Watchmen Week! Screenwriters David Hayter & Alex Tse Interviewed

It's here! Watchmen is finally upon us, as the most highly anticipated graphic novel of all time finally opens in international cinemas today.

Which also means its the final day of Watchmen Week here at Roll Credits, and we have some exciting things planned. Make sure you keep checking back throughout the day for some juicy Watchmen content...

First up we speak to screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse who had the unenviable task of breathing cinematic life into Alan Moore's seminal piece of literature.


"To me, Watchmen was as close to a perfect story as you can get" David Hayter

You were both familiar with Watchmen before this project; what impact had it had on you?

DAVID HAYTER I first read it when it came out, and then I didn’t read it again until I was 26 [or] 27. I hadn’t read the addendum's at the end of each issue the first time through, and the full impact of the story sort of hit me and I said to myself, ‘I have to make this into a movie’.

ALEX TSE For me, I was like 10 years old when it came out so it was way beyond my realm of understanding. I didn’t give it the time of day. I think I started getting into more serious kind of books when I was 12 or 13, then I think I read Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing. It just blew me away and then I went to the comic book store and tried to get into a more sophisticated discussion about comic books and when it was discovered that I had not read Watchmen, I was immediately told to leave the comic book store until I had read it!

The movie stays extremely close to the graphic novel; did you fight to keep to your own vision or to stay true to Alan Moore’s vision?

HAYTER: It’s all about Alan Moore’s vision. To me, Watchmen was as close to a perfect story as you can get. I knew that the trap of it was to try to imprint your own ego on it or try to improve on it and that wasn’t the purpose of it. The entire purpose was to protect the original story and to present it as close to the experience of the graphic novel as possible, to bring that experience to a wider audience.

Both Hayter and Tse fought to keep The Comedian's essential brutality intact

And Moore's is a pretty brutal vision; can you give us an example of some of the things you couldn’t believe you got away with?

HAYTER When you are working with a movie studio on a film that is going to cost over a $100 million and you say, ‘Here’s where one of these superheroines is almost raped,’ you get some flack for that!

Some of the more brutal aspects of the book which I think make it real, which put it into a world that is beyond what we’ve seen in Spider-Man. The scenes in Vietnam between The Comedian and his girlfriend there and some of the things that Dr. Manhattan does out of his dwindling connection with humanity, these are things I always fought desperately to keep in the script but never really expected them to put up the money for and then they did!

How do you think Alan Moore is going to feel about the finished film?

TSE Obviously I respect his position and obviously he’s a genius, but it’d be disappointing if he went really, really far out of his way to spit venom on it. Everyone who worked on the movie, everyone, even the driver, even the teamsters, they were like, 'Watchmen is awesome'. Everyone was a fan, so I’d just be disappointed for them if that was the case. The fact that [graphic novel illustrator] Dave Gibbons is so happy, that’s more than enough.

HAYTER It’s my secret hope that one day it comes on TV and Alan catches it and gets drawn into it. Look, if I had written From Hell and put all that work into creating this incredible vision of London, and all of these historical facts about Jack the Ripper, only to see Johnny Depp run away with Heather Graham - who’s playing one of the most famous murder victims in history - but somehow she survives in the end of the film so they can go get a beach house at the end, I would be upset as well!

But, I think that Warner Bros in particular did a very good job with V for Vendetta and have done an exceptional job with Watchmen, so the works have really honored his material. I hope that some day he is able to watch it and get a giggle out of it.

Interviews by Sheila Roberts

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This afternoon we'll be chatting with the film's director, Zack Snyder, so make sure you keep Roll Credits on your radar for the rest of the day...