Alicia Lozano makes her return to the Hero Complex with coverage of a packed-house event at UCLA's Royce Hall.

Neil Gaiman had a rough year. His father died while the 49-year-old author was working on a screenplay of his 2005 novel “Anansi Boys” and financing crumpled for a film adaptation of “The Graveyard Book.” But standing before a rapt audience (and a wildly diverse one, considering the children carrying copies of “Coraline,” the parents toting “American Gods” and goth kids wielding “Sandman” issues) at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Thursday night, Gaiman was nothing but sprightly storytelling and good omens.

“I always wanted to be the kind of writer who can tell whatever stories he wanted,” said Gaiman, dressed in his ubiquitous uniform of black on black with appropriately shaggy hair and alabaster skin. “It never occurred to me not to be.”

And this is exactly the kind of storytelling that has made Gaiman “the most famous writer you’ve never heard of,” according to the Times of London. At Thursday’s event, hosted by UCLA Live, the journalist-turned-comic-book-writer-and-eventual-novelist breezed through almost 30 years of literary works, ranging from whimsical poems to devilish short stories and culminating with full-blown adult novels.

He kicked off the evening with a reading of “My Last Landlady,” a poem inspired by the “horrors” of off-season English seaside resorts that once vacated in the winter become dark and twisted traps for unsuspecting tourists. 

After the reading, Gaiman launched into a brief retrospective of his work as a “crossover artist,” one who can deftly navigate the sometimes conflicting worlds of horror versus fantasy, children’s versus adult, comic versus fiction writing.

His first book, 1991’s “Coraline,” which became a 2009 silver-screen hit, took more than two decades to write, Gaiman confessed. He started it as a 22-year-old journalist, who soon after turned to comic books, “a medium that people mistake as a genre,” he explained. But his publisher argued that the children’s book he sought to create was too scary for kids and too juvenile for adults. It was tucked away until Gaiman found considerable success through his “Sandman” comic series and he was finally allowed to experiment with prose suitable for anyone with enough imagination to accept the “other.”

Sticking with the crossover theme, Gaiman continued with a reading from “The Graveyard Book,” originally conceived as a ghost version of the “The Jungle Book,” inspired by his then-2-year-old son, Michael, now 26, who enjoyed riding his bicycle through a cemetery, which coincidentally was one of Gaiman’s favorite places to visit when he himself was a child. This book also took almost 20 years to write. He kept putting it away until he became a better writer, Gaiman said. Eventually, he realized that he wasn’t getting any better and decided to finally give it a go. The result won the Brit a 2009 Newberry Medal.

His last reading came from a 100-page novella called “Odd and the Frost Giants,” about a young Norwegian boy living among Vikings who runs away from home with a broken leg, only to be followed by a bear, fox and eagle. In the novella -- originally written for World Book Day, during which English schoolchildren can buy books with 1-pound vouchers -- Odd comes face to face with some of Gaiman’s favorite, and most often invoked, gods: Loki, Odin and Thor.

When asked about writing for children versus adults during question-and-answer time, Gaiman noted that young readers “don’t come to stories with preconceptions,” making them a perfect vehicle for introducing the fantastical and horrific.

He ended the night by reading from “Instructions,” a poem about what to do when you find yourself living in a fairy tale. “Trust your dreams, your heart and your story,” he advised. The poem will eventually be published in a collection of the same name illustrated by Charles Vess. Gaiman is also working on a nonfiction story about Buddhist myths in China called “A Monkey in Me.”

-- Alicia Lozano

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Photos: Top, author Neil Gaiman in Manhattan in 2007. Credit: Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times. Bottom, Gaiman on a cemetery stroll. Credit: Philippe Matas / HarperCollins

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 will speak Feb. 4 at UCLA’s Royce Hall and, after winning the Newbery Medal last year for “The Graveyard Book,” there will probably be strong turnout for an author -- he was already a rock star with the Comic-Con crowd thanks to his landmark, seven-year run on “Sandman.” Gaiman has a reputation for wit and sprightly storytelling, but the Royce audience might hear a speech tinted with sadness on the edges.

Gaiman is also mourning the 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. It’s a demoralizing setback for Gaiman, who had announced Jordan’s participation last January on “The Today Show.” It may all still happen, of course, but it added to a year of tumult for the author.

“It was all put together over at Miramax Films. The people there had a long, great relationship with Neil Jordan and it was all set up and ready to go, and then Miramax was more or less erased from existence,” Gaiman said. “It became a filing cabinet in somebody’s desk, more or less.... But it looks like almost all the pieces are on the table again. They have a studio, they have a distributor and they are putting stuff together and I’m not allowed to say anything else.”

Gaiman has a spotty history with Hollywood, but he’s clearly fascinated by its career upsides. He was publicly bitter that the film adaption 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.

“These days we’re in this strange and fascinating world where it seems that even movie studios don’t have the money to make movies anymore,” Gaiman said. “That’s been the story of most of the films I’ve been involved in. The long, strange journey is the financing part; the journey of the filmmaking is always incredibly easy and straightforward.”

Gaiman, born in Portchester, England, lives in rambling old manse in Minnesota, but he and his fiancee, Amanda Palmer of the punk-cabaret duo the Dresden Dolls, attended the Golden Globe Awards this weekend. Selick’s “Coraline” was nominated for best animated film, and the author of the source material was dazzled and amused by his red carpet experience. He found himself sharing a banquet room with George Lucas, Paul McCartney and Mike Tyson -- an experience, he said, that was just like real life but entirely different.

“They definitely were all there, you were not hallucinating,” Gaiman said with a chuckle. “There was also Mickey Rourke in a cowboy hat, Meryl Streep threatening to rename herself ‘T-Bone.’ It was also the same room where my fiancee was threatened with removal and the confiscation of her camera for taking a photo of the teleprompter with her iPhone. Someone with security did not want the illusion to be shattered that these stars had not actually memorized the jokes they were making.”

Gaiman has high hopes that a long list of his creations of the page will live and breathe on the screen. “As a writer,” he said at one point in the interview, “what we’re fighting is obscurity.” His “Sandman” (which is a metaphysical and operatic chronicle of the modern-day doings of Morpheus, the immortal god of dreams) would seem like natural fantasy property for comic-book-obsessed Hollywood studios. The author is also optimistic that the “Graveyard Book” project has not truly given up the ghost. "It's a natural, that's why Jordan wanted to do it in the first place; he knew that someone was going to do it."

At the UCLA Live event, though, the storyteller plans to linger on matters of magical creation, not multimedia commerce.

“I think what I want to talk about is what the imagination is and what the imagination does,” Gaiman said. He also wanted to emphasize that, despite some trying times, he will not arrive at Royce Hall as glum as, say, Silas, the dour vampire who becomes an orphan's protector in "The Graveyard Book."
 
“Having said that it was a down year, and my dad dying, it was also one of the biggest up years I’ve ever had -- and the strangest. Any year that begins with you winning the Newbery medal and any year that begins with someone like Henry Selick making a movie like ‘Coraline’ out of one of your books, that’s an up year. And now I’m engaged….”

So what’s next for the writer? The big goal 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.”

-- Geoff Boucher

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PHOTOS: Top, Neil Gaiman strolls among the headstones. Credit: Philippe Matas / HarperCollins. Middle, Neil Jordan at work on set of "The Good Thief" in 2002. Credit: David Appleby / Fox Searchlight Pictures. Bottom, Neil Gaiman in New York, summer 2007. Credit: Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times.

 
 
Brave enough to enter the other world? Come see a free screening of "Coraline" at 7:30 tonight at The Landmark at 10850 W. Pico Boulevard and then stick around for my interview with director Henry Selick up on stage. We'll be taking questions from the audience as well, as this event that's brought to you by the Los Angeles Times and The Envelope is the first of five screenings leading up to the Oscar voting. Hope to see you there.

-- Geoff Boucher

Top photo by David Strick; photo of Neil Gaiman, below, by Kimberly Butler

Neil Gaiman and the stuff that dreams are made of

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"Coraline": Meet the cast

Exclusive set photos: "Coraline" coming to life

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The confetti has been cleared away, the egg nog has gone bad and I'm back at work. Hope you enjoyed the holidays as much as I did and welcome to the first 2009 edition of Everyday Hero, your handpicked headlines from the fanboy universe...

THE (NEW) DOCTOR IS IN: Big news from across the Atlantic, where the TARDIS has a new owner. I'm still mourning the departure of David Tennant, the best Doctor Who of them all, but I suppose it's time to move on, especially now that his replacement has been named: "The BBC today announced that Matt Smith has been cast in the role of the Doctor in the iconic BBC series 'Doctor Who.' Smith will be the eleventh Time Lord and will take over from David Tennant who leaves the show at the end of 2009. He will be seen in the forthcoming fifth series that will be broadcast in 2010. ... Matt Smith said of his new role: 'I'm just so excited about the journey that is in front of me. It's a wonderful privilege and challenge that I hope I will thrive on. I feel proud and honoured to have been given this opportunity to join a team of people that has worked so tirelessly to make the show so thrilling. David Tennant has made the role his own, brilliantly with grace, talent and persistent dedication. I hope to learn from the standards set by him. The challenge for me is to do justice to the show's illustrious past, my predecessors and most importantly to those who watch it. I really cannot wait.' Lead writer and Executive Producer Steven Moffat said, 'The Doctor is a very special part, and it takes a very special actor to play him. You need to be old and young at the same time, a boffin and an action hero, a cheeky schoolboy and the wise old man of the universe. As soon as Matt walked through the door and blew us away with a bold and brand new take on the Time Lord, we knew we had our man. 2010 is a long time away but rest assured the Eleventh Doctor is coming -- and the universe has never been so safe.'" [BBC]

GOODNIGHT, SWEET PRINCE: Meanwhile, the old Doctor has returned to the London stage after a painful holiday season of scar tissue and bed rest. Nosheen Iqbal has the story: "Four weeks after a prolapsed disc forced him off the stage, David Tennant has returned to play Hamlet for the final week of the Royal Shakespeare Company's sold-out production at the Novello theatre in London. The Doctor Who actor, who was confined to rest for most of December while recovering from back surgery, resumed his role on Saturday night. His performance won a standing ovation from a delighted audience, who had turned up expecting to see understudy Edward Bennett. Thousands of fans were left disappointed after Tennant's sudden departure from the show last month. Despite complaints, the RSC refused to offer refunds. Tickets for the West End run of Hamlet, which transferred from Stratford-upon-Avon, sold out within hours of going on sale in September. A cautious statement from the RSC said the company will assess Tennant's return on 'a day-by-day' basis. Theatregoers are advised to check the RSC website for updates throughout the week. The sold-out run at the Novello theatre is due to finish on 10 January." [The Guardian]

THE SICK SCOTSMAN: I had heard from several people that Mark Millar, one of the true shining stars on the comics scene today, had a nasty medical scare over the holidays, and now Scottish journalist Toby Mcdonald has details: "Mark Millar almost died after being pole-axed by his own medicine. The 39-year-old -- whose 'Wanted' series was turned into a blockbuster starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy -- lost more than a stone in weight in 10 days. Marvel comics writer Mark was raced to hospital after his temperature soared to 103 and he developed extreme flu-like symptoms. Mark, of Glasgow, said: 'I went off sick the first week of December and thought I had a heavy cold or flu. My temperature was a consistent 103F and I was awake all night shivering. After a week, it wasn't passing and my wife made me an appointment with the doc. He did tests and found my blood was wonky, my spleen was huge and my liver was acting weird -- all the symptoms of several very nasty things. I was sleeping 20 hours a day and have almost no memory of the whole episode.' Doctors finally discovered Mark was suffering a severe reaction to his medication for Crohn's, which causes agonising inflammation of the digestive tract. He said: 'They rushed me into hospital, kept me there for five days and did a million tests, which I slept through. I can barely remember being in hospital." [The Sunday Mail]...NOTE: A stone, by the way, equals 14 pounds, according to my handy pocket guide to British weights and measures.

CORALINE, BUTTONED UP: What movie is my 11-year-old daughter, Addison, most excited about in 2009? Well, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," without a doubt, but a fairly close second is "Coraline," which opens Feb. 6 and adapt Neil Gaiman's sweet and eerie tale of little girl who finds a mysterious door that takes her away from her boring life and right into a web of dark supernatural danger. Here's a video with some snippets from the film as well as some of the behind-the-scenes work going into the film by Henry Selick, who also directed the 1993 classic "The Nightmare Before Christmas." (Also, to read my three-part interview with Gaiman, click here.)

A GOTHAM GROOM AND THE MUTANT MOTHER: Film chameleon Gary Oldman has been a vampire, a wild-eyed wizard, a doomed punk icon and Batman's best friend, but those were just movie roles. You know what he is in real life? An optimist. How do I know? The 50-year-old actor just got married...for the fourth time. His new bride is 31-year-old musician Alexandra Edenborough. The Telegraph in the U.K. reports: "Oldman divorced from his third wife the former model Donya Fiorentino in 2001, after his previous marriages to Hollywood star Uma Thurman and English actress Lesley Manville broke down...the actor married Edenborough at a small ceremony last week. Rumours of their engagement had circulated since they attended the premiere of Brad Pitt's film 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' earlier in the month." In other life-event news, Rebecca Romijn, who looks deliriously good in blue skin in "The X-Men" films, is now a mom. People Magazine reports:  "Rebecca Romijn and husband Jerry O'Connell have welcomed healthy twin girls, People has confirmed. Dolly Rebecca Rose and Charlie Tamara Tulip were born Dec. 28. 'Mother, father and both girls are all home and doing well,' Romijn's rep Lewis Kay told People.  They are the first children for the 'Ugly Betty' actress, 36, and actor O'Connell, 34, who married at their Calabasas, Calif., ranch in 2007. The new mom, whose pregnancy cravings included lemonade and soy cream cheese, is planning a long maternity leave." Soy cream cheese and lemonade? She is a mutant.

ON THIS DATE: Actor George Reeves was born in Woolstock, Iowa, on this day 95 years ago. The actor (whose birth name was George Keefer Brewer) appeared in one of the great classics of cinema, "Gone with the Wind," but he is, of course, remembered most as the Man of Steel on "The Adventures of Superman" television series. The one-time amatuer boxer took the role with reservations in summer 1951, but he became a pop culture icon -- as well as frustrated symbol of Hollywood typecasting. Reeves died in summer 1959 of a gunshot wound that was ruled a suicide, but it remains a murky matter in minds of many and became the plot of the 2006 film "Hollywoodland." To honor his birth, let's all look up in the sky today and ponder the 21st century meanings of truth, justice and the American way. [If you'd like to see a bit of Reeves in caped action as well as the trailer for "Hollywoodland," you can find some video at the bottom of this post.]

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Neil Gaiman, who is one of the signature talents over the past two decades in comic books as well a writer of increasing renown for his novels and work in Hollywood.

I posted a three-part Q&A from that interview right here on Hero Complex (it began here, continued here and then finished up here) but I also used the conversation as the foundation for a feature on the 20th anniversary of "The Sandman." That feature ran (finally) this morning on the cover of the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times. It won't have many surprises for readers who checked out the full Q&A, but here's an excerpt for everyone else and those Gaiman die-hard fans who just can't get enough when it comes to this sparkling storyteller.

--Geoff Boucher 

Even in casual conversation, British author Neil Gaiman sometimes sounds as if he's narrating some dark fairy tale -- his sentences slither across old stone floors or flit on gossamer wings. He also happens to live in a rambling Minnesota manse that looks, Gaiman says, as if it were "drawn by Charles Addams on a day he was feeling particularly morbid."

So it's no surprise that fans of the fantasy novelist have whispered for years that Gaiman bears more than a passing resemblance to his signature creation, the Sandman, the spooky comic-book character that debuted 20 years ago and brought a new literary ambition to the pop medium.

"He's a lot like me, only with an immortal's superpowers and no sense of humor of any kind," Gaiman said. "Hmm. So in fact, he isn't anything like me at all, but he does have very messy hair. That was a great point of correspondence between me and the character. He's much paler than I am too."

Gaiman came up in the comic-book world, but his prowess as a storyteller took him far beyond its bordered pages. His bestselling novels "American Gods" and "Anansi Boys" helped establish his credentials with the critics, and the sly 1998 fantasy "Stardust" was adapted to the screen in 2007. His other Hollywood pursuits have included the Robert Zemeckis computer-animated epic "Beowulf" (Gaiman co-wrote the script) and the February release "Coraline," which director Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas") is adapting from Gaiman's novel for young adults.

But despite that career climb, it is the character of Sandman that follows most closely at the feet of the 48-year-old Gaiman like some staircase shadow. Far from a superhero, Sandman was a supernatural lord of dreams, going by several names, including Dream and Morpheus. In 75 monthly issues that spanned seven years, the spectral being brought readers into often nightmarish worlds like some cross between Rod Serling and one of the Christmas spooks from Dickens.

Gaiman said that he came to the premise with a sort of "1,001 Arabian Nights" motivation.

"It was an idea of trying to take something very literally: What would it be like to live in dreams? A lot of that came out of terror. I was a young writer and had never written anything monthly. I needed a story shape that could take me anywhere, because my fear was: What if I run out of stories? So I thought, 'I will have somebody who has existed since the dawn of time, so that gives me the entirety of human history to play with for stories.'"

                                            READ THE REST OF THE STORY

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Photo of Neil Gaiman in Manhattan in 2007,  by Jennifer S. Altman for the Los Angeles Times. Photo of Alan Moore, circa 2001, in Northampton, England, shot by Graham Barclay for the Los Angeles Times.

EXCLUSIVE: This is the third and final part of our interview with Neil Gaiman on the 20th anniversary of "The Sandman." In this installment, the British native talks about the film future of Morpheus, his disappointments with the "Stardust" movie and his anxieties about the upcoming "Coraline" adaptation.

(Read Part One and Part Two)

GB: This seems to be the golden age of comic-book films and your Hollywood profile has risen with "Beowulf," "Stardust" and the upcoming "Coraline." So what can you tell us about the status of "The Sandman" as a Hollywood project?

NG: Back in about 1991 or 1992 I got sent into a meeting with an executive at Warners. He told me, "They're talking about a 'Sandman' movie," and I said. "Please, don't do it." He said, "What?" I told him I'm still writing this thing, it's not done yet, and a movie would throw everything off of its course. He said, "You are the first human being ever to come into my office and beg me not to make a movie." [Laughs] Which was incredibly sweet...

My feeling today is that I would so much rather there be no movie than there be a bad movie. We're getting closer and closer to the point where you could make a Sandman movie just because the world is changing. The thing that has really made it practical for the superhero movies to exist is the simple fact that you can put it on screen now. With trying to make superhero movies over the years, it has always been that you simply couldn't do it. They would say, "You will believe a man can fly," but you really wouldn't.

Now, you pretty much can. And now you have an era of cheap special effects and people who have grown up reading and respecting comics. Fifteen years ago, when I would go in for meetings at studios, the people who had the power to greenlight things and make things happen, they didn't really know who I was. They weren't sure what Sandman was. Their assistants weren't sure what Sandman was. But the guy who would bring you the bottle of water, the interns, the assistants to the assistants, the bottom-rung people -- they knew who I was. These were the guys who would sidle up to me in the corridors and say, "I love what you do." The interesting thing is now, 15 years on, those guys are running studios.

The people making the decisions now, they know who I am, they know who Alan Moore is, these are the people looking forward to a "Watchmen" movie for 20 years. So a Sandman movie is an inevitability, sooner or later.

GB: And what would be your most important compass point in moving forward with a Sandman film?

NG: The only thing I hope for is that whoever it goes to has the same amount of passion for it that Peter Jackson brought to "Lord of the Rings." I want someone who will make the film because he loved it and he cared about it and if anybody was going to screw it up, it was going to be him. That's what Jackson did and it seems like the same position Zack Snyder is in with "Watchmen," from the interviews. He was scared somebody else wouldn't get it right. I hope when "Sandmen" gets made it's by somebody like that. Guillermo del Toro has his "Hellboy" as his thing that he loves that is important and personal, that's what "Sandman" needs. There is someone out there. Or there will be someone out there in five or 10 years.

Here are some images from the Portland, Ore., set of "Coraline," the much-anticipated animated film version of Neil Gaiman's brilliant novella (which was also notably adapted as a graphic novel drawn by P. Craig Russell).

The photo above shows scenic painter Aaron Jarrett at work on the set of the film now being directed and produced by the ingenious Henry Selick, who along with Tim Burton brought the world the spindly magic of "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

These photographs were taken by David Strick, who has one of the greatest gigs ever: He's the set photographer who gets fantastic access and captures truly singular Tinseltown moments. You can see the building collection of his very special work over at Hollywood Backlot. It's a pretty astounding and deep archive, and every time I click through I find something new and compelling.

Coraline is due in theaters in February and features the voices of Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Ian McShane and John Hodgman. There's a simmering excitment for this film. Why?

Fans of director Henry Selick and writer Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" got an up-close look at Selick's upcoming stop-motion animated feature "Coraline" on the Comic-Con show floor.

Adapted by Selick from Neil Gaiman’s international best-selling book of the same name, "Coraline" follows a young girl (Dakota Fanning) who walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers an alternate version of her life. The parallel reality is eerily similar to her real life – only much better. Except when Coraline's fantastical adventure turns dangerous, and her counterfeit parents (including Other Mother, voiced by Teri Hatcher) try to keep her forever.

Georgina Hayns, head of "Coraline" puppet department, accompanied the movie's maquettes to San Diego where they are displayed in the NECA booth. Selick allowed the models to journey from Laika headquarters in Portland, Oregon where he has been recording the stop-mo animation in native 3-D. "Coraline" is due in theaters February 6, 2009.

See a "Coraline" clip here and a trailer here. Character descriptions and another photo after the jump.

Photos: Ian Shive, courtesy Focus Features