An Evening With Neil Gaiman

Capitol Theatre Public domain 

Last Tuesday, I went to the Capitol Theatre in the Melbourne CBD to hear Neil Gaiman, author of so many wonderful books - American Gods, Anansi Boys, Stardust, The Graveyard Book, Coraline and, of course, Good Omens, which he co-authored with Terry Pratchett and more recently, wrote the script and acted as show runner for the TV miniseries. The session, “Neil Gaiman In Conversation”, was organised by the Melbourne Writers Festival. They do these things  during the year, and I get their newsletter, so when it arrived in my inbox, I booked immediately! 

The Capitol Theatre was designed by the famous architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney Griffin. It’s gorgeous! It opened as a cinema in 1924, and it was still a cinema when I first went there. For some years it was mostly a lecture theatre for RMIT(where I studied Librarianship years ago). Now, it does events like this as well. 

His talk was as interesting as I’d hoped it would be. It went for 90 minutes, in which he talked about his writing memories. I started to take notes towards the end. 

Alas, my photo with Neil was too blurry! 

He spoke quite a bit about the Good Omens miniseries, how he had written it because Terry Pratchett had asked him to,  and how he had taken on the role of show runner to make sure he got it the way Terry would have liked it. He said when you don’t have any control over the work, it ends up captive to the art department budget. As an example, he mentioned two episodes of Doctor Who which he had written. “The Doctor’s Wife” was produced the way he had written it. He said there was one line in it that paved the way for a female Doctor, by mentioning that the Time Lords don’t have to stick to one gender. I admit I don’t remember that bit, as I’ve only seen it once, but now I’ll have to hunt up that episode. He had wondered if that line would be cut, but it stayed, and as a result it paved the way. “The Doctor’s Wife” won masses of awards. The other episode, “Nightmare In Silver”, which had had a major rewrite to suit the art department budget, was considered a “dog”. 

He really didn’t want that to happen to Good Omens. Being show runner was exhausting and took away time from his writing, but the finished product was something Terry would have liked. 

During the session, he read a number of pieces, including poems. It ended with a reading of his next picture storybook, which he said was being illustrated by the brilliant Chris Riddell, even as he spoke. Having seen some of the other work Chris Riddell has done for Neil Gaiman’s books, such as Fortunately, The Milk, I’m really looking forward to it. 

I have to say, Neil Gaiman is a wonderful reader, and his reading of the book, Pirate Stew, was hilarious. Not all writers can read their own work for others; he is so very good, he reads quite a few of his own audiobooks. I actually remember when he read a chapter of the manuscript of Anansi Boys at a Melbourne SF convention months before it was published, and made us want it right away. (That particular audiobook is read by Lenny Henry, but still...)

That was a delightful evening. Expensive, but worth every cent!