I remember when the cast of Watchmen, Alan Moore's "unfilmable", grandiose, and damn near perfect graphic novel, was announced. In fact, I remember when the project was green lit and Zack Snyder signed the proper documents to become attatched as the director. I also remember reading Watchmen for the first time and being absolutely blown away by the fact that superheros could be real people with real problems. But all of that information is neither here nor there because what's important was the hubbub that erupted on the internet forums this lady nerd frequents when the cast was announced.
I, naturally, was one of the people typing up a storm on
Ain't It Cool News. Having read the comic at a young age, I had an A Plus vision in my head of exactly what each character should look like and, in some cases, who should play them. Despite my adoration of Patrick Wilson in Little Children and the epic, gripping
Hard Candy, I had really wanted
my captain, Nathan Fillion to take the role of Night Owl if only so I could look at Nathan Fillion on screen. Everyone, it seemed, had something to say about the casting of the characters: Jeffery Dean Morgan as The Comedian (Pitch perfect, in my opinion. Just look at that sweet 'stache!), Matthew Goode as Ozymandias (Homosexual or not homosexual? Still up for debate.), Jackie Earle Hayley as Rorschach (It was doubted early on that he could get the voice right. He managed, however.), etc. Surprisingly, the response was fairly positive and as cast photos and trailers began to make their way into the stream of the nerd popular consciousness, the kudos for the gentleman of Watchmen only began to increase as it was made apparent that the men cast as the anti-heroes actually
cared: about the characters, about the book, about the fans. They cared. And that, from a female nerd's perspective, is fuckin' awesome! What no one seemed to care much about, however, was the Silk Spectre or the actress chosen to play her.
Speaking of "sidetracked", to get back on point, if you were to go through my massive iTunes library, you would find an approximate ratio of one female musician for every fifteen males. What it comes down to is the fact that the artists I relate to, lyrically, are men and the voices that appeal to me are in a lower register. It just sounds good to me. There are female artists I've grown fond of over the years: I used to rock the album Haunted by Poe back in high school and I had an intense, burning love affair with Cat Power back before she went honky tonk and regurgitated the same exact story, word for word, of her sobriety in the press (The fact that it sounded so rehearsed made me doubt her sincerity and just feel put-off, to be honest). But in the recent years, no female musician has affected me half as much as that Will Sheff fellow.
