How to use this Page

Hi Neil,Are you aware that Beowulf has got a paticularly outraged review from the CAP movie ministry guy, (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/beowulf.htm) and is summed up as "quite probably the most heinous culprit for stealing childhood from children ever made". You didn't quite do well enough in the scoring system to get a perfect zero (not enough impudence/hate - please try harder next time), but this does mean that Beowulf is rated worse than Natural Born Killers, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, et al.Chris Reynolds

There you go. Then again, this is probably the first animated movie aimed at adults to go on broad release in the US for a very long time, and the idea that it's not actually intended for children is a hard one for some people to cope with. Interestingly, the Christian reviews I've seen so far -- Christianity Today and the Catholic News Service -- both liked the film, and were very sensible.

(It's one of those pleasantly surprising things that the Google News thingummy threw up, like the articles from local papers where they have English teachers and professors explaining that this Beowulf is rather more faithful to the original material than they had expected.)

Dear Mr. Gaiman;Firstly, I would like to say that I have just seen "Beowulf" and it was indeed a great movie. I read the poem many years ago and your story was one of the more interesting interpretations of the original poem.That aside I read up on the long process it took to get this film off the ground. As with what typically happens in Hollywood, there was a rewrite. As I'm sure you know, the final confrontation with the Dragon was rewritten. This discovery did not surprise me because the final confrontation just did not seem to be your style. Just what was your version like?
Robert M. Sharples

Ah, that one's easy. There's a script book, which contains our original 1997 script, two long essays by Roger intended mostly for film students about the realities of Hollywood (one on how he went into it in the first place, and then how I got involved and how we wrote the script together, and one on how he was persuaded to sell the script to Steve Bing and Bob Zemeckis), some of the storyboards for Roger's original version, the shooting script we wrote with Bob Zemeckis that they went into the 2005 shooting with (which is of course different to what they wound up actually making) and an afterword from me about how and what a film script is and isn't.

So you can read the original script or even the shooting script and make a film in your head and see how it differed from what made it to the screen. (I found a review of the book at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07320/834312-44.stm -- for some reason, none of the Amazon or Harper Collins sites make it clear what kind of thing the script book is.)

...

Right. Lots of people in the Philippines writing to ask how long I'll be there (until Sunday) and what I'll be doing. So I googled, and found http://heartofadream.wordpress.com/ a blog which seems to have all the information on it.

And the car to take me to the airport is outside, and I'm not yet dressed, so I will take my leave, vaguely regretful that I haven't done a big post on the writers' strike yet. Or even linked to the David Letterman show writers strike blog at http://www.lateshowwritersonstrike.com/ or Matt Selman's TIME Nerd bloggery at http://www.time-blog.com/nerd_world/2007/11/.

Add a Comment

Add a Comment

Add a Comment

I ought to be at work on the novel, but I'm sitting in front of the computer waiting for a phone call from the UK, so in the meantime, here's an article from the New Scientist (who have recently mostly rendered their website useless, even, pretty much now, to subscribers but have this up in full)

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19626255.100&feedId=online-news_rss20

Geoffrey Miller and his team at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, compared the earnings of lap dancers who were menstruating naturally with those of dancers taking the hormonal contraceptive pill. During the non-fertile periods of their menstrual cycle, both sets of dancers earned similar tips. But when naturally cycling lap dancers entered their fertile period they earned significantly more in tips than their co-workers on the pill...

Vanity Fair on Sushi .

People have been sending me links to: A Where Do You Get Your Ideas cartoon that made me smile, and to a blogpost on infixing and stressed syllables...

(Several people wrote in to let me know that there are other examples of infixing in English than swearing, but with the exception of some chemical names I can't see that they actually change the meaning or emphasis of the word. Edumacation and hizouse simply demonstrate that, yes, you can put other syllables into a word, Ned Flanders-like for comedic effect or as cant.)

I was delighted to see that Barry Humphries (here seen being interviewed with his protege, Dame Edna Everage) is now a Commander of the British Empire http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7038277.stm, and not just because Michael Swanwick was kind enough to send me a signed copy of his book-length essay on James Branch Cabell - WHAT CAN BE SAVED FROM THE WRECKAGE? JAMES BRANCH CABELL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY - with an introduction by, and also signed to me by Mr Humphries. Hurrah. (Read about the book here.)

I love Michael's essay, although I'm not entirely convinced by it. (Michael feels that Cabell doomed himself to obscurity. I think it was more time, and fashion.)

I enjoyed this Jamy Ian Swiss interview with Derren Brown. I love what Derren does, but I tend to feel uncomfortable when I read interviews by journalists who fail to notice that Derren is a magician and not a miracle worker. I don't know of any other interview with him by a magician where they talk about the difference between the trick and the effect...

Ooops. That's the phone. Going now.

Nearly forgot: Here's the New York Times review of The Wolves in the Walls.

Add a Comment

Let's see.

Went to Minneapolis airport. Flew to Tokyo. Changed planes. Flew to Shanghai. Got off plane. Got bag. Walked through customs. Thought, "I ought to find out about how I get to my hotel," when I saw my name written on a sheet of paper, and someone said "You're Neil. We're science fiction volunteers. We'll get you to your hotel now." And they did. Magic. (They were Vicky and Hida, and they read this blog, although they weren't sure if I really wrote it or if I got someone to do it for me. Er, behold. It is me actually. Thank you both.)

Sleep now. Up and fly to Chengdu first thing in the morning.

Add a Comment