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Watchmen Q & A at the Apple Store

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

 

Q & A with Patrick Wison and Jeffrey Dean Morgan

 

Q: You wrapped filming in August 2007, so are you excited that the finished product is finally ready?

(PATRICK WILSON) You know what’s funny? I have never been a part of a movie where before you even shoot, they have a release date and a poster! Zack [director] went down to Comic-Con – not this Comic-Con but the one before – and we had started shooting a month-and-a-half later, and Dave Gibbons had already drawn up that poster that said 3.6.09, so it’s bizarre that we’ve always had this, “When’s it coming out?” “March 6th!” And we’ve been saying that for the past two years! So the fact that it’s coming out is pretty creepy!

Q: Before you were cast in the film, what was your knowledge of the comic?

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) I had zero knowledge of it, I’m ashamed to say. Warner Bros. sent over a Xeroxed copy of the graphic novel – that was my first introduction to it, if you can believe it – and I read it one time, and I thought, “What the hell did I just read?” I put on a pot of coffee and read it three times in the course of 27 hours before my meeting with Zack, just so I could get a handle on what the hell I was looking at. So that was my introduction to it! 

(PATRICK WILSON) I had heard of it, and one of my best friend’s is a huge comic book nerd – every Wednesday since I’ve known him he’s gone to get new comics – so every script I get that’s remotely based on a graphic novel I call him and say, “I got so-and-so… what do you think?” And as soon as I said, “I got Watchmen,” he said, “Oh god!” And it was that mix of, “I’m really excited, but terrified they’re gonna screw it up.” So I quickly found it what it meant to the comic world, and then once I read the script and was blown away by it, and then went and got the Absolute Edition, which has all the notes at the end of it, I really became a fan and infatuated with it. This was December of ’07 maybe… So by the time we got to meet with Zack, I knew it like the back of my hand, I had all my notes, and I was ready to roll. It’s a great graphic novel, but you say that to people who don’t understand the genre, and they think they’re gonna pick it up and fly through it in an hour, but it’s a really, really dense, layered comic. So that was the crazy thing – to just keep going back and back to try and find all these little answers and one-liners, and constantly trying to throw it in the movie if it wasn’t in the script. That’s what was so fun about shooting.

Q: Since the comic has such a rabid fanbase, did you ever feel like there was pressure adapting it into a film?

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN)It certainly doesn’t take very long! You Google it – with a Mac, preferably! – and you’re inundated with love for this iconic piece of work that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons did. Before we started filming, we had people saying Zack was the wrong director, and certainly we were the wrong actors, so you’re highly aware of this, and then you don’t open your Mac again to e-mail your mother!

Q: It must’ve been cool having Dave Gibbons visit the set.

(PATRICK WILSON)That was so awesome. He came the day we did that Watchmen photo – which in the graphic novel is ‘The Crimebusters,’ our failed attempt to start a superhero group – and he was like a kid in a candy store, like, “Oh, there’s the Comedian!” “Gosh, Silk Spectre!” It was so funny to just see him say, “Gosh, it’s like you guys are walking out of my book! It’s just the strangest thing!” 

Q: Was it hard to make The Comedian sympathetic, with all the morally ambiguous stuff he does?

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN)With all the crappy stuff he does? It’s not really ambiguous, is it! The funny thing is, in reading it, we certainly should despise him for his actions, but after finishing it, I was fascinated by the fact that I didn’t hate him – I actually sympathized with and liked this guy. And that’s Alan Moore. You find out that there’s a bit of humanity that goes with this monster, and that was the joy in playing him – to find that and translate that from book to screen. 

Q: Could you talk about the weapons you used in the movie? And which one was your favorite?

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN)I could go so many directions with that! I’m gonna go with the flamethrower as being my favorite. The Colts that I had made, that Nixon gives The Comedian, and they’re inscribed, “With Love, Richard Nixon,” were pretty phenomenal. And there’s a story behind those guns: the guy who actually makes the guns for the President of the United States – whenever you’re a President you get a cool gun – and this guy that makes these guns for the likes of Obama and Bush made the guns for this film, which Zack promptly ran home with when we stopped filming. 

Q: Is there any aspect of your character that you can relate to personally?

(PATRICK WILSON)That’s not impotence? Let’s hope it’s not that one! And I can say it because I have a child, and that worked! So… [Laughs] It was there in the middle of the room, I had to talk about it! Well.. we look similar… I don’t know. I really loved playing Dan, I really did. You sort of strive to have that earnestness and heart – and I don’t if I have quite that sense of earnestness, but it’s fun to play; that eternal optimism and sense to do good, despite the feelings of everyone around you. 

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) Yeah, I really don’t know where to go with that! I really can’t identify with much of what Eddie Blake does, but I think that’s the fun part – is trying to inject him with the humanity, I guess… 

(PATRICK WILSON) The thing I loved about your character, and the way you play it, is by the end of it, you’re the only guy – all the ‘Minutemen’ are gone or retired, and there’s something about this guy that’s morally ambiguous, but you’re constantly still working. I always loved that. Whatever his goals were, he kept the suit, he kept going. I always loved that. 

Q: Jeffrey, is there some sort of clause in your contract that states that you always want a role with an untimely death? 

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) You know what, I’ve said before, this whole dying or dead thing is working for me right now, so why mess with it? [Laughs] 

Q: What was the audition process like?

(PATRICK WILSON) I met with Zack, and I didn’t audition for about 4 months. I think I was the first one cast, and I just kept hearing, “You’re his guy, you’re his guy,” but we didn’t really do any deals, so I was wondering how that would figure out. Finally, when they had figured out how they were gonna structure all the deals, even when there weren’t any actors attached, they said, “It was fine, now Warner Bros. wants to see you.” So me and Zack went in the room with another actor, and it didn’t feel like an actual audition because I already had the director in my corner, and we did a couple of scenes together until we were both happy, and he had something proud to give to the studio. 

Q: Was there something he saw you in that got you cast?

(PATRICK WILSON) “Little Children.” Debbie Snyder who is our producer and Zack’s wife – I believe she was the one who saw it first, and she sort of suggested me I think, and then he saw “Little Children” and said “Good, great,” then we hung out, and it was like, “Yes, we’re on.” And it was kind of strange a few months later to have Jackie, who was also in “Little Children,” get the part too. It was nice. 

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) I had just done a movie for Warner Bros. [“P.S. I Love You”] and I think the studio was interested, I don’t think Zack was at all. I think he thought, “Well this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life, having this guy play The Comedian.” They wanted me to do a scene, and I did the ‘Crimebusters’ scene, and I seriously added the F-word to every other word I said in the script they’d given me, and Zack called the next day, and I literally didn’t say a word over the course of this meeting – it was just Zack being Zack and showing me drawings, and over the course of an hour he said, “Are you in?” And I was just like, “Are you serious? Yeah, I am in!” And it was as simple as that. 

Q: Was there any room for improv here? Because I imagine you probably had to stick pretty close to the graphic novel.

(PATRICK WILSON) I improved one line. There had been many versions of the script for the past 20 years, and by the time it got to the latest version, and Zack made a pass at it, it was all gravitating back towards the graphic novel, and with the graphic novel being so closely related to it, we never went into improv land. We’d show up to set, and if there was a line in there that was in the graphic novel that you wanted to throw in, then it was constantly pulling from other scenes, if you felt like… I always thought it was pretty cool when Dan said, “Now this is getting heavy!” Because that’s a very ‘70s thing and this took place in the ‘80s, so it reflects how he acted when he was in his 20s. So, I was like, “Zack, could we throw this in somewhere?” And we would try to find places for that. And there was one line in the entrance to Rafael’s which you can barely hear, but I remember he was like, “Let’s think of a line to say,” and I threw in a line about – I’ve never actually told this – the line was, “Did you know H.J. and Nelson were…” Now if you don’t know the comic, there was one line in the graphic novel that reflects that two of these other characters, these very small characters, were gay, and so without saying gay, it was just a little something for the fanboys, like, “Did he just talk about…?” And you probably would never hear it, but we were trying to think of something, and I didn’t just want to ad-lib for the sake of ad-libbing; if I’m going to ad-lib, I want it to be something for the fans, or a good little nugget in there, so that’s the only line I ad-libbed. 

Q: Jeffrey, your character The Comedian is really not nice, so how did you humanize him?

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) I just go back to what Alan and Dave did, and I think it was on the page. It was just trying to figure out how and when. There were a couple of things in Edward Blake’s life that were life-changing events. The attempted rape scene – he crosses a line that he really can’t get back from, so there’s a regret that happens later on when we find out who Malin’s character [Silk Spectre II] is, and so I really gravitated toward trying to find that, and how and when to play that, and I really only had one shot. And then when he finds out ultimately what’s going on, the plot and this whole thing, you find out he’s not this hardcore man, and he’s broken by it. I was playing a lot of things in that last moment with Moloch – I wanted you to see a guy who just realizes that he’s made some really horrible choices in his life, and he’s paying for it, and there’s just no getting out now. 

(PATRICK WILSON) I think Dan probably is the most human, so any questions I had were there. I know that’s a lame response… but it’s true. You could even get into what is he like sexually? Well, when he and Silk Spectre II tear off their skin, in the comic, it goes to The Twilight Lady before it goes to Silk Spectre, so he’s obviously got a thing for this sadomasochistic woman. Well, that says a lot about him! So, for a guy who’s got impotence and got that, that’s a pretty well-rounded sex life. It’s all there if you really comb it well enough. If you really dig deep in there, you find out  his history, where he went to school, what he likes and doesn’t like, what he needs. I mean this is as deep and rewarding a character as I’ve played in any play. It’s the greatest arch of being able to come full-circle, so from that perspective, it was just digging around. 

Q: And what was the most embarrassing or funny moment while filming?

(PATRICK WILSON) Seeing Billy [Dr. Manhattan] was pretty funny! Seeing Billy in his little white pajamas with 140 little dots on his face for reference points for the CGI – that was pretty strange. But then again, he’s staring at a guy in a silly Batman-looking suit, so I probably look ridiculous too! Actually, the first fight we did was the prison break, and we hadn’t figured out how to not make my goggles fog up, so we could only get through about 7 seconds of it before I could not see anything, so that made for again, not “Haha” funny, but more humorous for the actor, because it was very frustrating.

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) Just seeing each other in our costumes for the first time. Look, we’re not kids anymore, so to be able to dress up as these kooky comic book characters, on first sight, there was a lot of giggling. It was pretty damn fun. And again, Billy was like the walking blue Christmas tree, and how he managed to pull off the performance that he does, being this serious – because we, off-camera by the way, are trying so hard not to fucking laugh during his close-ups, it was ridiculous!

Q: You don’t wanna tell the story about how you set yourself on fire?

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) Well that wasn’t embarrassing, that was just stupid! [Laughs] Jesus. It was during the Vietnam sequence when I was in the rice patty, and I was having to burn with my flamethrower one of the Viet Cong guys, and Zack, for the sake of the movie, is like, “You gotta hold that flame on him!” And this is this stuntman that looks like he has hair gel all over his body – this flame retardant material – and I just felt like I was gonna burn him alive. So Zack’s like, “Do a ten-count in your head and have your sadistic smile going, it’ll be great!” And after about three seconds I’m like, “This is too much… I’m gonna burn this guy! I can’t do it anymore…” So, I kept having to do it and redo it, and Zack’s like, “Come on man, toughen up!” So the last time I’m doing it, I’m just like, “Alright, you’re gonna burn now!” And I put this thing on, but meanwhile the rice patty had been covered in this gasoline substance that I had been shooting from the flamethrower, so I burn him and I do my little smile and I’m like, “Yay, ready to burn my next victim,” and I look and there’s flames comin’ in the water – the water’s now caught on fire coming right at me – and there’s no one near me! We’re in the middle of this rice patty! And I remember looking up at Zack and his eyes are popping out of his skull! And all I remember thinking is, “Don’t roll in the water and screw up this costume,” because they spent a fortune on these things, so I just let myself catch on fire and watched myself burn for a little while before someone came and put it out. It was really great. [Laughs]

Q: What was Zack like as a director? Did he demand a lot of takes?

(PATRICK WILSON) The quick answer is he was awesome. I have never worked with a director who had that amount of positive energy every single day. He was just really excited to be doing it, and it’s that combination of being really excited to do it, but he was right in doing it; he knew exactly what he wanted to tell, he knew the tone, he knew exactly how he wanted to do it. And this was a long shoot. We were there from August to about March, and it was over a 100-day shoot, which was a long haul, and I’ve just never seen anybody have that kind of energy and that kind of focus. If we needed extra takes, yes, absolutely do it. Sometimes you would get it in one, and it would be, “Great, let’s move on.” It was just about getting it right. If it took 10 times, we did it 10 times. I really can’t say enough good things about the guy, because it’s a hard tone to hit; the dark side is there, but you gotta understand the light side in order to get the satire of the whole thing. 

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) This is a guy that drew out ever freakin’ frame of this movie! You’ll never meet any guy that’s more prepared or has more energy. His enthusiasm was tangible, and like Patrick just said, it was a long shoot, a lot of nights, and there were days where it was just rough. And in the middle of the storm, like Patrick said, was this guy who was just encouraging, and more than that, he trusted us as actors, which is an awesome thing. Though we’re doing this graphic novel, and within that we had to be these characters, the freedom that he gave us in exploring these characters was awesome.
Q: Did you actually do that thing where you lit the cigar with your flamethrower?

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) I did! I just got my eyebrows back! [Laughs]

Q: What were your favorite one-liners?

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) Ours or could they be anybody’s? Any line is sort of iconic when you become a fan of this, but I gotta say, I’m like most fans – when Rorschach’s in the prison, and he’s like, “I’m not locked in here with you – you’re locked in here with me!” That was awesome.  

(PATRICK WILSON) I mean Rorschach is just built on one-liners. Every line in that prison is just awesome – “Tall order... Fat chance!” 

Q: How does it feel to be these iconic characters?

(PATRICK WILSON) AWESOME! It feels really great, it really does. To have been living with this for so long, and for people to finally be able to see it, is really, really rewarding for us. To feel like we gave it everything we had, and with such a huge fanbase that we want all of them to love it, it’s a thrill to be associated with these characters, and at the end of the day, we just hope we served the graphic novel, and served Zack!

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) Yeah, what he said!

Q: Did you take anything home from the film? 

(JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN) I took these boots! I may kill a certain president wearing these boots that you’re lookin’ at right now… And I think I got my dog tags from Vietnam. And other than that, I took a bad attitude home. How about that? [Laughs] 

End.