Right. Last night, CORALINE in 3D was shown at the Dublin Film Festival. (No, it won't be released here, or in the UK until May 8th.*) I introduced it and did a Q&A afterwards. I think the audience loved it, and I keep seeing things I missed on previous showings. (I was looking out for some of these things, too.) Lots of interviews during the day: I love Irish interviewers -- you find yourself having a conversation with them, rather than feeling like they're running through a checklist of questions.
Today was lunch with Neil Jordan, mostly talking about The Graveyard Book, and his next film, Ondine, which sounds beautiful. Tonight I went to Amanda Palmer's gig at the Sugar Club. I was fighting that Day Three Jet Lag thing, which meant that as soon as I sat down somewhere warm and dark, reality got a little mutable. Red Bull helped a bit, and so did the fact it was the single best of Amanda's concerts I've seen -- a small, perfect venue. And she is fearless, in front of an audience: they loved her and she gave them reason to. Wonderful stuff. I dozed off for a few seconds during 'Half Jack', but that was all.
And then I waved everyone goodbye and went back to my hotel because I was not certain that I would remain upright for much longer. And then I wrote this, because I wasn't sure I'd remember much about tonight by tomorrow.
*lots more emails from Australians wondering about the release. It's here. Why the title of the film has changed I do not know. Seems silly to me.
Originally, I was meant to get in to Dublin tomorrow, Sunday, and immediately start doing interviews. Somewhere mid-week I realised that simply wasn't going to work -- I'd burned the candle at both ends and incinerated the middle during the two weeks of Coraline-and-Newbery-Madness in the US, and flying to Dublin, getting off the plane and doing six print, one TV interview and then going to Dundrum to introduce the film and do a Q&A interview afterwards seemed like a recipe for disaster, or at least, for sleeping through my own film.
So everything moved a day earlier, and that was a good thing. The flight was easy and pleasant (I sat next to one of the Original Fathers of the Internet, and he wanted to know about writing and I wanted to know about The Internet, so we chatted cheerfully over the meal service, which almost never happens). On landing I was whisked magically from the jetway to a little VIP place where I was given a cup of tea and put in a car with a lady from Universal, and I dreamed that all international airport exits could be as smooth and as graceful and as queue-free.
My loverly Android G1 doesn't work here -- it was, as you may remember, a gift from Google, and is, until one day it won't be, free, but its very freeness meant that it won't connect to any foreign phone service, as someone would have to be billed for the connection. At the point it informed me that it was now just a thing with photos and music on, I discovered how much I miss it (memo to self, tapping on the screen of the Nokia N73 does nothing at all). My elderly and eccentric Nokia N73, which turns itself off from time to time a bit randomly, sometimes mid phone-call, is now my phone while I am in Ireland. And I discovered the problems I was having with its predictive text function could mostly be traced to fact that it had decided in the last month or so that it would rather predict words in Dutch.
Anyway. Happy Valentine's Day from someone in a suspiciously empty and unValentiny sort of Dublin hotel room.
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The Graveyard Bookwon a Cybil Award -- which is the children's book award from the blogging community. I was thrilled. All of the Cybil nominees and winners looked good this year, and I'm proud to be among them, and congratulations to everyone involved.
I read the last of “The Graveyard Book” to my class on a gloomy day. For close to an hour there were the sounds of only rain and story. In this novel of wonder, Neil Gaiman follows in the footsteps of long-ago storytellers, weaving a tale of unforgettable enchantment.
Which made me really happy. The sounds of rain and story. Yes, that's what it's all for.
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(About a month ago I'd told my Editor at HarperChildrens that I would send cupcakes for everyone at HarperChildrens if The Graveyard Book ever went back to Number One on the Childrens' list at the NYT. So last week, I sent an enormous number of cupcakes over to HarperChildren's [although ten percent of the cupcakes were paid for by my agent]. I've told them if we ever get to be Number One five weeks in a row, more cupcakes.)
(I twittered my sadness at losing my long-time publisher at William Morrow, Lisa Gallagher. I don't think I mentioned it here. I worked with her for nine years -- she was originally in marketing, and then became my publisher, and when Anansi Boys went to Number 1 on the NYT list, we sat and drank champagne in a busy square together. She was always supportive and I will miss working with her very much, not just because she was the only person who would begin a phone call with a breezy "Hello darling, it's Lisa." I hope she gets a job as good as she is.)
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Let's see.
Anyone who's seen CORALINE and wonders about the design work behind it should go and look at,
They're all awesome artists, but Dan Krall's work actually made me wish that he'd actually illustrated an edition of Coraline. Anyway, go and look at their art: you'll see illustrations for scenes that didn't make it into the finished movie. Like the Dan Krall drawing above.
I really hope there will be an actual Art of Coraline book, to collect all of this stuff, along with the other things you can look at on the videos at http://thinkinganimationbook.blogspot.com/2009/02/coraline.html. At the time of Steve Jones's Coraline: A Visual Companion book (you can browse it here) Laika and Focus weren't able to provide anything much in the way of art as, they explained, very sensibly, they were madly trying to finish a movie (they even cancelled the book at one point, pointing out that they didn't have anyone available to go through the art, as everyone was working on the film, and it took Henry Selick's intervention to get them to provide stills and bring it back from the dead).
Incidentally, if you are confused about which edition of Coraline to get, the ever-terrific School Library Journal has a round up of stuff about me here, and a round-up of all things Coraline here.
Just wanna make a quick comment on Marcel's question, I watched Coraline yesterday here in Brazil and I watched it in 3D. Gotta say the dubbing is awesome. They're all great in what they do, really.
(Did I mention that I ran into Althea Crome in the airport on the way home from Portland last week? Or that just as were about to get off the plane she gave Maddy and me a tiny pair of gloves -- not from the film -- that I treasure, and have to figure out where to keep so they can be safely displayed?)
And my own Valentine's Day wossname for the world -- you can hear Claudia Gonson singing "Bloody Sunrise", arranged and instrumentated by Michael Hearst, over at http://hypem.com/track/672071/Neil+Gaiman-Bloody+Sunrise -- the link doesn't work, but if you click the play triangle, it'll play.
So many messages it's impossible to pick through them or answer them all. (I read them all though.)Am still whirling in a tornado of amazing.
Hi Neil
I heard a rumour somewhere that you might be appearing at the Dublin Film Festival screening of Coraline. Is this true? Because it would be pretty awesome to have you there.
Eagerly anticipating respones Jack
Yup. I'll be there. There will probably be an intro and a Q&A to go along with it.
(Amanda Palmer will be doing a gig at the Sugar Club in Dublin on the evening of the 16th.)
On the 17th, I'll be doing a signing/reading/singing from the WHO KILLED AMANDA PALMER book with special guest, Amanda Palmer (I will not be singing. She will,)at Chapters Bookshop on Parnell Street, at 5.00pm. (Or, if you are an Amanda Palmer/Dresden Dolls fan, Amanda Palmer will be doing a singing and signing with a special guest reader and signer of me on the 17th at 5.00pm.) (Plan is for me to read, her to sing, me to read, her to sing, then both to sign.)
Working Dog Holiday ends today. I will carry the dog downstairs one more time. And then off to the airport, where I will give dog and car to a friend who will drive both of them back to the land of ice and snow, while I begin two and a half weeks of perambulation in support of the Coraline movie.
The first Coraline trailer I've really liked. (It's up at YouTube in HD and is very cool.)
I don't know if you've heard this directly, but I know two people who, while being Gaiman fans, said independently of each other said, "I'm sick of this Coraline hype. Enough already."
While I'm eager to see the picture, I can understand what they perceive as advertising bombardments, be it billboards, web ads, commercials and so on.
I'm sure you would like as many people as possible to see the movie, do you think it's been "a bit much" with all the Coraline stuff out there?
Not really. It's a film without a big name star, handmade in Portland by a first time studio: it's not a film that the world is holding its breath for -- mostly, the world doesn't really even know it exists. The filmmakers have one crack at getting people in to see it on its first week of release, and only one, because, while it will undoubtedly go on to live forever on DVD format (and whatever comes after that), possibly even go on to Nightmare Before Christmas-like longevity, the perception of whether it was a success or a failure is mostly all about how it does when it goes out there on Feb 6th.
I'm proud of what Henry and his astonishing team did, and want as many people to see it as possible.
The reviews will help, but I'm not sure that reviews make as big a difference as simply advertising and letting people know something's out there. (Princess Mononoke was an eye-opener for me in that regard. In its first year it had the top positive review score on Rotten Tomatoes. Didn't get people in to see it.) Word of mouth and "buzz" are difficult, probably impossible to manipulate. So you advertise, and you put the word out to where people who see films congregate.
I was sent the "tracking" for the film the other day, where the various studios and agencies find out what groups are planning right now to go and see what films, and if your friends are males under the age of 25, then all the Coraline promotion is working. Two weeks ago it was ranking very low on the list of films that that group wanted to see. Over the last few days it's spiralled up.
It's hard to promote a film that's as much for adults as it is for kids, easy for something like this to bomb -- or to be perceived as having bombed, which is not the same thing. The advertising is out there for another couple of weeks, and it'll probably get more pervasive as we get closer to the 6th of February, and will not please your friends. And the run up to Coraline will take over this blog more or less completely, I expect, because it's all I'll be doing. And then, after Feb 6th, it will all trail off, and the advertising will die away completely, and it will fade from the blog with occasional splashes of mention if the film does something interesting, or if I go somewhere to help promote it.
(Which reminds me: Jameson Dublin Film Festival. I'll be there on February the 15th, when they will be screening Coraline. And, for anyone in Dublin -- or indeed, in Ireland -- who missed the signing last year, I will be doing a reading and signing in Chapters in Parnell Street on Feb the 17th at 5pm. Perhaps with an as-yet-unnamed Special Musical Guest.)
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I read This Blog of Cheryl Morgan's. Thought "That's bizarre. I mean no-one would actually DO that." Then read around and realised that, yes, there are people who are interpreting the laws to get lead out of products aimed at children as meaning that they have to be kept away from book, with all that printing in it. It's mad and silly, but here's an American Library Association letter explaining that, yes, it's true, and what you can do about it.
Lovely early BLUEBERRY GIRL reviews starting to come in:
Publishers Weekly
In a magical blessing for unconventional girls, Gaiman (The Graveyard Book) addresses the "ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never-you-mind," asking them to shelter and guide an infant girl as she grows. "Help her to help herself,/ help her to stand,/ help her to lose and to find./ Teach her we're only as big as our dreams./ Show her that fortune is blind." Sinuous, rococo lines-the flowing hair, drooping boughs, winding paths that inspired the pre-Raphaelites-spread their tendrils throughout Vess's (The Ladies of Grace Adieu) full-bleed spreads, potent mixtures of the charms of Arthur Rackham, Maxfield Parrish and Cecily Barker's flower fairies. An Art Nouveau-ish font in a blueberry color compounds the sense of fantasy. On each page a different girl-short, tall, white, brown, younger, older-runs or jumps or swims, accompanied by animals meant to guard and protect her. Fans of Gaiman and Vess will pounce on this creation; so too will readers who seek for their daughters affirmation that sidesteps traditional spiritual conventions. All ages. (Mar.)
Kirkus Reviews
A rich and beautiful prayer for a girl. "Ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never-you-mind, / This is a prayer for a blueberry girl." Three women in flowing robes-the appropriately mythological Maiden, Mother and Crone-float in the sky over a small, dancing child trailed by numerous birds of the air. Free her from "nightmares at three or bad husbands at thirty," let her run and dance and grow, teach her and help her find her own truth. The verse is lovely, sinuous and sweetly rhyming, piling on blessings. Vess's precise line-and-color illustrations fill each spread with velvet colors and the iconography of myths and fairy tales, a good match to fantasist Gaiman's words. Plants, animals, sun and meadow appear in elegantly drawn detail, their realism tempered by floating trees and magical flowers. The girl transforms from stanza to stanza and spread to spread, blond or burnished, child or nearly teen. There is nothing cute or cloying here, just beauty, balance and joy. (Picture book. 4-8)
The only Blueberry Girl event will be on Saturday March 7th, at Books of Wonder in New York. Me and Charles Vess, signing books for anyone who comes by, along with a display of the original paintings, a Q&A, and so on. If you're in New York, we'd love to see you -- more details as I get them.
And the next post will probably be all coffee. You lot are amazing.
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Nearly forgot:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/22/1000-novels-fiction-fantasy-introduction Is the introduction page to the Guardian's list of SF, Horror and Fantasy novels that you should read, along with mini-articles recommending other books by Roz Kaveney, Mike Moorcock, Susanna Clarke and others. It's a great list -- and you can have fun arguing over who shouldn't be on it and who was left out.
