Rorschach test: Jackie Earle Haley won coveted role with self-made audition tape
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – The role of Rorschach, the masked, driven vigilante in “Watchmen,” was sought by many a Hollywood A-lister, said the producers of the film. The role went to Jackie Earle Haley, the child actor who, until being nominated for an Oscar for his 2006 film “Little Children,” was probably best-known for playing Kelly Leak in “Bad News Bears.”
Encouraged by fan chatter online that he’d make a good Rorschach, Haley made his own costume, and acted out scenes from the screenplay. He sent the tape to the producers of “Watchmen.”
After impressing the producers and director Zack Snyder, Haley became Rorschach – and in the process was reunited with his “Little Children” co-star Patrick Wilson. Wilson had already been cast as Nite Owl, Rorschach’s former crime-fighting partner.
“For me it was kind of interesting, to show up on the set and to basically, at least at the start, to know one guy, to only really have one friend there,” Haley said in a recent press interview. “And I did internally focus on that, because Rorschach only has one friend. And it happens to be the same guy. So there’s a neat parallel there.”
Rorschach is the most obsessive of this group of obsessives; when the superheroes in “Watchmen” are forced to retire by an act of Congress, Rorschach presses on in violation of the law. When one of their own is murdered, it’s Rorschach who believes someone is out to get the masks, and won’t let the investigation stop.
“This guy’s so lost in this world,” Haley said. “The cops don’t like him, the pedestrians don’t like him, his own masked vigilante partners don’t like him. If it wasn’t for Nite Owl, this guy would be absolutely, completely alone. And really, Nite Owl doesn’t even like the guy! If you really look at it, he puts up with him! But he does care.”
Rorschach’s drive results from his neglected upbringing, Haley said.
“He’s a victim of his mom’s own self-centeredness. … He ended up in a home at age 11 only to discover they weren’t much better at raising him than his mom was,” he said. “And I think he finally reached this point in life where he needed this black and white sense of the world. Because he was such a victim of the grey complexities.
“His whole life was falling through the cracks. And if it weren’t for becoming a masked vigilante, this guy would have no purpose in life.”
That focus on what would motivate a character to wear a mask and fight crime was part of what made the graphic novel “Watchmen,” which was the basis for the film, so successful, Haley said.
“People never thought to challenge the assumptions of the comic-book genre,” Haley said. “Watchmen” creators Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons took this medium that was more of a childlike entertainment medium, and decided to take that template and use it in more of a thought-provoking, grown-up manner to examine humanity. And it’s kind of fascinating when you take those two worlds and put them together,” he said.
That world was translated to film through the expertise of Snyder and the hundreds of craftspeople and technicians working on the film. Working on the heavily designed sets aided in the performance, Haley said.
“Zack created this incredible world,” he said. “Walking onto these beautiful sets was … incredibly motivating. You take the wardrobe design department, the makeup design department, all these departments that came together to create each character and these sets – it was total immersion.”
From Friday’s The Oklahoman
By Matthew Price
Buck for a quarter: Sci-fi character Buck Rogers returns to comics in 25-cent issue
WORD BALLOONS
Writer Scott Beatty and artist Carlos Rafael will create the new adventures of Buck Rogers, under covers from John Cassaday (”Astonishing X-Men”).
“Buck is a sci-fi icon. We wouldn’t have ‘Star Trek’ or ‘Star Wars’ or many of the familiar trappings of the genre without the trails blazed by Buck with his trusty ray-gun and jet-pack,” Beatty said in a news release.
Buck Rogers started in the pulps in 1928, as Anthony Rogers in the story Armageddon 2419 by Philip Francis Nowlan. Rogers moved to the comic strips the next year, when he gained a new first name, Buck, and an artist, Richard Calkins, according to Don Markstein’s Toonopedia.
Buck Rogers is an accomplished pilot who is frozen in suspended animation for 500 years. He awakens in the 25th Century to a new world. He befriends Wilma Deering and Dr. Huer, and joins Earth’s defenders, as the planet is under siege from an alien force.
Buster Crabbe, who previously played Flash Gordon, brought Buck Rogers to movie screens in 1939 as part of a motion picture serial. The character briefly appeared on television in the 1950s; the comic strip ended in 1967.
But that wasn’t Buck’s last gasp. The success of “Star Wars” – which was partially inspired by “Buck Rogers” – brought Buck back to cinemas in 1979. The film, starring Gil Gerard, was followed by a TV series. These episodes are now available for viewing online at www.hulu.com/buck-rogers.
The series lasted two seasons. The comic book based on the series was published by Gold Key for three years, according to Toonopedia, and a new newspaper strip ran through 1983. Other than a brief revival in the early 1990s, it’s been mostly quiet for Buck since then. Dynamite aims to change that.
“We’re planning Buck’s launch to be one of our biggest of 2009, one that will propel him into the comics future,” Dynamite President Nick Barrucci said in a news release.
And Buck may grace the big screen again, as well: According to a December article in The Hollywood Reporter, “The Spirit” director Frank Miller was in talks to bring “Buck Rogers” to movie theaters.
By Matthew Price
From Friday’s The Oklahoman
“Minutemen” sends “Watchmen” fans to video game past
THE NEXT LEVEL
Can’t wait for “The Watchmen”? “The Minutemen” provides a retro look at the kind of game you might have played in the game’s alternate 1985 world.
While fans wait the Zack Snyder film adaptation of “Watchmen” – and the Xbox Live downloadable game “The End is Nigh” – www.minutemenarcade.com/uk has a 2-D sidescrolling fight game in the tradition of “Double Dragon.”
After the site loads, the viewer is taken to a nostalgic, slightly run-down diner. In the corner is a well-worn “Minutemen” arcade game. Insert “coins” and enter an 8-bit world of sound and graphics.
Gamers can play as either the original Nite Owl or original Silk Spectre as they try to take out Moloch and his henchmen in 1942 New York.
There are several Easter eggs for Watchmen fans in the game – from the game’s “Veidt Enterprises” logo, referring to the alter ego of the masked hero Ozymandias to a poster for Rolf Muller’s Park Circus, Rolf Muller being the presumed secret identity of one of the 1940s Minutemen.
The game is simple, and short – Nite Owl and Silk Spectre can walk, punch, kick and jump, though I don’t know that they ever have the need to jump in the game. There are three levels, a street level, subway level, then a second street level ending at Moloch’s theater. Defeat Moloch, and the gamer is rewarded with an HD version of the “Watchmen” trailer.
– Matthew Price
From Friday’s The Oklahoman
Wired profiles comic store employees
Nice to see Wired taking a look at the man (or woman) behind the counter at comic-book stores, with profiles of several comic-shop employees. Five comic shop employees from New York and four from the San Francisco Bay Area are profiled.
This is the sort of thing I don’t want to see go away if we all have our comics beamed directly into our heads, or whatever, in the future. Just read the final profile of 25-year-old Jack Eldridge of Dr. Comics and Mr. Games in Oakland, and tell me you haven’t either had long conversations with that guy, or been that guy yourself. Slightly nerdy, yet obviously cool, defiant behind a Grendel T-shirt, Eldridge shares his thoughts on comics and comics retail just as I imagine he does every day behind the counter. From Eldridge:
Your comics are not worth a thousand dollars each. You bought them in 1993 and so did literally a million other people. You have all kept them in near-mint condition. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t understand basic economics, though, because as an adult you still think the “investment” you made as a 10-year-old was a sound one.
But seriously, read the whole article, and particulary all of the Jack Eldridge interview. I love the combination of snark and optimism this guy brings to the table.
– Matt Price
More Moore: From Hell
This Oct. 19, 2001 will serve as this week’s “Retro Thursday” piece. This article was published tying in with the release of the “From Hell” movie.
Also, with “Watchmen” nearing, I wanted to do a series pointing out additional works by Alan Moore that those who liked the “Watchmen” graphic novel can seek out. Thus, “More Moore.” My first suggestion is the unsettling classic, “From Hell.”
—-
“It is beginning, Netley. Only just beginning. For better or worse, the twentieth century. I have delivered it.”
That quote, from the character revealed as Jack the Ripper, drives the central premise of “From Hell,” the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Moore postulates through his fictionalized narrative that the Ripper killings of 1888 launched the world forward, and not necessarily for the better. Jack the Ripper, the world’s most famous serial killer, is revealed as a man seeking mystical power, while at the same time trying to silence a secret that could shake England.
“From Hell,” which takes its title from a letter received claiming credit for the Ripper murders, is the basis of the film starring Johnny Depp and Heather Graham.
The 500-plus page graphic novel, containing more than 60 pages of notes by Moore and Campbell, is published by Eddie Campbell Comics and represented in the United States by Top Shelf.
Moore’s Jack the Ripper tale is less a whodunit than a whydunit – the Ripper in the “From Hell” graphic novel is revealed fairly early on. By so doing, “From Hell” is able to move beyond a simple examination of the facts and go further, into an exploration of conspiracy, blackmail, murder and magic.
Inspector Frederick Abberline is the hero of the graphic novel, the police inspector charged with finding Bloody Jack. Also appearing are Robert Lees, the queen’s psychic; Sir William Gull, the Queen’s physician; and the victims of the Ripper, most prominently Mary Kelly.
Moore, the author of the acclaimed comic-book works “Watchmen,” and “V for Vendetta,” among others, is at his peak as a mature storyteller with “From Hell,” which is among the most ambitious, cogent and impressive works ever attempted in the graphic novel format.
Campbell’s art is different from the norm in graphic novels. His scratchy impressionism is perhaps more difficult to take to on first blush, but as the book continues, and the reader grows acclimated to the style, Campbell’s art pulls the reader further and deeper into the Victorian nightmare.
Campbell, the creator of “Alec” and “Bacchus,” is also an acclaimed writer, and the perfect choice to meticulously translate Moore’s opus into graphic form.
Moore and Campbell began work on “From Hell” in the late 1980s. A decade and multiple publishers later, “From Hell” was collected into an impressive $35 package.
Digesting the whole of “From Hell” leaves a sense of unease; it is horror in the truest sense. That unease was not lost on the author, whose close analysis of the killings left him feeling an uncomfortable tie to his subject.
“For my part I am concerned with cutting into and examining the still-warm corpse of history itself,” Moore said in his notes. “In some of my chilliest moments, I suspect that this was his foremost pre-occupation also, albeit in pursuit of different ends.”
Jackson signs 9-picture deal with Marvel
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Samuel Jackson has signed a nine-picture deal to reprise his role as Nick Fury in multiple Marvel films. The movies are to include “Iron Man 2,” “Thor,” “Captain America,” “The Avengers” and sequels. There’s also the possibility of a “SHIELD” film.
– Matt Price
Norman library to host adult gaming
Go into deep space, or dance the night away as Norman Public Library, 225 N. Webster, plans a come-and-go, Gaming for Adults event from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Friday.
Gamers can colonize space in “Mass Effect,” blast pesky aliens in “Halo 3″ or bring out their inner Steven Tyler with the Aerosmith edition of “Guitar Hero.”
Also available will be “Dance Dance Revolution,” “Rock Band” 1 and 2, and “Guitar Hero III.”
The evening is for adults age 18 and over; in-person registration with library card and personal identification is required.
Green Lantern film date set: Dec. 2010
Newsarama has a rundown of upcoming film dates for Warners and Marvel properties. “Jonah Hex” is now set for an August 2010 release. The much-anticipated (by me, anyway) Green Lantern is green-lit for a release date of Dec. 17, 2010.
– Matt Price
Alan Moore interview at Wired
If you want to see what the modern master of comics has to say about superheroes, comics, homage, film and more, check out this Wired interview. There’s a bit of his thoughts on filmed adaptations of his works (in short: he has no use for them), and more about his upcoming “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” series from Top Shelf.
He comes off bitter but brilliant, for the most part, with a different opinion on current comics than the one I have, anyway. (That said, he admits to not particularly following mainstream comics anymore.)
A funny comment from Moore about ending up working for DC after WildStorm was purchased:
When I returned to work for—well, I didn’t return. I was kind of press-ganged. I had DC buying the company I had just signed contracts with, which is flattering in one way and very creepy in another. It’s like being stalked by a very rich demented girlfriend who can just buy your entire street in order to be close to you.
– Matt Price
“I Watch the Watchmen” widget
Get your Watchmen countdown, info, trailer and more in this widget from the makers of the “Watchmen” film.
