Brian Hiatt: Hey, I'm Brian
Hiatt, a senior writer with Rolling Stone. And I'm so
pleased to have with me, the legendary Neil Gaiman, author of
many things, author of 'The Sandman,' which is now the
number one show in how many countries on Netflix? Neil Gaiman: Many, many. Brian Hiatt: Congratulations on
that. Neil Gaiman: It's been really
amazing. I'm so used to Sandman being a thing that people, the
people who love it, love it. But they're normally fairly small. I
mean, we spent when it was when it came out as a DC comic, we
were never in the top 50. We were somewhere in the bottom 50.
And eventually, Sandman #75 was the best selling comic of its
month outselling Batman and Superman. But we mostly did that
because everybody else's sales dropped slowly and ours just
stayed up. Brian Hiatt: Right. It was the
implosion of the comic book Neil Gaiman: The implosion of
the comic book industry got us industry, to number one. So we didn't do
it by being this huge thing that went to the top. But what I
forget is that we've had 35 years of selling graphic novels,
we've had 35 years of selling hundreds and hundreds of 1000s
and millions of collections of graphic novels. So now you bring
out something new and it Sandman and the world turns out for it. Brian Hiatt: You didn't actually
have to destroy the TV industry to get to number one. In this
case, you actually are truly number one by beating the other
show. Neil Gaiman: Yeah, exactly. Yes.
As opposed to just you know, destroying televisions and ways
of watching television all over the land. Brian Hiatt: And striding upon
its waste with that with Morpheus. But despite being
number one, it is not yet certain last I checked that it
is being renewed. Can you talk about the how that works. Neil Gaiman: I basically the way
that it works is making something like Sandman is
incredibly expensive. This is not a cheap show. This is the
opposite of a cheap show. This is dead expensive. And that
means that in order to be renewed, we have to really
perform as well as everybody could possibly possibly hope. So
everybody is very hopeful. It's all looking great. We're
certainly on track for it. But it's all about how we do over
the month after release. Brian Hiatt: On track sounds
positive. That sounds like were you given? Do they give you a
little throw your breadcrumbs as far as its status, or... Neil Gaiman: You get breadcrumbs
and you also get much more importantly, the most of the
breadcrumbs that they give you are things that you can check
publicly, you know, how many million hours I think last week,
human beings on the face of this planet spent 127 million hours
watching Sandman. That's an awful lot of Sandman. Pretty
good. That's so you know that and we were way ahead of you
know, the next, the next most watched thing was watched for 65
million hours, whatever. So so we're doing well, we're really,
we're doing great. Brian Hiatt: And you made it
clear that if Netflix is foolish enough to not renew this show,
there is a potential pathway to take this to another stream or
another network. Neil Gaiman: Back when we put
the deal together, we made sure that there were ways to continue
with Sandman. But we also all hope that none of them would
possibly be necessary because we love our Netflix people, and
they love us. So and they've been amazing. I mean, you know,
they even made a secret 11th episode. Brian Hiatt: Yeah. This weekend?
Yes, yes. Neil Gaiman: And we managed to
keep that secret. Despite the fact that I came very close to
blowing it. Brian Hiatt: You revealed you
actually dropped the name of one of the actors. Neil Gaiman: And and also I
tweeted, back before we were sort of thinking about how
secret we were going to need to keep this. I tweeted the cover
to a book to the book, here comes a candle. And I tweeted
the fact that we cast some of the cats. So that was you know,
18 months ago, fortunately enough people had forgotten that
or thought maybe we'd cancel it or maybe it was something else
that we got away with it. Brian Hiatt: Interesting thing
about doing you did dreams of cats story. Obviously the
animation of I would have loved to see that a live action
version of that. That would have been challenging. But one of the
first plans for Sandman adaptation involves partial
animation. So that idea has been around there for quite a while. Neil Gaiman: )h, absolutely. I
mean, you know, back in 1996, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio
their first or second Sandman script, and I think Roger Avery
was on board as a director. They had a dream of 1000 cats as part
of that. And it was actually, Roger Avery suggesting to the
top brass Warner movies. Back then, that whenever we were in
the dreaming, he wanted it to be done by Jan Švankmajer, style
stop motion animation, like Jan Švankmajer's 'Alice,' and they
didn't know what he was talking about. So he put on a screening
of Jan Švankmajer's 'Alice' for the Warner movies, top brass.
And by the time he left the screening, he was fired from the
project. And his parking space name had been painted over. They
were like, "This is madness. Get rid of it. This is not
mainstream." Brian Hiatt: Now, of course,
there were there are many attempts to adapt this over the
years. The one I'm sort of fond of in a sick way is that I guess
under. Under John Peters, there was a version that was going to
make it a really tough action movie. I think. Neil Gaiman: I've read that
script, or at least I haven't read the whole answer. I've read
as much of the script as I could take. And I am not sure if it
would have been an action movie or quite what it would have
been. It was a mess. It never got better than a mess. It had
giant mechanical spiders in it the the way that it worked, Brian Hiatt: Wait did it really? Neil Gaiman: It did. Brian Hiatt: Do you know about
the John Peters mechanical Neil Gaiman: I heard about that
later. And people like Oh, spider -- you're kidding. And I'm like,
No, mechanical spider. But much more important than that.
Lucifer, Morpheus, and the Corinthian were identical twins
are identical triplets. They Brian Hiatt: which, you know, I
have to point out for people who were they were a family of
identical brothers. And it was all a race to see who could get
the Ruby, the Helm, and the bag of sand before midnight on 1999
before the new millennium started, because whoever got it
will be the winner. And that was the plot. And I remember them
phoning me up. And I'm normally I'm polite, if you're on the
phone, and I'm nice, and I try and find positive things to say
to people who phoned you up because you do. And a guy in
John Peters office phoned me up and he said, "So, Neil, have you
had a chance to read the script we sent you?" I said, "Yes. Yes,
I did. I haven't read all of it. But I've read enough." He says
"pretty good, huh?" And "I said, No, it really isn't." He said,
"Come on, there must have been stuff in there you loved." I
said "there was nothing in there. I loved there was nothing
in there. I liked it was the worst script that I've ever read
by anybody. It's not just the worst Sandman script that was
the worst I've ever been sent." And then there was a pause he
says, "but come on that thing when we made the Corinthian, the
sand man's brother, that that was good." And I said, "No, that
was really stupid." And he said, "Oh, well, okay. Yeah, he can
win them all." And I said, "No, you, you really can't." And I
put down the phone. And I thought, "What do I do now?" So
I sent the script to Ain't It Cool News, which back then was
read by people? And I thought, "I wonder what Ain't It Cool
News, we'll think of the script that they're going to receive
anonymously." And they wrote a fabulous article about how it
was the worst script they'd ever been sent. And suddenly, the
prospect of that film happening don't know the story has a giant
spider, a giant mechanical went away. And instead, John
Peters turned his attention to the 'Wild, Wild West.' spider. Neil Gaiman: He had one idea in
transmuted, and he had three properties he had. I mean, as
you said, it sounds stupid. He was he came to Warner's, they
gave him any three properties he wanted to choose, because he
left Warner's for I think it was Sony. Warner's had sued, and
they'd received an enormous payout in that in the legal
suit, because John Peters had been broken his contract and
gone and they could see what certainly, they got, you know,
something stupid, like half a billion, so they were so happy
that he had got them there. money. I mean, this is at least
my understanding of things that they said to him. You can have
any three properties you want. And he chose Superman, Wild Wild
West, and Sandman. And when I asked why has he chosen Sandman
they said, because he saw a statue of Morpheus and he
thought it looked cool. Brian Hiatt: Sure. And before we
get off John Peters, I will say he also according to Kevin Smith
tried to put a giant mechanical SpiderMan into Superman as well.
So he did indeed have one idea. And but he made it into wild
wild west. But I was gonna ask you know you, Sandman was a DC
comic book, and it wasn't, you know, it now lives in these
beautiful, various beautiful editions, and it's collected
graphic novels, but it was a comic book comic book. You know,
this is a replica that they just made of it. It you know, and
then the back is an ad for a classic rock, a 60s hits the 60s
and digital sound it was it was truly accomplished like any
other out in the newsstand and it it grew into what it became.
But a couple of things. I mean, you you knew Alan Moore very
well, you even were You were something of a research
assistant. Unofficially for Watchmen, supposedly he called
you up to to add to source quotations was that it was that
the entire your entire contribution to Watchmen? Neil Gaiman: Yeah, that was my
my entire contribution of Watchmen although one I was
incredibly proud of having done initially, he phoned me up to
get me to fight he said "there's there's no you're an education
man. There's a quote Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right? I can't remember where it's from. But I want to call
this Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" And I say I
went and checked I said, "Okay, it's from the book of Job. This
is where it's from." And then after that, he phoned me up
saying I need a quote for and I think I found the quotes for
brother to dragons companion to owls. Seven and I got him some
material on owls that He then used in the back. It was it was
fun. Just being Alan's research. Your the owl research I was I
was owl researcher, and finder of things. And then Halloween, I
found them the Halloween poem. So it was fun. And then my name
is in the front of Watchmen, which is lovely. Brian Hiatt: That's incredible.
And it was actually Alan not to get sidetracked because you,
Alan showed you how to write a comic book script at a comic
book convention. Neil Gaiman: I wasn't a comic
book convention. It was it was. It was a British fantasy
convention. And Alan came up to Birmingham. And and I remember
just, at some point, we'd been hanging around and I said,
"Look, I don't know what a comic script looks like, I know what a
movie script looks like, I don't know, how do you write comics?
How do you get what you want out of your head into an artist's
head," and he grabbed a notebook. And he sat there and
he wrote, okay, page one, panel one, and then you describe what
you can see. And he wrote a sample description. And then he
showed me how use and then if you have somebody speaking, you
write their name, and you write what they say. And if you have a
sound effect, you have FX splat or whatever, and you know, if
they think something it's thinks, and it was okay. And I
wrote a, I wrote a John Constantine script for him like
a six or eight pager, called the day my flat one day my pad went
mad. It was called named after John Cooper Clarke poem. And he
said, "Yes. All right. It gets a bit wobbly at the end." And then
I wrote another one, Jack in the green story about a 16th century
something and send that to him. And he says, "Yeah, you got it.
And I felt good. Okay, now I can now I can write comics."
Afterwards, I did. Brian Hiatt: And then continue
to sidetrack you. He enlisted you to continue his comic book,
miracle man he did after he left that you were running for a
publisher called Eclipse eventually, and they kind of
went out of business. That story remained unfinished. And now
supposedly you're going to be finishing that is that Neil Gaiman: It's looking very
like it. I have I mean, given that this is taken almost three
decades. I think we're like 29 years since the last time I was
trying to write miracle man. I'm waiting to see what happens. But
yes, I mean, Alan has described it as a bit of a poison chalice.
The legal complications involved in miracle man was so much more
complicated and tangled and weird than anybody in Imagine
and then there were additional complications thrown in over the
years that Eclipse went bankrupt. They were bought out
of bankruptcy by Todd McFarlane, he offered to trade me his share
in miracle man for stuff that he owned. Then we looked at what he
owned, and we're like, but you don't own anything. It turns out
Eclipse didn't actually have anything. And then we had to get
deeper into who actually owned miracle man. And it turned out
the original creator make Anglo had kept rights that people had
claimed had been bought. And there was a there's an entire
book that you can buy on the mysteries of miracle man. But it
certainly looks, you know, I get beautiful, beautiful emails from
Mark Buckingham who is drawing away. And I think Brian Hiatt: You've written the
scripts Wow. But this was supposed to happen like six
years ago or something wasn't it are the legal Neil Gaiman: Things that we knew
the legal tangles. Six years ago, we were already to come out
with stuff. And then it turned out that things that we thought
had been sorted out had not been sorted out. So Marvel, and
people had to go off and sort them out while while Mark and I
sat on the side twiddling our thumbs and checking our watches Brian Hiatt: between miracle
man, the good omens TV show and Amazon Prime, which I recommend
everyone check out if they did not. And Sandman, you've done a
lot of sort of collaboration and continuation with your 20
Something self, which is a very interesting thing to do. And you
rarely seem to come at it from a place of, you know what, I'm so
much I'm so much older now and so much more experienced. Not
that much older, but more experienced, Neil Gaiman: I'm definitely a
lot Brian Hiatt: More experienced,
I've learned so much. I want to tear up what that kid did, and
do it better. You that doesn't seem to be your approach. Neil Gaiman: You know, on the
occasions that I've gotten, I am so much wiser, so much smarter,
and I'm going to show you how you should have done it. 26 year
old male game and I often find myself you know, a year later,
going, okay, so what if we just cut all that stuff that we did
and make it like I did in the original book or something? Oh,
that works. Yeah. And I can feel 26 year old Neil Gaiman smugly
smirking at me. He was he was incredibly smart. So it's not
that I haven't tried reshaping stuff. And I kind of enjoy
reshaping stuff. But mostly he was fairly smart. And he knew
what he was doing. I think he often knew what he was doing.
Even if he didn't, couldn't have articulated it Brian Hiatt: Was a beginner's
mind kind of thing. Neil Gaiman: I think that in the
case of Sandman there was a sort of weird phenomenon going on
whereby he had to get very good very fast, as well, weird to
talk about yourself in the third person. I had to get very good
very fast. Yeah. I had just been offered. I've been given a
monthly comic. My I honestly figured the best I was going to
get would be something would be a minor critical success, which
back then was also synonymous with major commercial failure.
So I, you know, it's weird, because I tell people now oh, I
figured we'd get to issue eight. And I get the phone call that
says "we're not selling any. But you've got four issues to wrap
it up in" and then we'd get to do to issue 12 Because that was
how DC used to do it. They would give something a year. But that
was why I plotted th e first storyline to take me to the end
of episode of issue eight. And then I was gonna have four
issues of short stories, and then we'd be done. Except that
by the time issue eight came out, Sandman was selling more
than anything like it had ever sold, or at least in you know,
within the last decade or whatever. So I wasn't getting
cancelled, and I got to allocate all of my mad plans for what I
would do if I had this thing. And I got to tell the story that
I want to tell those mad plans then are real. I can put them
into effect and that was really exciting. Brian Hiatt: The word cancel
reminds me of, it would be sort of a curse worthy of a plot
within Sandman, if you've got to see one season of this thing
being brought to life so beautifully, and then were
robbed of the chance of seeing the rest. Or would or would you
see it that way? Neil Gaiman: I wouldn't see it
that way. I would look at I love the 11 episodes that we've done.
I mean, a fabulous. They're magical. I think we've got to
see, Tom Sturridge, you've got to see Gwendoline Christie. But
to see Jenna Coleman, you've got to see Mason Alexander Park, you
got to see all of these people bring Sandman characters to
life. And to do really well, and to do it in a way that is
consistent with and feels like part of the comics. Most people
don't get there. I spent 30 something years battling bad
versions of Sandman. If what I get is nine hours of amazing
television with the budget of a big budget movie. I'm waiting
great. I don't feel like I definitely wouldn't feel like a
failure. I would feel incredibly proud of what we've made. And I
and I don't feel I'm trying to think okay, would I be
rationalizing fair? I don't think so. I think I just look at
this. I'm so proud. You know, I said this to Ted Saran at
Netflix. You know, he came over and he said, "Well, we're all
very excited about Sam." And I said, "Me too." And I said,
"I've got to say, you know, I said proud of what we made I
don't really care if anybody watches this or not just I'm
just really proud of it." And he's like, "Yeah, we want people
to watch it." Oh, yeah. Possibly. Brian Hiatt: I saw this as a
pure art project. We didn't in any way take the viewers in but
yeah, right. That's probably not right. Yes Neil Gaiman: Honestly, you know,
that was always how I felt about Sandman. i It wasn't. At the end
of the day. I was making it for me, my idea with Sandman was,
there aren't really many comics that would make me at that time
a 2728 year old person, go down to the comic store once a month
and buy a comic, I want to make a comic that would make me go
and buy a comic I want to write a comic that I would love. That
was my agenda. So here I kind of feel like me. And Allan Heinberg
with the connivance and assistance and support of David
Goyer. That's what we've made. We've made the show that we'd
like to watch we've made the Sandman that we'd like to see.
It appears that other people are enjoying it. I can tell that
because people keep sending me things saying you're number one
in Norway, you're number one in Nigeria, you're number one in
Australia, you're number one in America, you're number one in
England. So I know people are watching it. And I know that
telling other people to watch it. And obviously, this is a
commercial thing. And I very much want it to be commercial.
But at the end of the day, I think we made it for us, because
I don't know how to make it for anybody else. Brian Hiatt: If it does
continue, would you want to write some episodes yourself and
dive in the way that you did with with good omens. Neil Gaiman: I like the way that
we've done it so far. I wrote, I co wrote episode one. With Alan
and David, the three of us sort of had to find the tone and
figure out what this thing was. So we wrote it there. And I
would very happily do a you know, write or CO write an intro
episode or a closing episode as we move forward, but mostly I'm
there in ghost form. Anyway, every time Allan Heinberg hits a
bump. He's on the phone to me and we talk it out and we're
like, okay, so how do we how do we give Calliope agency we need
her to have agency but we can't change. We have a plot structure
that we need. Okay, what is she doing? How is this working? What
if this happens and stuff? So I feel like I'm in there. You
know, every every step of the way every beat of the thing.
Just talking it through with Alan being there. Helping
advising occasionally just going in and rewriting some dialogue
and sending it over because often it's quicker for me to
just write thing and send it than it is for me to say, why
don't you do something like this? And then for it to come
back and go not not quite like this. Brian Hiatt: And, again, so it
was it was a comic book you. You did sign away. As far as I know
the rights to this in a classic comic book fashion. Did you
quite realize what you were especially given? I don't know
if Alan Moore warned you given his situation? Oh, I Neil Gaiman: Was very aware. I
was 20. What would I have been when I signed the contract 26.
And I was very aware that I am a 26 year old being taken
advantage of biological operation. And I'm like, okay,
but on the other, the other side of it. I remember reading a line
from Johnny Rotten, John Lydon back when he was talking about
his Johnny Rotten days, saying, as the Sex Pistols, we knew that
we had to sign up with the big label. We couldn't be pin
pricking our way in from a little independent on the
outside. We had, if this was going to work, and if it was
going to reach people, it had to be from a big label. And it felt
this thing that I had in my head, you know, needed to be a
DC comic you did to actually be published and look like this.
Because I wanted to reach my audience. And I knew that was
the only chance I was going to get a doing it with that size
thing. What I did, that was different, I guess, to what Alan
and other people had done. was, oh, after a year of Sandman, I
wrote a letter to DC Comics I wrote to Paul Levitz, who was at
that time the President publisher. And I said, "Okay,
I've done a year. Let's talk about how much of the and you
guys own all this, and I've just done it as a standard work for
hire deal. I think you should improve my deal. I think we
should improve things, I think I should get a better deal. And I
think I should get part of this thing that I've created. Because
if I don't, it feels unfair. And I'm doing something special."
And they wrote back and said, "Yeah, you really are, you're
doing something special. And we didn't realize how special it
was going to be when you started and here is a brand new contract
for you. And it is a better contract. And no, you don't own
any of this stuff. But you have a lot more say and a bigger
share, and we're treating you with a lot more respect." And
that was basically and I think if they'd said no, I probably
would have stopped them. You know, Sam might have stopped at
issue 20. And I would have taken whatever clout I had and golf
and done something else, somewhere else, but instead my
relationship with Dc, you know, would still healthy three
decades on. The idea is I do Sandman stuff every now and
again, I look after and Shepard The Sandman stuff, and they have
3000 pages of Sandman material, which sells and sells and sells
and we're all very happy. Brian Hiatt: Is that contract
the reason why we don't have after Sandman and Sandman babies
and other things than with other writers writing it was that or
is it just the respect for you? Neil Gaiman: It's more respect
that wasn't written into anything. But we've always I
don't know. And it's one of those things where I do not take
it for granted. It is absolutely possible in this weird corporate
world that you know, tomorrow, Warner discovery would sell DC
to some other organization and the other organization would go
well, Sandman's huge you did that Netflix series and we've
only got this stuff. We want five monthly Sandman comics out
there just like we did with Watchmen or whatever. And I
could see that happening. But right now nobody's planning to
do it. And I like I like living in a world in which nobody plans
to do it because it's one in which I continue working with
DC. Brian Hiatt: One of the
fascinating artifacts of Sandman being a DC comic is that yes,
it's this modern fantasy masterpiece, but it also, you
know, obviously intersects especially early on with the DC
Universe in DC characters. You have there's cheese I forgot but
Lady Metamorpho What is her name is Elena. Oh, yes. Some I was
more nerdy to correlating Metamorpho actually, but, you
know, but you have an entire issue. Do with element girl you
have Martian Manhunter isn't it? There's all sorts of things John
Constantine who became brilliantly Joanna Constantine
in the show, but do you looking back regret at all including
that stuff? Neil Gaiman: No, I don't I don't
regret it. I mean, the truth is if if working with the DC
Universe hadn't been a continuous pain in the ass,
Sandman probably would have kept much more tied into the DC
Universe. The reason it wasn't, was because and the reason why,
after a while, the only DC Universe characters I would
touch would be people like element girl who was so
forgotten. She didn't even have a page or an entry and the who's
who of the DC Universe. And Pres. First team president of
the United States widely considered a joke was because I
kept trying to do things and they would be planned and they
will be set up and then suddenly, they'd be changed. And
I just got really irritated with DC continuity. You know, I'm, I
had a whole thing where an example would be at the
beginning of Sandman five. John D. Dr. Destiny is escaping from
Arkham. And he's meant to encountered the Joker. And I'd
written this whole Joker sequence and it went in and
suddenly got a phone call saying, Oh, no, the Joker has
just disappeared beneath the waters of the Gotham river. And
he's believed dead and I'm like, wow, he's, he's not dead. He's
the Joker. He'll be back now. Yeah, yeah. But technically
right now he's dead. So you have to make it somebody else was the
Joker. It was a good arcane, roll up my sleeves. It's now the
Scarecrow. But it was that kind of thing. And I just went, I
can't be bothered, I really can't be bothered to have to
change things and rewrite them because somebody else has just
dropped the Joker into a river. So that was really why it went
with Sandman, the TV show. People like oh, why aren't you
Why have you unplugged so much from DC Comics continuity. And
I'm like, because no human being watching this should actually be
obligated to understand 1989 DC Comics continuity, in order to
make sense of this now, like, but you don't have the Justice
League in there. That Justice League lineup has not been the
Justice League lineup since 1996. That was the last point
the JLA Justice League International went away. It's
now the Justice League. People would just get confused. They'd
be going well, why isn't that man there and who was Mr.
Miracle anyway? And I, we didn't want the hassle. We did not want
the tourists and trying to explain to people how things
tied into 1989. So and the place that I found very I thought it
made the most sense just to go okay, when I was a kid, before
the Crisis on Infinite Earths, which dates me, we used to have
earth one and earth to earth two was the one with the Batman and
the Superman, everybody from the 1940s. Earth One was the one,
the 70s and 80s 60s 70s and 80s. One, and they'd created two
Earths because everybody was 30 something years older. And
actually you needed to sort of create a new earth just for
continuity. And I'm like, great. The constant time of 1989 is now
in his late 60s Maybe even early 70s That character. And let's
make this Earth s. This is Earth Sandman. It will it it's not in
the DC universe. It's another Earth off to one side. But it
knows the DC universe exists it will borrow from it it will tip
its hat to it. Look here is Jed as a 12 year old Sandman and
he's going to be dressed like the Simon and Kirby Sandman from
the early 70s in through Brian Hiatt: In now but there
were there were DC villains on the screen there psycho pirate
which is perhaps your nod to Crisis on Infinite Earths maybe? Neil Gaiman: Well, a lot of them
are Flash villains. I like that for some flash it was had the
best row. Captain Cold and the Pied Piper? Yeah. Brian Hiatt: But it's the
extrication. It seems like you had funded with the extra cash
and yet you have house of mystery these wonderful nods to
DC lore here in this big budget Netflix series. Neil Gaiman: Absolutely. I mean,
it wasn't it wasn't that we were embarrassed by any of this it
was some of it was it was just more like okay, let's let's take
the bits that make it easier on people but let's leave in all
the bits we love and I I love that the House of secrets and
the house of mystery are on screen. I love that a sim
Choudry and Sanji Bhaskar are respectively Abel and Cain. I
love the fact we've got Goldie and Gregory the Gargoyle, I look
at Gregory and I'm just sad that Bernie writes and is no longer
with us because I wish he lived to see Gregory the gargoyle
flying around on the screen this thing that he made. I love all
that. I think that that's so much fun. And I love the fact
that if you want to do weird, deep dives into DC chronology,
you have lighter whole who in some versions of DC Comics
existence, but not really that one that we were in even by the
time we got to the comic, but there's some there is a level in
which she's wonder woman's daughter did Yes. And perhaps
she is we'll never know. Brian Hiatt: There's people who
weren't who many people watch the show are like that was
Wonder Woman start Yes. In some reality. Yes. And I guess Yes, I
had exactly the same reaction. But the in the in the ending of
towards the end of Sandman without any spoilers, the
graphic, the graphic novels, um, there's a there's a moment when
Morpheus is talking to William Shakespeare. And we learned
that, you know, we've learned that Morpheus helped manifest
Shakespeare's creativity. And specifically what he says is
that it was all there. I just opened the door for you what
opened the door? Neil Gaiman: Lovely question. A
few things open, different doors opened. But I think the thing
that really opened the door for me was getting to meet, interact
and work with people who were brilliant. And realizing that
the biggest difference between them and me was they were
working really hard. And that they'd set their own personal
goals high. People like Alan Moore people like Terry
Pratchett. People like Clive Barker, where I'd look at what
they were doing. And I'd be going oh, my, my idea of, of me
as a good writer is so far down from what you're doing. Why
don't I just raise? Why don't I raise my sights? Why don't I
just open that door and walk through it to become a really
good writer rather than a, you know, commercial writer who is
writing to survive. I wrote a biography of Duran Duran, I
would not personally have read it. And yet I wrote it Brian Hiatt: And a pretty good
book about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Neil Gaiman: That one I'm still
funding I would have read, I would read that one. But I
wouldn't have read my deram book. And that, and I learned a
lot from that. I'm just like, okay, that thing that was fine,
was great. I bought I got the money to buy an electric
typewriter, and to pay my rent and to feed myself with my Duran
Duran book. Now, let's, let's go forward. And let's go forward to
a point of always wanting to improve, as a writer always
wanting, if I can to go places I haven't gone before. And if I
get very, very lucky, every now and then I get to go places
nobody's gone before. Brian Hiatt: 'The Ocean at the
End of the Lane' is is now is a stage play in England. Any talk
of bring it to Broadway? Neil Gaiman: There's definitely
been talked to bring it to Broadway. But all I know, is I
only know one thing about it coming to Broadway, which is
when I called them up and said, "that amazing neon sign that
you've got outside the Duke of York's Theatre in London, when
you're done, is there any possibility of me being able to
like by the same" and they said, "you know, we are going to need
it for Broadway. So I thought, Okay, well, they're obviously
planning to go to Broadway." But more than that, I do not know. I
hope they do. It's an astonishing play the Joe Hall
would script Katie Rudd's direction so powerful and I've
never had the experience of sitting in a theater filled with
people crying and crying at different points but not crying
because the sad crying because there are things that are going
on on the stage that are too big to fit into their hearts. And
that sounds really wonky for which I apologize. But it's,
it's a thing. I've seen it and I've seen it over and over
again. And it's happened to me. And the first time it happened
to me, I was incredibly embarrassed because I'm like, I
wrote the novel, I shouldn't be sitting here, and I'm in a
rehearsal room and everybody can see me and I'm discreetly
flicking tears away. And then the next time it happened, I was
at the National Theatre on opening night, and I'm sitting
between my wife who is sobbing, which is not in itself unusual
because she cries that emotional things. And on the other side of
me, is a journalist from one of the leading English newspapers
and I'm watching his tears plopping onto his notepad as
he's taking notes and I'm going okay, if you're crying then
something something's happening here. So ocean ocean does big
magic things in your heart. Brian Hiatt: The useful spoken
about having less energy, creative energy than when you
were, you know, when you were 28 years old, because you were
doing doing Sandman. And I think good omens at the same time.
Just Neil Gaiman: I'm books of magic.
I was writing, I was writing. I because I remember I would write
Sandman until midnight, books of magic from midnight until 230 In
the morning, and then 'Good Omens' from 230 in the morning,
till five in the morning, and then go to bed. I look at that
now. And I'm How did you do that? How do you have a brain
that would do that? I don't know, these days, I have to sort
of work myself up to writing a shopping list. Brian Hiatt: So how do you as
you continue on, and there's, you know, there's people like
Philip Roth, who I mean, he retired eventually, but up until
he was about 80. He he was just he was he focused his life to be
able to continue to create it. How do you grapple with that?
Slightly diminished energy. Neil Gaiman: You know, I mean,
right, let's put it this way. Right now. I am show running.
Actively editing two shows two television show series. I'm
seeing another one through the promotional stages. It's been
through post production and so forth. I'm just about to start
writing a new six episode thing all on my own. I've got a novel
that needs to be finished. And I'm looking after a six year old
boy. So I'm doing okay. I mean, there is diminished energy. But
I'm some I am somehow publishing to juggle all this stuff. And
and I'm still enjoying it. I think it's actually much more
than just the list of stuff. I'm I'm so proud of good omens
season two, I think it's wonderful. I'm so excited about
an NC boys because it feels like something that nobody else has
made. So proud of Sandman. And obviously, with Sam working with
Allan Heinberg, on breaking down all of the stories and the
planning for season two. Assuming that we are fortunate
enough to get a season two, we need to be ready to go the
moment that the flag comes down. And really just enjoying it all
and enjoying being a dad to a six year old to that's fun. Brian Hiatt: Yes. And before I
let you go, I mean, yeah, good. Good omen season two, I mean,
you're breaking free of the book at this point. How is that
working? Neil Gaiman: Oh, it's wonderful.
It's so much fun. And partly because I learned so much. You
know, the first time you do something, you just learn how to
do it. And then you can start to play. So when I made when I
wrote made good omens, I was learning how do you do a good
omens? I think there's this thing in my head. But how does
it work? Because I'm in season two. I know how to make good
omens now, and I feel like you know, good omens was chopsticks.
This is much more me getting into actually sort of bringing
the whole orchestra Brian Hiatt: Golberg variations.
Okay, it's okay. And then I went off yeah. Neil Gaiman: Go on to music went
to an orchestra. Brian Hiatt: And then finally,
you've gotten to speak. Perhaps too much for your taste about
the the origins of Sandman itself, I think you've now
broken it down. But one thing I'm curious about is not so much
the character in the series. But since you did end up starting
the series, the same way that the TV series The same way,
where did the, the conceit of, you know, someone tries to trap
death, instead, they trap this entity and he's imprisoned. And
then we the whole rest of it is dealing with the consequences of
you know, these many years of him being imprisoned, where did
all that come from? Neil Gaiman: A lot of it came
out of me in October 1987. dealing with the aftermath of a
hurricane, a literal hurricane, we had the first hurricane in
England that we'd had for five, 600 years. And there was no
power, my little, little village I was in was in the middle of
the woods. So we were kind of cut off. And I had nothing to do
but think. And I just remember an awful lot of walking around
and thinking and walking around and thinking and going, Okay, I
got this character. But how would this work? And how does
that work? And how do I get from here to there. And I just
remember building the first eight episodes, and then writing
the outline. And as soon as the power came on, it had been about
a week and the power came on and writing an outline and sending
it off to DC Comics to my editor, Karen Berger, and
saying, Okay, this, I think this is it. It was it was and a lot
of it came from the idea that I didn't know if I was ever gonna
get to do this again. I've never written a monthly comic, I'd
written, you know, a handful of small things, a handful of short
stories that had sold a handful of comics. This may be my only
chance I thought ever to actually get a mainstream comic
published. So I was gonna get everything in there. And I was
going to do an okay. And I started out going well, it's a
horror comics. So I'm going to do every different kind of
horror. I'll start out with Episode One, issue one, and
that'll be like, you know, British respectable horror. And
then issue two, I'll do EC comics and DC Comics kind of
horror. And issue three, I'll do Ramsay Campbell, Clive Barker
contemporary split up on Quora, and issue four I'll do, I'll go
to hell. And I'll do that kind of 1940s Unknown worlds kind of
magical thing. And, you know, an issue five, six, I'll just go
hog wild, and see how far and weird I can go when issue eight,
I'll try and kiss everything better. And we'll meet death and
we'll go for a walk. And after that I've no idea what's going
to happen. But that's my story. Brian Hiatt: And finally, before
we let like, Finally, before I let you go, you you are not like
some of your colleagues, you are not a magician, you you don't do
rituals. There are other there are other comic book writers of
your era from from England who who do all of that. There are as
you as you will know, do you not believe in a spiritual dimension
at all? Do you do you think we're just our bodies. Neil Gaiman: I just don't ever
want to be limited to one thing. I mean, what I love is having
infinite possibilities. I can believe so many things, many of
them utterly contradictory. And I feel like if I had to pick
one, then now I'm locked into what I can write and what I can
choose. I I was telling somebody the other day when I was about
2526, I was standing on East Croydon Station in London on the
way to London. And I saw somebody reading a copy of the
Sun which is an English it's a rag but it's not tabloid in the
way that American tabloids a tabloid, right it's, you know,
it's sort of rubbishy but you're assuming that the front page is
probably something bears so Brian Hiatt: Werewolves claimed
to have found a werewolf and you Neil Gaiman: "Werewolf captured
in South End" and my heart broke it really I remember the moment
I was just like this, "oh, no, no, I do not want a werewolf to
have been captured." No werewolves must ever be
captured. Because the moment that a werewolf is captured,
there will be werewolf rules. And I will not be able to write
well, stories, I want to be able to reinvent a werewolf for any
occasion, I need my werewolf to be whatever I need my werewolf
to be my story. I need my angels to be whatever my angels could
be for my stories. And so for me, I look at the many British
magicians who also write comics, and I go to my friends, I think
I wonderful. But it certainly wouldn't be my choice of thing
to do. I like the fact that for me, I get to practice magic. As
a writer, that's that's what I get to do. I get to make magic I
get to create things that are not and never have been and
never will be. But I got to make them and I got to take people to
places that don't exist. And I got them to cry real tears of
people who have never been in the world and who never died.
And for me, that's the real magic. Brian Hiatt: Sounds like magic
to me. Are you are you still in touch with Alan Moore by the
way? Are you on good terms with Neil Gaiman: I remain on good
terms with Alan I just got sent his book called illuminations
which is his short story collection. She's absolutely
fabulous. The little plug for somebody else's book. Allen's
book, short stories, it must be coming out fairly soon. And it
has in it some stories. I'd read some stories I hadn't read. And
a short novel called I think all we can know about Thunder Man,
which is Allen, writing about his version of the history of
comics from an sort of slightly alternate dimension. It's
wonderful writing. Brian Hiatt: So in addition to
all the magical work you've given us, you've also pulled off
the magic trick of staying on good terms with Alan Moore. So
that's awesome, impressive. But Neil Gaiman thank you so much
for joining us.