There’s an old showbiz saying that goes, “Dying is easy, comedy
is hard.” True enough… unless you’re Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

“I keep dying!” the “Watchmen” star laughed. “I need to find
different ways to die.”

Morgan gets to try, try again in the just completed ‘Shanghai,”
he told MTV News, where (spoiler warning if this is 1988), the
action of the film, like that in “Watchmen,” is set into motion
by his character’s death.

“I play [John Cusack's] best friend and, again, the movie kind of
hinges on my death. I seem to die of a lot of stuff,” the genial 42-
year-old said of his character in the period drama.

Morgan’s character in “Watchmen,” of course, gets killed before the graphic novel
even begins, his death the catalyst that sends Rorschach into full-on conspiracy
mode. Maybe Cusack should start taking notes? In “Shanghai,” Morgan discovers
secrets the US government has been keeping about the Japanese war machine,
which somehow all tie into the evens of Pearl Harbor. That, in turn, leads him to
getting killed, in turn, leading Cusack to the Chinese mainland.

“It’s what leads up to Pearl Harbor. The Japanese are occupying China at the time
and its right before obviously the attack on the Americans. You’ll see me in
flashbacks I kind of stumble on some stuff that’s happening in China with what the
Japanese are up to and it kind of inspires the whole story to happen,” Morgan said.
“Kind of like ‘Watchmen’ actually - it runs a little parallel there.”