Neil Gaiman: Not all entertainment for kids should be a little bit scary. I remember the sheer joy, as a kid, of watching things like Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, for example. That had moments in it that are still engraved on the back of my head: The witch becoming the old cackling hag, and getting struck by lightening and stuff. I was hiding behind the chairs in the cinema, watching The Wizard of Oz on re-release in the U.K., as a boy, at the age of five. The witch would come on and I would be underneath the chair, listening. For most people, it’s the monkeys. For me, it was the witch. I think that a little bit of fear is a wonderful thing, but it’s what you’re using it for. In Coraline, what you’re telling them is, “Here’s something big and it’s something scary, and it’s something that’s worth being in a story.” She’s a smart kid and she doesn’t have magic powers. She’s not the chosen one. There’s nothing cool and magical going on. She’s just like you, and she’s going to fight this thing and she’s going to win. That, for me, is the important thing. And, for most kids, but not necessarily most parents, they read Coraline as an adventure. It’s somebody their height, who goes up against something nasty, and you read it kind of like James Bond. Of course, you need somebody evil to go up against, otherwise you don’t have a story. For adults, it tends to be much scarier. You’ve got a number of things going on, one of which is that you have a completely different genre of story. Adults are experiencing a story about a child in danger. We are hard-wired to worry about that. For an adult, a story about a child in danger is big and scary and dangerous. That grabs your heart and worries you, whether you want to or not. And, also, adults get to watch it, and all sorts of long forgotten and long buried, repressed and abandoned childhood memories start coming to the fore and worrying them. And, children don’t have that. They don’t have repressed childhood memories ‘cause that’s where they live and that’s what they’re doing.
Crave Online: It seems like Other Mother would have had Coraline, if she just hadn’t insisted on sewing buttons on her eyes. Why didn’t she just let that one go?
Neil Gaiman: You would have to ask her. That’s definitely part of it. Coraline has to say yes. When I was writing it, I liked the idea that Coraline was going to have to give into this thing. There’s a point where you give in. Either you give in because you are attracted by all of the beauty, or you give in because you’re terrified. In neither case does Coraline give in. She’s smart and she keeps fighting.
Crave Online: You sent Henry Selick your manuscript before the novel was published. Why him and why this book? And, how did you see them working together?
Neil Gaiman: In 1993, when only a portion of Coraline existed and I still hadn’t written the rest, I went and saw Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Being the kind of person who sticks around and sees credits, I noticed that it was actually directed by a man named Henry Selick. I really liked it and I really liked the sensibility, and I was fascinated by what he did with stop-motion. Back in England, my favorite filmmaker had been Jan Švankmajer, the Czech stop-motion guy, who I just think is amazing. With Henry, you have that kind of sensibility, but much, much more mainstream, and he had a willingness to go dark when dark was necessary and knew that this stuff was fun and cool. It’s that joy of a ghost train. You plunge into the dark and you know you’re going to come out okay, and it’s going to be fun and maybe funny and cool. I just loved that sensibility, which meant that when I saw that he directed James and the Giant Peach, which was not a film I would have gone to, I went to see it, just because I really liked Henry Selick stuff. When I finished Coraline, I gave it to my agent, Jon Levin, and I said, “Get it to Henry Selick.”
Neil Gaiman: The truth is, that’s a much bigger question because it’s, “How do you decide if something’s going to be a graphic novel, a short story, a poem, a radio play, a novel, a film, a TV episode?” And the answer is that I don’t really know. Normally, it’s what I see it as in my head, when I start. If it feels like it should be prose, then I try it in prose. If it feels like it’s probably a film, I’ll try writing a film script. It’s whatever feels right, but sometimes I’m wrong. I originally thought Anansi Boys, which was my last adult novel, was going to be a movie, and I tried writing the movie for years and it never really went anywhere. And, one day, I was sitting over lunch with my book editor at William Morrow in New York, and she said, “What kind of stuff have you got going on?,” and I started telling her about Anansi Boys. She picked up her fork and started waving it me, saying, “It’s a novel. That’s a novel. You’re telling me a novel.” I said, “Really?” and she said, “Yes!” And, she was the one holding the fork, so I went and wrote the book. That one was forked.
Crave Online: How do you feel about Neil Jordan taking on The Graveyard Book, and why was he the right person?
Neil Gaiman: The Graveyard Book was snatched up before it was published. We had a lot of film companies circling it like sharks, all offering very different things. And, the one that I went with, in the end, was Framestore, who were an English animation and special effects house that just started getting into production, but I really liked what they were saying and I liked what they seemed to be responding to, in The Graveyard Book. The first lunch that I had with the guys from Framestore was in London. We settled down for a lunch, and it was really just to talk. We weren’t having the lunch to pick a director. We were just having the lunch to chat. And, we got to the point where we realized that we’d spent the last 25 or 30 minutes just trying to have the kind of conversation that establishes that we do all have the same kind of film in our heads. There is nothing worse, in any kind of collaboration or partnership, when one person thinks you’re making a wacky action movie, and another person thinks it’s a buddy movie. I’ve been in those situations, where everybody’s hearing what they want to hear and then somebody hands in a treatment or a script, and you’re going, “Oh, my God, it’s now off the rails.” What was interesting was that the three of us at the table kept going back to The Company of Wolves, in terms of what we were talking about. It really was that that wound up jerking us over into, “Well, let’s talk about Neil Jordan. He’s a writer and director. He’s a really good writer. He’s a novelist as well.” He is one of those people who just makes movies, and sometimes they’re hits and sometimes they aren’t, but they are a tremendous body of work, when you look at it. He’s comfortable with special effects, he’s really good with actors, and all of his films have a wonderful texture and look to them. If you want somebody to direct a film that is all set in a little graveyard on a hill, and that covers 16 years, how are you going to do it? So, we sent the book to Neil and, the next thing I knew, I was having lunch with Neil Jordan, and he was saying, “Okay, I want to do it. I’ve read it and I want to make this film.” And, I said, “Oh, okay.” So, that was incredibly easy.
Crave Online: You've had a few films made of your work and others that faltered in development. How do you let go and let other artists adapt it?
Neil Gaiman: I was really, really lucky, when I was a very young man. My first graphic novel was a thing called Violent Cases. It had no sooner come out as a graphic novel than I was approached by a theater company who said, “We want to put this on stage,” and I said, “Great!” They said, “We’re going to be completely faithful to the graphic novel. Not a word is going to change. Nothing is going to change. It’s going to be completely faithful.” And, I said, “Great!” And, I sat there in the audience, on the first night, able to talk along with the actors because they hadn’t moved a comma, and it was terrible. It was really awful. Moments that were huge and powerful in the book became nothing on the stage. Moments that were meant to be tiny little nothings in the book, by virtue of now being on stage, became huge and important moments of stage magic. And, it was the biggest lesson I could ever have learned. You don’t transliterate from one medium to another, you translate. Simply by virtue of being in a different medium, everything has changed anyway. So, when I read Henry’s first draft script, which was incredibly faithful, I was the one on the phone to Henry saying, “It doesn’t work. It’s really, really faithful Henry. Now, go make a movie. Go open it up and put yourself in.” The thing in my head is not intrinsically a film. It’s a book. It’s meant to be a book. What it exists as is a book. For example, Coraline has no conversations in the book, in the real world, with any adult who actually listens to her and answers anything that she has said. None of the adults actually pay enough attention to what she’s saying to actually hear her. Mostly, they get her name wrong. That’s great in a book because you are down there, at her point of view, and you’re going along with her. In a film, you’re kinda screwed because you’re now in a world in which you just want her to be able to talk to somebody. So, Henry created Wybie, the kid next door. People got very upset. They were saying, “Why did you let Henry put a boy in it? Does he come in and save her?” No, he really doesn’t. Don’t worry. He’s the irritating kid next door, but he’s there and she can talk to him, and it’s great.
Crave Online: With as long and successful a career as you’ve had now, how does it feel to still receive recognition, like with the Newberry Medal for The Graveyard Book?
Neil Gaiman: The Newberry Medal is, as my daughter Maddy would say, made of awesome. Some years ago, I got an inquiry from the Pulitzer committee, and I had to explain that, “No, I was not American,” and they went away. And, when Coraline came out, we got an inquiry from the National Book Award people, and I had to explain that, “No, I was not American,” and they went away. The Newberry is the only major award which is open to Americans and residents. I can’t get a Pulitzer, and I can’t get a National Book Award, but I can get a Newberry. [Laughs] In addition to which, this is the 88th Newberry ever to go out, and most of the people who have gotten them are dead. So, I’m part of this incredibly cool, incredibly small group of people who’ve got Newberrys. When I was a kid, I remember picking up A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle, and it had the words “Newberry Medal” on the back, and I had no idea what that meant. All I knew was that I had just read one of the coolest books I had ever read, at the age of 8, and I was going to keep looking for this thing. When I saw Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, and when I saw From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, or Susan Cooper’s books, or Lloyd Alexander’s High King books, they had “Newberry Medal winner” on them, and I bought them. The idea that my book has gotten to join that elite, it’s awesome. It’s magic. It’s wonderful.
Neil Gaiman: Batman is going very well. My work is done, which is a wonderful feeling. And, it’s now up to the amazing Andy Kubert, who is drawing as fast as he can. It was an honor. The point where somebody can say to you, “Would you like to write the last Batman story, that will be the last issue of Batman and the last issue of Detective?,” it’s like, “Yeah!” You don’t get to do that very often. In fact, it’s probably the only time that it’s ever going to happen. So, I was thrilled that I got to do it. And, killing Batman, of course, is always fun. Everybody should do it.
Neil Gaiman: It might, this time. [Laughs]
Neil Gaiman: I wanted to do it for Sandman’s 20th anniversary, and DC Comics were of the opinion that, I should do it under the same royalty and financial terms of which I wrote Sandman in 1987. And, my opinion, honestly, was that I thought things should be a bit better, so I never did it. I would have loved to have done it.
