Don’t Fuck It Up: An Interview With Alex Tse
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How about Rorschach’s criminal files or Hollis Mason’s autobiography: how did those supplementary materials inform your script?

Looking at the supplementary stuff, in an article about Dr. Manhattan, there’s a statement that says: “It’s not that superman exists and he’s American, it’s that God exists and he’s American.“ We took that from the supplementary material and put it into the script.

When I did Black Freighter—and Zack wrote some stuff too so I don’t know what the finished script looks like—but in my initial version, I was able to expand it by reading the supplementary material within the graphic novel. I understood, for instance, that it came from The Threepenny Opera. So I had to learn more about The Threepenny Opera, and I used some of that material to expand the story.

Alan Moore’s original scripts are incredibly detailed—almost a novel in and of themselves. To what extent did you refer to them?

I didn’t have them. I didn’t have anything besides what was floating around out there. And I don’t think he would’ve volunteered them.

Alan Moore’s discontent with Hollywood is very public and justifiable, given the liberties taken with adaptations of his work. Ray Bradbury, however, has also been subjected to lousy adaptations of his work. Is he more involved with Illustrated Man than Moore was with Watchmen?

I’ve met (Ray Bradbury), and he’s read the script. He was very pleased with the last draft, and we seek his opinion. We want him to be happy and we want to respect his work. I know he hasn’t been happy with a lot of his stuff that’s been translated to screen, and the addition of Kaleidoscope in the script is something Ray very specifically requested, and I think we were able to make that work.

Which stories are going in?

Right now...as it exists...there’s The Veldt, The Fox in the Forest, The Concrete Mixer, The Visitor, and the Illustrated Man story, which is included to cohere the stories. There’s Zero Hour and Kaleidoscope.

How did you choose which stories to adapt?

The initial one was obviously The Veldt. But I hadn’t read some of those stories for quite a long time, and I’d never read the entire book. So I read it, came up with a list of stories that I thought would be the best. Then (producers) Zack Snyder and Debbie Snyder had a list. We saw which ones matched the list. We mostly had the same ones, though there was one in particular I wanted to try to do, called The Concrete Mixer, which I thought was brilliant.

That was the only one that wasn’t on their list and was on mine, and they let me run and do it.

What’s the status of the project?

They’re casting, so I’m not doing anything on that right now. If they get to the point in production where they need changes. If Zack is working the whole thing, that’s one thing. If it’s an anthology like they originally imagined it to be, then I might have to make changes based on whichever director they get for each segment.

So for the time being I’m done, but I may be called into service as the project moves forward.

The original idea is that each story will be directed by someone else?

There are certain scenarios where Zack might direct the whole thing. The original idea is that it would be an anthology. As of right now, I don’t know where they’re going to go.

What was the impetus to do an entire collection instead of focusing on one story? The Fox in the Forest is a time-travel thriller with a complicated backstory.

Yeah it is. The idea was to do something different. he cool thing about Zack and Debbie is the desire to do something that maybe hasn’t been done recently, or do a different kind of movie.

There have been some anthology movies that have come up recently, like Paris, je t’aime, and there’s going to be a New York one. But this would be different than those. Think of the old Twilight Zone movie, things like that—it’s been a while since you’ve seen a big event-type anthology movie

Every story in Illustrated Man, and all the ones you mention, take place in different times and places. Was it difficult to make the entire script cohere?

No. Not in terms of the stories themselves. The tricky part was whether we make it an anthology where it’s like watching a bunch of short films. But we wanted to also create an umbrella, a bigger picture of the whole thing. Some interconnectivity to it. Which is why there’s that Illustrated Man story to weave them all together.

Though it’s an anthology, we need it to feel like we’re not just randomly picking short stories and sticking them on screen and branding it. There had to be purpose: Why were these stories together? What’s their purpose? That was the tricky part.

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