On Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 10:03:33 PM
>
> Since the Watchmen movie is now a reality, this piece from the
> archives, written by a person known as Flash Forever, gives
> interesting recaps of the two scripts that were written for the film
> twenty years ago -
> The Watchmen movie script review.
> Amazing Heroes No. 173. November, 1989.
> The comments I recalled concerning the Watchmen movie scripts were
> from
> an article which appeared in that AH issue entitled, "Andy Mangels
> Backstage (With a Bunch of Movie Scripts)" written by, you guessed
> it,
> Andy Mangel.
> Mangel reviews several incarnations of the script for the Batman
> movie
> and what I presume eventually became the script for the Flash
> television
> movie. There's also a review of a script for a Nick Fury movie. There
> are references to several other super-hero scripts which, to the best
> of
> my knowledge, were never actually made into movies. Not as yet,
> anyways.
> But all of that is incidental. On to Watchmen...
> Mangel reviews two Watchmen scripts, one written by Sam Hamm and
> another
> written by Hamm and Terry Gilliam. Excerpts from Mangel's article:

I'm in the middle of a Terry Gilliam retrospective, from Jabberwocky to Brazil, and I can visualize Gilliam's take on Watchmen.
> "Watchmen (Fist Draft-Sept. 9, 1988)–Sam Hamm: Now for the moment
> you've all been waiting for. Don't deny it. Watchmen is probably the
> most eagerly awaited movie in comicdom now that Batman's on the way.
> Toss off Punisher, Captain America, Sgt. Rock, Flash, and Superboy.
> Bring on Rorschach!
> It is going to be difficult to discuss this script, as there are two
> major changes in it: the beginning and the ending. While I fell the
> beginning can be discussed (as Sam Hamm has done in some interviews),
> I
> cannot, in good conscience, discuss the ending (unless I'm very well
> paid, that it).
> Watchmen starts out in New York City–July, 1976–where radical
> terrorists have taken 40 hostages in the Statue of Liberty. As the
> S.W.A.T. teams discuss strategies, the Owlship swoops down from the
> clouds, piloted by Night Owl, and carrying Rorshach and Captain
> Metropolis. "Christ Almighty, it's the goddamed Watchmen!" shouts the
> S.W.A.T. captain, and indeed it is.
> Night Owl confers with Adrian Veidt on a TV screen even as a line is
> lowered to the Statue's head and the Comedian comes out of the water
> in
> scuba gear in the Statue's base. The Comedian shoots a hostage the
> terrorists at the base use as a shield, then blows them all away
> before
> letting Silk Spectre up from a sewer line. Meanwhile, because of the
> Fourth of July fireworks now exploding in the air, the remaining
> terrorists in the Statue's head are oblivious to Rorshach and Captain
> Metropolis's actions as they cut through Lady Liberty's head. They
> capture the terrorists within without bloodshe, but the Comedian and
> Silk Spectre have screwed up, and a bomb has begun its countdown
> somewhere near the Statue's waist!
> Catching the bomb's signal, Adrian Veidt aborts the mission, and
> Night
> Owl is forced to fly away from Liberty–Rorshach hanging by the
> ladder–with Captain Metropolis and all the hostages still in the
> Statue's head. Seconds after the Comedian and Sil Specte reach cover
> below, the Statue's midsection explodes and the top section crumbles
> into the ocean. Happy Bicentennial Fourth of July, America!
> As the ocean bubbles from the debris, a several hundred foot tall Dr.
> Manhattan walks up from its depths. "Asshole! What took you so long?"
> The Comedian exclaims.
> Thus the movie opens, with a news anchorman announcing legislation
> banning the "costumed adventurer."
> "The age of the super-hero is officially history."
> Ten years later we pick up with the murder of the Comedian, and
> Rorshach
> begins his investigation. He first visits Dan Dreiberg, who calls
> Adrian
> Vedt to tell him what's happened. Veidt then goes to tell Dr.
> Manhattan
> and Laurie Juspeczyk, and the subterfuge begins.
> From here, the framework and spirit of Alan Moore's Watchmen is kept.
> All references to the first generation of heroes have been deleted,
> but
> most of the rest is presented. Dr. Manhattan's origin does not
> involve
> so many flashbacks, and the Comedian and Silk Spectre's origins are
> not
> even discussed.
> One major/minor change involves Rorshach's confrontations with
> Moloch.
> The first time, he comes in on Moloch about to have sex. "Who's the
> welfare mother?" Rorshach asks, then warns her at the end ot the
> encounter that she'd better "stock up on penicillin." His second
> encounter with Moloch is in the bathroom stall, where he catches him
> snorting coke. "Two things I hate," says Rorshach. "Street
> mimes...users
> of recreational drugs." These exchanges show that Sam Hamm's
> extremely
> adept at use of dialogue–especially when it comes to crazy people–as
> well as his hatred for street mimes.
> Hamm shows his skill again in the intercut scenes of Laurie and Dan
> about to make love and Rorshach being captured by the Civil Terrorism
> Unit. Intercut with the Fats Walter tune "S'posin," this sequence is
> so
> wonderfully done in the script that the visuals would have been there
> even if I'd never have seen it in the comics.
> It takes the Civil Terrorist Unit's actions to bring Night Owl and
> Silk
> Spectre out of their closets again, when CTU beings to mow down
> protestors at a peace rally. "Attention CTU!" says Night Owl. "Cease
> fire immediately, or we'll blow your asses out of the sky!" From
> there,
> the script moves at a rapidly accelerating pace. Night Owl and Silk
> Spectre break Rorshach out of prison, Dr. Manhattan takes Laurie to
> Mars, and Night Owl and Rorshach try to make it to Adrian Veidt's
> Antartic base to find out if he can help. Something big (an
> understatement) stops them initally, but when they finally do get
> there,
> they find out that Veidt has a much bigger and better agenda than he
> had
> in the comic series.
> And this is where Samm Hamm really proves his storytelling
> capabilities.
> If Watchmen had a major flaw, and it did, it was the ending. If
> aliens
> were attacking Earth, it might indeed stop the threat of nuclear
> war...for six months or so. At that point, the nations would realize
> that no more aliens were going to attack, and business would go on as
> usual. Veidt would have to continue his destructive alien invasion
> plan
> periodically to keep the peace, as it were. Yet even Veidt would
> eventually realize he was being as destructive to humanity as nuclear
> war would be.
> Hamm tackles this problem ingeniously. He comes up with an entirely
> new
> ending–and ending which makes an incredible amount of sense, and one
> which I'm heartily surprised did not occur to Alan Moore when he
> wrote
> the original. Hamm's ending is so obvious yet so devious that I'm
> tempted to enjoy is Watchmen more than Moore's: his ending is
> definitely
> better.
> Does Rorshach get killed? Does nuclear war happen? Does Adrian
> Veidt's
> plan actually help humanity? I sincerely hope we all get the chance
> to
> find out the answers to those questions on the big screen some time.
> Watchmen, as written here, is an incredible story, a fantastic
> adaptation, and a damn good script. Although the budget would be
> tremendous, any studio who passed this one up would be making a
> mistake.
> By the way, you wonder what the young black boy who reads comic books
> at
> the newsstand is reading? It's not Tales of the Black Freighter. It's
> Colonel North and his Howling Commandos. Way to go, Sam.
> Watchmen (Second Draft)–Terry Gilliam and Sam Hamm: The rewrite of
> the
> beginning scene is largely full of unneeded and poorly done dialogue
> changes, almost as if Gilliam had to do something in it to put his
> mark
> down. An example of an unnecessary line comes right at the beginning.
> The Comedian's "Asshole! What took you so long?" is changed to
> "Manhattan, you cad! This lady's gone to pieces waiting for you!" You
> tell me which one's better.
> To his credit, Gilliam has included portions of Rorshach's diary as
> voice-overs in several scenes. Not only that, but he has restored
> scenes
> missing from Hamm's first draft. Once again it is Rorshach who tells
> Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan, and Adrian Veidt about the Comedian's
> death. IN fact, it looks almost as if Giliaiam just went through and
> copied Alan Moore's dialogue and scenes, while keeping in those
> elements
> of Hamm's that he liked. While this takes the script much closer to
> Moore's version, I think it takes it further away from Moore's
> vision.
> To explain:
> Alan Moore created a very dense comic series which takes hours and
> hours
> to read, and in which, upon re-reading one discovers new things. In a
> two-hour movie, it is imposible to create that kind of density, but
> it
> is possible to reshape that density into a workable, looser, more
> easily
> understandable format. Gilliam has shown, in all his movies, the
> penchant for filling them with as much as the mind can take, and then
> some. He would rather have people puzzling over his movies for years
> than have them understand them by evening's end.
> Whch is why the rewrite of Sam Hamm's script doesn't work. For all it
> was, Alan Moore's Watchmen, and thus, Terry Gilliam's Watchmen, is
> too
> ense for a two-hour screen movie. Hamm's version takes everything
> that
> was good about Watchmen and distills it into highly enjoyable yet
> still
> highly dense movie. While Gilliam's Watchmen would no doubt leave
> them
> scratching their heads at the box office, Hamm's Wathmen would bring
> them back, paying to see it again..."
> END EXCERPTS
> Interesting stuff, and even more so since we'll finally be able to see
> how the task of translating Moore's vision to the big screen comes
> about.
> --
> Truck Stop Woman by Dockery and Conley
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXA4jekz_xk

Will Dockery wrote:

> On Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 10:03:33 PM
>>
>> Since the Watchmen movie is now a reality, this piece from the
>> archives, written by a person known as Flash Forever, gives
>> interesting recaps of the two scripts that were written for the film
>> twenty years ago -
>> The Watchmen movie script review.
>> Amazing Heroes No. 173. November, 1989.
>> The comments I recalled concerning the Watchmen movie scripts were
>> from
>> an article which appeared in that AH issue entitled, "Andy Mangels
>> Backstage (With a Bunch of Movie Scripts)" written by, you guessed
>> it,
>> Andy Mangel.
>> Mangel reviews several incarnations of the script for the Batman
>> movie
>> and what I presume eventually became the script for the Flash
>> television
>> movie. There's also a review of a script for a Nick Fury movie. There
>> are references to several other super-hero scripts which, to the best
>> of
>> my knowledge, were never actually made into movies. Not as yet,
>> anyways.
>> But all of that is incidental. On to Watchmen...
>> Mangel reviews two Watchmen scripts, one written by Sam Hamm and
>> another
>> written by Hamm and Terry Gilliam. Excerpts from Mangel's article:

> I'm in the middle of a Terry Gilliam retrospective, from Jabberwocky to Brazil, and I can visualize Gilliam's take on Watchmen.

Fascinating though of what might have been indeed...!

>> "Watchmen (Fist Draft-Sept. 9, 1988)–Sam Hamm: Now for the moment
>> you've all been waiting for. Don't deny it. Watchmen is probably the
>> most eagerly awaited movie in comicdom now that Batman's on the way.
>> Toss off Punisher, Captain America, Sgt. Rock, Flash, and Superboy.
>> Bring on Rorschach!
>> It is going to be difficult to discuss this script, as there are two
>> major changes in it: the beginning and the ending. While I fell the
>> beginning can be discussed (as Sam Hamm has done in some interviews),
>> I
>> cannot, in good conscience, discuss the ending (unless I'm very well
>> paid, that it).
>> Watchmen starts out in New York City–July, 1976–where radical
>> terrorists have taken 40 hostages in the Statue of Liberty. As the
>> S.W.A.T. teams discuss strategies, the Owlship swoops down from the
>> clouds, piloted by Night Owl, and carrying Rorshach and Captain
>> Metropolis. "Christ Almighty, it's the goddamed Watchmen!" shouts the
>> S.W.A.T. captain, and indeed it is.
>> Night Owl confers with Adrian Veidt on a TV screen even as a line is
>> lowered to the Statue's head and the Comedian comes out of the water
>> in
>> scuba gear in the Statue's base. The Comedian shoots a hostage the
>> terrorists at the base use as a shield, then blows them all away
>> before
>> letting Silk Spectre up from a sewer line. Meanwhile, because of the
>> Fourth of July fireworks now exploding in the air, the remaining
>> terrorists in the Statue's head are oblivious to Rorshach and Captain
>> Metropolis's actions as they cut through Lady Liberty's head. They
>> capture the terrorists within without bloodshe, but the Comedian and
>> Silk Spectre have screwed up, and a bomb has begun its countdown
>> somewhere near the Statue's waist!
>> Catching the bomb's signal, Adrian Veidt aborts the mission, and
>> Night
>> Owl is forced to fly away from Liberty–Rorshach hanging by the
>> ladder–with Captain Metropolis and all the hostages still in the
>> Statue's head. Seconds after the Comedian and Sil Specte reach cover
>> below, the Statue's midsection explodes and the top section crumbles
>> into the ocean. Happy Bicentennial Fourth of July, America!
>> As the ocean bubbles from the debris, a several hundred foot tall Dr.
>> Manhattan walks up from its depths. "Asshole! What took you so long?"
>> The Comedian exclaims.
>> Thus the movie opens, with a news anchorman announcing legislation
>> banning the "costumed adventurer."
>> "The age of the super-hero is officially history."
>> Ten years later we pick up with the murder of the Comedian, and
>> Rorshach
>> begins his investigation. He first visits Dan Dreiberg, who calls
>> Adrian
>> Vedt to tell him what's happened. Veidt then goes to tell Dr.
>> Manhattan
>> and Laurie Juspeczyk, and the subterfuge begins.
>> From here, the framework and spirit of Alan Moore's Watchmen is kept.
>> All references to the first generation of heroes have been deleted,
>> but
>> most of the rest is presented. Dr. Manhattan's origin does not
>> involve
>> so many flashbacks, and the Comedian and Silk Spectre's origins are
>> not
>> even discussed.
>> One major/minor change involves Rorshach's confrontations with
>> Moloch.
>> The first time, he comes in on Moloch about to have sex. "Who's the
>> welfare mother?" Rorshach asks, then warns her at the end ot the
>> encounter that she'd better "stock up on penicillin." His second
>> encounter with Moloch is in the bathroom stall, where he catches him
>> snorting coke. "Two things I hate," says Rorshach. "Street
>> mimes...users
>> of recreational drugs." These exchanges show that Sam Hamm's
>> extremely
>> adept at use of dialogue–especially when it comes to crazy people–as
>> well as his hatred for street mimes.
>> Hamm shows his skill again in the intercut scenes of Laurie and Dan
>> about to make love and Rorshach being captured by the Civil Terrorism
>> Unit. Intercut with the Fats Walter tune "S'posin," this sequence is
>> so
>> wonderfully done in the script that the visuals would have been there
>> even if I'd never have seen it in the comics.
>> It takes the Civil Terrorist Unit's actions to bring Night Owl and
>> Silk
>> Spectre out of their closets again, when CTU beings to mow down
>> protestors at a peace rally. "Attention CTU!" says Night Owl. "Cease
>> fire immediately, or we'll blow your asses out of the sky!" From
>> there,
>> the script moves at a rapidly accelerating pace. Night Owl and Silk
>> Spectre break Rorshach out of prison, Dr. Manhattan takes Laurie to
>> Mars, and Night Owl and Rorshach try to make it to Adrian Veidt's
>> Antartic base to find out if he can help. Something big (an
>> understatement) stops them initally, but when they finally do get
>> there,
>> they find out that Veidt has a much bigger and better agenda than he
>> had
>> in the comic series.
>> And this is where Samm Hamm really proves his storytelling
>> capabilities.
>> If Watchmen had a major flaw, and it did, it was the ending. If
>> aliens
>> were attacking Earth, it might indeed stop the threat of nuclear
>> war...for six months or so. At that point, the nations would realize
>> that no more aliens were going to attack, and business would go on as
>> usual. Veidt would have to continue his destructive alien invasion
>> plan
>> periodically to keep the peace, as it were. Yet even Veidt would
>> eventually realize he was being as destructive to humanity as nuclear
>> war would be.
>> Hamm tackles this problem ingeniously. He comes up with an entirely
>> new
>> ending–and ending which makes an incredible amount of sense, and one
>> which I'm heartily surprised did not occur to Alan Moore when he
>> wrote
>> the original. Hamm's ending is so obvious yet so devious that I'm
>> tempted to enjoy is Watchmen more than Moore's: his ending is
>> definitely
>> better.
>> Does Rorshach get killed? Does nuclear war happen? Does Adrian
>> Veidt's
>> plan actually help humanity? I sincerely hope we all get the chance
>> to
>> find out the answers to those questions on the big screen some time.
>> Watchmen, as written here, is an incredible story, a fantastic
>> adaptation, and a damn good script. Although the budget would be
>> tremendous, any studio who passed this one up would be making a
>> mistake.
>> By the way, you wonder what the young black boy who reads comic books
>> at
>> the newsstand is reading? It's not Tales of the Black Freighter. It's
>> Colonel North and his Howling Commandos. Way to go, Sam.
>> Watchmen (Second Draft)–Terry Gilliam and Sam Hamm: The rewrite of
>> the
>> beginning scene is largely full of unneeded and poorly done dialogue
>> changes, almost as if Gilliam had to do something in it to put his
>> mark
>> down. An example of an unnecessary line comes right at the beginning.
>> The Comedian's "Asshole! What took you so long?" is changed to
>> "Manhattan, you cad! This lady's gone to pieces waiting for you!" You
>> tell me which one's better.
>> To his credit, Gilliam has included portions of Rorshach's diary as
>> voice-overs in several scenes. Not only that, but he has restored
>> scenes
>> missing from Hamm's first draft. Once again it is Rorshach who tells
>> Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan, and Adrian Veidt about the Comedian's
>> death. IN fact, it looks almost as if Giliaiam just went through and
>> copied Alan Moore's dialogue and scenes, while keeping in those
>> elements
>> of Hamm's that he liked. While this takes the script much closer to
>> Moore's version, I think it takes it further away from Moore's
>> vision.
>> To explain:
>> Alan Moore created a very dense comic series which takes hours and
>> hours
>> to read, and in which, upon re-reading one discovers new things. In a
>> two-hour movie, it is imposible to create that kind of density, but
>> it
>> is possible to reshape that density into a workable, looser, more
>> easily
>> understandable format. Gilliam has shown, in all his movies, the
>> penchant for filling them with as much as the mind can take, and then
>> some. He would rather have people puzzling over his movies for years
>> than have them understand them by evening's end.
>> Whch is why the rewrite of Sam Hamm's script doesn't work. For all it
>> was, Alan Moore's Watchmen, and thus, Terry Gilliam's Watchmen, is
>> too
>> ense for a two-hour screen movie. Hamm's version takes everything
>> that
>> was good about Watchmen and distills it into highly enjoyable yet
>> still
>> highly dense movie. While Gilliam's Watchmen would no doubt leave
>> them
>> scratching their heads at the box office, Hamm's Wathmen would bring
>> them back, paying to see it again..."
>> END EXCERPTS
>> Interesting stuff, and even more so since we'll finally be able to see
>> how the task of translating Moore's vision to the big screen comes
>> about.
>> --
>> Truck Stop Woman by Dockery and Conley
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXA4jekz_xk

Rocky Stoneberg wrote:

> Will Dockery wrote:

>> On Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 10:03:33 PM
>>>
>>> Since the Watchmen movie is now a reality, this piece from the
>>> archives, written by a person known as Flash Forever, gives
>>> interesting recaps of the two scripts that were written for the film
>>> twenty years ago -
>>> The Watchmen movie script review.
>>> Amazing Heroes No. 173. November, 1989.
>>> The comments I recalled concerning the Watchmen movie scripts were
>>> from
>>> an article which appeared in that AH issue entitled, "Andy Mangels
>>> Backstage (With a Bunch of Movie Scripts)" written by, you guessed
>>> it,
>>> Andy Mangel.
>>> Mangel reviews several incarnations of the script for the Batman
>>> movie
>>> and what I presume eventually became the script for the Flash
>>> television
>>> movie. There's also a review of a script for a Nick Fury movie. There
>>> are references to several other super-hero scripts which, to the best
>>> of
>>> my knowledge, were never actually made into movies. Not as yet,
>>> anyways.
>>> But all of that is incidental. On to Watchmen...
>>> Mangel reviews two Watchmen scripts, one written by Sam Hamm and
>>> another
>>> written by Hamm and Terry Gilliam. Excerpts from Mangel's article:

>> I'm in the middle of a Terry Gilliam retrospective, from Jabberwocky to Brazil, and I can visualize Gilliam's take on Watchmen.

> Fascinating though of what might have been indeed...!

>>> "Watchmen (Fist Draft-Sept. 9, 1988)–Sam Hamm: Now for the moment
>>> you've all been waiting for. Don't deny it. Watchmen is probably the
>>> most eagerly awaited movie in comicdom now that Batman's on the way.
>>> Toss off Punisher, Captain America, Sgt. Rock, Flash, and Superboy.
>>> Bring on Rorschach!
>>> It is going to be difficult to discuss this script, as there are two
>>> major changes in it: the beginning and the ending. While I fell the
>>> beginning can be discussed (as Sam Hamm has done in some interviews),
>>> I
>>> cannot, in good conscience, discuss the ending (unless I'm very well
>>> paid, that it).
>>> Watchmen starts out in New York City–July, 1976–where radical
>>> terrorists have taken 40 hostages in the Statue of Liberty. As the
>>> S.W.A.T. teams discuss strategies, the Owlship swoops down from the
>>> clouds, piloted by Night Owl, and carrying Rorshach and Captain
>>> Metropolis. "Christ Almighty, it's the goddamed Watchmen!" shouts the
>>> S.W.A.T. captain, and indeed it is.
>>> Night Owl confers with Adrian Veidt on a TV screen even as a line is
>>> lowered to the Statue's head and the Comedian comes out of the water
>>> in
>>> scuba gear in the Statue's base. The Comedian shoots a hostage the
>>> terrorists at the base use as a shield, then blows them all away
>>> before
>>> letting Silk Spectre up from a sewer line. Meanwhile, because of the
>>> Fourth of July fireworks now exploding in the air, the remaining
>>> terrorists in the Statue's head are oblivious to Rorshach and Captain
>>> Metropolis's actions as they cut through Lady Liberty's head. They
>>> capture the terrorists within without bloodshe, but the Comedian and
>>> Silk Spectre have screwed up, and a bomb has begun its countdown
>>> somewhere near the Statue's waist!
>>> Catching the bomb's signal, Adrian Veidt aborts the mission, and
>>> Night
>>> Owl is forced to fly away from Liberty–Rorshach hanging by the
>>> ladder–with Captain Metropolis and all the hostages still in the
>>> Statue's head. Seconds after the Comedian and Sil Specte reach cover
>>> below, the Statue's midsection explodes and the top section crumbles
>>> into the ocean. Happy Bicentennial Fourth of July, America!
>>> As the ocean bubbles from the debris, a several hundred foot tall Dr.
>>> Manhattan walks up from its depths. "Asshole! What took you so long?"
>>> The Comedian exclaims.
>>> Thus the movie opens, with a news anchorman announcing legislation
>>> banning the "costumed adventurer."
>>> "The age of the super-hero is officially history."
>>> Ten years later we pick up with the murder of the Comedian, and
>>> Rorshach
>>> begins his investigation. He first visits Dan Dreiberg, who calls
>>> Adrian
>>> Vedt to tell him what's happened. Veidt then goes to tell Dr.
>>> Manhattan
>>> and Laurie Juspeczyk, and the subterfuge begins.
>>> From here, the framework and spirit of Alan Moore's Watchmen is kept.
>>> All references to the first generation of heroes have been deleted,
>>> but
>>> most of the rest is presented. Dr. Manhattan's origin does not
>>> involve
>>> so many flashbacks, and the Comedian and Silk Spectre's origins are
>>> not
>>> even discussed.
>>> One major/minor change involves Rorshach's confrontations with
>>> Moloch.
>>> The first time, he comes in on Moloch about to have sex. "Who's the
>>> welfare mother?" Rorshach asks, then warns her at the end ot the
>>> encounter that she'd better "stock up on penicillin." His second
>>> encounter with Moloch is in the bathroom stall, where he catches him
>>> snorting coke. "Two things I hate," says Rorshach. "Street
>>> mimes...users
>>> of recreational drugs." These exchanges show that Sam Hamm's
>>> extremely
>>> adept at use of dialogue–especially when it comes to crazy people–as
>>> well as his hatred for street mimes.
>>> Hamm shows his skill again in the intercut scenes of Laurie and Dan
>>> about to make love and Rorshach being captured by the Civil Terrorism
>>> Unit. Intercut with the Fats Walter tune "S'posin," this sequence is
>>> so
>>> wonderfully done in the script that the visuals would have been there
>>> even if I'd never have seen it in the comics.
>>> It takes the Civil Terrorist Unit's actions to bring Night Owl and
>>> Silk
>>> Spectre out of their closets again, when CTU beings to mow down
>>> protestors at a peace rally. "Attention CTU!" says Night Owl. "Cease
>>> fire immediately, or we'll blow your asses out of the sky!" From
>>> there,
>>> the script moves at a rapidly accelerating pace. Night Owl and Silk
>>> Spectre break Rorshach out of prison, Dr. Manhattan takes Laurie to
>>> Mars, and Night Owl and Rorshach try to make it to Adrian Veidt's
>>> Antartic base to find out if he can help. Something big (an
>>> understatement) stops them initally, but when they finally do get
>>> there,
>>> they find out that Veidt has a much bigger and better agenda than he
>>> had
>>> in the comic series.
>>> And this is where Samm Hamm really proves his storytelling
>>> capabilities.
>>> If Watchmen had a major flaw, and it did, it was the ending. If
>>> aliens
>>> were attacking Earth, it might indeed stop the threat of nuclear
>>> war...for six months or so. At that point, the nations would realize
>>> that no more aliens were going to attack, and business would go on as
>>> usual. Veidt would have to continue his destructive alien invasion
>>> plan
>>> periodically to keep the peace, as it were. Yet even Veidt would
>>> eventually realize he was being as destructive to humanity as nuclear
>>> war would be.
>>> Hamm tackles this problem ingeniously. He comes up with an entirely
>>> new
>>> ending–and ending which makes an incredible amount of sense, and one
>>> which I'm heartily surprised did not occur to Alan Moore when he
>>> wrote
>>> the original. Hamm's ending is so obvious yet so devious that I'm
>>> tempted to enjoy is Watchmen more than Moore's: his ending is
>>> definitely
>>> better.
>>> Does Rorshach get killed? Does nuclear war happen? Does Adrian
>>> Veidt's
>>> plan actually help humanity? I sincerely hope we all get the chance
>>> to
>>> find out the answers to those questions on the big screen some time.
>>> Watchmen, as written here, is an incredible story, a fantastic
>>> adaptation, and a damn good script. Although the budget would be
>>> tremendous, any studio who passed this one up would be making a
>>> mistake.
>>> By the way, you wonder what the young black boy who reads comic books
>>> at
>>> the newsstand is reading? It's not Tales of the Black Freighter. It's
>>> Colonel North and his Howling Commandos. Way to go, Sam.
>>> Watchmen (Second Draft)–Terry Gilliam and Sam Hamm: The rewrite of
>>> the
>>> beginning scene is largely full of unneeded and poorly done dialogue
>>> changes, almost as if Gilliam had to do something in it to put his
>>> mark
>>> down. An example of an unnecessary line comes right at the beginning.
>>> The Comedian's "Asshole! What took you so long?" is changed to
>>> "Manhattan, you cad! This lady's gone to pieces waiting for you!" You
>>> tell me which one's better.
>>> To his credit, Gilliam has included portions of Rorshach's diary as
>>> voice-overs in several scenes. Not only that, but he has restored
>>> scenes
>>> missing from Hamm's first draft. Once again it is Rorshach who tells
>>> Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan, and Adrian Veidt about the Comedian's
>>> death. IN fact, it looks almost as if Giliaiam just went through and
>>> copied Alan Moore's dialogue and scenes, while keeping in those
>>> elements
>>> of Hamm's that he liked. While this takes the script much closer to
>>> Moore's version, I think it takes it further away from Moore's
>>> vision.
>>> To explain:
>>> Alan Moore created a very dense comic series which takes hours and
>>> hours
>>> to read, and in which, upon re-reading one discovers new things. In a
>>> two-hour movie, it is imposible to create that kind of density, but
>>> it
>>> is possible to reshape that density into a workable, looser, more
>>> easily
>>> understandable format. Gilliam has shown, in all his movies, the
>>> penchant for filling them with as much as the mind can take, and then
>>> some. He would rather have people puzzling over his movies for years
>>> than have them understand them by evening's end.
>>> Whch is why the rewrite of Sam Hamm's script doesn't work. For all it
>>> was, Alan Moore's Watchmen, and thus, Terry Gilliam's Watchmen, is
>>> too
>>> ense for a two-hour screen movie. Hamm's version takes everything
>>> that
>>> was good about Watchmen and distills it into highly enjoyable yet
>>> still
>>> highly dense movie. While Gilliam's Watchmen would no doubt leave
>>> them
>>> scratching their heads at the box office, Hamm's Wathmen would bring
>>> them back, paying to see it again..."

Will Dockery wrote:

> Rocky Stoneberg wrote:

>> Will Dockery wrote:

>
>>>> Since the Watchmen movie is now a reality, this piece from the
>>>> archives, written by a person known as Flash Forever, gives
>>>> interesting recaps of the two scripts that were written for the film
>>>> twenty years ago -
>>>> The Watchmen movie script review.
>>>> Amazing Heroes No. 173. November, 1989.
>>>> The comments I recalled concerning the Watchmen movie scripts were
>>>> from
>>>> an article which appeared in that AH issue entitled, "Andy Mangels
>>>> Backstage (With a Bunch of Movie Scripts)" written by, you guessed
>>>> it,
>>>> Andy Mangel.
>>>> Mangel reviews several incarnations of the script for the Batman
>>>> movie
>>>> and what I presume eventually became the script for the Flash
>>>> television
>>>> movie. There's also a review of a script for a Nick Fury movie. There
>>>> are references to several other super-hero scripts which, to the best
>>>> of
>>>> my knowledge, were never actually made into movies. Not as yet,
>>>> anyways.
>>>> But all of that is incidental. On to Watchmen...
>>>> Mangel reviews two Watchmen scripts, one written by Sam Hamm and
>>>> another
>>>> written by Hamm and Terry Gilliam. Excerpts from Mangel's article:

>>> I'm in the middle of a Terry Gilliam retrospective, from Jabberwocky to Brazil, and I can visualize Gilliam's take on Watchmen.

>> Fascinating though of what might have been indeed...!

>>>> "Watchmen (Fist Draft-Sept. 9, 1988)–Sam Hamm: Now for the moment
>>>> you've all been waiting for. Don't deny it. Watchmen is probably the
>>>> most eagerly awaited movie in comicdom now that Batman's on the way.
>>>> Toss off Punisher, Captain America, Sgt. Rock, Flash, and Superboy.
>>>> Bring on Rorschach!
>>>> It is going to be difficult to discuss this script, as there are two
>>>> major changes in it: the beginning and the ending. While I fell the
>>>> beginning can be discussed (as Sam Hamm has done in some interviews),
>>>> I
>>>> cannot, in good conscience, discuss the ending (unless I'm very well
>>>> paid, that it).
>>>> Watchmen starts out in New York City–July, 1976–where radical
>>>> terrorists have taken 40 hostages in the Statue of Liberty. As the
>>>> S.W.A.T. teams discuss strategies, the Owlship swoops down from the
>>>> clouds, piloted by Night Owl, and carrying Rorshach and Captain
>>>> Metropolis. "Christ Almighty, it's the goddamed Watchmen!" shouts the
>>>> S.W.A.T. captain, and indeed it is.
>>>> Night Owl confers with Adrian Veidt on a TV screen even as a line is
>>>> lowered to the Statue's head and the Comedian comes out of the water
>>>> in
>>>> scuba gear in the Statue's base. The Comedian shoots a hostage the
>>>> terrorists at the base use as a shield, then blows them all away
>>>> before
>>>> letting Silk Spectre up from a sewer line. Meanwhile, because of the
>>>> Fourth of July fireworks now exploding in the air, the remaining
>>>> terrorists in the Statue's head are oblivious to Rorshach and Captain
>>>> Metropolis's actions as they cut through Lady Liberty's head. They
>>>> capture the terrorists within without bloodshe, but the Comedian and
>>>> Silk Spectre have screwed up, and a bomb has begun its countdown
>>>> somewhere near the Statue's waist!
>>>> Catching the bomb's signal, Adrian Veidt aborts the mission, and
>>>> Night
>>>> Owl is forced to fly away from Liberty–Rorshach hanging by the
>>>> ladder–with Captain Metropolis and all the hostages still in the
>>>> Statue's head. Seconds after the Comedian and Sil Specte reach cover
>>>> below, the Statue's midsection explodes and the top section crumbles
>>>> into the ocean. Happy Bicentennial Fourth of July, America!
>>>> As the ocean bubbles from the debris, a several hundred foot tall Dr.
>>>> Manhattan walks up from its depths. "Asshole! What took you so long?"
>>>> The Comedian exclaims.
>>>> Thus the movie opens, with a news anchorman announcing legislation
>>>> banning the "costumed adventurer."
>>>> "The age of the super-hero is officially history."
>>>> Ten years later we pick up with the murder of the Comedian, and
>>>> Rorshach
>>>> begins his investigation. He first visits Dan Dreiberg, who calls
>>>> Adrian
>>>> Vedt to tell him what's happened. Veidt then goes to tell Dr.
>>>> Manhattan
>>>> and Laurie Juspeczyk, and the subterfuge begins.
>>>> From here, the framework and spirit of Alan Moore's Watchmen is kept.
>>>> All references to the first generation of heroes have been deleted,
>>>> but
>>>> most of the rest is presented. Dr. Manhattan's origin does not
>>>> involve
>>>> so many flashbacks, and the Comedian and Silk Spectre's origins are
>>>> not
>>>> even discussed.
>>>> One major/minor change involves Rorshach's confrontations with
>>>> Moloch.
>>>> The first time, he comes in on Moloch about to have sex. "Who's the
>>>> welfare mother?" Rorshach asks, then warns her at the end ot the
>>>> encounter that she'd better "stock up on penicillin." His second
>>>> encounter with Moloch is in the bathroom stall, where he catches him
>>>> snorting coke. "Two things I hate," says Rorshach. "Street
>>>> mimes...users
>>>> of recreational drugs." These exchanges show that Sam Hamm's
>>>> extremely
>>>> adept at use of dialogue–especially when it comes to crazy people–as
>>>> well as his hatred for street mimes.
>>>> Hamm shows his skill again in the intercut scenes of Laurie and Dan
>>>> about to make love and Rorshach being captured by the Civil Terrorism
>>>> Unit. Intercut with the Fats Walter tune "S'posin," this sequence is
>>>> so
>>>> wonderfully done in the script that the visuals would have been there
>>>> even if I'd never have seen it in the comics.
>>>> It takes the Civil Terrorist Unit's actions to bring Night Owl and
>>>> Silk
>>>> Spectre out of their closets again, when CTU beings to mow down
>>>> protestors at a peace rally. "Attention CTU!" says Night Owl. "Cease
>>>> fire immediately, or we'll blow your asses out of the sky!" From
>>>> there,
>>>> the script moves at a rapidly accelerating pace. Night Owl and Silk
>>>> Spectre break Rorshach out of prison, Dr. Manhattan takes Laurie to
>>>> Mars, and Night Owl and Rorshach try to make it to Adrian Veidt's
>>>> Antartic base to find out if he can help. Something big (an
>>>> understatement) stops them initally, but when they finally do get
>>>> there,
>>>> they find out that Veidt has a much bigger and better agenda than he
>>>> had
>>>> in the comic series.
>>>> And this is where Samm Hamm really proves his storytelling
>>>> capabilities.
>>>> If Watchmen had a major flaw, and it did, it was the ending. If
>>>> aliens
>>>> were attacking Earth, it might indeed stop the threat of nuclear
>>>> war...for six months or so. At that point, the nations would realize
>>>> that no more aliens were going to attack, and business would go on as
>>>> usual. Veidt would have to continue his destructive alien invasion
>>>> plan
>>>> periodically to keep the peace, as it were. Yet even Veidt would
>>>> eventually realize he was being as destructive to humanity as nuclear
>>>> war would be.
>>>> Hamm tackles this problem ingeniously. He comes up with an entirely
>>>> new
>>>> ending–and ending which makes an incredible amount of sense, and one
>>>> which I'm heartily surprised did not occur to Alan Moore when he
>>>> wrote
>>>> the original. Hamm's ending is so obvious yet so devious that I'm
>>>> tempted to enjoy is Watchmen more than Moore's: his ending is
>>>> definitely
>>>> better.
>>>> Does Rorshach get killed? Does nuclear war happen? Does Adrian
>>>> Veidt's
>>>> plan actually help humanity? I sincerely hope we all get the chance
>>>> to
>>>> find out the answers to those questions on the big screen some time.
>>>> Watchmen, as written here, is an incredible story, a fantastic
>>>> adaptation, and a damn good script. Although the budget would be
>>>> tremendous, any studio who passed this one up would be making a
>>>> mistake.
>>>> By the way, you wonder what the young black boy who reads comic books
>>>> at
>>>> the newsstand is reading? It's not Tales of the Black Freighter. It's
>>>> Colonel North and his Howling Commandos. Way to go, Sam.
>>>> Watchmen (Second Draft)–Terry Gilliam and Sam Hamm: The rewrite of
>>>> the
>>>> beginning scene is largely full of unneeded and poorly done dialogue
>>>> changes, almost as if Gilliam had to do something in it to put his
>>>> mark
>>>> down. An example of an unnecessary line comes right at the beginning.
>>>> The Comedian's "Asshole! What took you so long?" is changed to
>>>> "Manhattan, you cad! This lady's gone to pieces waiting for you!" You
>>>> tell me which one's better.
>>>> To his credit, Gilliam has included portions of Rorshach's diary as
>>>> voice-overs in several scenes. Not only that, but he has restored
>>>> scenes
>>>> missing from Hamm's first draft. Once again it is Rorshach who tells
>>>> Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan, and Adrian Veidt about the Comedian's
>>>> death. IN fact, it looks almost as if Giliaiam just went through and
>>>> copied Alan Moore's dialogue and scenes, while keeping in those
>>>> elements
>>>> of Hamm's that he liked. While this takes the script much closer to
>>>> Moore's version, I think it takes it further away from Moore's
>>>> vision.
>>>> To explain:
>>>> Alan Moore created a very dense comic series which takes hours and
>>>> hours
>>>> to read, and in which, upon re-reading one discovers new things. In a
>>>> two-hour movie, it is imposible to create that kind of density, but
>>>> it
>>>> is possible to reshape that density into a workable, looser, more
>>>> easily
>>>> understandable format. Gilliam has shown, in all his movies, the
>>>> penchant for filling them with as much as the mind can take, and then
>>>> some. He would rather have people puzzling over his movies for years
>>>> than have them understand them by evening's end.
>>>> Whch is why the rewrite of Sam Hamm's script doesn't work. For all it
>>>> was, Alan Moore's Watchmen, and thus, Terry Gilliam's Watchmen, is
>>>> too
>>>> ense for a two-hour screen movie. Hamm's version takes everything
>>>> that
>>>> was good about Watchmen and distills it into highly enjoyable yet
>>>> still
>>>> highly dense movie. While Gilliam's Watchmen would no doubt leave
>>>> them
>>>> scratching their heads at the box office, Hamm's Wathmen would bring
>>>> them back, paying to see it again..."