Matthew Goode Interview - Watchmen at Comic Con 2008
Matthew Goode plays the handsome and extremely intelligent 'Ozymandias' in the big screen version of 'Watchmen.' Goode created a backstory for his character which involves using a surprising accent and Comic Con fans applauded his decision.
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Transcript: Matthew Goode Interview - Watchmen at Comic Con 2008
Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con.
Matthew Goode – 'Adrian Veidt' / 'Ozymandias' in Watchmen
Nice to see you again after last night. How are you? [-We'd done an interview in support of his other movie, Brideshead Revisited, with a little bit of Watchmen thrown in the night before this video interview. During that interview we'd discussed his decision to sometimes use a German accent as Adrian Veidt.]
Matthew Goode: "Hello baby, yeah, good."
You were worried about how the crowd was going to react. They reacted very well to your explanation of your accent. What do you think?
Matthew Goode: "Well, I didn't have a huge amount of contact. Unfortunately I wasn't able to go into the throng and say, 'Do you think it's a good idea?'"
But they cheered when you explained it.
Matthew Goode: "They did cheer, yeah. They did cheer so that's hugely gratifying in some ways. I think as we were talking about yesterday, you were like, 'That's an interesting take on it. It seems to make sense,' because although it's something that's not going to be explained, it goes along with the sensibilities of comic book worlds. So it's nice, and their reaction was extraordinary to what they saw because it's the same reaction as us. We were all mouths agape like 7,000 flycatchers, so that's the payoff for us in the moment. But yet my cynical side is sort of still unwilling to go too berserk here because we haven't seen scenes. We've seen things cut together to music and you know I can't wait to see the rest of it."
And a three hour cut is what [Zack Snyder's] working on now. Do you think audiences can sit through a three hour Watchmen?
Matthew Goode: "I think they can from what they've seen. But I think Zack is going to be under pressure to keep it down a little bit more, and it's going to be a fight with the studio. I understand both sides of the argument. I don't know. It will be interesting to see what makes it in and I'm sure there will be a director's cut that goes along with this kind of work, so I think eventually everyone will be happy."
Now for people who will never be able to fit into a superhero-type costume, what's it like actually donning one?
Matthew Goode: "It's interesting. I mean, it's quite humiliating in the mornings. Every morning you're dressed in a complete nylon onesie and covered in talcum powder. And then there's bags put on your hands and your feet so it takes down the friction with the rubber. It takes about half an hour to put on, but once it's on and you've been wearing it for a couple of weeks, it starts to give a little bit. It's less uncomfortable. It's helping to bring to life that world that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created so once you're in it, it makes your job easier as an actor."
You know what? No one has explained in any of my interviews what exactly Watchmen is about. For people who've never read the graphic novel, what is it?
Matthew Goode: "What it is about really I suppose is the overriding theme is that we're very close to a world that's going to be destroyed by a nuclear war. And so it's what the Watchmen are doing is there's obviously the criminals on a very small scale who are committing rapes and murders and things like that, and then the criminals on a larger scale which is sort of the big corporations. And that's sort of the moral ambiguity of not only the characters themselves but certainly for Adrian Veidt who is my character is that he's seen as the villain of the piece but in an interesting way, in fact he's actually trying to save the world. So I suppose it's about the degradation in this alternate reality of a world and what it means to be a human being in it."
And it's timely, too. I mean, this is a story that connects today just as well as when it was written, right?
Matthew Goode: "It's pretty pertinent to today. I mean, we're not quite as far along in that nuclear implosion in its way, but it has some interesting things to say for our time now. But, obviously, that wasn't something that Zack was setting out to do, I think. Otherwise it wouldn't have held up the integrity of the novel."
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