When theatergoers leave screenings of “Red Riding Hood” this weekend, a great number of them will be saying, “The best thing about that movie was Gary Oldman.” This isn’t necessarily the greatest compliment that Oldman’s ever been paid – trust us, we’ve seen the movie – but it’s one that he’s heard plenty of times, and rightfully so.

On the occasion of this latest film, we thought we’d take a look back at 20 of his most notable roles, most of which are found in films far better than “Red Riding Hood.” That’s most, though, and not all. (See #10 and #13.) Still, as track records go, you’ll soon see that Oldman’s is pretty damned enviable.

1. Sid Vicious (Sid and Nancy, 1986): Most would agree that it was Oldman’s performance as the late Sex Pistols bassist which really put him on the radar. Even those who criticized the accuracy of the film generally had glowing words for Gary, and that goes all the way up to Johnny Rotten himself. “The chap who played Sid, Gary Oldman, I thought was quite good,” wrote John Lydon in his autobiography, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. “Even he only played the stage persona as opposed to the real person, (but) I don’t consider that Gary Oldman’s fault because he’s a bloody good actor.” This was echoed by the Evening Standard British Film Awards, who named Oldman the year’s Most Promising Newcomer.

2. Joe Orton (Prick Up Your Ears, 1987): Only 34 years passed between the life and death of English playwright Joe Orton, and one might be able to successfully argue that more people know him for his connection to the Fab Four (he wrote a screenplay, “Up Against It,” which was rejected as the Beatles’ cinematic follow-up to “Help!”) than for his plays, let alone this movie, but if you’ve managed to see “Prick Up Your Ears,” then you’re already aware of the phenomenal work Oldman does alongside Alfred Molina, who plays Kenneth Halliwell, Orton’s boyfriend and – eventually – his murderer. Indeed, Oldman’s performance earned him a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actor.

3. Rosencrantz (Rosencrantz & Gildenstern are Dead, 1990): Fans of the Bard with a sense of humor have long praised the way Tom Stoppard took two relatively insignificant characters from “Hamlet” and turned their actions – or, rather, their lack thereof – into a full-length play, but there’s not quite as much unanimity about the way the production transitioned onto the big screen. Still, the only real complaint tended to be that it probably played better when performed on a stage, which stands to reason. (After all, the play’s the thing, innit?) Granted, the humor’s a bit highbrow for the mainstream, but if you like Shakespeare, you’ll love seeing Oldman and Roth pondering their characters’ existence.

4. Jackie Flannery (State of Grace, 1990): Although Phil Joanou’s Irish-American crime drama didn’t break any box office records, possibly because the Italian-American criminal contingent had the higher profile at the time (this was right around the same time as “Goodfellas”), it sure had a hell of a cast: Oldman is teamed with Sean Penn, Ed Harris, Robin Wright, John Turturro, John C. Reilly, and Burgess Meredith. Throw in an Ennio Morricone score, and you’ve got the kind of picture that critics drool over…and rightfully so.

5. Lee Harvey Oswald (JFK, 1991): When you make a film about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, if there’s one role that you absolutely, positively must cast perfectly, it’s that of the man who (ostensibly) assassinated him. In an interview with Empire, Oldman revealed that director Oliver Stone gave him a couple of plane tickets, a list of contacts, and told him to go research the part himself. You’d think it would’ve been easier on the budget if Stone had just paid for Oldman’s cab fare to the library, but, then, the library wouldn’t have provided Oldman with a tenth of the information about the man he was portraying that he ended up getting from his meeting with Oswald’s widow, Marina.

6. Dracula (Dracula, 1992): For better or worse, Oldman’s Dracula is rarely mentioned in the same breath as Bela Lugosi’s take on fiction’s most famous vampire, but when he’s not forced to endure the old-age makeup, he’s rather spellbinding in the part. Many originally left the theater so annoyed with Francis Ford Coppola’s decision to put Keanu Reeves in the cast (“But, SUH!”) that they wrote off the film forever, but if you haven’t seen it recently, it’s well worth a re-visitation. Keanu’s still no better now than he was 19 years ago, but the look of the film is darkly gorgeous and, yes, it is all rather creepy…thanks to Oldman, of course.

7. Drexl Spivey (True Romance, 1993): As a scarred and dreadlocked pimp with an accent of indeterminate origin, Oldman takes this part and throws in everything from diddled-eyed joe to damned if I know. It’s not a lengthy part, but it’s certainly a memorable one, thanks to the script by Quentin Tarantino. In an interview with Venice Magazine, Oldman described it as “one of the few films I’ve made where you just shot what was there because the script was so good.” As for his appearance in the film, though, he was reportedly given free reign to look however he want, and as he told Detour Magazine, he took full advantage of it. “I made up the make-up, I went and got the gold teeth,” he said. “I called Tony Scott and said, ‘I want dreadlocks,’ and he sent me a message back saying, ‘Good idea.’ I had the wig made, I got the milky eye contact from Greg Cannom, the make-up man from ‘Dracula,’ who loaned it to me. I wanted a dead eye, a scar, good teeth, dreadlocks, the whole thing.”

8. Ludwig van Beethoven (Immortal Beloved, 1994): Not a lot of people can claim to have played both Sid Vicious and Beethoven…but, then, this is Gary Oldman we’re talking about. One of the greatest moments in this film comes during the meeting of the minds between Beethoven and Anton Felix Schindler, when the latter suggests that music exalts the soul and receives some serious scoffing in return. “If you hear a marching band, is your soul exalted?” sneers Beethoven. “No, you march. If you hear a waltz, you dance. If you hear a mass, you take communion. It is the power of music to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer. The listener has no choice. It is like hypnotism.” This single scene may well be why, in that same interview with Venice Magazine, Oldman described the composer as being “like the Orson Welles and John Cassavetes of the music world. He wrote with passion. He wrote about feelings and emotions, and he wrote what he wanted to write.”

9. Stansfield (Leon the Professional, 1994): In which Gary Oldman hasn’t got time for this Mickey Mouse bullshit. Here beginneth a period of collaboration between Oldman and director Luc Besson, one which was arguably at its best when Oldman was directing and Besson was producing, as was the case with “Nil by Mouth.” That’s not to say that this isn’t a cracking good action film, but when Besson’s at the helm of a film, one could argue that Oldman has a tendency to deliver performances which are, if not unequivocally over the top, at least circling just below the top. But, hey, at least you don’t forget them…

10. Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale (The Scarlet Letter, 1995): Regularly included in lists of Really Bad Film Adaptations of Classic Literature, Oldman found himself nominated for several Razzies as a result of tackling Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale of adultery…not that it did anything to damage the value of his stock in Hollywood.

11. Jean-Baptiste-Emmanuel Zorg (The Fifth Element, 1997): Fast-forward two years…or a couple of hundred, if you’re talking about when the film takes place…and you’ve got Oldman’s latest Luc Besson collaboration. Here he plays a wealthy, soul-patch-rockin’ industrialist who’s in cahoots with an entity known as The Great Evil, a move which, frankly, seems like the sort of thing which can only end poorly. (Spoiler alert: it does.) But what of Oldman’s performance? Well, not terribly long after the film’s release, Oldman did an interview with Stephen Schaefer and said, “That could well be what was making me cry at Cannes: I’d just watched my performance in ‘Fifth Element.’ Anyone would [cry].” Yes, but, again, you can’t say it isn’t memorable…

12. Ivan Korshunov (Air Force One, 1997): It might not have been critically acclaimed, but there’s something awesome about seeing Harrison Ford as an ass-kicking Commander-in-Chief. Shame it’s Oldman’s ass that’s getting kicked…and out of Air Force One, no less..but at least he enjoyed working on the film, praising Wolfgang Petersen as a man who knows how to make an action movie without stressing everyone out. “He knows exactly what he’s doing,” Oldman told Salon. “He knows the genre and he doesn’t pretend it’s anything else, (like), ‘Hey guys, we’re making great art.’ He very much loves his wife, so he likes to be home on weekends. He likes to be home and have dinner. We’d come in and start shooting at 9 and finish at 6. I’ve never worked with anyone so relaxed on a set. He has a wonderful sense of humor and doesn’t take himself or it too seriously.”

13. Dr. Smith (Lost in Space, 1998): Not, I think we can all agree, the most shining moment of Mr. Oldman’s CV, though one wonders what happened during production, since Oldman seemed quite pleased with the family-related themes of the film and observed, “The film is a lot darker than I thought it would be.” Clearly, something fell apart somewhere, but at least Oldman can sleep comfortably knowing that his work as Dr. Smith had the approval of the man who originated the role on television. In an interview on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” Jonathan Harris described Oldman as “a very fine actor and a very inventive and innovative actor” and said that he was “lovely” in the part, adding, “I’m told that he’s a fan of mine. Shows remarkably good taste, seems to me…”

14. Congressman Sheldon B. Runyon (The Contender, 2000): A great underrated political thriller and one of Jeff Bridges’ favorite films (he said so during the Winter 2011 TCA Press Tour), but Oldman and his manager, Douglas Urbanski, apparently got a bit up in arms over the way the film was edited during an interview with Premiere Magazine. “If your names are Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen,” Urbanski declared, “you can’t have a film with a Republican character…who is at all sympathetic … being released on Oct. 13 (less than a month before the presidential election).” Elsewhere in the piece, Oldman asserted that when Dreamworks bought the film rights to the story, which focuses on a female presidential candidate (Joan Allen) who comes under fire when a Republican congressman (Oldman) reveals a scandalous skeleton in her closet, they forced director-writer Rod Lurie to turn “The Contender” into an unbalanced, Democrat-friendly tale. True? False? Ah, who cares, really? It’s still a great movie.

15. Pontius Pilate (Jesus, 2000): Given how many despicable characters Oldman had taken on at this point, it’s no surprise that he was able to step easily into the shoes of the man responsible for crucifying Jesus of Nazareth. “I wouldn’t call myself religious, but I would say that I was spiritual,” he said in a video interview at the time of production. “If I had met with (Jesus) personally, I’m sure there was an energy, a power that came off the man. I’m not sure that he could change water into wine or that he could walk on water. I mean, who knows? But I do believe that a great man and a powerful man was called Jesus and he walked the earth, so I imagine I would have been very moved and impressed by a man like that.”

16. Mason Verger (Hannibal, 2001): You’re forgiven for not recognizing Oldman under the grotesque make-up he was forced to wear while playing a child molester who ended up disfigured and crippled after an encounter with Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Indeed, if you saw “Hannibal” in the theater, you’ve got an even better excuse, since Oldman’s name doesn’t even appear in the credits! (It was, however, added to the home video releases of the film.) The story of how this came to pass is a bit muddled. Co-producer Martha De Laurentiis told The Guardian that Oldman originally wanted to be billed as high as Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore and left the production when his request was declined, only to eventually return and say that he didn’t want to be billed at all. Oldman, however, has said that the name thing was done with good humor, telling IGN Filmworks, “I’m unofficially the man of many faces (and) I’m playing the man with no face, so we just had a bit of fun with it.”

17. Sirius Black (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 2004 / Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2005 / Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2007): Not unlike many of the actors who found their way into the “Harry Potter” franchise, Oldman’s dad street cred jumped by several points when he took on the role of Sirius Black, but getting a shot at having his kids name him Coolest Father Ever wasn’t the reason he pursued the part. “I needed the work,” he told the Coventry Evening Telegraph during promotion for “Azkaban.” “I haven’t worked for a while, a couple of years, so I thought it would be nice to get back to work and earn some money. Pay the bills.” Honesty: what a refreshing concept.

18. Commissioner Gordon (Batman Begins, 2005 / The Dark Knight, 2008): If Superman can put on a pair of glasses and convince the world at large that he’s Clark Kent, it should come as no surprise that Oldman can slap on a ‘stache and some spectacles and transform himself into Batman’s closest confidant in the Gotham City PD. Chris Cooper had actually been selected for the role by director Christopher Nolan, who’d met with Oldman with the intent of casting him as a villain, but when Cooper bowed out of the project in order to spend more time with his family, Nolan reconsidered. “We found that he’s very unlike the characters he normally plays, so we were lucky to get him to play Gordon, who is a good man with a great sense of integrity,” said Nolan, in an interview with Variety. “He had to be very restricted and subtle in ‘Batman Begins’ and he enjoyed that challenge but at times it was like watching a Ferrari in traffic. It was fun to bring him back (in ‘The Dark Knight’) and have him tested and pushed further.”

19. Bob Cratchit, Jacob Marley, and Tiny Tim (A Christmas Carol, 2009): Better that we should have gotten a live-action take on the Charles Dickens classic which gave Oldman the opportunity to play three such dissimilar parts as these, as there’s surely little doubt by this point that someway, somehow he would’ve pulled it off. Speaking of which, Ryan Ochoa actually receives a credit for voicing Tiny Tim, which seems like an unnecessary expense, given Oldman’s range. By the by, the voice of Mrs. Cratchit is performed by Lesley Manville, otherwise known as the former Mrs. Oldman.

Lastly, even though it’s utterly out of chronological order, we coudn’t resist closing by shining the spotlight on Gary Oldman’s most challenging performance, wherein he plays…

20. Gary Oldman (Greg the Bunny, 2003): Would that the world had truly been blessed with a version of “Hamlet” which teamed Oldman with Warren “The Ape” DeMontague…

As such, Bullz-Eye is going to try to tackle more stories from the medium…and when I was sent a copy of “Ides of Blood,” a new series from DC / WildStorm which is – at least according to the press release – not entirely unlike a blend of “True Blood” and “Rome,” it certainly seemed like something that our readership might be interested in learning more about.

God bless DC’s publicity department: they quickly put me in touch with series creator Stuart Paul, who gladly answered a few questions for us about his own introduction to comic books, the origins of “Ides of Blood,” his semi-controversial decision to have characters in ancient Rome use modern colloquialisms, which of DC’s stable of superheroes he’d like to take a shot at writing, and much much more.

Since I’ve seen the phrase “new to comic books” used in conjunction with your history of writing for the medium, what’s your personal background with comics? And don’t be shy: if your memory stretches back that far, feel free to offer up the very first comic you remember buying.

My childhood experience with comics was pretty limited. Other than reading the occasional issue of Moon Knight or X-Men at my friend’s house, the only comics I personally bought were “Star Trek” comics—mostly “Next Generation” and some of the original crew that took place in the post-”Wrath of Khan” time period. It wasn’t until college that my girlfriend reintroduced me to comics through Sandman. Once I realized there were comics for adults out there, I started reading them more and more. Initially, I stuck with the superstars—Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Brian K. Vaughan, Garth Ennis. I was kind of a Vertigo whore at first. I guess I still kind of am, but not as much. I have to hear a lot of good buzz about something before I’ll invest in a whole series like Walking Dead, but I’ve definitely branched out. Once I discovered Urasawa’s Pluto, I started getting into manga more. Right now, I’ve got 20th Century Boys, Basilisk and Lone Wolf and Cub to read. I also went through a period of reading a lot of DC superheroes. Jeph Loeb’s Batman stuff is my favorite. Sometimes I’ll still read X-Men, but it’s pretty rare for me to read superheroes these days. My favorite series right now is probably Okko. I think Archaia is doing some of the most creative and well-made comics today. Also, Chew is the only series I read on a monthly basis. Everything else is TPB’s, although the iPad is kind of changing that.

There’s been much talk about how fans of both “True Blood” and “Rome” will find much to enjoy in Ides of Blood. Is that combination what led to the concept for this series? If not, what were its origins, and how do you feel about those points of comparison?

No, neither show existed when I originally came up with the idea and wrote the first draft. I mean, I don’t have a problem with people using those as points of reference. It’s an effective shorthand, but it’s the type of thing you’d bring up in a Hollywood pitch meeting. The problem is that you don’t necessarily know what connotations those shows have for the reader and also, they’re such current references that it makes the comic sound like it’s just trying to exploit the zeitgeist. I mean, if you said it’s “Gladiator” meets… well, actually, “Dracula” might have too much baggage attached to the name, so I guess “True Blood” probably is a good descriptor. The point is, I don’t mind the comparison, but I do think it has as much potential to put-off readers as it does to draw them in. Anyway, the concept for the series came out of boredom. I don’t really like vampires, so it started as a challenge to myself to figure out what I’d have to do to make vampires interesting to me. Julius Caesar just popped into my head.

Are you at all concerned about a possible vampire backlash, given how many of these bloodsuckers are popping up in pop culture nowadays, or do you think the creative setting of ancient Rome will be enough for vampire enthusiasts to grant you some leeway? (i.e., “Okay, I thought he was just a bandwagon jumper, but I have to admit, this is something we haven’t seen before.”)

The backlash has definitely been a factor, and I think it probably has somewhat hurt the comic’s reception. I’m just as sick of vampire stuff as the rest of you. And it’s easy for people to assume, especially when you’re dealing with a genre-mash-up like this, that the idea came out of some douchebag who was, like, “What’s hot these days? Vampires! What else is hot these days? Ancient Rome! What if we put them together?” But like I said, I started working on this idea five years ago, long before anyone had even heard of “Twilight.” That being said, I think that a lot of people have kept an open mind and thought the concept was cool enough that they’d give it a try. By the end of the first issue, I feel like we proved that we weren’t just in it for the quick buck, but that this is a fully-realized world that is truly trying to do something original. A couple of reviewers have even said that they picked up the book not expecting to like it but the comic changed their mind. It won’t work for everybody, and there’s some people who won’t let their mind be changed no matter what, but I am very grateful to those who came to Ides with an open mind and let themselves buy into the world.

Speaking of vampires, I’d be curious about some of your favorites, especially if your list contains any obscurities that you’re particularly proud of and would like to trumpet.

There aren’t many. There really are only two I can actually list as favorites. The first is “Let the Right One In.” It’s just brilliant filmmaking. The mood is so powerful, and the relationship between the kids is unique. I’d never seen a story like it before. The other is “Martin.” This is a George Romero movie about a kid who thinks he’s a vampire but doesn’t actually have supernatural powers. He goes around drugging women with hypodermic needles and drinking their blood. It’s very 70’s and sexual and psychological and it has a fantastic ending. The same girlfriend who introduced me to Sandman showed me this movie. I ended up marrying her, which I think was a wise choice.

I like Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, but neither of them to a fantastic degree. “True Blood” has some boring characters, but it just got awesome with the King of Mississippi. I like Murnau’s “Nosferatu” better than Tod Browning’s “Dracula.” It’s a shame “Shadow of the Vampire” didn’t live up to its potential.

One of the things about the miniseries that threw me at first was the characters’ usage of modern colloquialisms. Was there any point when you considered using some semblance of era-accuracy with their dialogue? And what would you say to those who might find themselves disconnected from the concept because of the decision to go this route?

It’s been a very divisive choice, and I totally get why it might not work for everyone, but there’s a couple reasons I went this way with it. At first the book was going to be a “For Mature Readers” title, so I was going to have people use profanity, much like “Rome.” But when Wildstorm told me I couldn’t do that, I changed all the curses to Latin. This actually worked fantastically, and I was happy I took out the modern profanity. But apparently this didn’t fly either ‘cause they didn’t want kids Googling Latin curse words. Personally, I think anything that educates kids about foreign languages is a good thing, but so be it. So when I needed another way to express things, I decided to go colloquial with it. It’s how the characters would have sounded to each other.

Plus, I thought it fit the genre. As the story became more of a noir, I though it would be cool to give it a bit of a pulp, Mickey Spillane flavor. More importantly, we’ve seen attempts at realistic dialogue before. It usually ends up with everyone sounding like the Royal Shakespeare Company. I also feel that the idea of realism or accuracy in dialogue in period pieces is a fallacy. First off, these people didn’t speak English—they spoke Latin. So already by translating it, you’ve altered everything. A lot of nuance of specific concepts is immediately gone. If you accurately translated what these characters actually said, it wouldn’t sound right to our ears. A lot of people also seem to think that simply using more formalized dialogue and adding “fuck,” that somehow you’ve reinvented the wheel. I disagree. That’s one of the reasons I think “Deadwood” was brilliant. It was not historically accurate. It was David Milch’s version of the Old West—and not just regarding curse words. Those were the most eloquent *********** I’ve ever met. I mean, you’ve got these uneducated miners and tinhorns who speak better than most college professors with their ditchwater Victorian monologues. The thing is, he was expressing an aspect of the Old West and interpreting it in his own way. The words weren’t authentic, but the interactions and spirit were.

Look, man, everything should be tried at least once. Would I want all period pieces written with modernized dialogue? Of course not. That would be terrible. But if it’s not appropriate for an alternate-history pulp-noir swords-and-sandals yarn where Julius Caesar has conquered Transylvania and made vampires into slaves, when is it appropriate?

How did you and Christian Duce first cross paths? Did DC / Wildstorm put the two of you together, or had you already known him? And how did your vision of what the characters would look like evolve after he came onto the project?

Shannon Eric Denton at Wildstorm put us together. We didn’t really have any direct interaction until after Christian had penciled the first couple issues, so there weren’t any discussions about the character designs. Fortunately, Christian is a brilliant artist who has an uncanny, almost telepathic ability to visualize what I’m trying to express in my scripts, so he pretty much nailed the characters.

Actually, my favorite character design he came up with is for one of the minor characters, Cassius. I wanted Cassius to be a sort of blowhard puppet who follows whatever Brutus says, since Cassius has traditionally been more of a Lucifer figure, and there’s just something about Christian’s character design (it may be the mutton chops) that fills me with glee.

Ides of Blood is a creator-owned series, of course, but given the chance, which of DC’s established heroes would you be interested at taking a crack at one of these days?

That’s a tough question. I have a great idea for a Flash limited series that also plays around with ancient history that I would love to do. That being said, I really like Batman. It would be a really enjoyable challenge to find new ground to cover for his character. Green Lantern would be fun just because I could do lots of stuff in outer space. But really, other than the Flash idea, if I had my pick of the litter, I’d probably have to go with Superman just because he’s Superman. You can create such amazing images with his powers, I’d love to see what unique situations I could put him in. Also, I feel that unlike Batman, there’s a lot more to his character that hasn’t been mined yet.

I’ve seen the trailer for “Orion Slave Girls Must Die,” so it’s clear you’ve got more than a little bit of a “Star Trek” background as well. What’s your favorite memory (or memories, if you can’t narrow it down) of attending either a “Trek” or comic convention? And feel free to divide it into “fan” and “creator” memories, if you need to do so.

Ha! Yeah, man. I loves me some Star Trek. DS9 is my favorite TV show of all time. I guess my favorite Trek convention memory is when my parents and I went to my first convention in Pasadena and John DeLancie, who played Q, was speaking. Instead of telling old Trek anecdotes or a Q and A, he read a short story he wrote. I don’t remember the title, but it was about a guy who is playing dice with the devil for his soul. At the end, a fly lands on the die and takes a shit, changing the number so that the guy loses. Being a story about demons and fly-shitting, my parents were mildly scandalized, but I was totally enraptured by the story when he was telling it. In fact, he’s the only speaker whose presentation at all stuck with me.

Looking back, how much growth do you see in your work as a screenwriter between “Confessions of a Late Bloomer” and “Orion Slave Girls”?

Man, someone’s been using IMBD! Well, they were both student projects I wrote while in film school, and the first things I’d written that I didn’t direct myself (and had actual budgets). “Confessions of a Late Bloomer” was really a reflection on my high school experience. I think it’s well-made and director Jen McGowan did a great job with it, but it’s not really told in my voice. It’s pretty conventional. I feel it was less about expressing my POV as a writer and more about proving to myself that I could apply the things I was learning in school and make a basic 3-act movie (albeit a short one). “Orion Slave Girls” definitely had more of myself in it. Whenever I’m strapped for ideas, I usually end up coming back to “Star Trek” in one way or another. It was more inspired by that thing in college where you realize you and your high school friend are going down different paths in life. I think the gags are more clever in “Orion,” and obviously the style and subject matter are more up my alley, but I’m not sure how much actual growth you can see between the two projects, particularly since the final product was the director’s creation as well as mine, but I definitely think I felt more comfortable with playing around with the narrative structure in “Orion.”

And, lastly, are you keeping your fingers crossed that “Ides of Blood” might serve as the kickstart for a gig as a screenwriter? Also, given how quickly Hollywood is snapping up comic projects for development, I’m curious if you’d even finished punctuating your pitch for DC / Wildstorm before you’d been approached by a studio. Mind you, I’m not necessarily asking for specific details. I’m just wondering if indeed there’s been movement on that front for “Ides of Blood” already.

(Sighing) It’s a pretty common Hollywood story. I write film and TV as well, so the way this all started was that I wrote Ides of Blood as a screenplay. I got it to DC’s film people, and they thought it would make a great movie, so I wrote up a pitch for the comic series that we sent to Wildstorm. So we were doing the whole reverse-engineering thing. Afterwards, we started prepping the film pitch. Then DC went through this reshaping, which put a halt to the project, so right now the prospects of a film are in limbo until the new guard decides what to do. These things happen all the time, though. I’ve learned not to believe anything is a sure thing in Hollywood because it can all fall through up until the last possible moment. Hopefully DC will pick the project up again and indeed hire me to write the screenplay, but really there’s no guarantee. I wish every comic creator had right of first refusal to write the screenplay. I find it somewhat heinous that the WGA offers no protection to screenwriters who became comic writers and now face the prospect of getting bumped off their own creation. But, when you’re a young writer, you just have to go in, pitch the hell out of yourself and hope for the best.

Closing note: Paul dropped a line a few minutes after answering the last question, clarifying, “I hold no grudges against any of the staff at DC. They were nothing but supportive of me and Ides.” I hadn’t got the impression that he might’ve felt otherwise, so maybe you didn’t, either, but I figured he’d still prefer it if I included his clarification, so there you have it!