(Not actually Science Fiction) Double Feature...

As tickets go on sale in half an hour, I thought I had better put something up here about....

“You Show You Mine, I’ll You Show me Yours: The Neil & Amanda Double Features”

When you start a relationship with someone -- long before you get married -- you occasionally get baffled by the films they haven't seen that you think everyone must have seen.

In the case of Amanda and me, we made lists of our favourite films about four years ago and swore that one day we would have a long romantic weekend where we would do nothing but watch each other's films. It's not actually happened. A couple of times, late at night, we've downloaded and watched a film in bed, but the whole planned "I'll show you mine, you show me yours" hasn't happened.

And then we were seeing Nick Flynn talk at the Brattle Theatre, hanging around backstage, and I was reminiscing about doing the CBLDF "Last Angel" Tour stop there over a decade ago, and Amanda was reminiscing about all the times she'd seen things there, and they were doing a Kickstarter to get a digital projector, and we thought it would be good to get involved, and the upshot of it all was...

May 18th and 19th, there will be a double bill each night at the Brattle. I'll show a film I love to Amanda and she'll show one she loves to me. In each case, a film the other one hasn't seen. (I do not know why I haven't seen Santa Sangre. I'd never heard of King of Hearts.) The tickets benefit the Brattle (and the Kickstarter -- which was fully funded -- means we'll be going out to eat first of all with people who backed it at that rate.) We'll introduce the films, probably talk afterwards about what we thought of the films we saw that night...

And the films are:

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Saturday, May 18

DROWNING BY NUMBERS
Introduction by Neil Gaiman
at 6:30pm | Tickets (on sale today at 3PM)

(1988) dir Peter Greenaway w/Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson, Joely Richardson, Bernard Hill, Jason Edwards [118 min]
Three women in the same family (all named Cissie Colpitts) each drown their troublesome husbands – and convince the local coroner to help cover up the crimes. It sounds simple but in the hands of masterful visual artist Peter Greenaway, the film becomes a baroque meditation on the nature of life and games – and the game of life.

SANTA SANGRE
Introduction by Amanda Palmer
at 9:15pm | Tickets (on sale today at 3PM)

(1989) dir Alejandro Jodorowsky w/Axel Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra [123 min]
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s wildly unrestrained flights of cinematic psychedelia are legendary midnight movies and SANTA SANGRE is no exception. Fenix, the scion of a circus family has entered an asylum after witnessing his mother commit a heinous crime and get both her arms cut off. Eventually she secures his release and forces him to become her arms.

“This is a movie like none I have seen before, a wild kaleidoscope of images and outrages, a collision between Freud and Fellini. It contains blood and glory, saints and circuses, and unspeakable secrets of the night. And it is all wrapped up in a flamboyant parade of bold, odd, striking imagery, with Alejandro Jodorowsky as the ringmaster.” – Roger Ebert

…………………

Sunday, May 19

IF…
Introduction by Neil Gaiman
at 6:30pm | Tickets  (on sale today at 3PM)

(1968) dir Lindsay Anderson w/Malcolm McDowell, David Wood, Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan, Rupert Webster [111 min]
Lindsay Anderson’s searing excoriation of British boys school traditions features the screen debut of Malcolm McDowell.
Digital Presentation

KING OF HEARTS
Introduction by Amanda Palmer
at 9:15pm | Tickets  (on sale today at 3PM)

(1966) dir Philippe de Broca w/Alan Bates, Genevieve Bujold, Adolfo Celi, Jean-Claude Brialy [102 min]
This counter-culture cult classic screened for over five years straight in Cambridge during the late ‘60s and one can see why. Alan Bates plays a Scottish WWI soldier dispatched to disarm a bomb left by the retreating Germans in a French town. When he arrives he discovers that the supposedly abandoned hamlet is actually still inhabited – what he doesn’t realize is that it’s been taken over by the cheerful lunatics from the local asylum.

……….

Tickets for individual films are $10 general admission; $8 students, seniors, Brattle members
Double feature tickets are $15 general admission; $12 students, seniors, Brattle members
A limited number of full weekend passes are available for $30
Brattle member passes will be accepted for individual screenings at the door only.
We strongly advise that you buy tickets in advance.

tickets will be on sale starting at 3 pm EST today (friday april 26th)

ticket link: bit.ly/YouShowMe

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If it's fun we may do it again.

Labels: Brattle, films

Religiously interrupting your being since February 2001

I'm slightly brain-dead right now -- yesterday I flew to LA, had a late-afternoon meeting about a movie I'm going to be writing based on one of my books (I don't think I can be more specific until all the contracts are signed or at least I know that I've got an okay to talk about it) which was really good. My producer is a writer, and he and I sat and agreed with each other about what I was going to be doing. The worst thing in writing something for someone else, and I've found this several times over the years, especially in movies, is where you talk to an editor or an executive and you think that you're talking about the same thing. Then you go away and do what you thought you were talking about and hand it in and find that you were quite wrong, and while you were describing (say) a romantic comedy with ghosts in they were buying a scary ghost story with perhaps some love in, and nobody is happy and the project is doomed. Anyway, this one will I think be just fine -- I felt like we were talking about the same book and the same movie.

Then my cell phone rang, and I found myself heading out to an Emergency Room at a hospital to see an embarrassed friend who had just had been admitted to the ER and had no desire to be there. On the whole it wasn't as intense as ER nor as funny as Scrubs but I definitely felt like I had wandered into American TV Fiction Land. Back to the hotel late, and worked on an overdue article on Crossover Fiction for the UK Writers and Artists Yearbook, because they had asked me to write something for them, and because the 1983 edition of the yearbook was the single most important and useful thing I owned when I set out to become a journalist.

A five in the morning wake-up call and off to the airport to fly home. Finished the Yearbook article in the Northwest Lounge. Sent it off. I slept a bit on the plane. I'd heard that "crippling" snow was expected in Minneapolis, but it was actually rain and didn't turn into snow until I had got home safely. And it was vital that I made it back in time because I had to get back home for...

The Sleepover. At which I was going to be The Adult. Starring Maddy and five of her thirteen/fourteen year old friends, at which I get to serve as chauffeur (to cinema and back) adviser ("you could probably put more cheese on those nachos"), placer-of-things-into-oven, and most importantly, because they had all just seen Prom Night and were a bit skittish, offerer of helpful advice ("You'll all want to stick together this evening. It's a big old house after all, and given the people who've died here over the years... well, I've said too much already..."). It's going on as I type this.

...

An article on writers blogging from The Age, in which we learn that this blog has jumped the shark, and is no longer as good as once it was. Probably true, although over seven years I've noticed it tends to go through phases. Still, if I do go on these research expeditions this summer I'll probably take a break from blogging while I'm doing it, and put it all into notebooks.

Lovely article on fantasy in the Daily Telegraph by Mark Chadbourn. For whose book The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke, I once wrote an introduction. I'll see if I can find it and put it up here. It's mostly about Richard Dadd, another of my obsessions.

...

Hi Neil,


I thought you might find this interesting: http://www.thedesignfiles.net/2008/04/interview-nicholas-jones.html


The idea of making such amazing sculptures out of books fascinates me (and makes me cringe a little bit--"no, not the books!"--but still, it's beautiful :)).

They are beautiful, aren't they?

You write great books. In fact, at one time you were my favorite writer, but then I picked up Viriconium by M. John Harrison only because in small black letters, near the bottom of the cover it says "With a Foreword by Neil Gaiman".

Now M. John Harrison is my favorite writer, and Viriconium is my bible. You knocked yourself out of the top spot. Introductions are like small bridges from author to author. Thank you for building so many.

Ironically yours,

Evan


P.S. The introduction is quite good.

You're very welcome. Mike Harrison is one of my favourite writers -- I'm delighted that he's now yours.

just wanted to tell you that your work religiously interrupts my being!!!!!

I hope that's good.

I'm a little forlorn at the moment. I had a wonderful talk with one of my professors today about how much we admire and enjoy your books. But that was following a very tough talk about how I have to rewrite my fiction piece for him. Again. Reason? Because he didn't believe character--due to the profession I labeled her with (Police officer)--think certain thoughts or be worried about things or would ever wish upon a star.

Police officers are humans too, right? They can still be disturbed by a rape case despite the fact that they're a seasoned officer? They still feel emotions?

[sigh] This rant was inspired by the fact that I read on your page that about 95% of what you write in your first draft ends up in your final product. Has that always been the case for you? Was there a time when someone refused your work because they point blank believed what you wrote is unrealistic? Or because you typically write in a magical fantasy world, do they give you certain allowances?

A student who knows her professor reads this page, and therefore remains nameless,

(despite the fact that she gave enough details that her professor will recognize her anyway...)

me.

Let's see. To answer the obvious questions first, was there a time someone turned down something I wrote because it was unrealistic? Probably, although nothing comes to mind. Normally they'd turn things down for just not being good enough.

You never have to convince a reader that Police Officers would wish on a star. You have to convince your readers that that police officer would wish on a star. You have to make someone rounded enough that the reader would half-expect the police officer in question to wish on a star.

Nobody gives you allowances for fantasy, just as nobody gives you allowances for romance or history or even non-fiction. It's called suspension of disbelief, and when you're writing it's what you're doing and what you're building, and it's soap-bubble thin. It pops easily. (I remember once being taken to task by Rachel Pollack for something in a short story I'd written. "But that's the only bit in the story that's true!" I told her. "It doesn't matter if it's true," she said. "What matters is if, in the context of the story, it's believable." And I knew that she was right.)

Incidentally, I've always found the police, in the US and the UK, tremendously helpful to writers, or at least to me. There's nothing like spending a day riding along with a cop, or being walked through a police station and getting to ask nosy questions for giving a writer confidence in what they're writing. And confidence is most of the battle.

The other day I was shopping in a used book store and suddenly realized that I don't know how authors get paid. I understand advances and royalties, etc. (at least well enough) but:

1. Do authors get royalties on new books and used? Sales numbers are only on new books, so...

2. And book clubs - anything from there?


I make enough to buy my books new, but haven't always - I'm not trying to disparage used books shops and libraries. If buying books new means more money for the writers (& illustrators), which leads to more books, then, well, I'll buy them new.


Thanks, looking forward to "The Graveyard Book" (although I wish it were out now to coincide with the dreary spring weather in the upper midwest)


ethan

No, authors don't get paid anything for books in used bookstores -- but then, we've already been paid for them. Someone bought them once, and I'm happy for them to be resold. (As I said in Wired (full reply by me here) and repeated in this journal,

If you buy one of my books (or are sent it to review) it's yours. You bought it (or were given it). You can sell it on. I don't have any more of a problem with Amazon listing the used copies than I do bookstores having used book sections. It's their store.

You can buy a book new, buy it in hardback or wait for the paperback, find it used or as a collectible. I don't mind. What I care about most is that people are reading.

As I said when I discussed this at length in the piece I put up on this journal that was quoted in Wired last month, books don't come with single-end-user licenses, and I think that's a good thing.

And six years on, I've not changed my mind.

Writers do fine from book clubs, too -- the book club isn't paying a royalty on each book. Usually they'll pay a fee to the publisher, which is split with the author, for permission to publish a book (often at a smaller size or on cheaper paper than the original) or they will contract with the publisher to overprint copies for them as part of the original print run (so the Book Club editions of the original Stardust hardcover are just like the DC edition, identical in size and binding and paper, they just ran off a few thousand at the end of the print run with the Book Club logo on).

Hi Neil!

I just read a book by a German author who borrowed some stuff from your novels, especially Neverwhere. The story takes place in (a) London Below and Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemaar show up as well (with different names), and some other details were terribly familiar.

I was just wondering what you think of somebody else using "your" ideas & characters. Is it something that annoys you? Do you feel honoured? Do you even care?

I hope you haven't answered this question already - if yes, I couldn't find it and would love a hint in the right direction.

Thanks in advance!

L.


There's a saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the truth is that mostly I feel flattered when I hear about things like this. It's classier when the people doing it list you as an influence in interviews or thank you in the acknowledgments or whatever, but it doesn't bother me either way.

Labels: book sculptures, films, imitation, m. john harrison, suspension of disbelief, the sleepover, used books, when this was good

Why I am not much of a prophet really

Following on from yesterday's post, I was looking for a link, and wound up on a five year old post from this blog. And on rereading it it made me smile, enough that I thought I'd repost some bits of it here. All of my guesses were interestingly wrong.

(The unnamed Zemeckis project I refer to is The Fermata; the unnamed Dave McKean thing would have been the as-yet unwritten and untitled MirrorMask.)

Last night's e-mail brought Henry ("Nightmare Before Christmas") Selick's second draft script for CORALINE. Henry's first draft of the script was utterly faithful to the text of the book -- if anything, too faithful. This version was both looser and truer to the spirit of the book -- he'd added a character, made the beats in the first act slightly different, but the changes were the all kind of changes that need to exist when translating a book into a film, and the core characters -- Coraline, her parents, the Cat, the Other Mother -- and the story are still just the same. Very creepy and a great deal of fun. Apparently it was very well received by the studio.

It's weird -- there are so many movie projects out there based on stories or books of mine that I (a) lose track and (b) assume as a general rule for peace of mind that none of them will happen. But i think we're getting to the point where the probabilities are starting to suggest that something has to happen.

Really we need a tote board, with Coraline, Good Omens, Murder Mysteries, Stardust, Books of Magic, Neverwhere, Death, and (trailing way behind) Sandman on it, along with anything I've forgotten or intentionally not mentioned (like the Robert Zemeckis project, or the Dave McKean film), not to mention various of the odd projects I've collaborated on over the years, like Beowulf, or Interworld, which, just as I'm certain they're utterly dead, stir in their graves and yawn and blink and sit up and ask for coffee. I think Good Omens will probably come in first, but an outsider like Books of Magic or Murder Mysteries might come in and pip it at the post....

Proving that I was a very bad guesser. And five years later, Henry's Coraline is in production. (If you read this very technical blog entry you'll know a few things that haven't yet been widely announced.) Dave McKean's MirrorMask was the first film to come out. Stardust will be second, in August in the US, and Beowulf (which I'd assumed was dead back then) is third, in November.

Coraline will be fourth, around Hallowe'en 2008.

Books of Magic is currently in suspended animation -- as is, I guess, Good Omens, unless someone wants to give T. Gilliam 70 million dollars. Neverwhere, having been pretty much dead for years has recently pushed its way out of the grave and is currently lurching enthusiastically around the village terrorising villagers, or at least, I've just been asked to do a rewrite on a draft of the script I did in early 2000. And then, of course, there's still Death.

...

While this is a question that pertains to my "homework" (my Master's thesis, to be precise), I'm not asking you to do it for me. :) Mostly, I wanted to know, in your personal opinion (mostly for a quotable quote and another person besides Ursula K. Le Guin to cite on the subject, though she's wonderful in and of herself) whether you've noticed a difference in the reception of Fantasy in Britain and in America. Le Guin thinks there is (or was; that essay was written in the 70s), but you share your time with Britain and America enough that I figured you'd have a perception of the difference--if there is one.Thanks so much! Shiloh C.

I'm not sure which essay you're referring to, and I'm not really certain what you're asking. Are there differences between critics writing about fantasy in the US and the UK, or fans, or educated readers? Perhaps, but I don't really see enormous differences between them these days -- I suspect that the differences have been eroded somewhat in the last 30 years. I don't know if you surveyed Americans and got their favourite books, you'd get quite as much fantasy as you did when the BBC did it to the British(http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml) (I counted 37 fantasy titles. Your numbers may differ) but you might.

Hi Neil ; I purchased the audio collection from itunes a while back. My son just loves listening to it. His favorite is the Wolves in the Walls. The interview Maddy did was very cute. I was wondering if you plan on continuing to publish audio books, both children's stories as well as novels ? I completely agree with you that there is something special about an author reading their stories. Take care and best wishes ~ william

Definitely. Actually today I got CDs of both M is for Magic (read by me) and Interworld (read by Christopher Evan Welch and I'm listening to it as I type this. He does a lovely job). Later this year the full audio of Neverwhere should come out.


Here's a taster for the Interworld audio. It's tracks 1 (which is the title and copyright), 2 3 and 4 of the audio CD, in MP3 format. It's the first couple of chapters...

1-01%20Track%2001.mp3
1-02%20Track%2002.mp3
1-03%20Track%2003%204.mp3
1-04%20Track%2004%205.mp3

Labels: American and British Fantasy, audio books, film rights, films