The Four Color Media Monitor

Some more's just been reported on the movie adaptation of V for Vendetta, including how Alan Moore's disassociated himself from the production. First, what the NY Times has to say (registration required):

THE most vivid characters in Alan Moore's graphic novels are antiheroes of ambiguous morality and identity: costumed avengers like Rorschach, the disturbed street vigilante of "Watchmen," or the crusader known only by the letter V, who commits catastrophic acts of terrorism in the dystopian tale "V for Vendetta."

With inventions like these, and a body of writing that spans nearly three decades, Mr. Moore, a 52-year-old native of Northampton, England, distinguished himself as a darkly philosophical voice in the medium of comic books — a rare talent whose work can sell solely on the strength of his name. But if Mr. Moore had his way today, his name would no longer appear on almost any of the graphic novels with which he is most closely associated. "I don't want anything more to do with these works," he said in a recent telephone interview, "because they were stolen from me — knowingly stolen from me."

In Mr. Moore's account of his career, the villains are clearly defined: they are the mainstream comics industry — particularly DC Comics, the American publisher of "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta" — which he believes has hijacked the properties he created, and the American film business, which has distorted his writing beyond recognition. To him, the movie adaptation of "V for Vendetta," which opens on Friday, is not the biggest platform yet for his ideas: it is further proof that Hollywood should be avoided at all costs. "I've read the screenplay," Mr. Moore said. "It's rubbish."

Not that this really makes it clear why Moore finds it rubbish, but then, I'm sure that no matter his standings, he never intended for the original book to be seen as something that literally disrespects victims of terrorism, and makes everybody out to look like a jihad worshiper.

And after how books like From Hell and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were exploited by Tinseltown as well:

...he [Moore] has refused to allow any more movies to be made from work he controls. In the case of work whose rights he does not control, he has refused credits on any film adaptations, and has given his share of option money and royalties to the artists who illustrated the original comic books. That position is so radical that though his colleagues say they respect his position, few in the film industry can understand it.

"It's very simple, but they don't seem to hear it," said John O'Neill, the illustrator of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." "They just gravitate towards offering more money."

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."

Through his editors at DC Comics (like Warner Brothers, a subsidiary of Time Warner), Mr. Moore insisted that the studio publicly retract Mr. Silver's remarks. When no retraction was made, Mr. Moore once again quit his association with DC (and Wildstorm along with it), and demanded that his name be removed from the "V for Vendetta" film, as well as from any of his work that DC might reprint in the future.

Man, reading this, I sure feel sorry for Moore, for the abuse he's suffered at the hands of Horrorwood. With the way that the movie industry is floundering now, it's to be hoped that Moore won't have to put up with any more of this embarrassment much longer. IMO, he's right to just stick to comic books and other literature. It works much better that way.

The British Telegraph also gives a report on the movie, giving a few more clues:

The script, by the Wachowskis, differs considerably from Moore's novel, which is set in the 1990s and contains allegorical digs at Margaret Thatcher's Britain. The film, set in a ravaged, crumbling London in 2020, when most of the rest of the world has been destroyed by biological warfare and viruses, has been updated to reflect current fears about what a future totalitarian state might repress - free speech, homosexuality and Islam, among other things.

Moore's outspoken denunciation of the project has proved a major embarrassment, although the filmmakers have attempted to brush it aside.

They can try, but, if free speech and Islam* clash with each other, then all I can say is - they've failed.

Update: Andrew Cochran at The Counterterrorism Blog has more to say on the movie.
Some commentary from Right, Wing-Nut.

Update 2: Most amazing. Alan Moore, in an interview with MTV (Hat tip: Monitor Duty), explained almost perfectly what's wrong with the film:

Those words, "fascism" and "anarchy," occur nowhere in the film. It's been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country. In my original story there had been a limited nuclear war, which had isolated Britain, caused a lot of chaos and a collapse of government, and a fascist totalitarian dictatorship had sprung up. Now, in the film, you've got a sinister group of right-wing figures — not fascists, but you know that they're bad guys — and what they have done is manufactured a bio-terror weapon in secret, so that they can fake a massive terrorist incident to get everybody on their side, so that they can pursue their right-wing agenda. It's a thwarted and frustrated and perhaps largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values [standing up] against a state run by neo-conservatives — which is not what "V for Vendetta" was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about [England]. The intent of the film is nothing like the intent of the book as I wrote it. And if the Wachowski brothers had felt moved to protest the way things were going in America, then wouldn't it have been more direct to do what I'd done and set a risky political narrative sometime in the near future that was obviously talking about the things going on today?

[...]Presumably it's not illegal — not yet anyway — to express dissenting opinions in the land of free? So perhaps it would have been better for everybody if the Wachowski brothers had done something set in America...

Who knows, maybe he's right. Maybe that's what they should've done - be honest about where they stood, and not try to hide their true leanings behind a ludicrous metaphor.

* Under Islam and the Caliphate, homosexuals and lesbians were given a choice of being beheaded or crushed with heavy stones. How some homosexuals and lesbians today can overlook that is beyond me.

Labels: islam and jihad, terrorism