the best of give up-gaiman
One of those “if I could turn back time 12 hours and not put up that photo” moments…
Neil Gaiman’s, ‘That’s all I’ve got’ face. By now, twenty people have probably already done this, but I’ve had a boring morning so have another anyway. :)
Neil Gaiman, no!
It seemed a nicer thing to do than to point out to all the people who were writing in and yelling at me on Twitter that Twitter has a 140 character limit and explain the concept of an abbreviation to them.
It’s somehow gratifying to know that even the best writers among us still find their eloquence stymied by Twitter’s stupid character limit.
BBC Doctor Who Blog - Neil Gaiman Interview: Part One
Nightmare in Silver is written by the internationally acclaimed Neil Gaiman whose previous episode – The Doctor’s Wife – was a brilliant, bonkers, wildly enjoyable adventure that won plaudits and the 2012 Hugo Award for the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.
He returns with a story that sees the Doctor once more facing the Cybermen, but this being Doctor Who and Neil Gaiman, nothing about the iconic enemy’s return is as you’d expect, from the Cybermen themselves to the people battling them. We caught up with Neil and quizzed him about how he ended up back in the world of Doctor Who and what we can expect from his latest inspired nightmare…
Question: You’re back! Hurray! How were you persuaded to return?
Neil Gaiman: It began with an email from Steven Moffat. He said, ‘I know you’re too busy ever to write another Doctor Who episode… but would you like to make the Cybermen scary again?’ And I thought, Agghhhh! I do! I really do! I said,Yes, I’m in…
I thought it would be really fun to make the Cybermen scarier than they have been recently and then I got completely side-tracked by a mad, strange romp that just keeps getting bigger and odder in which the Doctor and Clara have taken two children to a big amusement park and they find themselves embroiled in a very peculiar galactic empire which has fought a battle against the Cybermen - and won…
Q: What can we expect from the Cybermen and the adventure in general?
NG: We’ve moved on a little bit, technologically, from the last round of Cybermen we saw, because we’re a bit further into the future. So instead of Cybermats, we’re now going to encounter Cybermites… We have to deal with various things we’ve had to deal with in the past, such as the Cybermen’s ability to take over people and transform them into Cybermen. And this time, it’s going to get very, very personal for the Doctor…
Thank fuck. Camp disco Cybermen really got on my very last nerve. Bring back David Banks!
More photos…
The movie ‘Coraline’ was beautiful & the Q&A with Neil was cute, funny and down to earth! loved when Neil said a lot of girls that were kids, now in their 20’s come up to him with horrible stories of what they went thru & thanked Neil for the book/movie gave them courage! it was touching! Neil is always a gentleman, sweet natured & down to earth! I asked Neil where Amanda was, he said in Boston. I already knew that, I just wanted to hear him say it! Lol. Oh oh oh and I ran into the guy that ran the whole Q&A in the parking lot and I asked him where Neil went after the show & he said next door for a whiskey!!! Lol!! And get this the guy said that he was going to have drinks with Neil, a bunch of other “famous” writers and Johnny Depp later that night! He told me where, but that would’ve been too weird. ;) fun! Karen & I had fun walking Hollywood Blvd even tho I use to live in Hollywood. It was so good to see Karen, I haven’t seen her since Tori’s ADP tour in 2007. I have to thank Tori for bringing so many special people into my life! I have travelled with these lovely friends from show to show in the past and memories were made that ill have forever!! Thank You Tori!! xo ❤📚🎥🎼🎹
Spoilers for the first few minutes…
RT met Neil Gaiman, the writer of Nightmare in Silver, back in March at the BBC’s New Broadcasting House in London. Here’s an extract of that interview…
Neil, could you give us a non-spoilery encapsulation of the story?
Easily! It just stops at about minute three. The Doctor has been talked by Clara into taking the two kids she looks after, Artie and Angie, for an excursion, a day out, and he decides to take them to Hedgewick’s World, the biggest, best and most wonderful amusement park in the galaxy, a quarter of a million years in the future, because he has a golden ticket and it gets four people in for free, gets you free ice creams and it gets you to the front of any line, which is great because the lines for the Spacey Zoomer can go on for weeks. And that’s where it starts.
Unfortunately, it also starts with them discovering that Hedgewick’s World has been closed for several years and there’s almost nobody on it now except for a small army troop on manoeuvres and a mad old showman named Mr Webley who landed his spaceship there after it closed and is now there with a Cyberman that plays chess. That’s where it begins. This is also 1,000 years after the end of the big human/Cyberman war – where we won.
There are some well-known actors in the episode. Can you tell us about the characters they’re playing?
Jason Watkins plays Mr Webley, this wonderful, slightly alcoholic old showman touring the universe with a waxworks and a chess-playing Cyberman. Warwick Davis is his henchman, who is called Porridge. He’s affable, sweet and helps Webley and cannot wait to get off this planet.
Tamzin Outhwaite is a captain named Alice Ferren who’s in charge of the platoon doing troop exercises on an abandoned amusement park planet and as we discover, as the story goes on, it’s actually a punishment platoon. They’re all people who’ve got into trouble. She was sent there for disobeying orders. They’re not the kind of crack troop you’d want if it so happened that a Cyberman moves in – a new model Cyberman that we haven’t seen, who is absolutely lethal and hyper-intelligent…
from http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-05-05/doctor-who-neil-gaiman-sets-the-scene-for-nightmare-in-silver
I wanted to put a reference to masturbation in one of the scripts for the Sandman. It was immediately cut by the editor. She told me, “There’s no masturbation in the DC Universe.” To which my reaction was, “Well that explains a lot about the DC Universe.
“
| — | Neil Gaiman, flawless human being (via worldwarlove) |
Neil Gaiman ponders what causes a book to be classified for children and recieves a standing ovation at TXLA
It’s not always easy to entertain a room full of librarians, especially in Texas. A group of librarians can be split into thirds. One group fits into the stereotypical, up-tight old coot who whispers “SHHH,” and longs for the good-old-days. The second group consists of librarians by trade who don’t passionately live and breathe books. They’re decent at the craft but used to be gym teachers or chemistry teachers and added on a library certificate for a change of scene. The third librarian group is full of quirky types. Here you find the punk-rock librarians, the uber-nerds, the lipstick librarians and those who excel in their knowledge of specific areas. While perhaps different in personality, what this third group has in common is their painfully obvious, insatiable appetite for books and all things bookish.
Entertaining this diverse group of librarians was the job handed to during the Texas Library Association’s annual meeting in April and he managed to elicit crowd wide laughter, cheers and a standing ovation, even though he said “Fuck” in Texas (or maybe the standing ovation was because he had the sand to say it).
Neil Gaiman chose to revise a speech that he had previously presented, entitled What the Very Bad Swear Word Is A Children’s Book Anyway?
“I write to find out what I think about things.”
Gaiman talked about how children know what they are ready to read and won’t reach to read above their limits. If they attempt to read something that they’re not ready for, they are inevitably bored and put the book down to find something more suitable.
“Children tend to be really good at censorship”
Censorship is an issue that Gaiman is no stranger to. He has had several pieces challenged over the years and commented that he received numerous complaints over the sex scene in Stardust, which was once referred to as embarrassingly specific.
“Walking the line can mean, occasionally, crossing it.”
Gaiman commented that there is a certain level of incomprehensibility for children thinking about the adult world. They are told to trust adults, yet adults lie to them about things such as the myth that the school years are the best years of their lives and telling them things like “shots aren’t going to hurt.”
“Ideas that are old and hackneyed for adults are still fresh and new for children.”
Gaiman concluded with the thought that there really are no discernible answers to what differentiates adult and children’s books. He jokingly stated that one difference is that in adult literature, you can “leave the boring bits in.” Swear words don’t make a book an adult book. Don’t kids deserve stories about magic, adventure and turmoil and to be pushed to the limits of fear that thrill? Kids will take something out of anything that they read even if they don’t understand things in the same way that adults do.
“You do not come to authors for answers. You come to us for questions.”
JOSS WHEDON: I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that’s been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it’s been in development.
NEIL GAIMAN: Yes. It really is this thing of executives loving the smell of their own urine and urinating on things. And then more execs come in, and they urinate. And then the next round. By the end, they have this thing which just smells like pee, and nobody likes it.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1109313,00.html#ixzz2RXrXd8TI
