Don’t Ask the Writer

When Allen and Albert Hughes’ adaptation of “From Hell” reaches theaters this fall, it will be a breakthrough of sorts, but not for the twin brother filmmakers best known for their gang drama debut, “Menace II Society.” It’s more of a coming-out party--on-screen at least--for Alan Moore, who wrote the book the film is based on.

Famous in certain circles for chronicling the exploits of costumed superheroes, Moore is not an obvious choice for presenting the most thoroughly researched theory of the mysterious identity of Jack the Ripper. But in “From Hell,” he did just that--and in a medium that has consistently lacked the respect of the cultural elite: the comic book.

Sometimes called “graphic novels” by those uncomfortable with the juvenile images the comic book reader is associated with, Moore’s works have often defied the public’s expectations of the medium, and his most ambitious work, the massive graphic novel “From Hell,” is no exception. Published periodically from 1989 to 1998 and collected in one volume in 1999, “From Hell” details Jack the Ripper’s famously grisly 1888 Whitechapel murders in England.

Moore and his co-creator, artist Eddie Campbell, who are both British, have taken more than 100 years of investigation, conjecture and wild accusations surrounding the case and boiled them down to a single, well-researched theory about the Ripper’s identity. The result is at once a meditation on evil, a police procedural and a commentary on Victorian England. It’s an impressive piece of work--one that did not go unnoticed by “From Hell’s” producer, Don Murphy.

“After the second issue of the comic came out,” says Murphy, “I said, ‘This is insane. It’s not just another Jack the Ripper story; it’s not just another superhero comic; this is a comic with footnotes. I’ve got to do something about this.”’

Murphy set about trying to secure the film rights to the book with his own money, and in the process developed a friendship with the author, even flying to England and touring London’s Whitechapel neighborhood with Moore. The effort paid off: The 20th Century Fox film opens Oct. 19. It stars Johnny Depp as Inspector Fred Abberline, who’s on the trail of Jack the Ripper (whose identity isn’t revealed until the end).

Although Hollywood has come courting more than once, Moore prefers to keep his distance from the process. “In terms of my top five media, film would probably come in around sixth,” he says in a phone interview from his home in Northampton. “So there’s no temptation for me to work for Hollywood. I’m certainly curious to see how [the film] turns out. I’ve got a great deal of respect for the people involved in it.”

The land of suntanned starlets and chiseled action stars would be a strange fit with the 48-year-old Moore, who could be a character out of a Victorian melodrama, with his wild mess of long black hair, beard and ominous voice. “Having a deep voice and kind of being physically imposing, you tend to find that you can talk almost any old rubbish and can make it sound creepy,” he acknowledges.

Despite the popularity of films based on comic books and Moore’s long-held esteem among comic readers, this is the first time his work has been translated to the big screen--a fact that doesn’t bother Moore at all.

“I’m never a big fan of things being adapted from one medium to another unless there’s a really, really good reason for it,” he says. “It seems to be kind of a reflex these days: If something works as a novel, then it will work even better as a film and a video game and a comic book. I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that. I try to do things in comics that cannot be repeated by television, by movies, by interactive entertainment.”

That hasn’t stopped Hollywood from trying.

A film adaptation of “Watchmen,” Moore’s 1986 deconstruction of the superhero genre, has been stalled in development for more than a decade despite the combined efforts of director Terry Gilliam and action producer Joel Silver.

“[Gilliam] asked me how we would go about turning [‘Watchmen’] into a film, and I pointed out that if anybody had thought to ask me first, I would have told them that I didn’t think it could be,” Moore says.

The Hughes brothers harbor no misconceptions of what it means to take on such daunting material. “It’s impossible to adapt [Moore’s] work and do justice to it,” Allen Hughes says. “It would be ridiculous to even attempt it.” Although working from a screenplay by Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias, the brothers made sure to keep the book close by at all times, using the comic panels as preliminary storyboards and generally trying to preserve the look and feel of Moore and Campbell’s work. “The biggest thing we took from the novel is the smell,” Hughes says.

That “smell” is Moore’s specialty and also why his work is so attractive but so tricky to adapt. His comic scripts are notoriously long--pages and pages of description can be devoted to one single panel--but result in the creation of a world rich and detailed enough, his fans say, to smell. Since the beginning of his career, his dedicated readership has held that complexity up as a symbol of pride, proof that his graphic novels were more than just overinflated comic books.

Moore’s dedicated fan base has also been the most vocal in criticizing changes (reported on the Internet) that have been made to his story for the film. The main complaints involve prioritizing Depp’s detective character (the secondary character in the book) over the Ripper, and choosing to structure the film as a whodunit. Others have criticized the newly created love story between Abberline and Mary Kelly (Heather Graham), the prostitute and last of the Ripper’s victims.

“The good news is, I’m a fan” of the graphic novel, Murphy says. “The bad news is, I also know I’ve got to make a movie. So I always struggle to keep what I like about the original material.” Hughes is more blunt in his defense of the film. “I hate getting the flak that we’re getting before the movie comes out,” he says. “I wish all these geeks would grow up and get a job, get a life, get something. When it comes to ‘Planet of the Apes,’ when it comes to ‘Apocalypse Now,’ great movies like that, flawed or not flawed, they’re nothing like the book.”

Moore chooses to observe from the sidelines, taking no side in the debate. “If it’s a tremendous success, then I don’t think I deserve any share of the credit. If it’s a tremendous failure, then I don’t think I deserve any share of the blame.”

Moore’s graphic novels have had considerable influence on the comic book field--and the films based on them. Using the superhero format as a launching pad for tackling deeper issues, he brought a grimmer, more serious tone to comic books and comic book characters.

Tim Burton’s “Batman” in 1989 up through last year’s “X-Men” and “Unbreakable” all owe a certain debt to Moore’s work. That, combined with his continued accolades in the comics field--he won this year’s Eisner award (the comic book equivalent of an Oscar) for his writing in five simultaneous series, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” “Promethea,” “Tom Strong,” “Top Ten” and “Tomorrow Stories”--are enough to cement his reputation as a master storyteller. But Moore remains modest in the face of his success, calling himself a “pulp hack writer.”

Whatever he calls himself, it’s a far cry from his working-class upbringing. Born in Northampton, England, Moore grew up in the oldest--and poorest--neighborhood in the city. Surrounded by rampant poverty and illiteracy, his parents were determined he have the fundamentals of reading and writing before enrolling in school at 5. His formal education ended abruptly at 17, when he was kicked out of school for dealing acid.

Moore spent the next few years in a variety of odd jobs, including chopping up animal carcasses at a skinning yard and cleaning hotel toilets. At 25, he began doing cartooning work for the English weekly rock newspaper Sounds, but after a couple of years he decided that his talents were better suited to writing than drawing.

His English comics earned him awards and the attention of American comic book giant DC Comics, which hired him to work on the low-selling “Swamp Thing”; he turned it into a hit. His next work, the 12-part series “Watchmen,” which dealt with the concept of the superhero in a realistic way, clinched his status as a star writer and helped popularize a movement that viewed comic books as literature.

After leaving DC Comics and embarking on a series of self-publishing ventures, Moore decided to write a long historical work about a murder. Jack the Ripper’s bloody spree through London seemed an obvious choice, and he set about devouring all the information he could find on the subject.

As he points out in the appendices to “From Hell,” theories about the Ripper’s identity are numerous, and many of the writers who claimed to unmask the killer faced threats, both veiled and otherwise. Moore’s theory is no less scandalous, but that’s nothing new--his previous nonfiction work has included material unflattering to such entities as the CIA and organized crime. This time, though, he says his work brought him unwanted attention: His house was watched.

“The neighbors across the street came to me both separately and told me that they’d been approached by Special Branch, which is the political police in this country, who were asking permission to use their house as a monitoring station to watch and film my house,” he says. “I’ve got no idea what that was about.”

For Moore’s part, he won’t let the government intimidate him. As he explains with nonchalance, “There’s worse things to worry about in Northampton than Special Branch.”

Just what exactly those things might be are anyone’s guess, but it’s a safe bet they’re a little more unusual than the common headaches of urban living. After all, Moore has been a practicing magician for eight years. He hasn’t been working on parlor tricks, though. His studies involve, as he puts it, “bizarre otherworlds, entities and all the usual paraphernalia.” But more than anything, he sees magic as a new, helpful way of thinking. Call it a mystical form of pop psychology, but it’s allowed an already fertile mind to become even more productive.

“I don’t think I can ever remember doing five books [simultaneously] before,” he says. And that doesn’t count his work on stand-alone books such as “From Hell” or his live performances--a series of complex one-shot performances combining film montages, music and performers, held together by Moore onstage performing a monologue.

It’s an astonishing amount of work and a surprisingly high profile for a man who admits he’s uncomfortable with the idea of celebrity. Perhaps that explains why he hasn’t left England in years. In an era when authors are eagerly setting up their own Web sites to get instantaneous, direct contact with their readership, Moore maintains a discreet distance.

“People don’t communicate with celebrities the way that they communicate with ordinary human beings,” he says. “I believe very much the maxim that communication is only possible between equals, and when people are putting me on a pedestal as they did do at the conventions and things like that, then they’re talking up to you through this stellar dazzle. It didn’t feel very human and it felt very lonely.” *