Headspace: Inside The Mindscape Of Alan Moore

Filmmaker Dez Vylenz' documentary The Mindscape Of Alan Moore was shown as part of last week's Comica event in London. Adrian Brown reports on the film, and presents highlights from the accompanying panel, featuring Dave Gibbons, David Lloyd, Oscar Zarate and Jose Villarrubia.
14 June 2004

The Mindscape Of Alan Moore is a head film.

From the opening colossal close up shot of Moore as he introduces himself, to the psychoactive effects of the art that accompanies his words as the camera swoops around his comic pages, to the concepts of magic that he expands upon; mind your head.

Go back a couple of years to Orbital, a comic shop in a basement in Soho that had then just recently opened. There was one person in there, not a member of staff, but someone looking after the shop for his friend, who had just "popped out". He asked me what I thought of the shop, and - rather charmingly - asked if I liked Alan Moore.

This was Dez Vylenz, who told me he was making a film about Moore, which immediately struck me as a difficult task. But the filmmaker had been given direct access to the man whose comics are said to cast a magical spell. I feared that the end result would be like one of those David Blaine videos where it takes him two hours (or two months) to show a two minute escape routine.

Back to the future - or rather, to last Monday night. I'm sat in the front row of the cinema at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, home of the annual Comica comic arts event. In a panel on the work of Alan Moore, superlative comics artists David Lloyd, Dave Gibbons, Oscar Zarate and Jose Villarrubia have talked to Garrulous Paul Gravett about their work with the writer.

"We were swimming in the same small puddle of mud at Marvel UK and Dr Who magazine, when Len Wein asked me if I knew Alan," remembers Dave Gibbons, co-creator of WATCHMEN. "He is a great collaborator, taking in the artist's interests and suggestions. He gives the tiniest details to give you an idea of what he was thinking. ... When he says 'we see the motes of dust floating in the Sun's rays', you know what he means, but you don't have to draw it!"

Recalling the origins of V FOR VENDETTA, David Lloyd explains: "When Dez Skinn went from Marvel UK, he had some characters he wanted to develop, and asked me to do a detective noir type story. I had worked with Alan on DR WHO, and so I asked him if he'd get involved with V FOR VENDETTA. ... He had something more heroic in mind for V, but Alan took it and made it more theatrical."

Oscar Zarate, Moore's collaborator on A SMALL KILLING, quips that, "Alan must be swimming in a pool of honey after all that has been said." Of his work with Moore, he recalls; "I had proposed an idea to Alan, and he said he liked it. I do pictures and don't know how to tell it in words, but I find it difficult to work from a finished script. It took us a couple of years of conversations to develop the story. ... There has been much interest in the book recently, and although the names have changed, the situations are still there. ... We are now working on a new book called THE BATTLE - we are not in a hurry."

Jose Villarrubia, who has worked on Moore's PROMETHEA and is the illustrator on new editions of Moore's MIRROR OF LOVE and VOICE OF THE FIRE, notes: "I was a fan, having read all the works that have been mentioned. Having done covers with Jae Lee and VEILS for Vertigo, I was never a traditional artist - using film and photography. ... I talked to Alan about a theatrical adaptation of 'The Mirror of Love' which had appeared in his AARGH (Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia) anthology. He had attempted to tell the entire history of homosexuality in eight pages, starting before history and ending with Margaret Thatcher. ... He rewrote some passages which he doesn't usually do. ... Although the political climate changed since he wrote it, things seem to be turning back somehow. Some views have regressed."

The panel is followed by the first ever European presentation of Dez Vylenz's film THE MINDSCAPE OF ALAN MOORE.

The film begins with that close up of Moore. His voice is profound, his words more so. And he is funny. This was like the time I saw Patti Smith break off mid-concert to tell a joke about golf. Surprising, but absolutely right for the man whose more popular comics are laced with humour.

Moore's Head tells us about his life in Northampton. I will attempt to paraphrase; "Call me naive, but I did not know of the existence of the middle class. I thought there was people like my family, working class, and the Queen."

Being in the front row, there are times when Moore's Maw threatens to swallow me whole. But the story he's telling is riveting, and the filmmakers begin to punctuate and illustrate his words with images of Northampton, of London and of the comic art of his numerous collaborators. He maps his education and early employment history as a decline in fortunes. From top of the class in primary school to twenty-fifth in grammar school; negative references followed him around "because the headmaster took me personally", and he took the work he could get - tossing testicles around the abattoir, cleaning toilets, writing comics.

Some of his work is given closer examination. The initial freedom he is given at DC is illustrated with the insane glare of Bolland's Joker from THE KILLING JOKE. The ecological and social horror of SWAMP THING is accompanied by images from the comics and film of some suppurating biological substance. Remarkably, V FOR VENDETTA is reconstructed in a small scene where an actor dons the iconic mask and Parliament is shown with flames engulfing its tower. Tarot cards and images litter the screen throughout. On several occasions, Moore's hand runs across the cards, wrapped in arcane jewellery, suggesting we are being given a reading of ourselves rather than hearing about someone else's life.

Moore's paranoid reading of the words of Rorschach is illustrated by the camera pulling out of the scene where Dave Gibbons' art reveals close up details of a body that has fallen from the roof of an office block, making the people on the street seem even more like insignificant ants. This scene ends with an actor in Rorschach's mask, writing in his diary.

Unlike the film's depictions of his other works, FROM HELL and LOST GIRLS are presented through the use of comics panels, repeating images in Warholian style. Moore tells us he wanted to do something about sex, because there are thousands of comic stories about violence. "Erotica or, as I prefer to call it, pornography." Meanwhile, in Melinda Gebbie's art, three lost girls seem to be dancing around each other, before it's clear that they are indulging in orgiastic foreplay.

When the narrative reaches the present, Moore expands on his philosophies of magic, ideaspace and the rate of acceleration of ideas. While Promethea is dancing with a serpent in the background, Moore's basso profundo voice vibrates the speakers. He evokes magic as the use of words, or "spells", which is something he performs with his stories and live readings. Somehow, having Alan Moore tell you what he means rather than reading it in an interview gives the theory more clarity. Is this another of his magic spells? Well, yes it is, if you understand his magic as sleight of language.

Moore's handling of his celebrity is infamous. He remains in his home town, and does not make much of his status as a big fish in the comics pond. So it was interesting to hear his perspective on the cult of celebrity. Again, I am paraphrasing. "In days gone by, if you were famous, there were probably about a thousand people who knew who you were. Today there's so much information that millions know about celebrities. Celebrity has replaced the ocean as a place for young people to escape to, but at least when young men went to sea, they learned to swim first."

If you have seen any of Moore's live readings, this film captures that ambiance, music and imagery. But this time the subject is not Blake, Islington's Angels or the hidden recesses of the CIA, but Moore himself. And his mind has been mapped more clearly than ever before by this film.

Adrian Brown is a professional psychiatric nurse at a central London NHS substance misuse service.

Ninth Art endorses the principle of Ideological Freeware. The author permits distribution of this article by private individuals, on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.