Online desde: 05/01/2000       
Última atualização: 21/11/09       

UHQ: There's a lot of talk about the Death movie and that you are going to direct it. Is that true?

Gaiman: Yes that's true. If it happens it's true

Neil Gaiman might be the director, as well as the scriptwriter, of the Death movie.

UHQ: Is the project green lighted?

Gaiman: Right now the light is amber, but we are moving ahead. I handed in a first draft script to Warner. And there is Warner and another production company. Warner read the script and loved it and the production company read the script and hated it. So they fired the production company and they are getting a new production company on board which is kinda cool.

Many many things could go wrong between here and shooting. For example, I could write a script that is too good. I could write a script that is good enough. That if it starts to float around Hollywood and somebody like Robert Zemeckis sees it, they could phone up Warner and say: "You know I really would like to direct that Death thing."

DAll of a sudden I could find myself in an office in Hollywood with somebody saying, "you know it says in your contract that if you don't direct it than we have to pay you all this money for the script."

Because I'm writing the script for Death, at basic writer's guild rights, which is way way way below what I charge to write a movie, I'm probably ¾ of a million dollars now for a script. I'm writing that for 25-50 thousand dollars.

They could say: "hey we have good news for you, here's your check, somebody else is going to be directing."

All these things could happen. But first it's Hollywood, which means that nothing could happen. At any point in time I think the statistic is somewhere between 18 and 30 scripts that are developed, which means they go to draft after draft for every movie that gets made. So the chance for any movie to get made is 20 to 1.

UHQ: It's also known that The Sandman project is so bad right now that you don't want to have anything to do with it. What's exactly is happening there?

Gaiman: I never wanted to be a part of it, which I think is such a good place to be, not being a part of it. They started off with a script from Elliot Rossio, which I thought it was ok, then they went with a Roger Avary script which I thought it was Ok..

UHQ: Wasn't Peter Guber that got involved and it got really bad?

Gaiman: No, it was Jon Peters. Jon Peters decided to make the script more like the kind of things he likes to produce. You know, fighting and so on. And I just got sent another outline the other day, for another movie a lot like the really bad one. It's always the same. They want a love interest now, for the Sandman. They want the Corinthian to be the big bad guy. He's like the Sandman only more powerful. And they want them to fight and for the Corinthian to menace to kidnap his girlfriend. It's just stupid.

Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman's project for English TV network BBC.

UHQ: What happened to Neverwhere? Why it didn't hit?

Gaiman: Didn't hit in what way? The movie or?

UHQ: I mean the TV Series. It hasn't been show here in Brazil.

Gaiman: Oh, it has not been shown in many places. Most of the reason why it hasn't been shown in many places is that BBC filmed on video. I still don't understand, to this day, why they did it like that, because they told us as we started: the only rule we have is that it has to be shot on video.

Which made everything look ugly. We shot everything ion location and it still looks like we shot on Dr. Who sets. Because it's video.

But also meant that maybe three TV stations in the world will take it. Most TV stations look at it and they go it's video we don't want it. It's looks like Dr. Who.

And I still don't know why BBC did it, at the time when X-Files been shot on film, you know, why didn't they shoot on film? It would have added 50 thousand dollars to the cost of each episode I think. But it also would have meant it would have been a bigger seller around the world, and make a lot of money back.

HBO said: "Hey we loved this, we would love to show it, but it's on video we won't show it."

UHQ: Let's get back to Comics... You once said you wanted to write Batman, why?

Gaiman: I would love to do a Batman's story, because he's so complex, and such a pliable character. The best thing about batman is that he has around 60 years. And all this time they did one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand or three hundred thousand bad stories with him and maybe only one hundred, two hundred or three hundred good ones.

I love the character. I would be very happy to do some work with him. I almost did it with Simon Bisley. I signed up with DC Comics years ago, but it never happened.

UHQ: What do you expect from Dark Knight strikes Again?

Gaiman: I expect it to be as good as what Frank (Miller) told me, the night on the ship a year ago. Frank started to tell me. We stayed up all night until 4 o'clock in the morning with him saying this is what I'm gonna do…

I gave him one idea for it, which we will see if he uses it.

Scene from Preacher - Cassidy: Blood & Whiskey, suposedly showing Neil Gaiman

UHQ: There's a Preacher edition were Jesse Custer meets a character that's has your face…

Gaiman: I've got pissed off about that. I phoned Steve Dillon. I said: "Steve friend, is that meant to be me? Are you making fun of me?" He said: "no, it doesn't look like you". He said: "I've known you for long enough that if I wanted to draw you it would look like you". Then I think.. mmm you know, it doesn't look like me.

I mean Steve has known me for along enough time that if Steve wanted to draw somebody he would not draw just somebody in dark glasses and dark hair. He would draw somebody who looked like me.

UHQ: And your relation to Garth Ennis?

Gaiman: It's good.

UHQ: Two questions into one. What comics did you read recently? What artists and writers do you admire?

Gaiman: What am I reading? The last thing that I've read, just before I left the house, which I loved was Eddie Campell's book How to be an artist. Which I think should be made compulsory reading to everybody. It's not only a really good comic but it's like the flip side to understanding comics. What it's like on the ground. I think Eddie Campbell is a genius.

If Jack Kirby was the king of comics, and he was the muscle, then Will Eisner is still the heart.

I think Dave Sim, even though I sometimes have no idea why he's doing what's he's doing, he is still an astonishing cartoonist. You just look at the latest issue and all these sheep. Have you seen the latest Cerebus?

UHQ: We've seen many, but not the latest one.

Gaiman: The new one has Cerebus working on a sheep farm. And he's carrying the sheep around, and the expressions on the face of the sheep make the whole thing magic.

I think Jeff Smith is a genius. I love Charles Vess's work. Still love the Hernandez.

UHQ: What you think o Mike Mignola?

Gaiman: He's a very fine artist but I never got into his writing in the same way.

UHQ: You don't like Hellboy?

Gaiman: Oh, I like Hellboy, but, it doesn't do it for me like… You know, I tend, with Hellboy, to look at the pictures, rather than go oh my god, what beautiful writing, the writing is solid, but he's not Alan Moore, he's not Warren Ellis.

UHQ: How would you fix the current market crisis?

Samir Naliato and Neil Gaiman, during the Press Conference in Rio de Janeiro

Gaiman: Ooofff, that's an easy one… (Laughter) Just fix this... (Laughter)

My only solution to the comics crisis is: I will write a good comic, that human beings, and not comic collectors, will like to read. That's how I did it. It worked for me for seven years. By the time we got to Sandman 75, we were outselling Batman and Superman. We had 100 thousand readers. We had that when the top-selling comics were selling a million, because they were selling by the case to gullible children.

And then when the market crashed we had 100 thousand readers. You could actually watch us month by month go up the bestsellers list, with the same sales. We never sold on funny covers; we never sold on the promise of naked breasts. We sold because it was a good thing that people wanted to read. Now the last issue of Sandman came out 5 years ago. We sell as many sandman graphic novels every month as we did 5 years ago. They sell through bookstores as much as comic stores. But every year, over a 100 thousand graphic novels are sold. Year in, year out. The comic isn't published anymore and people go out and buy it because it is good reading.

How would I fix this? I would try and get a diversity of good comics for people. I think it's really good that DC is doing these Cartoon Network comics, because they are comics for little kids. You need to teach kids how to read comics; otherwise the audience will not appear from nowhere.

But I think you have to give people a reason to sticking around. The day after they realizes that it doest matter how many times Dr. Octopus gets killed he still gonna come back. Nothing is ever gonna change in a superhero comic. But that's 'fine when you are 13, you don't need things to change. All you want is the power fantasy You wanna be stuck in traffic in São Paulo and go: If I was the Flash I would be back by now! That's all you want when you are 13. By the time you are 17-18 you want something else. I figure the main thing in comics is the diversity.

UHQ: If you were watching the Harvey Awards this year and Frank Miller invited you to go up there and tore the Wizard magazine with him… what would you do?

Gaiman: Geeez, oh boy. I think that Wizard magazine has done an awful lot of harm to comics. I think chiefly because you have an art form. You have something that really is or could be an art form. And then you have something like Wizard magazine, which is trying to sell comics as big-breasted collectibles for stupid people. And you just wanna say: Ok, if you people only shut up!

UHQ: Why the British comics never happened? You export a lot of talent but you don't have a thriving market?

Halo Jones

Gaiman: I don't know. I think it's probably a good thing, because if we did, we would not be working for America. I still don't know. When you looked at something and the best thing that has been produced in the last 30 years it's 2000 AD and the worst thing that is produced is 2000 AD. 200 AD got as good as The Ballad of Halo Jones book 3, that is the pinnacle, they never anything else that good. I don't know. I wish I could give you an answer. I think that part of it is that the British don't like, don't trust and don't really believe in super-heroes. So whenever British writers, writes super-heroes, we always do it from a perspective of a people that do not really believe.

UHQ: It seems you have similar problems than those we face here.

Cover of the TPB edition of Sandman - Season of the Mists

Gaiman: I think it's very true anyway. The English comic tradition is of cheaply weekly comics. That is the tradition. That is why 2000Ad still works. It's a cheaply weekly. Getting the English to buy things that are different than that is difficult. I do know that Titan Books sold over a quarter of a million Sandman graphic novels (the trade paperbacks) in England. That's quite a lot of books, and that doesn't include any that came from DC. So obviously English people are buying the graphic novels.

I mean while this was going on, while I was writing Sandman, I was never particularly bothered when people said, "why aren't you writing an English comic?" I would say I am writing an English comic. It gets printed in Canada. I'm writing a comic in England, that the publisher is an international multinational, Time-Warner, which exists everywhere, it's printed in Canada and is shipped backed to England. In what way this is more important, or less valid than going up to Northampton, going up to somebody with offices on the east end of London and having it been printed in Scotland. The readers are still there, the readers are still reading it, and that's the important thing for me.

UHQ: Who are your favorite European artists

Gaiman: My favorite of all the European artists is Moebius. Because he can do more with less, than any other artists I know.

UHQ: Do you plan to work with him?

Gaiman: I would love to. I would work with him tomorrow if he wanted to.

UHQ: Do you have any intention to work with Milo Manara?

Gaiman: No. I was trying to give an example at the Rio press conference. I was trying to put it in context at the press conference. I was saying, we are looking at lots of European artists and lots of artists form around the world to do some of Endless stories. And they said could you give us an example. What kind of stories you will write. And I said I don't know; right now we are trying to find the perfect artist for the stories. But I said as far as I'm concerned the perfect artist for Desire would be Milo Manara. Who else could you want? The great thing about Manara, everybody can keep their clothes on for 20 pages and still it would be the sexist thing you ever read.

So Manara would be far and away my first choice for desire. I think the odds aren't too good that I'll get Manara, because every time I spoke with his agent, Rafa, in Spain, he said Manara does what he wants to do, so you know I have no idea. But that would be my first choice.

Scene from Princess Mononoke, feature lenght anime of Hayao Miyazaki, that was a huge success in Japan, adapted to english by Neil Gaiman.

UHQ: You have strong ties with the orient, works like Sandman: Dream Hunters and the adaptation of Princess Mononoke. What do you think of Manga?

Gaiman: I like some of them. Not as a whole. But I think they do the opposite of what I want to do. Most of them are trying to reproduce an almost cinematic experience with the speed of reading. As you watch somebody reads a manga, Flip, flip, flip, there's a speed of reading that's the opposite of what I am doing. I am creating something that I want you to spend 10 minutes on a page and then turn to the next one.

UHQ: But you still enjoy them?

Gaiman: It depends on the artists. There are as many lazy manga artists as there are lazy super-hero artists. I think he shorthand's of manga are shorthands of a super-heroes, the giant eyes and no noses, are as stupid as the huge muscles and the Rob Liefeld teeth with 40 teeth. Yoshitake Amano, Otomo and Miusake are artists.

UHQ: What's your opinion about comics on the Internet?

Gaiman: I think comics on the Internet will only work when people don't have to read a message saying, "loading page, this will take some time, you better make a coffee". When that happens, then we can have comics on the Internet.

Comics are made so you sit and read. It's not something you do when you have two hours available and nothing else to do, so you go to the computer and start downloading.

UHQ: This is your second trip tp Brazil. What are your opinions about the local fans?

Gaiman: I love Brazil! You're more cheerful in everything (laughter). Soccer, comics… I received a phone call and they told me, "Mr. Gaiman, this is from Brazil, we love you. We want to make the Neil Gaiman day and bring you down to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and other places. We will have a ceremony and everything else." I listened to that and thought it was great! I asked when they had that planned, they told me: "Tuesday"!

And I said I couldn't do it. Here everybody says:
"Hey, let's do this?"
"Sure"! When?"
"Tomorrow"

I think that's great!

Sérgio Codespoti, Neil Gaiman, Marcelo Naranjo and Sidney Gusman

UHQ: Neil Gaiman, in the name of our reader's, thank you for the interview.

Gaiman: Thank you! It was nice seeing you again!

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