Despite the seeming impossibility of getting Watchmen made, Zack Snyder is currently editing the film. We chatted to the director and his cast about making the movie itself…
Zack Snyder, director: “I like a certain aesthetic. Unfortunately, when my characters are in a love scene, I like it to be adult, to be sexy. It's not, 'oh, they're gonna fu.... Fade to black.' No! The idea that a superhero could not be sexually aroused without his costume on is cool to me. That's real - when you take that perspective, you're making a movie that's outside of the Hollywood norm.”
Matthew Goode, Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias: “I auditioned sitting on a toilet in York, with a white sheet behind me because it's the only way I could do it. I never expected Zack to call me back and when he did, I thought, 'How the hell am I going to play this part?' A day later, you're standing in your Calvin Kleins being lasered by seven or eight blokes, which is slightly disconcerting in the first place.”
Jackie Earle Haley, Walter Kovacs/Rorschach: “If I'd have been on a movie where Rorschach was the only guy wearing this getup, it would be easy to say, ‘god it was so tough being stuck in that cloth! Sometimes an hour, man, you get fuzzy...’ I remember the first day at the cemetery, and there's a huge light behind me, and Zack was getting ready to yell action and I looked down and saw Rorschach's silhouette. And it was me!”
Billy Crudup, John Osterman/Dr Manhattan: “I wore a leotard covered in white balls, with dots on my face. How did it feel? Not great. Humiliating! It was an exciting, creative, imaginative endeavour... Malin laughed in my face for the first week straight. It's a six-foot-four tall creature of unchained matter being played by a five foot nine-tall jackass!”
Jackie Earle Haley, Walter Kovacs/Rorschach: “Poor Jeffrey Dean Morgan spent as much time in the make-up trailer as he did in the set. I was walking around the production office doing things and there's this guy, this older guy in the '60s and I thought it was a producer I hadn't met yet. I kept walking past him, saw him a few times and then he looked over and went, ‘Jackie!’ I didn't recognise Jeffrey, I recognised The Comedian!”
Zack Snyder: “I'm trying to make the movie shorter right now, because I understand that a three-hour movie is difficult for the studio, but they have to understand that if it stops being Watchmen, I have to stop cutting. They don't tell me what to cut, just that it's shorter.”
