � who, with his brother, Andy, had written and directed the "Matrix" movies � to discuss the "V for Vendetta" film that the Wachowskis were writing and producing for Warner Brothers, Mr. Moore felt he had made it clear that he did not want to be involved in the project.

"I explained to him that I'd had some bad experiences in Hollywood," Mr. Moore said. "I didn't want any input in it, didn't want to see it and didn't want to meet him to have coffee and talk about ideas for the film."

But at a press conference on March 4, 2005, to announce the start of production on the "V for Vendetta" film, the producer Joel Silver said Mr. Moore was "very excited about what Larry had to say and Larry sent the script, so we hope to see him sometime before we're in the U.K." This, Mr. Moore said, "was a flat lie."

"Given that I'd already published statements saying I wasn't interested in the film, it actually made me look duplicitous," he said.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Silver said he had misconstrued a meeting he had with Mr. Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 20 years ago, when Mr. Silver first acquired the film rights to "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta." (Mr. Silver no longer owns the rights to "Watchmen," though Warner Brothers is still planning an adaptation.) "I had a nice little lunch with them," he said, "and Alan was odd, but he was enthusiastic and encouraging us to do this. I had foolishly thought that he would continue feeling that way today, not realizing that he wouldn't."

Mr. Silver said he called Mr. Moore to apologize for his statement at the press conference, but that Mr. Moore was unmoved. "He said to me, 'I'm going to hang up on you if you don't stop talking to me,' " Mr. Silver recalled. "It was like a conversation with a tape recording."

I am reminded here of Ellis's hilarious recounting of Alan Moore on the phone (right-click and "save as" to download a 3mb MP3). I swear, between his statements that he's what "Harry Potter would grew into" and his voice like an Ent, the man scares the living daylights out of me.

I actually think that V For Vendetta may not be a bad-at-all movie if I can divorce myself of my attachment to its source material, which I've managed to do in the past with LA Confidential and Amazon Women On The Moon.