An interview with Neil Gaiman

I have a confession to make. I don’t read comic books or graphic novels (yes I know, boo hiss me) but despite that I was very excited to talk to author Neil Gaiman during the week for RTE 2fm.

After all, I knew he wrote the book on which the new kids movie Coraline is based, I knew that I had The Graveyard Book at home on my book shelf still waiting to be read (to be fair I have a backlog of about 100 books to catch up on, I buy them faster than I can read them) and I knew he also wrote Stardust, the book on which the 2007 movie of the same name was based.

But during my research I discovered the man is also very active on Twitter, has been blogging for quite some time now and has some very interesting taste in music.

Unfortunately due to matters outside my control, my slot with him was cut (so much so that the big bad people in the studio in London cut my ISDN line before I even had the chance to say goodbye to Neil properly) and sadly I never got the chance to chat to him about blogging or Twitter but he still had plenty to say about where he got the idea for Coraline, about stop-motion animation, how he’s every director’s dream, why kids really should be allowed watch horror movies and the reasons to go see Coraline.

You can hear it all by going to the RTE 2fm website at http://2fm.rte.ie/blogs/the_slate/2009/05/interview-with-neil-gaiman.html

Coraline, which features the voice talents of Dakota Fanning, Terri Hatcher, Ian McShane, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders is worth checking out no matter what your age. If you enjoyed The Nightmare Before Christmas (also directed by Henry Selick) or indeed Corpse Bride then you’ll like Coraline. It’s a gothic horror movie for kids that managed to freak me out a bit and the stop-motion animation and 3D effect is stunning so for that reason alone it’s worth seeing. But I bet you’ll get drawn into Coraline’s world and come out thinking, isn’t Terri Hatcher (who is the voice of Mother and Other Mother) actually quite good at voicing animated characters. If Desperate Houswives comes to a premature end, she should definitely look into it.