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Not that he disowned his novellas. He still approves of "V," just not the way he or the novella has been treated.
Since then, he 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.
...and again with "V for Vendetta" (illustrated by David Lloyd), published in America in 1988-89, about an enigmatic freedom fighter opposing a totalitarian British regime — Mr. Moore helped prove that graphic novels could be a vehicle for sophisticated storytelling. "Alan was one of the first writers of our generation, of great courage and great literary skill," said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics. "You could watch him stretching the boundaries of the medium."
But by 1989, Mr. Moore had severed his ties with DC. The publisher says he objected to its decision to label its adult-themed comics (including some of his own) as "Suggested for Mature Readers." Mr. Moore says he was objecting to language in his contracts that would give him back the rights to "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta" when they went out of print — language that he says turned out to be meaningless, because DC never intended to stop reprinting either book. "I said, 'Fair enough,' " he recalls. " 'You have managed to successfully swindle me, and so I will never work for you again.' "
Mr. Levitz said that such so-called reversion clauses routinely appear in comic book contracts, and that DC has honored all of its obligations to Mr. Moore. "I don't think Alan was dissatisfied at the time," Mr. Levitz said. "I think he was dissatisfied several years later."
Mr. Lloyd, the illustrator of "V for Vendetta," also found it difficult to sympathize with Mr. Moore's protests. When he and Mr. Moore sold their film rights to the graphic novel, Mr. Lloyd said: "We didn't do it innocently. Neither myself nor Alan thought we were signing it over to a board of trustees who would look after it like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls."
Mr. Moore recognizes that his senses of justice and proportion may seem overdeveloped. "It is important to me that I should be able to do whatever I want," he said. "I was kind of a selfish child, who always wanted things his way, and I've kind of taken that over into my relationship with the world."
In 2001, the first film adaptation of one of Mr. Moore's graphic novels arrived in theaters. "From Hell," distributed by 20th Century Fox, was based on his extensively researched account of the Jack the Ripper murders, a 572-page black-and-white title illustrated by Eddie Campbell. Mr. Moore had no creative participation in the film, and happily so. "There was no way that I would be able to be fair to it," he said. "I did not wish to be connected with it, and regarded it as something separate to my work. In retrospect, this was kind of a naïve attitude."
Two years later, when 20th Century Fox released a movie version of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," the screenwriter Larry Cohen and the producer Martin Poll sued the studio, charging that elements of the film had been plagiarized from their work. Though the film, which was one of the year's costliest flops, differed drastically from the graphic novel, the lawsuit nonetheless claimed that the "Extraordinary Gentlemen" comics had been created as a "smokescreen" to cover up the theft.
Mr. Moore found the accusations deeply insulting, and the 10 hours of testimony he was compelled to give, via video link, even more so. "If I had raped and murdered a schoolbus full of retarded children after selling them heroin," he said, "I doubt that I would have been cross-examined for 10 hours." When the case was settled out of court, Mr. Moore took it as an especially bitter blow, believing that he had been denied the chance to exonerate himself.
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