Tag Results: neil gaiman
Bella Pagan has written a lovely piece about her experience at Eastercon...which include getting lost in those scarily winding corridors at the Renaissance Hotel. I had a wonderful time also, and I'm left with a number of rich memories that will stay with me:
- drinking too much wine with John Jarrold, Darren Nash and Bella Pagan, and hearing John sing a medley of songs from Guys and Dolls;
- marvelling at Charles Stross talking about the future, in his Guest of Honour Speech, with such effortless articulacy and attention to detail and casual charisma;
- listening spellbound to Neil Gaiman reading from his new novel, about a little orphan boy raised by ghosts;
- meeting the wonderful and very charming Tanith Lee, who is astonishingly young considering she's written nearly 100 books. Tanith admits that her writing method involves very little planning, and few revisions; her process is more like the 'channelling' experienced by a medium who is possessed by spirits than mere humdrum writing.
It's rare to meet so many engaging people in such a short space of time; and (as an avid reader of SF who has never been to a convention before) a pleasure to so quickly become part of that science fiction community. I'm looking forward to the next Eastercon already.
Many years ago I studied Anglo Saxon as a module at University, and could actually read and speak a few snippets of that of that long dead, resonant, rhythmic, repetitive, blood-drenched-battle filled ancient tongue. ('Biter was the baduraes, sword edg onfeng' - that's the only bit I can remember. Meaning 'Bitter was the battle, sword clashed against um, 'onfeng'? Lance? Forgive me, it was a long time ago.)
I also read Beowolf, in translation not in the original Anglo Saxon, and I remember finding it tough going. A wonderful core story - Grendel is the monster, but when he's killed, Grendel's Mother stalks the land - hilarious but chilling. And great passages of rhythmic epic writing. And I don't doubt Seamus Heaney's claims that it's one of the greatest poems ever written. But it is without doubt a tough read - very repetitive, and full of bragging alpha males.
And so I have to take my hat off to Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, for what they've done with their script for the Robert Zemeckis' directed Beowulf. They turn a turgid yarn into a ripping yarn. And without taking any credit away from Avary, surely it was Gaiman's influence that turned a macho blood-fest into a subtle dissection and critique of the nature of heroism? Quoting from memory: late in the story, Beowulf (Ray Winstone) says, 'Men are the monsters now,' beautifully turning a reactionary tale into a critique of war. And the extraordinary twist in the story, featuring a near-naked CGI Angelina Jolie, most certainly was not in the original....
This is, all in all, a very very smart movie. You wouldn't know that from the rather sniffy reviews, which all tactitly imply that Gaiman/Avary are playing fast and loose with a flawless classic, rather than making a magnificent hero's journey morality tale out of a dense and bloodthirsty and at times impenetrable text.
The final sequence is fabulous in every sense of the word - a brilliant tour de force spectacle every bit as thrilling as the best bits in the first Lord of the Rings.
There are flaws, as in every movie - Anthony Hopkins is fine as Hrothgar, but Robin Wright Penn makes an attempt at a matching Welsh accent that was ill-advised and, for a Welshman, deeply annoying. And John Malcovich? Um?
But I found this beautiful and spectacular and thought-provoking. And like The 300, this is a film which stretches the visual possibilities of film. It's eerie, at first, to see such almost-real CGI animations; but by the final climax I had suspended my disbelief totally, and could totally see why they just had to do it that way.
The nude scenes have been much mocked, because of the way the naughty bits are always cunningly concealed. I didn't mind that - am I really ready to see a CGI willy or vulva? I think not! And to my mind, it was very like the coy way nudity has always been handled in Marvel Comics, which I'm sure is the intended vibe. (But it still manages to be genuinely sexy. Especially Angelina as Grendel's mum! - quick, cool me down with swamp water immediately..!)
The 3 D experience added enormously to the richness of the experience. I remember seeing House of Wax in 3D in a cinema near Piccadilly Circus many moons ago. The modern incarnation of 3D is streets ahead of that - and for a spectacular movie like this creates a truly remarkable viewing experience.
'I've come to kill your monster!' says Ray Winstone/Beowulf in an early sequence. Good lad, off you go then....
And okay, that bit is maybe just a tiny bit unintentionally funny; though I wouldn't swear to that. Gaiman of course has the most delicious sense of humor, and he doesn't mind leavening drama and tragedy with belly laughs.
One of the pieces of writing I'm proudest of is my own adaptation of another literary classic for radio - Sir Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. (That also had a dragon, in fact...) The experience of making that was fabulous, though extremely risky; I kept closely to the story, but I iconoclastically wrote the whole thing in my own very different Hollywood-influenced style.
But at that time, I never would have imagined that these dusty greats of Eng Lit would start making their way into the multiplexes of the world....
Did you read this fascinating piece by Neil Gaiman in the Guardian, on the art of fairy tales? It's a witty and very informative piece, which serves as the perfect intro to the movie of Gaiman's Stardust which comes out next week. The film is written and directed by Matthew Vaughn, producer of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and director of Layer Cake. Gaiman is pleased at the final result, and I'm looking forward hugely to seeing it.
As well as his novels and original graphic novels like Sandman, Gaiman also wrote what I think must be one of the boldest and most brilliant Marvel Comics stories of all time - the extraordinary 1602, which posits an alternative reality in which the spymaster to Queen Elizabeth I is not Walsingham, it's Nick Fury; and the court magician is not John Dee, it's Dr Stephen Strange.
1602 is a dense, dark piece of storytelling, with multiple protagonists which is laced with brilliant gags (there's a character called Peter Parquah, a silly flourish which I find indecently funny, I'm not sure why.) And appalling things happen to some of our best loved Marvel characters, giving the narrative a shocking bite.
Damn, I wish I'd written this; or even thought of it.
I suspect, however, there isn't a movie in it, because the storytelling doesn't stand alone; it relies on a thorough and geeky knowledge of Marvel lore. (The minute we meet a character called Bruce Banner, we know what will happen...)
Oh and there's a Templar treasure...and guess what that turns out to be....1602 gives us Gaiman at his most subversive, and funny, and serious.
I've just finished reading the excellent and immensely ingenious Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. It's a book which plays a very clever game - drawing on the ancient myths of Anansi the Spider God, and mixing it in with an entertaining contemporary drama/comedy. It's a warm, lovely, feel-good kind of a book, as one would expect from the warm-hearted, kind-spirited Gaiman.
But fortunately, it's not too nice. In fact for my money, the book really gets into its stride when a ghastly and horrific murder is committed. Yay! Bring it on! my inner demon yelled at that moment. Now we're cooking with vitriol and bile...!
In an interview published as an afterword to the book, Gaiman admitted that this twist in the story came as a surprise to him (ah! so I'm not the only writer who doesn't plan his bloody stories in advance...) and it forced him to totally rethink the rest of the book because, 'I didn't want anything quite that dark to happen to any of the characters.' But I'm glad he took the left hand fork in the road, the one that leads the dark side; because a novel that's all nice is an oyster shell with neither grit nor nacre.
Gaiman is, of course, an absolute softie - all his main characters, even the wicked Spider in Anansi Boys tend to have a heart of gold. But Gaiman's malicious streak is a joy to behold. Take this little section from Neverwhere, in which the evil hitmen Mister Vandemar and Mr Croup are pursuing a young girl, with intent to murder:
'Bless me, Mister Vandemar, she's slowing up.'
'Slowing up, Mister Croup.'
'She must be losing a lot of blood, Mister V.'
'Lovely blood, Mister C. Lovely wet blood.'
'Not long now.'
A click; the sound of a flick knife opening, empty and lonely and dark.
That last phrase is poetry from the quill of Lucifer - bleak and menacing and ghastly. And in a later scene, the evil Misters commit gory and gruesome torture and murder, sending streaks of darkness through Gaiman's light, witty prose, and creating rich chiaroscuro.
While reading Anansi Boys, I was niggled by a sense that there was something familiar about the story. It's a classic tale of course - an ordinary Joe turns out to be the son of a God, with god-like powers himself. And it reminded me strongly of The Eternals, the graphic novel re-make of Jack Kirby's original, which Gaiman himself wrote (all the best writers steal from themselves!) But, as I mused about the need to have nastiness mixed in with niceness, I then remembered another graphic novel with a similar premise - the brilliant (and truly truly nasty) Wanted by Mark Millar. In this story Wesley Gibson, an ordinary Joe, discovers that he is in fact the son of - not a god, but a supervillain, called The Killer. And he has also inherited his father's super-powers - which basically consist of the ability to kill, very very well. Wesley is cajoled into taking up his father's mantle (cape?) and becomes a super-villain, with bloody consequences.
It's gripping stuff, a perfect setup for a classic character journey/twist, in which Wesley realises in the nick of time that supervillainy is not for him - he is going to be a superhero after all! Thus, achieving redemption, etc etc, and setting a moral example for us all. This, as I say, is what I was expecting....
I won't spoil the story by going into more detail; but suffice to say, this story shocks because it starts nasty and it stays nasty. I remember reading it in a state of stunned incredulity - surely someone will turn out to have some redeeming qualities?
Nope, they don't. It's dark, bleak and nihilistic from start to stop. But it's not, I would argue, immoral or amoral - hell, it's a story, not a rampaging mob in your local pub! And it's a story which plays with ideas about good and evil in a complex way. It is written with wit and brilliant satirical edge, and it openly mocks our assumptions about how a comic book story ought to work. (It has a supervillain called Fuckwit, and an even eviller supervillain called Shit-Head, who is made of 'one hundred per cent excrement...the collected feces of the six hundred and sixty-six most evil human beings that ever walked the earth.') If Jonathan Swift had written graphic novels, he'd be jealous of that line....
It intrigues me to see how two writers can take essentially the same story premise (ordinary Joe, father a god/superpowered being, son turns out to have the father's powers) and yet can create two such radically different stories. Both Millar and Gaiman write with wit and verbal flair, and both of them have a morally sophisticated approach to their material. But Millar shocks us with his nastiness, while Gaiman charms us with his niceness.
I don't know either writer - but I'm sure that in real life, Millar is as nice as they come. But he writes like a Tequila Slammer, in sharp intoxicating bursts; while Gaiman is a glass of Pimms on a hot summer's afternoon.
Interestingly, many friends who know me as a person, and as a teacher, are genuinely shocked when they read my screenplays and prose - because my writing is way nastier than I am. In the Nice V. Nasty spectrum, I'm closer to Millar than Gaiman.
Although, some would argue, and have argued, especially after seeing that sinister photograph at the top of this blog, that the 'Nice Palmer' is just a facade...I'm evil through and through. I'm the Cheo, not Flanagan...
Hmmm..trouble is I do like that idea. Who wants to be Superman - when you can be the Killer!
