Following the Warner Bros. panel on Friday afternoon, a select group of press were invited to take part in a series of roundtable discussions with various panelists from the presentation. Director Zack Snyder (of the upcoming “Watchmen” film) was kind enough to give me and seven other writers a few minutes of his time to discuss the film in a much more controlled environment. Unfortunately, Zack likes to talk an awful lot and we didn’t have much time to begin with (five minutes), so I was unable to ask any of the questions I had lined up (like whether Gerard Butler will be cast as Hooded Justice, or if he’s got any ideas on how to shoot the “Black Freighter” sequence). Of course, there’s a lot of people out there who’d like to know everything they possibly can about the production on this movie, and so I’ve posted the following tidbit for the pleasure of anyone who may be interested…

Zack Snyder: (continuing his conversation from the previous roundtable) One of the things that I think is important about “Watchmen” is that it have resonances of cinematic pop culture, as well as superhero culture, because I believe there’s a relationship between Rorschach and Travis Bickle in “”Taxi Driver.” I believe that there’s a relationship between the war room in “Doctor Strangelove” and NORAD. There are cinematic relationships in the graphic novel, and I really think that the movie, this movie, “Watchmen,” is able to comment on both things in a way that other movies can’t, because it really does observe pop culture all the time while it’s telling the story. And I think that part of the influence on the characters themselves is the culture that they’re in. And for that part it’s something hugely fun to explore and, just from a visual standpoint, is hugely fun to say ‘Well, what does that mean?.’ Like, when you’re in the war room, how do you make it “Doctor Strangelove,” without making it “Doctor Strangelove”?

Reporter: It’ll pull you too far out of the story…

ZS: Yeah, I mean, let’s be realistic. Probably 99.999% of the population has not seen “Doctor Strangelove,” so there’ll be minimal impact on them, but, you know, for those of us that have, you want it to have those kind of broad implications that that has about the Cold War, and about like satire, and all those things, so Alex and I have been having a lot of fun, I think, in trying to… because I always say, treat the graphic novel like it was written 2,000 years old and it is like an illuminated text, and that we are disciples of this religion and we have to make sure that it is somehow, you know… we won’t be burned at the stake, for heresy, after the movie comes out. I think that’s the fun we also have, like for instance even just the smallest things like when Rorschach burns the SWAT cops with the hairspray. We’re sitting around and they showed me some hairsprays – you know, cool ratty hairspray cans – and I was like ‘Oh, they’re cool, but the labels are wrong.’ And they’re like, ‘What do you mean?’ And I go ‘That’s Veidt for Men, it should be, hairspray.’ And I was like ‘See?’ (mocks opening a copy of “Watchmen”), and they’re like ‘Oh, fuck, okay, sorry.’ But it’s like that. You could do that with pretty much everything in the movie.

Reporter: Well, like “300,” you already have a visual template to draw from and reference. In that sense, is the movie – because you haven’t really started on it yet – is it kind already made?

ZS: You know, it’s a hugely, hugely difficult thing to take any work of, like a drawing, and say ‘Make that real.’ You know you have… well yeah, to some extent, you know? I think part of making “Watchmen” is deciding what not to have in the movie, not what is in the movie. That’s easy, you know? So we’re just trying to like, what stories don’t you have? That’s part of the problem. It’s awesome because it’s a six-hour movie if you shoot everything. Just about. What happened was we meet a guy – a very awesome guy – who had done an animatic of the first ten minutes of the graphic novel. Like the first three chapters. Well not three chapters, but first six pages of the book. And it timed out at about ten minutes. And it was each frame, alright? With cool little flash animation – awesome – and with art from the book. And he said ‘I’ve extrapolated that if you wanted to do the whole book and it would be six hours and twenty minutes’… And so it’s not as easy as saying ‘Oh, that shot, that shot, that shot.’

Studio Rep: (talking to Snyder) We have to go.

Reporter: Really quick. Do you have a timeframe for the movie?

ZS: I don’t have a timeframe right now. I think it’s running long right now. It’s about 140 page script, not including “The Black Freighter,” and so – and “The Black Freighter” is about 16 pages as a script – and so, I mean, it’s going to be long.