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That's [Don Murphy's] rep, of course: angry young producer who launched his career with a bang by producing Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone's controversial 1994 movie "Natural Born Killers," which Murphy's then-partner Jane Hamsher chronicled in her tell-all book, "Killer Instinct." Over the years, Murphy always hears the same rap on him: " 'You have the best taste in town, you actually get movies made, but you can be hard to handle,' " he says. "It's an assessment I can live with, especially since I'm not sure which good producer in Hollywood is easy to handle. Talent goes a long way, but tenacity is the only way a film gets made." Murphy is the same scruffy, heart-on-his-sleeve guy as ever. It's still not a good idea to piss him off -- after all, his 6-year-old production company is called Angry Films. He'll happily post a response to the entire World Wide Web at DonMurphy.net -- or call his lawyer. While he's no Jerry Bruckheimer, Murphy is successful because from Tarantino on, he has chased after the material that excited him -- which often happens to be the comic book action fare that makes studio execs see dollar signs. From the start, Murphy realized that "the established properties with valuable names were already tapped," he says. "DC and Marvel have 100 properties each with good stories, but you wouldn't know what they were. If something is a good idea, it doesn't matter where it comes from." Four years ago, Mr. Murphy, a comic-book lover since growing up on Long Island in the 1970s, turned a forum on his personal Web site (donmurphy.net) into a rolling conversation about the movie, which was released on July 2. And much to the delight of some of the fans who posted on the site and engaged with Mr. Murphy, they actually had some influence over changes in the script and casting. “With ‘Transformers’ we had this really rabid following,” said Mr. Murphy, whose films include “Natural Born Killers” and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” “To be frank, I wanted to have some way where we could at least hear what people think.” But Mr. Murphy, who started the forum in June 2003 and can be alternatively deferential and combative, took a more confrontational approach... Mr. Murphy would answer questions about studio meetings, who was being hired or what characters would be included in the film and solicited complaints from fans so he could share them with Mr. Bay. And once he almost banned a poster who used all capital letters... “I had my own persona, the angry sheriff,” said Mr. Murphy of his Web site. “I will mock fans if that is what I have to do.” Mr. Murphy said the studios were worried from the start about how his site might be perceived... “There was concern that it was going to be an official site,” he said. “All three of the partners — Paramount, DreamWorks and Hasbro — said I needed to make it clear it was the Don Murphy board. I was never intending for it to be an official Web site or that I was a spokesman for the film.” Mr. Murphy’s site and its nearly 950,000 posts caused a rift between Mr. Murphy, the studios and his fellow producers because some of the angry attacks were lobbed at them, particularly Mr. di Bonaventura, who had a tense relationship with Mr. Murphy, according to people involved with the film who asked not to be named because they still work with both producers. In his interview Mr. Murphy did not take creative credit, but instead said he saw his role as a liaison to the legions of “Transformers” fans. Still, in the past, he used his site to promote his role in making the movie. On May 23, he posted quotes from a story published on the fan site, IESB.net, commending him and Mr. DeSanto. In person, Murphy borders on physically intimidating -- 6-foot-2, an Irish brawler with an asymmetrical haircut who speaks so fast it often requires an aural double take. At his most manic, he seems like a cross between Richie Rich and Godzilla -- a precocious 12-year-old irradiated into city-crushing leviathan. The son of a well-to-do Long Island ad man, Murphy spent his undergraduate career at Georgetown University as film critic for the student paper and head of the campus film program. At the last second, he dodged the bullet of Georgetown Law School and entered the USC graduate film program, where Singer cut sound on Murphy's student feature film. There, Murphy also met future partner Hamsher, a sardonic ex-punk editrix (San Francisco's Damage fanzine), and their faith in a stray script by the undiscovered Quentin Tarantino led them to Oliver Stone, who not only committed to direct the Tarantino-scripted Natural Born Killers with a $35 million budget, but installed them as on-set producers -- the equivalent of a crash course in filmmaking. But somewhere along the way, Murphy's reputation as a hothead and loose cannon was codified. Once JD (for Jane and Don) Productions had disbanded, he settled on the shingle Angry Films. "I know what my reputation is in town -- difficult, great taste, gets movies made. To me, that's fine. I'm not trying to win a popularity contest. You don't get movies made by being friendly. You get movies made by saying you have to make this movie." "So don't get in my way, and I'll be your best friend. But if you get in my way, don't be surprised if I smash this ashtray into your head. Maybe that makes me a colorful personality." And yet filmmaker Larry Clark (Bully), not noted for his affinity for producers (he once punched Another Day in Paradise producer Stephen Chin onstage at the Venice Film Festival), is borderline-ecstatic in his praise: "I can't say enough about Don Murphy. I think he's a great producer and a really good guy. I like him a lot. I think Don and I are probably cut from the same cloth. We're determined to get it done. Nothing's going to stop us." "He certainly wants to make good movies," says screenwriter David Goyer, "but I think he's trying to appeal to his own sense of what's good and what's not, and he really doesn't give a shit what other people think. Sometimes it makes him reckless, and sometimes it makes him his own worst enemy, but he really fights for this, and he doesn't care about the politics. The funny thing is, he's actually a huge softie." Maybe so. But according to screenwriter Scott Rosenberg, who co-wrote a project called The Book of Skulls with his brother Phil for Murphy at Universal, "Don's a throwback to the old days of the bombastic, bellicose, belligerent producer. Takes no shit from anybody. Does not suffer fools gladly. But at the same time, he has this incredible taste for the most out-there, insane stuff. There's not a whole hell of a lot of mavericks in this day and age -- no Sam Peckinpahs, no Richard Brookses. Or even actors -- there are no Lee Marvins, no Robert Mitchums. Every now and then, though, you get an Oliver Stone or a Mike De Luca or a Don Murphy, and it's refreshing." Murphy is also the guy who has stood up to industry powerhouses like Jerry Bruckheimer by threatening to go to the press. ("Years ago, I was involved in a project at Touchstone, and because of the way it was orchestrated, I think mostly by agents, it was putting me in a position where if I didn't get out of the way, the very successful Jerry Bruckheimer was going to cancel my Christmas. And I stood in front of the tractor and said, 'You know, run me down, this is not okay what's happening here.'") And when German financing entity Senator backed out of financing a Manson biopic last year, Murphy made sure its credibility suffered at every agency in town. ("You know, you have your little checklist of people who must die? Most of them now are people who fucked up that movie.") New York-born Don Murphy is a graduate of the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television. He broke into the film business by discovering an unknown screenwriter named Quentin Tarantino and producing, along with his then-business partner Jane Hamsher, his script for Natural Born Killers. 2. What is your favorite film? Favorite implies [I] can watch it endlessly – so old school: And Then There Were None. New school: Nightmare Before Christmas. Don Murphy shares other details of his personal life.
 * The Hollywood Reporter, Jan. 13, 2006
 * The New York Times, July 9, 2007
 * LA Weekly, Nov. 13, 2002
 * IGN, Dec. 17, 2002