Neil Gaiman with Lenny Henry, Tuesday 9th November.

[reddragdiva]

apiphile asked redcountess to take notes. So, of course, she asked me to.

Lenny reading hangover scene from Anansi Boys. Questions from Lenny:

• Q. Why so passionate about stories? A. Stories are the most important things.
• Q. Where did Anansi Boys come from? A. You never see black people in horror movies. Started the book as a movie, didn't work. Then as a novella, to be one of three. Then a novel. Told New York editor Jennifer (they're always called Jennifer, only one name to remember) story, she said it was a novel.
• Q. Do you have a backlog of ideas? A. I have lots of ideas, but I need parameters to write to. The people who say "write anything you want, any topic, any length" never get anything. The ones who ask for a specific thing — "Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu" — get stuff.
• Q. Beowulf. A. Making animated Beowulf in Old English. Lots of money. Anthony Hopkins. Angelina Jolie playing Grendel's mother.
• Q. Doing your own adaptations for film or TV? A. Can't adapt my own stuff for film, etc., because (a) I keep writing new stuff (b) I can't see how to adapt it, knowing the story too well (c) painful to change. Like barbecuing your own baby. Not just barbecuing it, but cutting off its fingers and toes and marinading them.
• Q. Mirrormask. A. Creative clash with Dave McKean on working methods, after having worked together 17 years with no problems. Eventually he went upstairs in the room with light and a piano to work on index cards, I worked downstairs in the kitchen on writing. In house owned by Henson; wrecking old muppets with perished latex. Terry Gilliam came around, saw the index cards, said "Hey, that looks like a movie!" "Gosh," we said, "do you think so? That's a good idea!"

Neil does reading from Anansi Boys, description of the death of Fat Charlie's father. Audience questions:

• Q. Would Sandman have been better if you had finished it before it was published? A. No. It was good that it was published monthly and that I had 7-8 years to think about it. I couldn't go back and put things in at the start — if the gun wasn't there in the third chapter, it wasn't available for me in the last chapter. It was improv. Now I read Dickens as someone who's done that. It was a really good thing to do and I never want to do it again.
• Q. Do you think it'll be possible to adapt Sandman? A. DC gets a call a week. We did a presentation to a bunch of filmmakers, explaining the story, and said you couldn't do it in less than three movies. Better not to do it at all than to do it badly. Adapting Death: The High Cost Of Living was better because a faithful film of that would be 36 minutes, so I had to write more stuff.
• Q. What's the Japanese influence in your work from? A. I got a book when I was six called Tales from Japan. Then I got a call from Harvey Weinstein to adapt Princess Mononoke. Lots of research, how to get across Japanese cultural background and symbolism.
• Q. The gods that run through your work. How much is made up and how much is research? A. The Slavic gods I made up. Anansi Boys was research, except the cliffs at the dawn of time, which I made up ^*.
• Q. What were the other two novellas planned to go with Anansi Boys? A. One in the Stardust world, one about Shadow from American Gods. I had one published with him in Edinburgh, this would have been the one after that set in London.
• Q (from LH). Miracleman? A. Miracleman is like a tar baby. We thought we had Miracleman back, but then Todd McFarlane went bankrupt, owing to his habit of suing people and losing, and the Miracleman trademark is listed as an asset in the bankruptcy. Which it isn't because he didn't own it, so we'll get it back. I have a lawyer working on it. Then we can finally bring out Miracleman #25 and finish the story.
• Q. Have you written anything then worried if it's been done before? A. "Other People", a 1000-1200 word story about a demon. I said "Hold on ... am I just remembering an old Frederick Brown story?" Friends said no, I sent it off to be published, it was published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, I still worry ... Or you write something and someone says "Oh, you got it from there" and you go "oh my God, I did!" e.g. "Foreign Parts", about a man taken over by a veneral disease, which was from "Fever Dream" by Ray Bradbury. It happens. But mostly it's not. I hope.
• Q. There was an interview with Joss Whedon and you bouncing ideas off each other. Would you collaborate with him and would you use his universe or yours? A. Oh, yeah. I think he's brilliant, I'd love to collaborate. We both have lots of universes. He loved The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish.
• Q. Will we see you write and draw your own comics? A. It always frustrated me I had all these friends who were brilliant artists. Then I saw 24-hour comics (do 24 pages in 24 hours) and they were all as bad as my stuff! It was a failed 24-hour comic because I did Watchmen-style 9-panel grids, and that's a lot of drawing! I would like to draw; the reason I don't is that I work with brilliant artists. I can write it myself or call H. Craig Russell. Craig is working on a graphic adaptation of Coraline.

* arkady says he said he researched the Slavic gods; possibly I got mixed up with him having said elsewhere he made up a lot of the detail.

Update: See also ruthi's notes. Neil signed our copies of Anansi Boys and Good Omens (the one that already had Terry Pratchett's signature). His eyes were way glazed by my turn in the queue.

Comments

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[redcountess]

I delegated the note taking to Diva as I knew my wrists weren't up to it!

[shamus9999.livejournal.com]

Even if he researched the Slavic gods he probably had to make most of it up. There aren't really any records of the Slavs before the Viking/Christian era.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

I think he said he had to research the Slavic gods, but had absorbed enough about other gods not to need to research them much when writing.
I forget what he said he made up, but it was amusing: his agent gets calls from frustrated librarians wanting hints on where to get sources for the gods he mentions, but they're invented so this is fruitless.

[ruthi.livejournal.com]

The story librarians kept looking for was the Japanese folk tale he invented for the sandman book he did with Yoshitaka Amano.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

(psst - that's P Craig Russell)

[reddragdiva]

I was sure he said H. Ah well!