Journal

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

the enormous bed

Hotels are so different, one from the next. Today I'm in a room smaller than the bed I slept in last week. (The hotel put me in there because they were out of normal rooms, and told me it was the biggest bed in London. I do not doubt that it was. It would have slept families.)

The Independent on Sunday article will, I am told, be out this week.

Please can you settle a family row and confirm that it was you that we saw at The Now Show on Thursday evening? I wanted to get your, and Marcus', autograph but the youngest was too shy and ran away first.

b.t.w. My eldest, 16, oft quotes your "kindly declines your offer of a comb" and liked the bit about hunting for weasles.

Matthew


That was me, yes. I hope that settles the family row. I was there as Mitch Benn's guest, but was thrilled to see Marcus Brigstocke (who I hadn't seen since we made A Short Film About John Bolton), and then delighted to find out that I went to school with Steve Punt ("I saw your band in the music hall," he said, as only someone who was once fourteen can say to someone who was once sixteen. "You were a legend." And then we reminisced about the school peacock and Stewart Elsey's chips.)

You should have said hullo.

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Lots of people wrote in to say that,

There are higher quality versions of the Tyger animation as well as more information on it at http://guilherme.tv/tyger/.

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Hi Neil, I'm glad your having a fun vaction after a busy signing tour, but I'm wondering if any developments on the Crazy Hair front will be made while your hanging out with Dave. I remember you describing it last October and it sounds absolutly delightful!-Rachael


It's done! He showed it to me! He's finished! It's amazing! I may have to rewrite a couple of lines to make the words and the pictures match up perfectly, but just a couple of lines, and then we will be done. Expect it out in 2008 from Harper Childrens and from Bloomsbury in the UK. It's gorgeous. (There's a picture from it at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/uploaded_images/Pgs.24,25-707551.JPG)

Hello Neil,

Longtime fan here with a comics-world-related question. Seeing as Coraline is already in production and I can't be cast, haha, I've turned my sight on to the new 'Preacher' series (yet-to-be-cast) on HBO.

Specifically I'd like to try for the character of Tulip OHare, and thought I should send of a 'screen test' where I'm reading from the comic, as well as a few shots recreating panels from the comic, along with my headshot and resume. I'm also going to try to be signed with a local casting agent for Maryland... and see if they can help as well.

My question is:
1) Should I send my information to Ennis & Dillon via Vertigo? Would they recieve it?

2) How can I be a fan and still have my request taken seriously?

Any input you have would be greatly appreciated... as I'm sure you've had experiences like this throughout your career.

Cheers!
Jess Angell


Well, I've been given lots of headshots by people that I wasn't sure what I was meant to do with them over the years. To answer your questions...

1) Possibly it might get to them, but Garth and Steve aren't casting it. They won't do anything more with a head shot and DVD than shrug and wonder why you sent it to them. If you're amazingly amazing they might send it on to a producer who probably won't watch it, but you'd have to be jaw-droppingly brilliant, and even then it probably won't do anything.

2) Be an actress.

I'm serious. If you want to be in something like that, your best bet is to be an actress already. Be a good one. Take lots of parts. Do TV, movies and theatre. Be someone who, when a casting director says to a producer "I think we could get Jess Angell to play Tulip," makes the producer go "Really? Would she be interested in something like this?"

Casting is about a lot of things, and one of them is getting the thing made.

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Hullo Mr G. I recall your excellent contribution to 'AARGH' when it came out (I'm that old), and thought you might be interested in the campaign to save the veteran London bookshop Gay's The Word, survivor of the Clause 28 battles and now threatened by the general Starbucks-ing of the streets. It's always stocked a good selection of gay & lesbian-related graphic novels and comic books. Times story here:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1462206.ece?token=null&offset=0



...but it's not really threatened by the Starbucksing of the streets. It's threatened because most mainstream bookshops have really good LGBT sections now, which they didn't have before. Just as it gets harder for the specialist SF shops once the SF shelves in the big bookshops get big.

I think it's sad when the little shops go, and I wish they wouldn't, but I don't think it's a bad thing when things that were once specialised interests become more easily available in the mainstream. It means that the small shops have to figure out what they can give their customers that the bigger shops or the online world simply can't.

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Last November I mentioned Clive Barker's inspirational speech on genre as a continent, given impromptu at British Fantasycon. Someone wrote to let me know it's now up at

http://www.clivebarker.info/newsfantasycon2.html

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Thanks for signing two of my treasured Sandman hardbacks on Friday. MUCH appreciated as always. I have one more to go!
I was wondering, did you watch Dr Who on Saturday night at the same time as your fellow countrymen? I'm guessing you didn't as you would rather watch it back in the US with Maddy. But if you did, what did you think?
Til' next time. Tony Scudder.


I didn't. I'm waiting until I am home to watch Dr Who with Maddy. Anything else would be wrong.

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Congratulations to Bryan Talbot on the publication of Alice in Sunderland -- http://www.bryan-talbot.com/alice/.

And there's a German interview with me (in English) up at http://www.phantastik-couch.de/interview-with-neil-gaiman.html

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