Finishing Things

It's 2016, a writing year. On Friday I finished a book I've been working on since 2013 (you will find out what it is sometime in the next few months. Promise). Tomorrow I finish the introduction to it. The world feels a little lighter.

The book I finished is not the big thing I have to do this year -- I think I'm going to fall off the world completely to do that pretty soon. But it's something I'm really proud of nonetheless.

It's really nice not having to do anything but writing.

Having said that, THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS, my huge collection of non-fiction, of essays and speeches and suchlike, is coming out, and I'm even doing an event for it: http://store.unionchapel.org.uk/events/31-may-16-an-evening-with-neil-gaiman--audrey-niffenegger-union-chapel/

I'm not really meant to be doing any events this year, although I'm doing a couple of things that had to be postponed last year when I flew back to the US suddenly to be at a friend's deathbed. *
(Oh the things I've had to say no to.) But I'm doing this one CHEAP SEATS event in the UK. As we get closer I'll announce how it will stream, etc.

This is how they describe it:

To celebrate the publication of Neil Gaiman’s collection of non-fiction, The View from the Cheap Seats, the award-winning author will be joined by Audrey Niffenegger, bestselling author of The Time Traveller’s Wife, at a rare public event in London. The Union Chapel, Islington, will play host to these two literary heavy-weights, as they discuss Gaiman’s latest work, lauded by Stephen Fry as ‘magnificent’, amongst a myriad of other topics sure to delight fans – with a couple of surprises also in store…

Tickets are £20 each, and include a free signed copy of The View from the Cheap Seats for every ticket-holder, which they will receive on the night courtesy of Waterstones. The event will be live-streamed across the globe, via YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, so fans who are unable to attend can also enjoy this special, one-off event. Furthermore, Gaiman and Niffenegger will be answering audience questions, both from within the chapel and from those viewers at home or in bookshops tuning in. Anyone not present at Union Chapel will have the opportunity to submit their own questions via Twitter ahead of the event using the hashtag #CheapSeats.

There are still a few seats left, but not many. Order from http://store.unionchapel.org.uk/events/31-may-16-an-evening-with-neil-gaiman--audrey-niffenegger-union-chapel/

This is the first copy that arrived in my house, a couple of days ago. I'm going to give it, as a graduation present, to Maddy Gaiman, who was about 6 when this blog started and is 21 now. She graduated today from Wake Forest.

Gaiman's Law holds true: when I opened the book for the first time, I saw a typo and my heart sank. I've not found any more, though.

Ash has his first tooth. He's all joy, all the time. It was an especial joy to see him with his brother and his sisters this weekend.

I thought about posting some graduating Maddy photos, but instead decided to link to this page, of Maddy in 2007, aged 12, on the set of Hellboy 2. She took over the blog, and captioned the photos herself. http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/06/photos-yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.html

Nine years have passed since that blog came out, and it feels like yesterday.

And on May 26th, at 9pm, on Sky Arts, LIKELY STORIES begins. Four episodes based on short stories by me, directed by Ian Forsyth and Jane Pollock, with an original soundtrack by Jarvis Cocker. Check out the trailer:

*(One of the things I had to postpone was getting an honorary doctorate at St Andrews. It's now going to happen this year, and I am thrilled about it. https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2016/title,496871,en.php) 

Labels: audrey niffenegger, Gaiman's Laws, Jarvis Cocker, Likely Stories, Maddy Graduates, The View From the Cheap Seats

Pondering Gaiman's Law of Superhero Films

Back in May I posted,

Had a conversation with Paul Levitz the other day about Gaiman's Law of Superhero Movies*, which is: the closer the film is to the look and feel of what people like about the comic, the more successful it is (which is something that Warners tends singularly to miss, and Marvel tends singularly to get right) and the conversation went over to Watchmen, which had Paul explaining to me that the film is obsessive about how close it is to the comic, and me going "But they've changed the costumes. What about Nite Owl?" It'll be interesting to see whether it works or not...

And I wound up pondering that when I noticed that Frank Miller's The Spirit film had racked up a sad little 15% fresh over at Rotten Tomatoes.

The impression I get with Watchmen is that, with whatever changes they've made, and whether or not it works as an adaptation, if they manage to get it released it will do just fine, because there's a tremendous amount of attention that's gone into getting it as close as they can in a movie to the look and feel of Watchmen the comic.

There may be exceptions to Gaiman's law of comic-book inspired movies, but it's definitely the way to bet. The films that look and feel like what people liked about the original comic succeed. The ones that move away from that tend to have a rough time to the degree that they move away from it.

(It doesn't say anything about the quality of the film in question, I should point out. You could make a film you called Batman, in which Batman's costume is pink and green and he's a lawyer who works all day and into the early evening to save a small  health-food franchise from being taken over by a big conglomerate, and at night he goes on a succession of dates with odd people... it might be a wonderful, amusing, strange film, but what people know they want in a Batman film is a Bat-costume and crime-fighting and evil villains and night and Bruce Wayne and the rest of it, and it would be a very bad Batman film and it would fail.)

(And for that matter it doesn't seem to matter if people have read the comics or not. If you get what makes the character work, if you get what people like about it in its platonic ideal, you have a successful movie -- Iron Man being a lovely case in point.)

Which, I suspect, is why Sin City and 300 worked. They were like having the comics happening up on the screen. The thing that people liked about it was there. With The Spirit, what the reader responded to is Eisner's lightness of touch and mastery of story, his humour and his humanity -- and a world that looks like Eisner drew it.  The moment that it's obvious that that isn't there it almost doesn't matter what is there instead. According to Gaiman's Law, the more Sin City looked and felt like what people like about Frank Miller's work on Sin City, the more successful it was going to be with audiences, but the more The Spirit feels like Sin City and not like Will Eisner's The Spirit, the less successful it's going to be.

Ah well.

This is the link to the Will Eisner The Best of the Spirit collection that I did the introduction to. It's a wonderful way to start to discover The Spirit. Go and read it...

...

And here's another video from the talk I gave and interview I did with Henry Jenkins (a man my daughter Holly describes, with awe in her voice, as "The Dude...") at MIT earlier this year. J. Michael Straczynski is going to be the next Julie Schwartz lecturer. Find out about it at Henry's Blog:

(DVD ordering details -- which go to supporting the lecture series --  are here.)

*Not to be confused with Gaiman's Law Of Being An Author, which states that on getting your first published copy of anything, and opening it to the bit you did, you'll see a typo.

Labels: Gaiman's Laws, Henry Jenkins, MIT talk, The Spirit