Vilandra
09-27-2005, 03:48 AM
Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote the upcoming fantasy film MirrorMask with artist and director Dave McKean, told SCI FI Wire that he deferred to McKean on most of the major creative decisions. "He had an idea of what he could do, which I didn't," Gaiman said in an interview. "He had the idea that, for $4 million, he could actually make this thing. And he knew kind of how he could do it. And I had to trust him a lot on that. So if he'd say,'Oh, you can't do this,' I wouldn't do it. He really had an idea going in what his technical limitations were. That gave him sort of a senior role."
Gaiman's collaboration with McKean goes back to the seminal DC Vertigo comic-book series Sandman, for which McKean created the cover art. But MirrorMask is the first project that the two have written together. "We had great arguments, which was actually very odd at the time, because we'd never had them," Gaiman said. "We've worked together for 17 years, and we'd never argued before. Normally we have this lovely, strict demarcation of roles. I needed something. I'd give it to Dave. Dave would give me what I needed. It was nice and simple. But we couldn't do that this time. If we had $100 million, we probably would have done it like that again, a strict demarcation of roles. I would have gone off and written something and given it to Dave, and he would have made it. But we didn't. We had 4 million. And we were trying to make a fantasy movie that would actually look beautiful and contain all this wonderful stuff."
MirrorMask is the story of a young girl named Helena, who wants to run away from the circus and join real life. But when her mother falls ill, her feelings of guilt lead her to dream of a fantastical world in which she must save the sleeping queen of light from the evil queen of darkness.
Though many of the story elements are familiar themes in Gaiman's work, he said that they were often ideas brought up by McKean. "A lot of those were actually Dave things," he said. "I mean, that was some of the stuff the Dave and I were fighting about, because Dave would say, 'I like the idea of this mother, and she's going to be the queen of light and the queen of dark.' And I'm going, 'Yeah, but I just did Coraline, and I had an Other Mother there and a girl, and do we really want to do that?' And Dave would say, 'Yes.' I was going, 'I've done Alice in Wonderland now a couple of times. Do I want to do again?' So there's definitely a level on which some of the things that are most obviously me, aren't. They're Dave." MirrorMask opens in select theaters on Sept. 30.
Source: SciFiWire (http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?category=0&id=32590)
Gaiman's collaboration with McKean goes back to the seminal DC Vertigo comic-book series Sandman, for which McKean created the cover art. But MirrorMask is the first project that the two have written together. "We had great arguments, which was actually very odd at the time, because we'd never had them," Gaiman said. "We've worked together for 17 years, and we'd never argued before. Normally we have this lovely, strict demarcation of roles. I needed something. I'd give it to Dave. Dave would give me what I needed. It was nice and simple. But we couldn't do that this time. If we had $100 million, we probably would have done it like that again, a strict demarcation of roles. I would have gone off and written something and given it to Dave, and he would have made it. But we didn't. We had 4 million. And we were trying to make a fantasy movie that would actually look beautiful and contain all this wonderful stuff."
MirrorMask is the story of a young girl named Helena, who wants to run away from the circus and join real life. But when her mother falls ill, her feelings of guilt lead her to dream of a fantastical world in which she must save the sleeping queen of light from the evil queen of darkness.
Though many of the story elements are familiar themes in Gaiman's work, he said that they were often ideas brought up by McKean. "A lot of those were actually Dave things," he said. "I mean, that was some of the stuff the Dave and I were fighting about, because Dave would say, 'I like the idea of this mother, and she's going to be the queen of light and the queen of dark.' And I'm going, 'Yeah, but I just did Coraline, and I had an Other Mother there and a girl, and do we really want to do that?' And Dave would say, 'Yes.' I was going, 'I've done Alice in Wonderland now a couple of times. Do I want to do again?' So there's definitely a level on which some of the things that are most obviously me, aren't. They're Dave." MirrorMask opens in select theaters on Sept. 30.
Source: SciFiWire (http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?category=0&id=32590)