News: Neil Gaiman Featured in SF Chronicle

“I find if I stay here too long, then my value system goes Hollywood, and I don’t like that,” he says over tea and a fruit bowl. “You suddenly find yourself living in a universe where it doesn’t matter whether a film was any good or not. What matters is how much it made. It’s very weird.”

Neil Gaiman, currently making the rounds to promote “Stardust,” was recently featured in this San Francisco Chronicle article. Go behind the cut for the full extravaganza.

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NEIL GAIMAN’S MAGIC HOUR
Michael Ordoña

That disturbance in the universe you may have felt is the potentially unholy alliance between Hollywood and Neil Gaiman, one of the reigning dark princes of fantasy literature.

It’s an on-again, off-again courtship that’s very on right now, with two major movies coming this year: “Stardust,” from his popular novel, directed by Matthew Vaughn (“Layer Cake”); and his adaptation of “Beowulf,” directed by Robert Zemeckis. The Porchester, England, native has made the trip from his home near Minneapolis to the land where quirky writing goes to die so many times that the staff of the Chateau Marmont hotel knows him – although he never lets the flirtation last.

“I find if I stay here too long, then my value system goes Hollywood, and I don’t like that,” he says over tea and a fruit bowl. “You suddenly find yourself living in a universe where it doesn’t matter whether a film was any good or not. What matters is how much it made. It’s very weird.”

Gaiman first emerged in the American consciousness via the groundbreaking DC/Vertigo comic series “The Sandman” in the late ’80s. Instead of bodybuilders in tights, it featured literary references and a lead character, the many-named Lord of Dreams, who wasn’t clearly good or evil. Gaiman has collected cabinets full of awards for his books and comics. His novel “Anansi Boys” topped the New York Times best-seller list; he wrote the English translation of the anime classic “Princess Mononoke” and co-scripted the film “MirrorMask” with longtime collaborator Dave McKean.

Those unfamiliar with the mysterious flavor of Gaiman’s brew might take note of a description of his play “The Wolves in the Walls” that appeared in the British newspaper the Guardian: “endearingly terrifying – like ‘Bambi’ with fangs.”

It could apply to most of his oeuvre.

“I would go with that,” he acknowledges with a smile. “There was a sort of weird review, but accurate, of my last adult novel: ‘This is one of Neil Gaiman’s adult novels, which means it’s much less disturbing than any of his children’s fiction.’ I’m currently writing my next children’s book, and it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever written.”

Then there’s “The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch,” a graphic novel that has seen several stage adaptations and one for radio.

“It’s the nearest to being pure autobiography I’ve ever come while being completely filled with lies,” he says. “I love the weirdness of the English story of Punch and Judy: a merry little story about a merry little serial killer as an entertainment for children.”

Like much of Gaiman’s work, such as “MirrorMask” and the first movement of “Sandman,” “Stardust” is a quest story in a land where the mundane and the magical coexist somewhat peacefully. The romantic fantasy concerns a young man’s search for a fallen star to win his beloved’s heart, while powerful forces marshal against him. “Stardust” won the 2000 Alex Award for adult novels “with special appeal to young adults.”

“It doesn’t patronize,” says the author. “That’s also the thing that makes it a bastard to sell. They say, ‘What kind of film is it?’ And you say, ‘Well, it has humor, romance, adventure, some scary stuff; it’s not just one thing.’ It’s like building a layer cake, to quote another Matthew Vaughn thing. They asked me what my suggested tagline for it was – ‘A star falls, a quest begins’ is the one they chose – and mine was ‘ “Stardust”: It’s not a sequel to anything.’ “

“Stardust” is the first feature to be adapted from Gaiman’s work (the screenplay was written, with Gaiman’s approval, by Vaughn and British TV personality Jane Goldman, known for her investigations into the paranormal, and who appears as a character in a Gaiman short story), although he wrote the BBC series “Neverwhere.”

“I’ve had things out there I wasn’t happy with,” he says. “You know, the BBC version of ‘Never-where’ really upset me. I hated it. I wrote the script and I watched them f- it up. And everyone would say, ‘This is stupid, look at that idiot Gaiman doing this.’ And I would say, ‘I didn’t do that!’ If they make a movie of ‘Stardust,’ I want to be proud of it. I want to be there, making it the best movie I can.”

The film features an all-star cast including Claire Danes as the fallen heavenly body, Michelle Pfeiffer as an evil witch, and appearances by Rupert Everett, Ricky Gervais and Peter O’Toole. Robert De Niro has a “Brazil”-esque bit as Captain Shakespeare, a character who is there and gone in the book but greatly expanded for the film. The odd man out is the lead, 24-year-old Charlie Cox, who stateside audiences may have noticed in the Heath Ledger vehicle “Casanova” (2005).

Gaiman’s courtship with Hollywood may be getting more serious as he anticipates the release of “Beowulf,” which he co-wrote with Roger Avary (“Pulp Fiction”). He confidently predicts, based on some journalists’ “hyperventilating” reactions to its eye-popping motion-capture animation, that it will be a huge hit: “If ‘Polar Express’ was a bicycle, this is a little red Corvette.”

In the meantime, the author awaits the delivery of “Stardust,” which, as he notes on his blog, “opens the weekend of the Perseids meteor shower, one of the most active times for shooting stars of the year, so it wouldn’t be unheard of at all for people to see the movie, walk out of the theater and actually see a shooting star themselves.”

STARDUST (PG-13) opens Friday in the Bay Area.