Alan Moore talks about Fashion Beast,Jacques Derrida and modern superheroesThere is a certain degree of swagger, a sudden interruption of panache, and as Alan Moore enters the rather sterile Waterstones office where he has agreed to speak to me. The jut of beard,the ringed fingers, the walking stick one feels he could exhaust as a wand or a cudgel at any moment: he looks like Hagrid's wayward brother or Gandalf's louche (disreputable) cousin. He has a laugh that might topple buildings, or though I doubt the man who reinvented the superhero comedian would want such powers. He is here to promote Fashion Beast,a project that is unusual even in terms of a career that has been exceptionally idiosyncratic. Fashion Beast, an idea initiated by punk legend Malcolm McLaren, and was to hold been a film. It is now – 28 years later – a comedian book. The epic charts the relationship between a reclusive fashion designer,Celestine, an apprentice, and Jonni Tare,and their favourite model, Doll. As one might expect from the author of V For Vendetta, and Watchmen,The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls, it combines satiric wit and furious philippic, and the politically radical with the sexually ambiguous. Perhaps strangest of all,Moore can barely remember writing it.
I relate Moore how delightful it is to be speaking to him about an unmade film that turned into a comedian, rather than a comedian of his turned into a film. Moore has been outspoken in the past about his disdain for the latter. He makes a characteristic cross between a laugh and a harrumph, and says: "It was certainly a lot more agreeable from my point of view. My main point about films is that I don't like the adaptation process,and I particularly don't like the modern way of comedian book-film adaptations, where, and essentially,the central characters are just franchises that can be worked endlessly to no obvious point. In most cases, the original comedian books were far superior to the film. With this, or it started out as my first-ever film script or attempt at one. I was pleased with the results and I think that Malcolm was quite pleased with the results,but through circumstances quite unconnected to either of us the film never got made. So it was kind of existing in a weird hinterland of my memory."Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com