V for Vendetta

remember, remember the fifth of November...

http://vforvendetta.warnerbros.com/trailer.html

GE
<font color="green"> Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel/Which smoked with bloody execution/Like valour's minion/Carved out his passage till he faced the slave </font>

 

I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks. But I don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but I love you.


I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a women. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won't be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I have ever written and oh God I'm writing it on toilet paper.

I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl's Grammar. I wanted to be an actress.

I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss. Watson's class. Her wrists. Her wrists were beautiful. I sat in biology class, staring at the picket rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't.

In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I enrolled at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart.

But it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free.

London. I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all that breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I'd go to the Crew-Ins or one of the other clubs. But I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt comfortable there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition. And I wanted more than that.

Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in "The Salt Flats." It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other. We lived together and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses and oh God, we had so much. Those were the best three years of my life.

In 1988 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.

In 1992 they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them my name. She signed a statement saying I'd seduced her. I didn't blame her. God, I loved her. I didn't blame her.

But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch. Oh Ruth. . . .

They came for me. They told me that all of my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair and held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak.

The other gay women here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It's strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody.

I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.

An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.

Valerie

X



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

from V for Vendetta
Written by Alan Moore.
Art by David Lloyd.

 

Looks an awful lot like Zorro

Looks like it will be a good film. The excerpt you wrote is touching. I think it gives a misleading idea of the true nature of the film, however. Judging from the trailer, government in this film is oppressive in many different ways.

But more obvious than that.....

The hero is wearing black, a mask, a black wide-brimmed hat, and long hair. He is fighting with knives, and painting "V"s all over the place. On top of that he is fighting against a corrupt and oppressive government; that looks a LOT like Zorro to me. So much so that I wonder if there are any trademark issues.

 

Re: Looks an awful lot like Zorro

Just to clarify, I did not write the letter excerpt. That was by Alan Moore and included in his 10 issue comic series, V for Vendetta. It highlights one of the most compelling (maybe the most at its most stripped bare) concepts of that work and I thought it was worth including because there is a good chance the movie will fail in bringing this book across whole.

Aside from dressing black and a having a hat the resemblences drop (and I don't think Zorro has a copyright on that particular fashion choice nor on the wont to fight against corruption). Symbols are the lynch pin of our worlds, any individual who wants to be more than just man or words (which can both be dismissed) must evolve beyond into something lasting, something that asks questions, begs rememberance. This is that, nothing more. The V is multi-layered throughout the book and, I hope, the movie as well.

There have never been trademark issues with V that I know of. Likely, the rights would not have transferred so easily to the Wachowski's had that been the case.

GE

 

Re: Looks an awful lot like Zorro

"Aside from dressing black and a having a hat the resemblences drop (and I don't think Zorro has a copyright on that particular fashion choice nor on the wont to fight against corruption)."

He looks like Guy Fawkes. Which makes a whole lot of sense.