Last week, on his news-and-opinions site Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells posted a fairly typical quote from Watchmen creator Alan Moore regarding his opinion of the upcoming big screen adaptation. (In short: He's agin' it. And he wishes the money spent on the movie were being used to "sort out the civil unrest in Haiti.") The comments on Wells' post quickly split into the standard "Moore is a man of rare integrity" versus "Why does Moore keep trying to make me feel bad for wanting an Ozymandias action figure?" factions that should be familiar to anyone who's spent any time reading about comics on the internet over the past 10 years. And then another voice was heard: Hollywood geek-flick producer Don Murphy, who worked on the Moore-derided big screen versions of From Hell and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Murphy wrote:
Alan Moore is a hypocrite and a liar.
—He took a million dollars from Fox for League- he did not HAVE to do so
—He claims that he never saw League so why does he get to comment on the merits of it? YOU can say what you want to- but he never saw it
—He has made over $3 million dollars on the increased sales of the Watchmen hardcover due to the film- he isn't returning that money
—He sold the rights to Watchmen in 1988
—He attacked V for Vendetta back when it came out- after he had sold those rights
He is an old man who smokes too much hash and prays to a lizard god. Don't buy his bullshit.
In the days since, Murphy has stuck to his guns, claiming that Moore's vaunted integrity means little, since he already banked most of what he's owed for the properties at which he now takes potshots. Of course since Murphy himself is famous for being beaten up in public by Quentin Tarantino (and receiving $450 in compensation) and going ballistic over the anonymous, publicly-edited nature of Wikipedia, his own credibility may be a little shaky. Still, Murphy's point about how Moore plays fast-and-loose with other people's creations and then gets tetchy when it happens to him is one worth considering. And at the least, his rants on HE are entertaining in their unhingedness.