Every once in a while, you come across an interview with a genuine artist, one who doesn’t bend over when the big studio man comes calling with fat checks in his hand.
In an interview that was originally published in truncated form in Giant (a magazine that I’m starting to develop some admiration for – a cut above the "lad mags") and then in its full length here, on Comicon.com, Alan Moore talks about why he demanded that his name be taken off the upcoming "V for Vendetta" movie:
At this point, I said that’s it I’m not working for DC again and also I still want my name off this film, if they don’t take my name off this film, I will be taking my name off the books, because it means that much to me to sever my connection with this whole painful business.
The Beat: But, Alan, isn’t that throwing out the baby with the bathwater?
Comicad V For VendettaMoore: Well, I don’t own the baby anymore, Heidi! The baby is one I put a great deal of love into, a great deal of passion and then during a drunken night it turned out that I’d sold it to the gypsies and they had turned out my baby into a life of prostitution. Occasionally they would send me increasingly glossy and well-produced pictures of my child as she now was, and they would very, very kindly send me a cut of the earnings. This may sound melodramatic, but I’ve been writing for 25 years and I think that the passion with which I write is probably evident—it’s not faked. I really do feel intensely passionate about nearly everything I write. Obviously, it’s going to vary, but I try to be passionate about everything I write. In some cases I succeed. V for Vendetta was one of those cases. It’s that—I mean for 20 years since then, it’s been a kind of a dull ache that the regular paychecks of our cut of the money don’t really do an awful lot to assuage.