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Actors Billy Crudup and Matthew Goode Decipher Watchmen
by Jordan Riefe
 After years of fan demand and development challenges, comic book geeks around the globe finally get to see the much anticipated big screen adaptation of the Alan Moore – Dave Gibbons graphic novel Watchmen. Set in the 1980s Cold War climate as if President Richard Nixon hadn’t left the White House, Watchmen was long believed to be too difficult a challenge to adapt for the screen given its deep character complexities and intricate socio-political layers. But since comic book adaptations have blown up on the big screen in recent years and geeks are finally having their day in the page-to-panel sun, director Zack Snyder rose to the challenge of translating the classic comic series for moviegoers.
With Watchmen about to travel back in time to a super hero world set in the ‘80s, we took a seat at the recent Watchmen press junket in Beverly Hills where actors Billy Crudup and Matthew Goode filled us journalists in on how they stepped into the shoes of their characters Dr. Manhattan (aka: Jon Osterman) and Adrian Veidt (aka: Ozymandias).
What did they do to you to …
BILLY CRUDUP: To capture the motion? Motion capture.
Were you ever really naked?
CRUDUP: I am naked often. I was not naked, that I recall, during the filming of this film. However, I wore pretty elaborate pajamas, and they were studded with about 1,200 blue LEDs so that Manhattan would glow blue. And there was motion capture symbols on them and I had about 140 dots on my face and all those things corresponded to points on the computer, Dr. Manhattan. And so my performance was basically just manipulating that puppet version of me.
How intriguing is that?
 CRUDUP: Extremely, extremely. I didn’t realize how much [it was]. I guess I just took for granted that when you’re playing a character, you have their coat, you have their watch, you have their glasses or whatever, and those are all things that are quite useful. It turns out, because when you’re bereft of all of them and all of the artifacts that you can recognize around you are taking you in a completely different direction. Your imagination becomes - well, your only real resource. And so I realized that my imagination was maybe a little rusty and it took a while to get it going again.
What about having your eyes clouded over?
CRUDUP: It wasn’t a part of my process. That was all done in postproduction. You mean seeing it?
Did you ever ask to just have the eyes to work with?
CRUDUP: Yeah, I was told that the eyes would be in there. “They weren’t? Okay. Good news.” No, it was part of the book. I don’t know exactly how to respond to that. I know what you’re saying.
It seems like an important tool. To take that away and to take your body away, it’s like the only thing you have is your voice.
CRUDUP: Yeah, that’s about it. The gesture …
 MATTHEW GOODE: I think it was really important for us.
CRUDUP: The gesture and stuff, that was what I was doing. It was just on a different body. No, you’re right, though, but that’s one of the confounding things about Dr. Manhattan is he appears sort of soulless. Isn’t there a line about the eyes being the window to the soul? I think that’s part of the gag of it.
GOODE: Be glad you weren’t wearing what Rorschach was wearing.
CRUDUP: That’s true.
GOODE: He was wearing - he had eyepieces to his mask. I think it was really important - a difficult question for you to answer - but we were really lucky to be able to look into his eyes. And Jackie, even if it’s not necessarily going to be used, you can see what’s going on there. And it’s about connection, really, isn’t it? And so when that’s taken away, I don’t think it, in that rendering, it detracts from the performance at all. I think it was just really useful for us, as the actors, to have.
How familiar were you with the Watchmen? Did you wish you could be the good superheroes instead of these twisted people?
CRUDUP: I’ve thought that about almost all of the roles that I take. I always end up taking people that are … taking parts that are …
GOODE: F**kheads?
CRUDUP: … morally ambiguous in some ways, or they’re in a transition. Those are the characters that I find fascinating. And I do wish I had more of that hero gene in my acting imagination, because it seems like that would be the stuff to [lean toward]. But I think ultimately I don’t think I’d be very good at it. When you’ve got Harrison Ford, there you go. I’ll watch him run from anything. He’s compelling in that state. I would not want to watch me do that.
GOODE: Well, I just don’t know how interesting it would be, either.
CRUDUP: Yeah, I agree with that.
Just your general impressions of the character. What do you think he represents in this story?
 CRUDUP: What was interesting to me about it was that I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand how that character existed. I didn’t understand how you could play that character. There was no apparent motivation that was recognizable to me. The things that motivated him were not familiar to me. So I was very curious about how you would go about playing a character whose understanding of time, one of our most useful constraints in acting, because basically what you have is the beginning, the middle and the end of any scene, right?
So the way that you play a scene again and again and again is you always start at the beginning, right? And you pretend that you don’t know the middle or you don’t know the end. Well, this character knows the middle and the end of every scene that he’s going to play, and yet still somehow is surprised by it, is emotionally invested in some way. And so to try and find a way to play that, as an actor, was kind of puzzled. It was, I thought, very interesting to [do].
Did you have those conversations with Zack?
CRUDUP: Oh, yeah, you have to. It’s impossible to play a character like that with any kind of point of view and be able to be malleable. And I guess you could go on as a sort of automaton and just say, “This is the way I’m going to do it.” But then there’s no way to kind of modulate that. There’s no discussion about where it fits into the whole piece. So from my perspective, you have to have a point of view about it.
What was the resolution?
CRUDUP: That he’s distracted. He’s interested in something else. He’s not interested in humanity and the way that we are, that he has motivation but that motivation is elusive from the perspective that we all understand motivation, which is go to work, eat, have relationships, raise children and stuff. He’s interested in what’s the most economical way for him to fuse two particles. That’s the kind of thing that he’s interested in. Well, I don’t know much about that. And for him, it’s an exercise that’s happening perpetually in his mind while he has to deal with the mundane. So for me, to try to find the right way to be distracted and invested was really the … Did that make any sense?
 GOODE: I don’t know. I knew, and I think the people will [see], the conceit that Alan Moore set up is anyone who’s got a German heritage is guilty because of what happened to the Jews. And the Americans don’t see themselves as guilty for dropping a bomb on Hiroshima. So having a duality - I was interested in doing - that’s why we gave him a public and a private persona with the German. And the American was just to try and, by the end of the movie, have people go, ‘Well, actually … ‘ to not be villainous and to not be two-dimensional and to not be Machiavellian, and think there will be a lot of people out there who will think, ‘Well, he was a bit of a shit villain.’
But actually, for someone who’s the most intelligent person and who have been planning this for such a long time, it’s not a big performance. And I think, really, that the whole of “Watchmen” is quite a tall character study on what is sociopathic behavior and what’s morally right and wrong. I like the idea of introducing, sort of pulling the wool over the eyes not just of America, but saying German guilt and -- I don’t know, all that. It’s very f**king complicated, and I think that was what drew me to it in the first place. I was just, ‘Make me understand and try and get me through this, Zack, because I’m not sure if it’s going be a good idea to get involved in it.’
CRUDUP: [laughs] That will convince them to go and see it.
GOODE: But it’s a real head-f**k … I’m in the film so little, so you want to get in a bit of Adrian’s arrogance - he has so much duality.
CRUDUP: Well, I think that’s what he’s pointing to, which interested all of us, which is there’s no one way to play these characters. And we could have license to try and solve pretty exotic problems while finding our own voice in each of them. That’s a pretty exciting thing to do in a movie that’s ostensibly a studio comic book movie.
How open was Zack to these discussions?
 CRUDUP: He would have to be very open to take the two of us. We’re frickin’ chatty Cathie’s and very confused, clearly. So I think he was engaged in it. One of the reasons probably the material was interesting to him was the same reason it’s confusing and interesting to us is we want to solve these problems. He was never dogmatic with me at all. It was all part of a process, and that was a really exciting and exhilarating experience, because sometimes you feel a little bit afraid if the director isn’t dictatorial and showing you the path, especially with a behemoth like this. You want somebody to say, “This is what’s happening.” So for him to be able to do that, which he did steadfastly, and at the same time carry on these kinds of conversations with us to help us solve the minutia of the character motivations and how do we render it subtly and stuff like that was - it takes a very special kind of person, and I think Zack is that.
GOODE: Yeah, particularly with me, as well. The first thing that I shot in the first two weeks was like the second half of the Lee Iacocca scene, where the lady gets shot and the elevator comes up. So that was the first thing that we did. And then because it’s a long, vast book to make into a film, I had three weeks off or something like that, and it was only during that break that we came up with the idea, or I came up with the idea and brought it to Zack … and I know he’s not originally from Germany, but could we go down that route because I think it would just be a really interesting exercise to do. And who the f**k is Adriane? So you don’t actually know who the hell he is. And Zack, the only thing that came out of Zack’s mouth was, “Awesome!” And he was straight into it. And thank God, because I would’ve been left very bemused if I hadn’t had that to [work from]
Had you ever told your agents to not send you comic book movies? What was it that got this to your attention?
CRUDUP: No. Listen, I’m thrilled to get anything, frankly. To get the chance to play this kind of character, as a 40 year old, is pretty rare. I was very excited at the opportunity. And the fact that it happens to be material that is so accomplished - not just revered, but accomplished - I don’t know if material can be accomplished, but it’s so rich and textured and vital and subversive and interesting, and you don’t typically get that in movies.
 GOODE: It was written by a couple of Brits.
CRUDUP: Written by a couple of Brits. Well, you can’t have everything. But typically, after the first page of a movie about superheroes, you kind of know what’s going to happen and it’s a question of how did they make it happen. And that’s also why we go to see those movies is because we get paid off in a way that we expect and we want. And so to have something that stood in such stark contrast with a level of self-consciousness about that conceit was exotic.
GOODE: Especially something that’s so [dense]. It’s set up for adults.
CRUDUP: That’s the thing, too. Yeah, it’s …
GOODE: It’s like something you thought of. And that’s the whole thing about it. When you think of it as kids and something that’s set up to be about that, and it’s all for common good … and then twist it and it says that actually people who dress up and go out and beat people up are more likely to be sociopathic than the people.
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