V For Vendetta: A is For Anarchist, H is for Hollywoodporncrudcrap

What is it about Hollywood? Everything they touch turns into porn with no sex.

'V for Vendetta' is the latest classic example. The original master piece of a book features an English anarchist as a 'hero', fighting facism.

Hollywoodporncrudcrap edits out the anarchist and turns him into an American liberal dressed in a cloak behaving like a Guardian and/or Independent reader dressed up as Batman.

In fact the 'Guardian' (also known as 'Pravda2' or 'The Labourgraph'), recently had a review of 'V for Vendetta' (March 17th), and did not mention the word 'Anarchism' once, probably because they think 'Anarchy' is a Calvin Klein perfume, but also because there is not even a 'blims' worth of anarchism in the film.

The co author of 'V for Vendetta' Alan Moore, a self confessed anarchist who was expelled from grammer school for dealing acid, is not mentioned in the credits of the film currently being flogged worldwide.

He thought the script was so bad that he demanded that they take his name off, and refuses to take any money for it. He has also asked DC Comics to take his name off the book - because although he co wrote it, they tricked him and David Lloyd (easy to con artists who did not read the small print) into signing the rights away for ever - or until the end of the universe, which ever is longer.

In an interview with The Beat Alan Moore explains:

As far I'm concerned, the two poles of politics were not Left Wing or Right Wing. In fact they're just two ways of ordering an industrial society and we're fast moving beyond the industrial societies of the 19th and 20th centuries. It seemed to me the two more absolute extremes were anarchy and fascism. This was one of the things I objected to in the recent film, where it seems to be, from the script that I read, sort of recasting it as current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism. There wasn't a mention of anarchy as far as I could see. The fascism had been completely defanged. I mean, I think that any references to racial purity had been excised, whereas actually, fascists are quite big on racial purity.

The Beat: Yeah, it does seem to be a common element.

Moore: It does seem to rather be a badge they wear. Whereas, what I was trying to do was take these two extremes of the human political spectrum and set them against each other in a kind of little moral drama, just to see what works and what happened. I tried to be as fair about it as possible. I mean, yes, politically I'm an anarchist; at the same time I didn't want to stick to just moral blacks and whites. I wanted a number of the fascists I portrayed to be real rounded characters. They've got reasons for what they do. They're not necessarily cartoon Nazis. Some of them believe in what they do, some don't believe in it but are doing it any way for practical reasons. As for the central character of the anarchist, V himself, he is for the first two or three episodes cheerfully going around murdering people, and the audience is loving it. They are really keyed into this traditional drama of a romantic anarchist who is going around murdering all the Nazi bad guys.

At which point I decided that that wasn't what I wanted to say. I actually don't think it's right to kill people. So I made it very, very morally ambiguous. And the central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn't want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think, and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history.

Regarding DC Comics Alan Moore told the Beat:

By asking DC to take my name off 'V for Vendetta' and stop giving me the money for V for Vendetta, all I'm asking for is for them to treat me in the same way they’ve been completely happy to treat hundreds of much greater comics creators than I over the decades. I'm asking them to say to me the same thing they said to Gardner Fox and Jack Kirby and to all those other guys, just say to me you are not going to see a penny for any kind of future reproductions of your work and we're not going to put your name on them. Why should I be singled out?

So far DC Comics have continued to use Alan Moore's name on the book he wrote and they stole. Maybe someone should drop acid in their tea?

In an revealing interview with Comicbookresources.com Alan Moore explains how acid dealing at school got him into the comic buisness:

I was dealing acid. It was 60s. I was a 17 year old boy. Dealing it at school was a lot better than plan A, which was dumping it in the water supply. They should have taken that into consideration. The thing is, the headmaster didn't really share my sense of fun of the incident. And he not only expelled me from school, but he went to all of the further education colleges, universities and art schools, he wrote to them and told them that I was a creeping cancer on the morals of all of his pupils and they shouldn't take me on. And then of course when I started to try for jobs, they wanted a reference from a school. Pretty much from the age of 17 he wanted to make sure that I never did anything again for the rest of my life. Which seems a little harsh for a 17 year old. Okay, so I was a sociopathic 17 year old.

Where is he now? Has he stuck around long enough to see your success?

He hung himself. A few months later. I had nothing to do with that.

But so yeah, that was the backbreaker, the termination of my school career which didn't really leave me with a lot of choices. The only jobs I could get were the only jobs anyone could get even with a prison record. You know, job listing in the yards, or cleaner of a hotel. And then get a precarious foothold on office jobs, which were lowly pay but were at least indoors. You know… and then coming to the age of about 24, something like that, I had got a wife. And I was thinking well, I've always wanted to do something creative in my life , like writing. And I thought, well if I don't do it now, I'm just going to find myself in these miserable jobs when I'm 50, with a lot of regrets. And that terrified me. so I decided I was going to quit the job and just try to make a genuine go of at it as an artist. As soon as I quit the job my wife announced the tests were back and they were positive and we got a baby on the way. At which point, I had a decision: give up a secure job, and throw yourself into this terrible insecurity with an infant on the way. On the other and I realized that once the baby had arrived and was staring at me with those big hungry eyes that I'd never have the nerve to quit the job. And so then they offered me the job back, I said no, I'll leave.

After sometime on the dole he got a job on a newspaper doing a comic strip, and one thing lead to another .... which just goes to show - L.S.D can be good for your career! Chemists reunite - we need acid!

Of course acid alone won't save humanity but there is some hope: while Hollywoodporncrudcrap may be getting away with stealing the creative stash of an anarchist ex acid dealer, some real anarchists in New York have done a 'portal' website for 'V For Vendetta' fans who want to know the real story called 'A For Anarchy'. They have also done a downloadable lay up for a flyer to distribute at cinemas showing the film. Anyone want to hit the Odeon?

schmoo says ... Support your local acid dealing anarchist genius: get out your credit cards and rip them up now! Then look out for Alun Moore's next book coming when he has finished it, it's going to be way better than the Bible and the Koran put together - and he has promised he is not signing it away to anyone, and will never work for DC Comics again. He says he does not care if it does not sell. Typical! Is he a masochist as well as an anarchist - or are they the same thing??? Probally, but either way, he's one cool dude.