Gaiman!

As a result of a good friend I ended up with passes to the screening of Coraline tonight, review to follow tomorrow morning. What made the whole thing so much better was that Neil Gaiman was there to introduce the movie and to do a Q&A after. I heart Neil Gaiman. I’m not as much a fan of the Sandman stuff (save your emails, I just haven’t got there yet, what with being up to my eyeballs in Green Arrow recently) but I am a HUGE fan of his Marvel stuff and, more importantly, his fiction. Neverwhere was one of the single best books I’ve ever read and still love passionately. In fact, it’s one of the only books I’ve ever read more than once – and not just because I forgot I read it. Being in this guy’s presence tonight basically made me giddy like a school-girl. The imagination on this man is just so….. incredible.

Tonight he was his usual candid self, answering questions from the audience with his usual humility. Gracious as always and a brilliant storyteller, you just want to hang on every word and – better yet – listen for hours. I’ve uploaded a video from this evening below. It includes reference to one of my favorite bits on the Stardust DVD extras; an anecdote in which he describes walking around the set of a movie based on his works because there is always literally a small army of people working to create something in real life – to be used by real people – simply because he thought it up.

I ran out of time on my camera before he got to this, but he did field a question from the facilitator (Chris Landreth) about the creative process of handing off a story, like a baby, to another person. Gaiman spoke about how he has friends who hand the script off and take the check and are very unhappy people. He also described that the other way it’s traditionally done is to get overly involved – write, direct and create it yourself. He didn’t have the desire to do that, so instead he went out and found the best creative team he could to do it for him. The product is excellent and I hope that you enjoy the video. Sorry he didn’t stand in the light once.

(FRUSTRATED AUTHOR’S NOTE: I set this video – of only 6 minutes – to upload last night at 11:30, then I went to bed. When I got up this morning, it was still not uploaded and, sadly, Blogger doesn’t tell me how much progress it made while I slept. This is why I do not video blog. I’m taking my camera to work and will see if I can get it to upload. Please accept my apologies.)

PS – Being HUGE nerds, my husband and I also got a Sandman #1 and the beginnings of a Doom gauntlet from 1602 signed by Mr. Gaiman….. I’m just bragging at this point.