Chain Reaction – Alan Moore

Chain Reaction has been a fascinating Radio 4 series in which a celebrity pick’s someone to interview, and the following week, interviewee turns interviewer and chooses a new guest.
People this series have included Jenny Eclair, Mat Lucas, Johnny Vegas and Stewart Lee. Lee was interviewing comic book writer Alan Moore this week. Alan Moore was someone I used to read an awful lot (The Ballad of Halo Jones from which the graphics at the top of this page were, er, borrowed, was an old 2000AD strip penned by Moore).
I hadn’t realised until I heard this that Watchmen is 20 years old this year. And as it happens, on an entirely different Radio Five programme, the director Paul Greengrass spoke a little about his upcoming film version of it. Well I say that he spoke about it, but he couldn’t really say much at all and just said that sets were being built etc. He was really in because The Bourne Supremacy is out on DVD this week.
Of course Moore probably won’t even see the film as he’s famously disavowed all involvement in the film industry, and he recounts as much in his Chain Reaction interview (it’ll stay on the BBC website until Thursday 3 Feb). He also mentioned a Constantine film, based around the character who I believe Moore originally created for Swamp Thing, and who was then spun-off into Hellblazer – the early editions of which I used to read.
I kind of knew that this film was coming (there are an awful lot of films based on comics right now), but this was the first time I’d checked out the website. Since Keanu Reeves plays John Constantine, I was curious to hear his English accent.
Er, no.
He seems to have become American. I guess that voice work is not one of Reeves’ stronger suits. As for the trailer, well it looks trailerish. Can’t say that I was exactly overwhelmed, but it’s a long time since I read the comic, and we’ll have to wait for the finished film. (And the Farrelly brothers are remaking Fever Pitch, a non-fiction book that was already a fictional film, set against the backdrop of Arsenal’s extraordinary 1988/89 season. The new film is set against the Boston Red Sox season seems to encompass their world series win this year. )


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