Jeffrey Dean Morgan Gives a Watchmen Update

Jeffrey Dean Morgan Gives a Watchmen Update
by Fred Topel (Source)
December 19, 2007

It's a good thing Jeffrey Dean Morgan made so many movies before Watchmen. Now that he has to do press for P.S. I Love You and such, we can grill him about production on Zack Snyder's long-awaited graphic novel adaptation.

"We just got to the halfway point, I think, a week and a half ago," said Morgan. "We finish in the end of February. I’ve been there since August. It’s long. Usually you do a movie, for me, you do a movie in two months. I’ve done movies in 15 days. One scene takes 15 days in The Watchmen. I always say ‘The’ Watchmen. They’re going to kill me for that. The scale and scope of it is to an extent that I’ve certainly never experienced, and I don’t know that I ever will again."

So far Morgan has worked on the constructed New York City set, and he's seeing others in development. "They’re building everything. The Owl ship, it’s like the coolest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. You want to take it home and live in it."

Now, Morgan understands the significance of what he is seeing underway. Before he was cast, he did not know what a big deal this is. "I had heard of it, I’d never read it. I read it when I went in and met with Zack. They’re like, ‘We’re going to send you a script.’ Well, they didn’t send me a script, they sent me the book. So that was my first introduction to it. I’ve since read it, since we started this thing, I don’t know, 20 times. David Gibbons came up to the set who illustrated it. Talk about a kid in a candy store. Seeing his face I think may have been kind of the highlight of the whole thing for me. Him seeing us in action, in costume, seeing the sets. It’s kind of like getting approval from your father. Since Alan’s kind of distanced himself from this at this point, David hasn’t and he’s been a big part of what’s going on. His eyes welled up on seeing the sets.'

That approval is one thing, but comic book fans can be even harsher than comic book writers. "I learned that very quickly. All I had to do was put ‘Watchmen’ and Google it and you get a real quick idea of how big it is and how iconic it is. I mean, I was blown away. I had no idea. The fan base, I think, is unlike any fan base for any superhero or comic book ever done. Zack stays on top of it. He’s always trolling these message boards, but there’s a couple websites that I visit and they’re sort of intimidating. You feel like there’s a bit of the weight of the world on your shoulders when this movie is going to come out. We all want to make everybody happy, which is a hard thing to do, for one. Two, I don’t even know if there is a two. You just want everybody to be frigging happy and you want to blow their minds. I think that’s what’s going to happen. I really am confident that Watchmen’s going to change the way people look at movies." Morgan plays The Comedian, and all of his evil actions are captured in the film. Yet, Morgan thinks he is sympathetic. "I don’t know if they’ll feel bad. He dies right off the top. The top of the movie is his death and then the rest of the movie is in flashbacks. I think it’s about making the audience understand, because the flashbacks, what you see are pretty brutal acts. The resolution being kind of that scene- - Well, he’s got two scenes I think are sort of key, and that is the one with his daughter when Sally Jupiter comes up and sort of bitches him out and tells him to get away. And the scene with Molock when I think he kind of discovers that in fact he’s not as bad as it can be. He does have some humanity in him and doesn’t want the world to enter. I think every scene is kind of key. Everyone has these scenes. You’ve just to pull it all together and I think that’s our job as actors so hopefully we’ll do that." Watchmen hits theaters on March 6th, 2009.