2005-02-01 - 3:43 p.m.
Two entries in as many day. You must suspect the world of ending. I certainly do. I'll get to that later. First I will thank all of you that wished me luck on seeing Neil Gaiman last night, and all of you who would have. It worked quite well.
So the film was set to start at 5:45. We left work promptly at 5:00. We took back roads to the theatre, to avoid as much traffic as possible. We got there at 5:30. Love was already there, so I caught up with her, as Shadowedge dodged off to get popcorn and soda. We all made it into the theatre with plenty of time. It was not crowded, or even sold out. We sat as a group of friends and twittered with anticipation. 5:45 came around, and they started us off with some animated shorts from Ringling Students. I enjoyed them all, and they were appropriate in subject matter for a Gaiman/McKean project. The first short was a a photomachine on Coney Island that could tell the future, and that it is best to grow old with someone. The second short was about the perils of fishing, in which the fisherman get eaten by the fish he eats. The last was shadowy mannequins dealing with authority structures. None of them used voice, only music. Then a spot warmed up, and the guests of honor were introduced. Gaiman and McKean waved and said, "So we made this film. It's called Mirror Mask, and we will answer questions about it afterwords. Enjoy." and they sat down. Opening credits began running at 6:00. I will now digress into some of the information they gave us after the film. The film was sponsored by Henson Studios. They asked the two of them to make a film in the vein of Labrynth and Dark Crystal. They gave the pair of them 4million USD. This became slightly problematic, as the dollar proceeded to decline rapidly against the pound, and they were working in England. It was done with 6 weeks of physical filming and 17 months of animating. There were 17 animators working on the project. Now with that said, I will critique as much as possible without actually addressing what happens. It is a mix of animation and live action, interacting. The visuals are powerful, my favorite work done by McKean yet. It was interesting to see his creations moving for real. Incredible use of color and symbolism. I am also of the opinion that visual references were made to "Wings of Desire", "Labrynth", "Cabinet of Doctor Caligary", "Dark Crystal", and "Never Ending Story." There were probably many more, and these may not actually have been in McKeans head, but you never know. The writing was distinctly Gaiman writing in his fairytale style. The writing was very solid, naturally. The pacing was surreal. It moved like a dream. Drifting and light at points, and then frenetic at others. The acting was strong, but overshadowed by the power of the visuals. Anything I am leaving out? It was incredible in my opinion. Better than Labrynth, because Labrynth wasn't quite as surreal and pretty.
After the film, they got up and told us about Henson studios and such. I can't say I remember all of the questions, but I believe 3 of our party gt to ask questions for the general audience, including the last one. The last question was, What was best, and what was worst, personally, in making the film? Neil Gaiman answered for McKean. "I'll answer this one for Dave, and then hand the mic over to him so he can answer. I can answer this just from the phone conversations I had with him. I called him while they were shooting and asked how he was doing. He said he was tired, but it was good. I called him while he was working on the animation and he responded *grrrrr mumble grr*" Dave McKean agreed with Neil's assessment. He went on to tell us a story about how five months into the project, there was not a single completed shot. His animators would all take lunch, opening up there little bag lunches, and down load previews for various movies. They would then proceed to tear apart the mistakes in the animation. He however just kept seeing completed shot after completed shot, and wished he could get one. "Look a completed shot. Oh, another one. Gah, thats three, three complete shots, and I don't have one." Neil was asked about the similarities between this and other works of his. He replied that everytime you start a new writing project, you always intend to make something completely new, and when you are done you see how it fits in with everything else you have written. He was asked why betrayal is featured so much in his writing. "It makes for a good story." was the bulk of the answer. They were thanked for contemporising the Alice story, which I think led to some comment on inspiration. In addressing inspiration for the film he read through the list of movies in the "Avatars of Alice" syllabus. The important ones cinematically to this film were Paper House and Labrynth. Now to relate the next story I must reveal part of the movie, so if you hate anykind of spoiler stop now. One of the creatures featured in the film are "sphinxes" which are multi-colored housecats, with rainbow wings, and human faces. At one point the protagonists are in a cat-ladies house, and part of the script that was cut was a line where she is talking about her dead husband. She says, "My husband never liked them, and would taunt them, and mistreat them. They were terribly fond of him however. After he went missing, they wouldn't eat for a week." Hold onto this when you see the film. There was a question as to the names of the characters, and their significance. The lead is named Helena, because it means light. Her compatriot is named Valentine. This name was selected very late in the production, on February 12 to be exact. The character is fond of his name, and everyhere they looked they saw Valentine. Other than that, I believe a distribution question was asked, and they said to get on the internet and stir up the buzz. Write reviews for IMDB and so forth. I hope to get to that soon.
We were forced out of the theatre because there was a movie trying to start after us, so slowly the fans and them moved out of the way. I rode the wave of people out of the theatre, standing about 5 feet from Neil the whole way. Love was right next to him. Thw two then hung out with us infront of the theatre until they really had to go for an interview. Love got to ask Neil Gaiman if he wrote things knowing that they would be geek taglines, and he said he never really knew which lines were going to be popular. Other than that, they were just really nice to everyone. Everyone who had anything they wanted signed was rewarded with a signature. I am pretty sure I left them entirely alone, though our party stayed swarmed about Neil Gaiman for much of the time. We then went for dinner and glowed.
I'll tell you why the world is ending later. Enjoy the parades and circuses until then.
