Neil showed the trailer for the film, which you can see at http://www.stardustmovie.com/. He knew very little about the production of trailers until he saw them putting together trailers for Stardust. Apparently, there were around 30 different trailers, all of which made it look like a completely different film. One made it clear that Stardust is a pirate film; another, a film about witches. The final trailer, while clearly the best at conveying the essence of the film without giving away the entire story, makes it seem as though the film is full of swashbuckling sword-fights. Apparently it's not. Pretty much all the sword-fighting in the film is shown in the trailer. I don't think I'm alone in wishing we could have seen some of the others; after internet successes such as 'Brokeback to the Future' (check Google; I'm sure you'll find it) I have to admit a fascination with the way in which trailers can present a completely different film to you from the one you end up seeing.
When, much to everyone's regret, the clips had finished, Neil answered questions from the audience. One memorable question managed to bewilder the great man himself. 'Do you wish you were more widely read, or would you rather have fewer, more devoted fans?' After a pause, Neil pointed out that he'd had a number-one New York Times bestseller. He seemed bemused by the way people tend to fall either into 'never heard of him' or 'love his stuff', and the ones who love his work tend to believe they're the only ones who have ever come across him. There are millions of fans out there, he explained, each one of them utterly convinced that no-one else has ever heard of his books. So he gets to have his cake and eat it: he's widely read and has lots of devoted fans.
Many of the questions were from his younger fans, including one who wanted to know if there are any plans to make Sandman into a film. As always, the answer is no. Neil explained that the rights to Sandman are held by Warner, and they have no idea what to do with it. Plenty of directors have expressed interest in making a film, but all have, ultimately, foundered on the rocks of that large corporation. This is something for which Neil is avowedly glad. He would love for it to be made into a film, or, better still, a series of films. But the director is not yet there who is as passionate about the graphic novels as Matthew Vaughn (prompted by his wife, Claudia Schiffer) has been about Stardust. And that makes all the difference.
Stardust looks like being a truly incredible film. I wanted to go and see it before I'd seen any of the clips from it. Having watched scenes beautifully acted by a deliciously wicked Michelle Pfeiffer, who is still the sexiest woman on film, Peter O'Toole as an aging fairy king with the kind of evil asthmatic laugh which makes me want to reach for cold iron and an inhaler, and Clare Danes as the understandably annoyed fallen star, I can't wait to go see it when it's finally out in the cinema.
But I think the most telling recommendation is this: I can't wait to see it, the rest of the audience can't wait to see it - and neither can Neil. His writing is always of such high quality, and thankfully, that's been carried over into the film.
Stardust is currently due for release in the US on August 10th.
Interview
With Austin Grossman
Last week we reviewed Grossman’s debut novel Soon I Will Be Invincible – a superhero tale about belonging and world domination. Here he tells us a little about his life, and the novel.
Did you read superhero comics or watch superhero cartoons as a child? If so, what drew you to them?
I have very early memories of watching the Hanna-Barbera Super Friends, which were a kind of watered-down version of the classic Justice League heroes, plus the execrable Wonder Twins.
I liked how dramatic the characters were, how they had to perform their Superness or Batness all the time. And despite the blandness of the show’s scripting, I gradually figured out that the way Batman and Superman dressed up was a reflection of a personal story, which was both an experience of violent trauma and the source of their superpowers.
I liked that, and I liked that even though they had all that strangeness in their past – crazy vigilantes, alien planets, Greek myths – they could all still be buddies. Super friends, as it were.
If you could be a superhero/villain, what powers what you have and what would your name be?
My superpower, frankly, would be to subjugate this puny Earth purely by the power of my enormous intellect. I wouldn’t have a name – people would call me “Our Dread Master.” And I’d be able to fly.
But I think it’s probably true that no one gets to choose their superpowers. Like a lot of other things in life, they choose you. I’d probably be someone like Bloodstryke, who shows up in Soon I Will Be Invincible for only about two seconds. It’s not his fault he inherited a cursed suit of armor that drinks blood! He’s doing the best he can with what’s got.
Has being a game developer influenced your writing?
Enormously – it’s what I had instead of an MFA program.
Before I graduated from college I was writing mawkish fiction for the Harvard Advocate, at a time when Carver and Beatty were the reigning spirits, the stark, pared-down realist sensibility. Then, while everyone else got jobs in publishing or went for fiction MFA’s, I started writing role-playing games – wizards, rogue supercomputers, superheroes, etc.
It was a strange and rich atmosphere in which to let my writing mature, like stepping back into dreamy early adolescence and forward into my twenties at the same time. It put me outside the mainstream literary culture. And it allowed me to write in a way I felt deeply and instinctively – to turn my suburban geekiness, my first language, into a literary idiom. To create a kind of Geek Lit.
Why did you choose to write a novel, instead of creating a comic book or a video game?
I wanted to push farther in the direction of Alan Moore, Frank Miller, or Jonathan Lethem. To create the kinds of characters and stories I love in comics, shown with the physical and emotional reality of a novel.
In a comic book, a superpower is often just a costume and some colored lines, showing some random “energy.” Putting superheroes in a novel opens up a whole sensory world - superpowers have a sound, a smell, a taste, history, memory. Instead of just looking at a superpower, you can get at what it feels like to have the power inside you all the time, or what a superhero wanted to be when he was nine years old. What it’s like to sleep and wake up with powers, to try to eat in a restaurant when you’re a living fusion reactor.
Superheroes are perennially popular figures – from Superman to the X-Men to TV's "Heroes." How does the superhero idea reinvent and reinvigorate itself? Why do you think people are so drawn to superheroes and villains?
It’s a cliché to say that superheroes and villains are contemporary myth, but they’re useful, they’re stories that help make sense of the world. Superhero stories revolve around real things - around trauma and identity and lost love. The Incredibles showed this very powerfully, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which showed how going to high school really is like fighting vampires, every day.
Likewise, writing about an aging super-villain or a traumatized cyborg is a way of talking about something I can feel in my life – a sense of lost potential, disappointment, what have you. On some level it helps me, and I hope it helps the people who read it.
In the book, you alternate between the narrative voice of Fatale and Doctor Impossible - how did you decide on these two voices, and how do you think alternating between them affects the narrative?
Having two narrators underscores the idea that in a world of superheroes and super-villains you have to choose a side. There’s no neutral perspective.
I started with Doctor Impossible – the villain. I wanted to write the super-villain's story, the super-villain Catcher in the Rye. In any superhero story the villain is the interesting character, the one who embodies intelligence, imagination, arrogance, imagination, thwarted ambition and lost love. Honestly, who else would you want to hear about?
But once I started thinking of a super-villain as human, I had to ask the opposite question – could I even imagin
e a superhero who was also a believable person? I started with Fatale, a cyborg still getting over the trauma of losing her memory and having half her body replaced with circuitry. Then I branched out to the rest of her super-team, the Champions, as they came to life.
The more I wrote, the more I wanted to find out about these people: how does it feel when the cyborg has to interact with the faerie warrior, or the super-girl from the future? What does everyone talk about when they’re having lunch in their big gleaming control room?
The “invincible” in the title seems to have multiple meanings-referring to CoreFire's powers, to Doctor Impossible machinations, to the dreams of both the superheroes and super-villains. Do you think the heroes and the villains are so different in their goals for the world?
This may be the question of the book: what does it mean to identify as a superhero or a super-villain. Where do you think you belong, and why – and at what moment do you decide?
Superheroes? Do-gooders. They’re the schoolyard jocks, and they always get the cheerleaders. Bland opportunists who dress up and roam the world enforcing the status quo, normals ganging up on anyone who dares step out of line. Which maybe isn’t fair – superheroes have plenty of weird stuff in their past. It’s just how they deal with it.
Super-villains are the romantic nerds of the superpowered world – all those gleaming machines, dreams of universal power, cities of gold. They bring all the imagination, the perversity, the ambition, the raw passion. They come back every year, even though they’re one person against the world, even though they lose every time.
All the superheroes and villains you invented are fantastically imaginative, as well as being both funny and very human. How did you come up with all their back stories, and do their histories say anything about their paths toward fighting evil or destroying the world?
I love superheroes and I’m obsessed with superhero origin stories. I love the idea that the trauma in your past, the shit that you went through and survived – losing your parents, being hit by a truck, stumbling into a mystic cave – is what makes you strange, but it gives you your mission and gives you superpowers.
If I just think of a guy calling himself, say, “The Quizzler” and dressing in a red leotard –a real person doing this – maybe his power is to remember all the trivia in the world; and it suggests a funny, poignant, complex, and human story. I don’t even know yet if The Quizzler is a hero or villain – we’ll have to see how the world reacts to him. Everyone’s a hero in their own story.
What's next for Doctor Impossible?
He’s like any other obsessive neurotic; he’s never going to give up on some things. He’s going to battle his nemesis, and he’s going to try to take over the world.
Coming Next Week:
Fiction: The Blue Parallel by Jessica Reisman
Feature: Origins – The Second Doctor
Interview: Charles Stross
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