tzikeh

mtgat posted a segment of An Open Letter From WATCHMEN Screenwriter David Hayter, in which he is asking the fans who saw it on opening weekend to see it again. He is astoundingly blind to the hatefully misogynistic language he is using. Likely, there will be spoilers in the comments (there's a very mild one in the quote).

"All this time, you’ve been waiting for a director who was going to hit you in the face with this story. To just crack you in the jaw, and then bend you over the pool table with this story. With its utterly raw view of the darkest sides of human nature, expressed through its masks of action and beauty and twisted good intentions. Like a fry-basket full of hot grease in the face. Like the Comedian on the Grassy Knoll. I know, I know...

You say you don't like it. You say you've got issues. I get it. (I used the bold tag here, but what I really need is an incredulous-sarcasm-motherfucker-do-you-speak-it tag.)

And yet... You'll be thinking about this film, down the road. It'll nag at you. How it was rough and beautiful. How it went where it wanted to go, and you just hung on. How it was thoughtful and hateful and bleak and hilarious. And for Jackie Earle Haley.

Trust me. You'll come back, eventually. Just like Sally."

Later, when he tries to apologize, HE MAKES IT WORSE:

"...let me apologize for my metaphor. I am certainly not advocating violence against women of any kind. My sole intent was to reference... the nature of the relationship between Sally and the Comedian... in the spirit of speaking to those who are truly entwined with the heart of the story--[a] horrific act, that ends in a love story.

I sincerely apologize for any offense."

The fact that David Hayter is a vile, loathsome, abhorrent mass of human-shaped excrement doesn't necessarily mean I won't eventually see the movie. My sense is that he does not have a part of the profit-sharing; as he is a screenwriter, my bet is that his salary is paid already. But this is quite the public display of ingrained and unconscious misogyny, and I think that when people say things like this, it should be publicized as much as possible, and that the vilification and condemnation should be spread far and wide.