LOS ANGELES — Neil Gaiman knows that the best stories must be both bitter and sweet — he is, after all, the author of “The Graveyard Book,” the tender children’s novel that opens with a nasty knife murder. Still, the 49-year-old Brit sounds dazed when he reflects on the past year of his life.
“I had a really strange year,” the author said in a faraway voice. “I was leading up to the writing of an ‘Anansi Boys’ screenplay, based on my 2005 novel, which begins with an incredibly funny sequence where the protagonist’s father keels over from a surprise heart attack. And as I was doing that my father keeled over and died of a surprise heart attack. It’s not terribly funny though, is it?”
The death of David Gaiman during a business meeting in March left his son searching for words. As the weeks passed, though, the writer was met with blank screens, blank pages and a blank stare in the mirror. The author of “Coraline,” “American Gods,” “Stardust” and the comic-book epic “The Sandman” was suddenly unable to conjure up those apparitions of imagination that had made him a signature figure in fantasy circles.
“It left me just completely stilled for about nine months,” Gaiman said. “It was very weird. … I’ve never really had much time or patience with writer’s block. I think sometimes you need a period of just healing and distance before you can say, ‘Yeah, I’m ready to do that now.”’
Gaiman is also mourning the potential loss of a highly anticipated film project: “The Graveyard Book” adaptation that was to be written and directed by Neil Jordan (“The Brave One,” “The Crying Game” and “Interview with the Vampire”) has fallen apart on the financing front.
Gaiman has a spotty history with Hollywood, but he’s clearly fascinated by its career upsides. He was publicly bitter that the 2007 film adaptation of his “Stardust,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert DeNiro, wasn’t marketed by Paramount Pictures as a clever-but-winking fairy tale in the vein of “The Princess Bride.”
But last year, Gaiman was over the moon with Henry Selick’s acclaimed stop-action interpretation of “Coraline,” a movie that grossed $122 million worldwide and earned strong reviews. Gaiman also co-wrote the screenplay for “Beowulf,” the 2007 film from director Robert Zemeckis. Overall, the Hollywood experience has been eye-opening.
Gaiman has high hopes that a long list of his creations on the page will live and breathe on the screen.
The big goal, though, is completing that “Anansi Boys” script and getting past the emotional connection it has to his father’s death. “It would be a nice way to put that story to rest,” he said, “and put what happened to rest.”
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
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