Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
LOL
  

    
And so to bed. It'll probably be a few more days until i get to stop
and read everything throroughly and post considered replies -- as it is
it's a bit of an on-the-run thing, so if there was something you
wanted a reply to that I haven't, repost it. And goodnight...
  

    
Busy day in Portland. I am being trailed by a cameraman with a camera
-- he's not here at this moment, thank heavens (he's very nice, his
name is Patrick) -- but I feel rather like someone in a fly-on-the-wall
documentary.

Very unsure about what I'll read tomorrow. As it's being videoed for
posterity I may put a lot more shorter bits in than I usually do, to
give them a better selection of stuff to pick from...
  

    
Should we scream loudly from the audience at each The End?
  

    

I think you should flail about, and swoon, and have to be revived with
smelling salts.
  

    
Why don't you stun 'em all and only read other people's work?
  

    
Because I read my stuff better than I read other people's stuff.

...

It was announced today that Terry Gilliam is directing GOOD OMENS...
http://www.variety.com/body.asp?HbkId=5176563&subcat=-1&ArticleId=11177881
16
  

    

I so can't wait. A better combination I cannot think of.


...of course, I wouldn't know a director if one bit me on the ass, so I may
not be the best judge of things. But I do love Gilliam.
  

    
Vicky e-mails:

neil - ahh, i see, I suppose i can't really back up my thoughts, it is
just a deep down belief that stories, poems, songs etc are like
creatures, wild and beautiful.  It is as if they should be free to roam
if you like, little doggies roaming the world, finding many people to
love and travel with...possibly not practical, but, as i said, it is a
gut feeling, and definately comes from my reader mind and not the writer
mind, or the hungry, by the way i need money and stuff to live mind
either :)

sorry, i'm not sure which sandman issue i got this feeling from, however
i do have the suspicion that this is the root of the idea... possibly a
story based on a boat...a young boy on a boat travelling...might have
been a girl in disguise...it's been too long :)

oh, btw, when the cbdlf readings are finished, is there a chance you may
do more readings in the future?  one day i will make it :)...tell you
what, i'll ride over on my horse, read you a few stories, and you can
give me food, board, thanks and a reading...yup, definately a fair deal
that! lol, yes vicky...:)

thx, vicky
  

    
Cindy (whose e-mail name is elaine_of_shallot) e-mails:

Neil,

    Actually, this is sort of a question for anyone with advice, but you're 
getting stuck with it because I really do blame you for getting me to write 
again.  :)
    Ok.  I finally, after much angst and spell checking, have a finished 
book sitting on the disk in front of me.  The books I read all seem to agree 
that the only way one can get published is through an agent.  Do you agree?  
What things should I be doing now, beside sending query letters out?  Does 
anyone know of any good websites with writing related information. (I'm 
working on a home page that's a sort of writer's diary, and would like to 
put them up there, as well use them for my own greedy purposes.)  Any advice 
that any of you lovely people (I've been really enjoying reading this 
topic!) would like to give me would be greatly appreciated.
    Thanks.  And Neil, I hope that you had a wonderful time at the readings. 
  The feedback I've heard has been really positive.

Cindy
  

    
Vicky - It sounds like the Sandman story you're thinking of is from _World's
End_, in which refugees from a reality storm come together at an Inn to wait
out the storm.  While they wait, they tell stories, and one of them is
about a girl in disguise as a boy on a ship.

Also: Woohoo! Gilliam for Good Omens! Now if we can only get Burton for
Sandman.
  

    

Neil- a number of years ago, Wizard magazine ran a "Casting Call" (a regular
feature of theirs) in which they attempted to cast The Sandman. Did you see
this? If you remember any of them, did you have any thoughts on their
castings?
The ones I remember- Johnny Depp as Morpheus. K.D. Lang as Desire. Tori as
Del. The exorcist woman from Poltergeist for Despair. I think they chose
Alec Guiness as Destiny. I don't remember Death or Destruction, though I
recall that Destruction was a wrestler.
I remember that they picked Christian Slater and Gilbert Godfrey as Matthew
and Mervyn Pumpkinhead, but I don't remember which was which.
The only other person I remember that they cast at all was Lucifer, and I
don't know who they cast in that role.

Actually, random anecdote- my first exposure to Sandman was in an issue of
Wizard (my younger brother had, and may still have, a subscription), in
which the letters section was full of speculation as to how Dream was going
to fall. It was just as Kindly Ones was starting up. A lot of people thought
Lucifer was going to follow up on his threat from the end of A Hope In Hell.

It was years later that I finally read Sandman. Now if only I could find
Season of Mists in the original paperback cover...
  

    
Now that should be an interesting movie.  Gilliam is so distinctive a
director, this will be a three-way collaboration--you, Pratchett, Gilliam.
And that sounds fine to me.
  

    
        Gilliam's style is not suited for many things.  It is, to my mind at
least, ideally suited for Good Omens.  This is one of those absolute
dream director-movie combinations that film geeks talk about when we
get together, but never actually happen in real life.
        I am going to take a moment to piss off my best friend by saying that
I think Burton would be quite wrong for Sandman.  Unless the storyline
were... ooh, whichever one had Dream and Delirium looking for
Destruction, and Burton could get all his twitchiness out of his system
with Delirium.  Haven't a clue who _would_ be good, though.  Apart
from auteurs like Gilliam and Burton I have a hard time telling
directors' styles apart, and I don't honestly think it matters as much
as it's given credit for.
        BTW, in case it hasn't been posted here, one of the early screenplay
drafts for Sandman, and the only good one I know about, has been made
public and can be seen at:
http://wordplayer.com/archives/SANDMAN.cover.html
        Anyway, enough movie geekery.  I'll see you tomorrow evening, Neil.
:-)
  

    
*twinkles at Shira and her first kiss*..and I remember when you were
sworn enemies of said boy.  Things couldn't get much more perfect,
there.  :p
  

    
And Neil...you said something about reposting questions that haven't
been answered...I posted these few  awhile back, and theu were
missed...and the curiosity is still there...so Ill copy and paste.

Anyways, just a couple of Sandman-ish questions, in case you were
 missing them.  In Death: The High Cost of Living, is the 'gloved
woman' meant to bring such strong echoes of Wanda, or is that a
completely separate story?  Also, in the end, did you have a specific
disease/condition in mind with Didi?  Okay, I think I managed to ask
both of those without any spoilers.  

Thank you...
  

    
Streak...I agree with you on Burton.  Burton is great and Sandman is
great.  But shrimp and chocalate are good, too.  Just not together. 
Personally, I'd like to see the person who directed American Beauty try
it...I wish I had seen more of the person in question's dircetion,
though.  I liked how s/he weaved so many threads of the unreal with the
real, the outlandish with the mundane in a way that you didn't
question. 
  

    
I must chime in on the idea of Tim Burton directing Sandman with a
resounding..noooooooooooooooo! I've never forgiven him for ruining
Batman, which is not to say he isn't a good director, just don't hand
him any characters he hasn't created himself.  

The chocolate and shrimp analogy was right on the money.

Hmm..reading the link on GOOD OMENS and here we go again..what the
hell do they mean when they say Neil and Terry Pratchett have huge
"cult" followings?  That's right up there with that other boilerplate
description in every other interview which mentions "..legions of
awestruck fanboys and scantily clad Goth girls."  I suppose the rest of
us are so much chopped liver. ;) 

Sam Mendes directed AMERICAN BEAUTY, he's great choice!  And perhaps
Bryan Singer who directed X-MEN and THE USUAL SUSPECTS is someone else
who could probably handle the multi-layered complexity of SANDMAN.

Frankly, my dream director would have been the late, great Stanley
Kubrick.  Sure it would have taken two decades to produce, but what a
movie that might have been.  And speaking of what might have been, now
that libraries stock video tapes and DVDs, is it possible that Lucien
might have a copy of the SANDMAN movie by Kubrick?  Just a thought. 
*grin*
  

    
Although I wouldn't have said this a year ago, my first choice for
director would be Ang Lee.  His early movies have such a strong sense
of humanity...and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (or vice versa?) looks
sumptuously magical.  Also, Neil has spoken about how many moments in
Sandman are about people who *think* they're communicating, but really
are at odds-- or at least not listening.  Movies like Sense and
Sensibility and Ice Storm capture that communication problem perfectly,
though in different ways.

My second choice would be to do a megabudgeted Sandman tv series, with
a rotating roster of indie and mainstream directors, analogous to the
changing artists on the book, brought in to do a single story, or a
whole story arc if the stylistic differences between episodes would be
too jarring.  Cover the first seven episodes in one two hour movie,
then get things rocking with Doll's House.
  

    <hidden>
  

    

Above hidden, containing a response to <whispered>'s post above, and some
spoilers for _Death: The High Cost of Living_.
  

    

Thanks for hiding the spoilers, madman!

Mimi e-mails:

Hi Neil, hi everybody. ^_^

Lessee.

There were a number of people who mentioned Nicholas was... a while back.
I've heard Neil read it twice, and I want to note that the audience
responded quite differently to it each time. The first time, there was a
chilled silence before the audience started clapping. Which makes sense --
Nicholas was... always scares me a bit. I love it, but it scares me too. It
makes an upside-down cake of something that's very established in your
mind... a bit like Snow, Glass and Apples does, actually. That and because
sympathy pain kicks in... The second time, in NY for the tour just about a
week ago, the audience laughed almost the whole way through. It wasn't even
nervous laughter (or I didn't think it was), which does happen when people
are scared/uncomfortable and use laughter to relieve the tension. The
audience seemed to genuinely think it was funny. Goes to show vocal
inflection can really change how a piece is received... Neil did seem to
have given the poem a more humourous slant with that reading. I guess
having Shoggoth's Old Peculiar right before also prepped people to hear it
that way. ^_^  What do people think?

Another train of thought: just why are funny things funny? If you come
right down to it, funny things are all strange. The word 'funny' can mean
'strange' too, right? But what makes some strange things funny and other
strange things frightening?  

The Blueberry Girl... Neil, I think just about everything that I can
possibly want to say has been said, but I do want to stress that people who
respect you will respect your decisions and your right to do with the poem
as you will. I think it's probably safe to say that most sensible, decent
people will do just that. Everybody else can go hang themselves. (Yes, not
the nicest nor the most intelligent remark about this whole affair, but it
sure feels good saying it. Rarr.)

Did I miss anything?

Oh! Congratulations on the Geffen, Neil! 

Random interjection: Speaking of Neil's work in other countries/languages,
I once saw a poster advertising the Japanese edition of Dream Hunters (? I
think it was the Japanese edition anyway... the ad was in japanese) in a
japanese bookstore, a collaboration between 'Amano Yoshitaka' and 'Niiru
Gaiman'... the japanese spelling and sound of Neil's name had me in stiches
just cos it sounds so familiar and so strange ('Gaiman' is spelt
'Ga-i-ma-n' in japanese characters but sounds like 'Guy-ee-maan'...). And
they gave him the honorific suffix 'shi' which denotes respect and is used
for writers and scholars and other respectable types. So it read something
like: 'Niiru Gaiman-shi had written many popular works before this
collarboration etc etc.'  ^_- 

I assure everybody that was funnier in the original. And I do like the
sound of 'Niiru.' ^_-

-- Mimi from Hong Kong, jetlagged 

P.s. Neil: would a 11x14 inch print (photograph) be too big to send you
(via Dreamhaven)? I know a lot of people send you art/music/stuff, and I
don't want to clutter up your house, and I've given you 2 smaller prints
before already... Embaressing. ^_^; Or I can just scan it and let you have
a look.
  

    

E-mail from Shira:
 
Len--ooooooh, what marvelously provocative ideas....from your mouth to
HBO's ear!
 
Streak--must respectfully disagree with you on the importance of the
director.  In the theatre, they're crucial.  In film, the balance of
power is a little different, but it's still a terrifically important
job.  The have more of an opportunity to make a hash of it than anyone,
except the editor. 
 
Neil--of course you're not being too sensitive on the recording issue.  I
was honored to have heard it--Natashya is a very lucky young lady.  I
think a large part of the reason I hoped that you might consider
publishing it is that there isn't enough published Neil Gaiman poetry in
the world to suit me  :-).  Seems like I remember you mentioning in an
interview a while back that you might do a volume of poetry....that would
be ducky!  Whatever you felt comfortable putting in, I would love to
read.
 
Merde, tonight.
 
Shira --Congratulations!
 
Sarah--Congratulations! 
  

    
Mimi--

You're the woman who came from Hong Kong for the reading? I am filled
with awe :)

Your question about what makes things funny is a good one.  Here's my
theory (which I know is inadequate, but it's a start):

Comedy comes from the brain trying to reconcile two opposite ideas--
or two behaviors that are incompatible-- at the same time.  That's
irony, which is the spring that sets comedy bouncing. When Michael
Palin, as a pet shop owner, tries to sell a dead parrot, which he
insists is alive, to John Cleese-- that's comedy.  So's a cheese shop
that doesn't have any cheese.

People ought to act a certain way-- ethically, bravely, etc.  When art
depicts people NOT acting that way, the result can be comedy-- in this
case, satire.  For that matter, life ought to go a certain way; when
it doesn't, that can result in comedy too-- that's what Seinfeld, for
example, is all about.

Whether something is genuinely funny, or really disturbing depends on
the context, and the ending, I guess. Happy endings lead to comedy, sad
ones lead to tragedy.

I get stuck on black comedy and tragicomedy.  I think it has to do
with reconciling the fact that we all have to die with the
expectation/desire that we want to live forever... but I don't have
anything coherent.

None of this explains why Saturday Night Live has consistently failed
to be funny for my adult life.  

Anyway, that's my theory. (about the brontosaurus?)
  

    
Len --  Saturday Night Live fails to hit the mark because it feels as
if they leave nothing to chance and are writing comedy using a focus
group.  Other comedy ensembles such as Kids in the Hall and Mad TV seem
more willing to take a daring leap of faith and trust that their
audience will get the joke.  SNL should have been retired right after
Joe Pescipo and Eddie Murphy left the scene because everything else,
with the exception of Christopher Walken occasionally hosting, has been
really crappy.