David Hayter Receiving Screenplay Credit

[Gotham]

http://thisweekingeek.net/node/128

He starts talking about Watchmen around thirty-one minute mark.

 

[The Guard]

They ALL get screenplay credit. Hamm, Hayter, Tse, Orci and Kurtzman, etc.

Hayter deserves a credit, as every draft was built off of what he did to pare down the story in at least a mostly faithful manner.

 

[Gotham]

I don't think they've kept anything from Hamm's version. I wouldn't know if they have, but according to a few reviews, everything about it is unfaithful.

 

[The Guard]

They've still credited him. At least on the screenplay.

 

[Katsuro]

I don't think they've kept anything from Hamm's version. I wouldn't know if they have, but according to a few reviews, everything about it is unfaithful.

I've read bits and peices of Hamm's version, and it's disgusting. I read the opening, which is a cliched action movie opening of "The Watchmen" flying in on an owlship and fighting terrorists at the statue of liberty.

The end is... oh my god. The end is absurd.

Basically, Vedit's plan has nothing to do with stopping the inevitable war. Instead, he created a machine to look at possible futures or some **** and concluded that Manhattan's existence will doom the world, but it's unspecified how.

So he builds a machine to allow him to assassinate Osterman before he becomes Manhattan. He's stopped and vaporized by Manhattan, who then realizes he was right. Manhattan goes through the portal, does some wierd **** where he fuses with his past self, and Osterman comes out of the chamber unharmed.

Then back at Karnak the heroes (Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, and Rorshach who is still alive), watch the portal grow and reality warps or some ****, then they end up in New York, but the real New York where superheroes never existed. People are like "wtf are these guys doing in silly costumes", and then... here's the real kicker... some kid goes "look, it's the Watchmen, from the comic book!" and holds up a Watchmen book. Then the movie ends.

So yeah, Sam Hamm is an idiot. He doesn't deserve credit whatsoever, expect maybe for setting an example of what not do when adapting Watchmen.

 

[Mister Sinister]

This is good news, maybe then the people at Sony will see that he IS good enough to write an MGS movie.

 

[Antonello Blueberry]

They ALL get screenplay credit. Hamm, Hayter, Tse, Orci and Kurtzman, etc.

According to Hayter just him and Tse will get credit for the script.

 

[The Guard]

Hmm...that's not what it says on the screenplay itself. Interesting.

 

[Gotham]

Hmm...that's not what it says on the screenplay itself. Interesting.

I'm assuming you've read the final draft or is there something I'm missing?

 

[arman200]

I've read bits and peices of Hamm's version, and it's disgusting. I read the opening, which is a cliched action movie opening of "The Watchmen" flying in on an owlship and fighting terrorists at the statue of liberty.

The end is... oh my god. The end is absurd.

Basically, Vedit's plan has nothing to do with stopping the inevitable war. Instead, he created a machine to look at possible futures or some **** and concluded that Manhattan's existence will doom the world, but it's unspecified how.

So he builds a machine to allow him to assassinate Osterman before he becomes Manhattan. He's stopped and vaporized by Manhattan, who then realizes he was right. Manhattan goes through the portal, does some wierd **** where he fuses with his past self, and Osterman comes out of the chamber unharmed.

Then back at Karnak the heroes (Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, and Rorshach who is still alive), watch the portal grow and reality warps or some ****, then they end up in New York, but the real New York where superheroes never existed. People are like "wtf are these guys doing in silly costumes", and then... here's the real kicker... some kid goes "look, it's the Watchmen, from the comic book!" and holds up a Watchmen book. Then the movie ends.

So yeah, Sam Hamm is an idiot. He doesn't deserve credit whatsoever, expect maybe for setting an example of what not do when adapting Watchmen.

Yeah, I only read the ending, and I remember that. Read like it was written in crayon.

 

[Octoberist]

Hmm...that's not what it says on the screenplay itself. Interesting.

do you have it?

 

[CaptainGenerica]

Yeah, I guess that makes sense, Hayter getting credit. So no real surprise, but a good bit of info.

This is good news, maybe then the people at Sony will see that he IS good enough to write an MGS movie.

As in... Metal Gear Solid?

News to me. Fill me in, please!

 

[Mister Sinister]

They're doing a Metal Gear Solid movie, but Hayter's pitch (Apocalypse Now of the digital age, with Snake right in the middle of it) was turned down.

 

[The Guard]

I'm assuming you've read the final draft or is there something I'm missing?

Nothing ends. Nothing ever ends.

do you have it?

Not currently.

If you've read Hayter's original draft, and Tse's draft, and can imagine a draft that takes the best elements of those two and makes it more faithful and relevant...you've got an idea of what to expect.

 

[The Battousai]

The Watchmen section of Hayter's interview (for those who didn't catch the audio feed)

David Hayter Talks Watchmen

Screenwriter discusses the colossal task of adapting the story from comic to movie script

David Hayter, famous for writing X-Men and X-Men 2 as well as being the voice actor who portrays Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid video game series, spoke to This Week in Geek about acting, video games, and of course, Watchmen.
Thanks to the nimble transcribing efforts of our own Curiosity, Inc., here is everything Hayter had to say about the upcoming Watchmen film and his involvement in its writing...
TWiG: With your involvement with Watchmen, what were some of the challenges that you faced adapting such a piece of work because it has this huge storyline but also having the subset of the Black Freighter?
David Hayter: Well, the challenges were immense. In some ways, it was very easy because the story is so good and so well-written and I think so cinematic I just sort of felt like a lot of fanboys felt, which is this is basically a storyboarded movie, it’s ready to go and it’s already better-written than 98 percent of the movies that come out, so in terms of adapting it, it wasn’t that difficult.
It was protecting the integrity of the project from all the different studios we took it to. I had it at four different studios and it would inevitably come down to the same notes, which were “It’s a six-person movie, can we make it about one person?” and “We don’t like all these flashbacks, can we get rid of these flashbacks?” Well, we’re stretching over events that reach for 40 years, so we kind of need the flashbacks, and it’s not about one person, it’s about six people. So, I can write you a movie with no flashbacks and only one main character, but that’s not Watchmen, that’s a different thing, and you’re gonna have to pay me again. So eventually, we would part ways with each successive studio as they lost their nerve to make that movie and what we knew. But the entire time, what it was really going to come down to was a super-hot director coming in off of a huge success so that he couldn’t be messed with and somebody that was a huge fan of the comic book itself.
And like a miracle from the sky, 300 comes out, opens to $70 million in March, of all months, and suddenly, Zack Snyder is this huge director and he’s a massive fan of the material. He came in and was really our white knight. He got it made the way it needed to be made. As far as “Tales of the Black Freighter” goes, it was always my intention to do everything from the book, but with “Tales of the Black Freighter,” you’re really sort of looking at a three-hour movie, and the studios were just not willing to consider that concept. But what we’d always talked about in the past was shooting the movie and shooting the newsstand with the kid reading the comic book and getting all the inserts we would need for that and then if the movie was a big success, then going out and shooting “Tales of the Black Freighter” and then intercutting it for a big DVD release. This was our concept. I can’t tell you what they actually came down to doing, but that’s how I always wanted to do it. It was always my intention, to put everything from Watchmen up onscreen.
David Hayter: (thought 300 was “amazing, stylistic, beautiful”) When I saw it, I called the producer of Watchmen and said “Oh my God, do we ever have the right guy.” And then I went up to Vancouver while they were shooting and he couldn’t have been nicer. He couldn’t have been more enthusiastic. It was just like two fanboys hanging out and living out their dream. It was amazing.
TWiG: When you were writing Watchmen, what was the character that was the most enjoyable to write? Personally, my favorite character in the comic is Rorschach.
DH: Yeah, well he’s the gold, right? I mean, they’re all great characters, and they all have amazingly detailed character arcs, but Dan is just sort of human. I love Dr. Manhattan as well because I love his problem. He’s becoming God and he’s having problems with his girlfriend. I just think that’s a really great metaphor for anyone who’s gained a lot of power in their life and has to try to stay connected to humanity. But the real gold is Rorschach. That character is so brilliant. To me, Rorschach always pointed out the problem of having masked superheroes. As a kid, you say, oh, wouldn’t it be great if there was a Batman or if there was a dark avenger of the night who would just come and right wrongs and so on and so forth.
But Rorschach raises the question of well, if you’re going to hide your identity and go out and beat people up, are you always going to be beating up bad guys? Who regulates that? Who watches the watchmen? How do you know he’s not going to be beating up environmentalists or creationists or whatever? Taking whatever his own personal ideology is and applying that in ways that society as a whole might not agree with. So, I think that’s a really brilliant character that takes Watchmen above a standard comic book story and puts it directly into our world. Plus, he’s got all the most fun dialogue. “None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with you, you’re locked up in here with me.”
TWiG: I thought that line was tremendously cool. I remember I was sitting in the residence here at the college reading Watchmen last year and I read that line thinking “Holy crap, that is so epically cool.” I had that as like a forum signature in my online life for so long.
DH: Oh, yeah. It’s one of the greatest lines ever written for a hero. I was reading it on the set of a little movie I had produced and I was rereading Watchmen, somebody gave it to me. I think I got to that line and said “I have to make this movie just to hear that line onscreen.” It’s so brilliant and fierce and amazing.
TWiG: Is there anything exclusive you can offer from Watchmen for the listeners of TWiG?
DH: Well, I can’t tell you anything about what’s in the movie, because it’s all confidential. But I can tell you that I’m at the Writer’s Guild right now and I literally found out five minutes before the interview started that I’m getting screenplay credit. The screenplay is by myself and Alex Tse, who worked with Zack. That’s a bit of news that only you and my wife know at the moment.
TWiG: That’s tremendously cool. Now I have to make sure this gets out fast.
DH: Yeah, put it out fast and that’ll be an exclusive for you.

 

[TheVileOne]

Interesting, Hayter makes it seem like he had a lot more involvement then I would've believed before. I thought he was totally off the project as of a while back, and that Snyder just basically threw out everything that came before.

 

[The Guard]

I love David Hayter. He's always been my screenwriting idol. The man made this project happen, as far as I'm concerned, with his fantastic initial adaption of it, even under studio pressure. They built the Alex Tse draft off his script.

 

[TheVileOne]

Isn't the Alex Tse draft supposed to be bad?

I like Hayter's work a lot. His Iron Man script was totally off though. I respect Hayter highly considering he was a guy that came to Hollywood to be an actor but he still succeeded at becoming a screenwriter and became a part of the most important, popular game series of all time.

He should try writing or directing a movie that's not based on a comic book though.

 

[The Guard]

Isn't the Alex Tse draft supposed to be bad?

It's supposed to be. It's really not though, unless you take issue with every little change to the material. It's at once more faithful than Hayter's even though it builds off it, with bigger and more relevant action. Tse essentially took what Hayter did, tightened it up, and built on it in a more faithful and ultimately I think, somewhat more satisfying overall, manner.

A lot of the fanboys who read the Tse draft will tell you it's bad, but they'll tell you that about the Hayter draft as well. I think a lot of that comes from the fact that they take issue with every little change to the source material.

I like Hayter's work a lot. His Iron Man script was totally off though. I respect Hayter highly considering he was a guy that came to Hollywood to be an actor but he still succeeded at becoming a screenwriter and became a part of the most important, popular game series of all time.

I thought his IRON MAN script was fantastic. It just wasn't very faithful to the origin of Iron Man or his relationship with his father, and it didn't include many of the "classic" elements people wanted, like Pepper Potts, Happy Hogan, etc.

He should try writing or directing a movie that's not based on a comic book though.

Agreed.

 

[TheVileOne]

I like parts of the Hayter draft. The action was well written. But Howard Stark being a villain is worse than making Sandman Uncle Ben's killer.

Spoiler

And doesn't Hayter's draft highly sanitize the destruction of New York City and throw a Beatle's quote in at the end? That I hope they would change.

 

[The Guard]

Yes, but he sanitizes it by

Spoiler

making it thematically relevant, by utilizing the concept of nuclear holocaust and drawing distinct symbolic paralells with Hiroshima, and the nature of Dr. Manhattan as America's "Secret weapon".

And the quote...that, they did change.

 

[Flying Jokeshop]

I think it is pretty dumb to think of the graphic novel as a story board.

 

[Katsuro]

I think it is pretty dumb to think of the graphic novel as a story board.

Well obviously he doesn't mean literally. They do have actual storyboards, of course. But they're based on the graphic novel as much as possible, which is a good thing.

 

[TheVileOne]

Yes, but he sanitizes it by

Spoiler

making it thematically relevant, by utilizing the concept of nuclear holocaust and drawing distinct symbolic paralells with Hiroshima, and the nature of Dr. Manhattan as America's "Secret weapon".

And the quote...that, they did change.

Spoiler

That doesn't really jive with the image they are trying to create with this movie, which is supposed to have Nixon, all the old school Minutemen stuff, etc.

I think that it wasn't some sort of nuclear holocaust had a lot to do with Veidt's plan apparently working.

 

[The Guard]

Can you elaborate on that?