WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1353 - Neil Gaiman

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Neil Gaiman’s writing - from The Sandman to American Gods to Good Omens to hundreds of comics, novels and screenplays - uses fantasy to help explain modern reality. Marc talks with Neil about how his early work sidestepped the pre-adolescent male power fantasies of most contemporary comic books and helped connect with a broad and enduring fanbase. They also talk about the new adaptation of The Sandman for Netflix and why Neil believes his past experiences in TV led him to make the ideal filmed version of his work. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing with cannabis legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category.

legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! store and a cast creative all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck nicks what the fuckadelics what's I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF. Welcome to it. I'm back in my garage. I'm sweating. I'm back from Montreal. And it was a good time.

Even though I got an email from a woman named Connie who insists that all I do is talk about how great I am and how talented I am and how well I'm doing with comedy. She says that's all I do on every show and that, you know, she's concerned I might be entering into a danger zone because all I'm talking about is how talented I am. And no other talented people talk about how talented they are. And no other talented people talk about how talented they are. And it's just she's concerned as a fan that I'm, I guess, being too confident and enjoying myself. Connie, fuck right off. Seriously, Connie. Stop listening, please. I can't take the condescension and your fucking, you know, buzzkill soul suck.

Just fuck right off and stop listening. I don't care how big a fan you are. Don't write me and tell me to stop talking about how much fun I'm having doing stand-up. Finally, after 40 years, Mark can finally talk about having a good time without feeling some sort of weird shame or disingenuousness. of weird shame or disingenuousness and fucking connie fucking connie says back off the self praise and uh excitement and pride back off it's too much it's unseemly connie said unseemly connie said to uh pull back from uh enjoying. Connie, let me tell you directly and all the Connie's out there. I had great shows up in Montreal. I mean, really great. And can I just say that, you know, despite what anybody thinks or what anybody knows or whatever criticism may come to me from people who don't like themselves or sense a tone,

this new set is good. I'm doing good work. And I had fun in Montreal, despite the fact that Connie Buzz killed me. And all the Connie's. For all the Connie's, fuck right off. But, see, now some people go, she got under your skin you let her get at you that's all she wanted is it you know i don't know what people do or what people say i just see what they write sometimes whether on any media social media platform whether it's instagram whether it's

twitter whether it's my email it's like did a human being sit down and write this on purpose in a conscious state usually at some point you're like like, hey, I'm going to do this. I'm going to send this email. And 99% of the time, it's a them problem. And I appear to be some sort of passive garbage can for their projections and psychic refuse. No. No can do. No Connie dumping in this fucking can so listen neil gaiman is on the show today and uh neil gaiman is a very prolific fantasy writer novelist short story writer comic writer sandman american gods stard Gods, Stardust, Coraline, and Good Omens,

which he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett, are all books he's written. The Sandman comic book has been adapted to a live action series for Netflix and premieres this week. And I'm not a deep gaming nerd, but I did go through a Sandman period i spent my time with the sandman during a very weird part of my life when i was in a a slightly drug-induced psychosis psychotic state post los angeles post first shot at sobriety and my brain was fucked it was highly mystical mystically paranoid i didn't go with the big pharma jew world thing i went right to the completely fucking vague uh demons and dwarves and gods and signs and symbols magic and somehow hellblazer and Sandman were not just entertainment for me.

They were journalism. Yeah. Journalism. You hear me? That's how fucking out of my mind I was back in the eighties for a couple of years where I thought Hellblazer were like, no one knows this, in the 80s for a couple years where i thought hellblazers were like no one knows this but this is just the facts sandman no one knows this but we're he's just reporting on what is so look montreal i think i talked about it leading up to it that i was having some kind of ptsd related uh spite triggers from having gone there in 1995 as just some sort of Dirk with a mic for Comedy Central though I was a comic who thought he was on on a journey of uh edgy comedy and there I was I took a gig short attention span theater they sent me up there man with a mic that's where the amazing interaction with Jonathan Winters happened the first time when I went up to him.

And crazy Dick Cavett was wandering around. He saw I was about to interview Jonathan. So he took my sound guy's headphones and they sent me out with a question. I walk up to Jonathan. I was like, hey, Mr. Winters, are you enjoying the festival? Have you seen any comics, young comics that you you were impressed with? He's like, no, I haven't. I haven't gotten out of the room.

My wife is sick back at the hotel room. And I said, Jesus, I'm sorry. Sorry to hear that. Sorry you're going through that, Mr. Winters. He said, yeah, I should never put her in air cargo. And I turn around and Cavett is cackling. You ever seen a cackling Cavit it's something something but i've been going up there for years for better for worse and for some reason it was putting a zap on my brain like there's something about me even with interviewing people doing this

show doing what i do that if i don't do it for a week or two, I feel like I don't know how to do it. My brain just does that. And I drift and I go and wherever the hell my brain goes, most of what I experience is what my head is generating. A lot of it's not great. A lot of obstacles in my head. And then the first night I was there, the first day, the first show, the place I played,

it seemed to be like 120 people. It was just great. I had Lara Bytes open for me. She did like 10, 12 the first night, and then Allie Colbert. I'd seen her on TikTok or Reel or something, and I ran into her up there, and I just said,

do you want to do some time before me? She was great, and I enjoyed the shows, and I was happy that the people that got tickets, got tickets. Listen to me, Connie. I had fun. I had fun and I did great shows and the people there really enjoyed it. And I was glad I did them for the people that came out. I'm very good at comedy. Yeah, I'm not. I don't think I have to tell you guys that but i need to tell connie that again and again connie listen to me i'm fucking amazing don't you guys know that that paired with the utter insecurity and fucking psychic turmoil that goes on can't you hear a guy that's drowning in himself don't you know what's going on connie come on

so the gala that i was so concerned about i went over to that theater here was the good thing and this is just shop talk i guess but in years past they shot it at a place that must have seated between three and four thousand people and it was impossible to have a good show so i was haunted by But in years past, they shot it at a place that must have seated between 3,000 and 4,000 people. And it was impossible to have a good show. So I was haunted by that. And thinking that I had to host an evening of that was kind of daunting. But I was like, I had it coming. That's how I saw this gala.

I booked it two and a half years ago. It would have been special and important a decade ago or more. But now it was like, all right, I'll do it. It's not going to change anything. I'm not going to, you know, I appreciate the opportunity. I had it coming, though. But I went over to see Patton, who was hosting it the night before me, and it was half the size. It was a 1,200-seater.

And most of us have played 1,200-seaters. And I was talking to Patton for a while, and I went out on the stage, and like there's just some part of me that lives out there. And for some reason, if I get off of that stage for a week or two, I forget that I live up there, that there's a mark that lives up there. And I just got on stage, an empty stage the night before, and I was like, oh, fuck yeah, this is going to be fine. Laid out my set the next night, did the run through, did the rehearsals.

I had not done the job of hosting in a while where you got to be sort of gracious and keep the flow going and ride that line. But a lot of people there came to see me and I did a lot of the material that I don't think I'll be doing on the special and also talking about Canada because it's going to be my future uh uh residence hopefully if the paperwork clears uh and you know I got to get it in I'm

almost done with it but I want to have the option I'd like to have some kind of permanent residence situation up there and I because I'm very I just like it all it all rolls off me up there as soon as I get up there no matter what city or town over the last year, I've been to a lot of them. I just relax. I feel better. I like the pace. I like the people. The food is fucking great.

I just, I'm like ready. And by the time my, the stuff processes, you know, it'll probably be a few years from now. the stuff processes you know it'll probably be a few years from now and you know i might be you know if if everything hasn't burned up down here it might be nice to spend half the time in the beautiful uh country of canada because you know why you know why so now i talk to neil gaiman Sandman, about music, about other stuff. I tell him. I tell him my experience with him. It's good.

Ten episodes of The Sandman begin streaming on Netflix this Friday, August 5th. This is me and Neil Gaiman. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed,

how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die die we control nothing beyond that an epic saga

based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel to show your true heart is to risk your life will I die here? you'll never leave Japan alive

FX's Shogun a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney Plus 18 plus subscription required T's and C's apply. You want to wear those?

Sometimes they help. Yep. It's nice for knowing what your voice is doing. It is, right? When I was starting out as a young journalist, it would, or young writer, I guess, getting interviewed, and people would ask me to wear headphones. It would drive me mad.

I'd have to get one thing off, and it was listening to my voice. But somewhere in there doing audio books, I got over the sound to my voice but i somewhere in there doing audiobooks yeah i got over the sound of my voice oh yeah it no longer cringe and stuff and i can just think of it as a musical instrument yeah and i know what it's doing yeah and so i love the headphones because i can do different things going oh this is exactly what it's doing and it sure you you don't play you're playing the instrument less approximately yeah you can get more precise that's right and when you're doing audiobooks you're that's hours oh yeah i mean that's gonna be you're gonna be doing it for

three days yeah and you have you have a director there who's uh telling you like you know do another read on that yep do you do voices when you do audiobooks yeah always you do like all different characters yeah that's great that's the um where would be the fun if you didn't do that i don't know it depends what kind of book it is you know when i was reading my uh memoir it was really just me different variations of me sometimes i'd be like you know and other times like yeah you know the the weirdest one for me the only time i still look back and go, did I do the right thing? I have no fucking clue. Yeah.

Is I did a collection of my nonfiction called The View from the Cheap Seats. Yeah. And that one is all fine, except it contains in it two interviews. One with Stephen King. Yeah. An article about Stephen King that contains an interview. Yeah. And an article about Stephen King that contains an interview yeah and an article about Lou Reed that contains an interview with Lou yeah and so for both of them I'm like do I try and do a Lou do I try and do a Steve and I just and at the time I was just like

yeah I'm gonna go for it you did and I so and I it's the only thing I've never dared go back and listen to it could be awful. It could be fine. I don't know. You did Lou. But it was just like going, you know, trying to get that, yeah, kind of Lou. Slightly nasally. Slightly nasal, slightly very New York.

Yeah, right. And just try and get that Lou voice in there. You interviewed him? I did. That must have been, I have, I'm a huge fan of Lou's and I tell a story about meeting Lou Reed and how I was online at a record store

and I just really wanted to ask a question that would resonate. I was in college and I think I waited, the guy in front of me was wearing a white jumpsuit and he had an amp strapped to his back, and he was playing guitar, and I was like, why this guy? But I get to Lou, and I just say, Lou, what gauge pick do you use? You know, that would really connect.

And he said, medium, man. Got to use a medium. And that was it. The big moment. But you know what? I love that. I really love that because you gave him something that he could answer yeah you didn't fuck it up and it's so i mean i get people

in lines i don't do a lot of signings anymore just because they go too long and i can't cope but the saddest thing in the world is when the person gets to the front of the line in front of you and they've been there for five six hours and in their head they've been going i've got my question i've got my question it's going to impress him i'll tell i'll say my question and then we'll be best friends i've got my question and it's obscure nobody's ever asked this question before what i'm going to ask this question and they get to the front and their question has now become the most important thing in the world for them and they can't even get it out or when they do answer it you give them the wrong answer or whatever and it's just like this yeah and you go oh why didn't you just get to the

front of the line say hey i love your books and i could have said thank you where are they were they shaking sometimes they're shaking they're nervous they shake sometimes they faint do they you get fainters i've had a few faints not a lot i can't imagine what the well first let's talk about lou so when what year was that lou i interviewed in about 1990 okay 91 and i then met him for dinner in 92 or 93 and what's your what are your feelings about the Velvet Underground? I think the Velvet Underground are the most important band that America produced in the 1960s full stop.

Really? Yeah. I'm agreeing. I'll agree with you. I interviewed Jerry Harrison yesterday and we talked for like 30 minutes about Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers.

Who wouldn't have existed without, I mean, Jonathan Richman talks about essentially the scales lifting from his eyes and right hearing the first velvet underground album and see and then going to whatever it was 60 different velvet underground gigs in in boston where they were playing yeah as a kid yeah it i think i think it soothed him i think that the the layers of sound that the velvet underground created was like just perfect for his brain.

I think they were... The velvets, for me, are like a sort of resonance test. Okay. They're like when somebody walks over to a piano key and they hit it hard, and the other keys resonate, and all of the other G strings in the room resonate, and nothing else does. And for me, that's the velvets. It's like the people who strings in the room resonate. Yeah. And nothing else does. Yeah. And for me, that's the velvets.

It's like the people who resonate to the velvets, they heard that and they resonated. Right. And everybody else heard nothing at all. And it might not have existed. And then without them, you don't get like Brian Eno even. Like later Brian Eno. And you don't get David Bowie. No.

There was stuff that Bowie stole from. Oh, yeah. The Velvets. That was so important. It's the stuff that gets you from the man who sold the world to Hunky Dory and Ziggy and everything else. That's right. That's right. Yeah.

I listen to them all the time still. I can't stop, really. You? Absolutely. Which albums? All four. you too absolutely which which albums all all all four and i have a very very soft spot for loaded me too and fully loaded me too and i will i you know which was i i feel was unfairly written off yeah sweet nothing is one of the best i'm absolutely oh my god so yeah i just love

i will go and listen to that album and just put it on in the background. And there's Doug E. Ewell singing Who Loves the Sun and Everything is Perfect. It's great. So were you, are you a musician? No. Never in a band or anything? I was, I'm, as a 61 year old English person, of course, I was a punk in 19, late 76 late 76 early 77 so of course i was in a band didn't require musicianship there are photos of me and my band back then um and i and i i'm really

pleased um having you know married a yes she's a performer yeah um and got to see enough backstage areas and enough buses and enough gigs over the years i'm so glad that i didn't go into that life and become that thing yeah well i mean it's uh didn't quite have the talent but it's like so good that i didn't spend that i love the backstage time that moment before i go on stage doing stand-up like i to me like when you're just standing there or if you're doing a TV show, that's the great thing about show business. If you're backstage and all of a sudden someone walks a horse through for the next piece, you're like, that is a show business.

I love that about being on late-night interview shows more than anything else in the world. The point where, you know, all of a sudden Paris Hilton trips over you on her way out and you're like I just oh dear I just tripped up Paris Hilton and you're kind of apologizing yeah and you see them and they're like kind of real people yeah and they have this that moment of vulnerability of a regular person and you're like and they're approximately real people I remember being on a early early morning yeah news tv show in new york in 1990 yeah local 1995 or 1996 in new york and um to talk about a book and i and he looks vaguely familiar and i tap dave mckean and say that guy

who who is he yeah and dave says i don't know and then he walks in and sits down and suddenly he's in front of the camera and i'm like oh i know you you starred in a clockwork orange you it was it was now it was mcdowell malcolm adele do you know him i don't yeah but i just loved the fact that i didn't recognize him when he was a human being just a person he was just a person but a vaguely familiar one and the moment he's in front of the camera yeah and i'm looking at him on the screen that. That makes sense, yeah. So I have to ask you questions and I have to tell you exactly where I'm at with Sandman. I'm not a big comic book guy.

I didn't grow up that way. I'm almost like your age, right? But for some reason in the late 80s, I'd spent time out here starting in comedy and getting fucked up on drugs. And I went back to Boston to kind of reconfigure myself. And I had a mild cocaine psychosis going on. I was sober.

And somehow or another, I started with Hellblazer at the first issue. the first at the first issue yeah and and and being not a guy that had a vocabulary or or a context for comics in general hellblazer for me in that state of mind sort of made sense i was like this is real and uh this is possible and this guy's in between worlds and that's how i felt i was so through hellblazer i get sandman so that's where it starts for me at the first issue. And I go through like, you know, 20 or 30 of them or 40 of them even. I think I went up and dug up my old comics and I have a lot of them. I don't know where it, and I have the death one, the first graphic novel. But it was all something, not just soothing in an entertainment way,

because I don't know how to take fantasy as entertainment as well as somebody who is sort of a fantasy nerd. But I needed it to make sense of the world. And I imagine that's in some ways how most fans of it are, right? I think most people use fiction to make sense of the world. Yeah. They use stories to make sense of the world yeah they use stories to make sense of the world and i think sometimes fantasy allows you to process things that are happening and process information in ways that i think sometimes it's just like an oyster and a pearl you're getting to cover it in a shiny layer of something that's actually going to make it hurt you less sure um and sometimes it actually gives you a way of thinking that you didn't have before so an example of that would be the character of death right and

when i created death i thought you know i just want a death that i would like to meet yeah when i get hit by that car somebody who'll be standing there saying yeah someone will say you know you really should have looked both ways before crossing that street hi okay we're going to move on to the next thing and also there was i like that there's a reprimand because the character that that evolved was somebody said well it's your time there was not there was not judgment there judgment? I don't think there's judgment, but I think there's a certain amount of practicality. Yeah, yeah. And she's a grown-up, and I thought, I like that.

Just a death that I'd like to meet. And over the years, probably the biggest responsibility that I feel like I have from having been a writer in my life, the number of people who've come up to me and said you know you're you're Sandman comic it got me through the death of my son it got me through the death of my mother or my lover or my uncle or my friend and the idea of thinking of your death being with them at the end let me cope and that doesn't mean that the person believes that what i wrote was true right it means that it gave them a way of seeing things that let them hold on and made things easier for them yeah i you know i it's that's a powerful feeling to to receive that

from somebody and and then to be gracious about it and really know that was not necessarily your intention, but it's a beautiful kind of result of what your work is. Absolutely. And it would never have occurred to me that that would have been the result and that I would have now, you know, three decades of that i got to take kirby how baptiste um who is in plays death in the san bernard tv show aside at san diego a couple of days ago and i said look this is this is kind of a bit more serious than the normal conversation you're going to have with somebody at the convention as an actress but i have to tell you this is what i've been doing for the last 30 years people have been coming up and saying this to me and i guess you need to know as this character that probably for the rest of your life

people will come up to you and they will tell you about the deaths of people who were important to them and tell you that you or the character that you played that they saw on television got them through something hard. And that's going to be a responsibility and you're going to have to kind of live up to it. And it is a gift that I give you. And I know you didn't ask for it because you just signed up to it and it is a gift that i give you and i know you didn't ask for it yeah because you just signed up to be an actress in a show but you have this now too but but the responsibility is to be is to be present and receive you know what what the the gratitude that is exactly the responsibility and i think kirby is actually somebody who will be present sure and will be there for them which real well not i've met a lot of actors not all of them would

be um some of them would just be going they would be mentally going is this person talking about me can they do anything for my career are they telling me that I'm a wonderful actor? No? Then I will move on to the next place. Kirby, I think, isn't that person and will carry that burden. So tell me about during the period where I was losing my mind a bit. It comes back, by the way,

once you clean up. It takes a couple years, but it comes back. But there seemed to be room in my mind at that time to, you know, indulge in the idea of practical magic and of, you know, not getting deep into it because I really couldn't make sense of Crowley. And I know that references to Crowley and sort of Crowley himself, even in this new series of Sam, or a guy based on Crowley, shows up. Yep. So how deep did you get into Crowley? Not very deep. I probably would have got deeper if I'd liked his prose style.

It's difficult. I liked his prose style. It's difficult. I found his, I'm always impressed by, you know, Alan Moore and those guys who find something beautiful in it and get deep into it. I was repelled by the prose style. And what are they, the Contos? Or is that Ezra Pound? Ezra Pound is, no, Ezra Pound I love.

He was appalling. He was monstrous. He was a terrible, terrible person. But his writing was so good. Right, but didn't Crowley write a series? There were numbered poems. There were pieces that were impenetrable to me. I found lots of his stuff impenetrable, and I just found his whole writing style kind of clunky. writing style kind of clunky um but i love the idea of him and i loved the idea of creating a character who was one of those magicians based on loosely on crowley there were a whole load of them there's um there's one in the wonderful night of the demon movie i'm just looking at the guy that put your guy charles dan charles Dance was my guy. What a great actor. Isn't he marvelous? Yeah.

He's been around forever too, right? He is. And he has that lovely sort of star quality thing of imbuing the part that he's playing with every other part that he's ever played. Sure. The whole history. And so you look at him and you go, ah, yes, you are

that Lannister who is gonna get it in the guts on the loo so the magic thing though you never bought in i never bought in and i guess i never but i never bought in because i'm a writer and for me and it's it's it's weird because i know a lot of writers who love that stuff and who are bought in all the way and they do the rituals yeah i mean the but for me um when i was about 22 23 yeah i was standing on a railway station platform on east croydon station in london south london yeah and i saw somebody holding a newspaper uh and the headline was werewolf captured in south end yeah on the sun newspaper and my heart sank because i thought oh i i don't want anybody to have captured a werewolf because if they capture a werewolf, then werewolves become real.

And then I have to deal, then all of the imaginary werewolves that I could ever create are now subsumed into what an actual werewolf is. And it would make me really sad because I want the ability to imagine anything. Yeah. So I much preferred the idea of magical systems that I could invent. And if I would research magic, which I would from time to time, I'd research like a magpie. Yeah. I'd just be looking for the shiny bits.

I'd go, oh, I like you. You're a good secret word. And, okay, you're how the Romans did this thing. Right. I will use you because I can mash you into this little bit of Kabbalah that I also know. But it's much more as a convincer. Right. So you're not a historian.

that sort of takes this stuff in, figures out how it can be repurposed or suggested or open up a door to something else within the story you're telling. Absolutely. And then when you get to something like American Gods, you're just mashing them all in. People would say to me, how did you do the research for American Gods? And I said, I read everything I could for 40 years.

Brought them all. You summoned them all you summoned them all it was all there but i mean i mean how deep do you like you know what is it does it just to inform your story or do you like like would you do you do the same type of investigations that you know joseph campbell does you just just read joseph? Oh, I tend not to read Joseph. If ever I can, I will go for primary sources. Because primary sources are always much more interesting. It's much more interesting to read the edda, the poetic edda and the prose edda, than it is to go and read the ways that other people have retold the stories.

So no Golden Bough? I actually have the giant Fraser Golden Bough, the 13 volume one. And I have not read it all. But every now and then I pick it up and read some of it with enormous delight. Yeah. I love that it exists. It's the same for things like The White Goddess. The White Goddess, yeah.

I love that they're there. Yeah. And I love, they don't have to be right and they don't even have to be wrong. They just have to exist. Yeah. And people had to write them. And I love that. In some way, you're involved in the same project.

Only yours is fiction. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm not sure that there's quite as fine a line between fiction and fact on that stuff. Because the truth is, one of of the things i've learned as a writer of fiction yeah is when you start making things up yeah because human beings are designed to find patterns in things we are we are pattern making and pattern discovering animals um the universe will start providing you with things that back up your pattern so right when i will come up with a fictional scenario set in the past or whatever

i will then start finding evidence that this thing is absolute and absolutely true here and i've got this and this will back it up. And I have to sometimes remind myself that I don't actually believe this. Right. I've just realized that this is my story. And look, here's another piece of evidence for my story, and this is another piece of evidence for my story. In terms of like, you mean when you set it in a year or place,

In terms of like you mean when you said it in a year or place that you find historical pieces that that that add to it, that somehow justifies it as a truth for. Oh, absolutely. You can start coming up with a historical fiction and the facts will start marching to get into line. And it actually makes me incredibly sympathetic for anybody who has any kind of conspiracy theory. Of course. Because I realized if you have a conspiracy theory, the facts will just march and they'll get into line. And all of a sudden, you know, you'll discover that, well, this person was at the same school as this person. So they must have done this thing. It means nothing. And it means absolutely nothing.

But yeah, the brain wants to make those connections. Brains make patterns and brains find patterns. And then if you attach belief to it, that's when the trouble starts. Exactly. It's real. And you have to be able to go, it's real for certain given values of real. Well, it can be real like I was talking about with my brain, is that it can be real and then it has to just become provocative.

You want to make it real like a conspiracy theory, fine. But if you are able to, and I hope this catches on, you're able to take yourself out of it for a minute and say, well, there's really no fucking way that it can be this convenient. History doesn't work that way. But because I was thinking that way, it made me think about this in a different way. Absolutely. And I think that's the important bit. I love that you discovered Sandman at a time when you need it. Yeah. I love that it gave you what you needed at the time that you needed it. Because I think that really

is the point of fantasy and the fantastic is it gives you a little holiday from reality, but then it sends you back into reality to see it.

Haunted. Yeah. But also seeing it from a different angle. Yeah. Seeing it anew. Seeing something freshly that you're familiar with. Well, yeah, especially if it's emotionally engaging uh like sandman is and how you you know

put all these characters together but even you know watching the show but you do get a feeling it does make you feel so then you go out into the world with that feeling and then it takes however long it's going to take to shake that yeah Yeah. To seeing it through the lens of Sandman, right? I love that. And, you know, it's like when you get a really weird and really real dream and you wake up from it and your day is going to be colored by it. Yeah. You know that. Yeah.

And on one level, you really know that you weren't just hunted. Sure. By the KGB through Ireland. through Ireland for smuggling bunny rabbits. But that was what happened to you. And now you're going to have to go through the day. And you're really sad because you did actually see your child who you, for some reason, never met in real life, shot in front of you. And that's going to color your whole day. I had one last night that was very disturbing i'm just i had to stop myself from you know getting

in touch with the guy that was in it yeah because i didn't want to bother him but it was like it stuck with me i don't know how long it'll stay there i hope it goes away soon they do stick and i think that a good fantasy novel gives you that and a good and a good writer lends you their eyes to see through and you just don't see the world in quite the same way for a little while and that's got to be healthy yeah i guess so as long as like again you don't attach belief on to the fantasy and then you know start a cult yeah but i mean i think that's the weird thing now about like even in the world of comic inspired stuff or the business of comics, that there is sort of an almost slightly fascistic vibe to superhero fans. I think there are various different groups of all of these people. there are various different groups of all of these people.

It's that thing where you go to, you go to San Diego comic con. Never been. Ah, it's, it's a monstrous, awful thing, like a giant tumor. And at the same time,

it's a magical liberating woodstock of the mind for all of these kids. And those two things, the fact that it's a monstrous commercial machine and it's a liberating woodstock of the mind for all of these kids and those two things the fact that it's a monstrous commercial machine and it's a liberating thing can both be true okay and they both are yeah and somewhere in buried deep in that is a tiny little comics convention sure um which is still going on yeah and and i love the fact that there's still the comics thing happening. I guess I'm critical of, I don't know, I don't watch them, the superhero movies. Because I don't really grow up with it. And I'm sure I would like them okay. I was in the Joker for a minute.

And that got a lot of flack because I'm publicly sort of critical of Marvel movies. And I did a DC movie and I had to pay the price for that a little bit. Marvel movies and I did a DC movie and I had to pay the price for that a little bit but but I but it is kind of bizarre to me how aggressive and how hostile and how possessive and weird uh that fan base can get it it seems almost uh like a religion a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. I, you know, the weird thing about Sandman is I didn't have to deal with those guys very much over the last three decades. Because Sandman demanded a certain level of literacy and a certain, and it wasn't really a pre-adolescent power fantasy. So that's where they get captured. They get sort of stuck in early pre-adolescence. And it matters so much to them.

I remember a guy, a comics fan who's dead now, talking to him once. And he was complaining about a writer-artist named John Byrne changing Superman's origin story. And this is, you know, we're talking 30-something years ago now. But he said to me, you know, he said, John Byrne did all the stuff, and it just destroyed my life. And I said to him, him well why did it destroy your life is it because you were the world's number one superman expert and now you're not or or what is it and he said well well it's a bit that but but it's much more that the he brought back superman's clark kent's mom and dad and they're dead in the comics

and my mom and dad are both dead and I can't bring them back and I suddenly thought oh you've been using Superman all your life as a way of holding on to reality and holding on to the world and using it for order and the fact that you knew all of this stuff was what gave you protection against the world and now something fundamental has changed and it's hitting you in an incredibly basic way yeah and that sort of gives me an enormous amount of sympathy sometimes for these people who just get over invested and angry and upset. And you go, look, you're, you know, you're somebody who's been using, whether it's Iron Man continuity or Superman continuity or whatever, to hold on to and understand the world. the world and now something is somehow threatening the thing that you thought you knew and and you have to try and fight back and you just want to tell everybody that you can't bring your own parents back from the dead wow yeah i mean that does put a different frame on it because but it seems to me that most of these superheroes are retooled you you know, generationally. They're always retooled generationally.

And that's, you know, that's their strength. Like Alan Moore, what did he do to Swamp Thing? He changed the whole thing, didn't he? Absolutely. And he, you know, I think Alan Moore's Swamp Thing retooling was where it started for me as comics. Just going, oh my gosh, I remember reading them and suddenly going,

oh, that thing that I thought that you could do when I was a teenager that I then thought you couldn't do where you make comics that are as important and as literate and as smart as anything on the stage,

anything on television, anything in the cinema, anything in a novel. You can do that because this guy is doing it yeah and that for me was absolutely

a revelation that was the gateway it really was but I didn't realize until today really that that Sandman

was sort of a retooling well what was lovely about Sandman was what I took all I took was the name yeah there was a Sandman

was one of the very first DC Comics characters in 1939. Really? In this guy in a gas mask putting superheroes to sleep. And then in the early 1970s. So he was a villain? No, he would put bad guys to sleep. Oh, bad guys, right, right. And leave a calling card on them saying the Sandman.

An anesthesiologist. Exactly. He had his gas gun. He had his gas mask. He wore a trench coat and a hat. And then in the 1970s, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created the Sandman. And this was a sort of goofy children's superhero who lived in dreams and would battle the lobster men from Pluto. Oh, to protect them during their dreams?

Yeah. It was silly and funny, and it lasted about six issues. And that one I never forgot. And I always thought, I felt like the idea of somebody who lives in dreams was never properly exploited. Somebody who lives in dreams was never properly exploited. So when I was asked by DC Comics if I would come up with a monthly comic, the idea of taking the name Sandman and making somebody who lived in dreams. And also, I was young.

I was I'd written, you know, I'd published a handful of short stories. Before. You were a writer, though. I was a writer, but I was primarily a non-fiction writer. And I didn't know if I could do a story every month. Well, were you a comic book kid? I'd been a comic book kid, absolutely. And then I'd been sort of a comic book kid until I was like 17. And then suddenly, I wasn't interested in what comics had for me. And I walked away.

Was that the punk rock time? That was the punk rock time. And different concerns? Did you become political? Did you become like, nihilistic what i just didn't think that there was anything the things that had interested me about comics didn't seem to be there anymore and i had no patience for superheroes even then well where'd you grow up uh sussex in england and like what how many sisters and brothers two younger sisters i was the oldest um what was your parents' thing? My parents' thing was mostly Scientology when I was growing up. That was their thing. Now, they must have been early adapters.

They were. It must have been the first wave in British Scientology. They were the first wave. So that was their thing. So were you able to become fascinated with that? Or did you just see it as this weird thing your parents were doing? I think what it gave me, I think that what was great for me looking back on it, I don't think I knew this at the time, was I'm going to a high church of England school, very religious but Christian school. I'm a Jewish kid studying for my bar mitzvah so they kept the

jewish thing going definitely kept the jewish thing going so they they looked at it as more of a self-help thing absolutely okay um and the santology going on in the home and i'm like it gave me a wonderful sort of vantage point going, people believe all of these different things. People, okay, but I don't have to believe any of this because I can be over here and not believe that. I can be over here and not believe that, which means that, you know, it's kind of like the thing where you start talking to people about what gods they believe in. Sure. talking to people about what gods they believe in sure and you go you know isn't it amazing that you don't believe in all of these gods and they don't believe in all of those gods but somehow out of all of the millions of gods human beings have come up with that didn't exist you found the

one that did yeah um and so for me it was uh it kind of gave me this kind of anarchy of belief. What are you like one in a sense, one canceled out the other and you were able to not cancel that, but you were able to see belief as as a choice in a way or an action as opposed to, you know, there's one only thing. Absolutely. If I was going to believe in anything, I was going to believe in Harlan Ellison short stories. Harlan Ellison. I was going to believe. So you're already reading that stuff. Oh, yeah. But the thing about, you know,

I don't know if it was apparent at that time if the approach to Scientology was not as expansive and I don't know if there was tithing then or how organized the church was. But, I mean, as it became more established, the mythology within it is definitely science fiction shit. Absolutely. Was that there then? It was.

But what I liked best about that was just the idea of a lot of people who didn't seem to think that being a science fiction writer was a failure as a profession. No, he was the guy. You know, and I thought, okay, cool. So being a science fiction writer, and I think I was kind of disappointed when I grew up and I wasn't a science fiction writer. I was a fantasy writer. So you saw that the science fiction writer

could create a religion. I definitely got to the point of going, it's a good thing to be a science fiction writer. It's a good thing, but it's a good thing to be a writer. It's fiction's a good thing. But it's a good thing to be a writer. It's fiction. Fiction seems safe. Did you read Hubbard's books?

I read some of them and liked some of the early science fiction stuff. You did. Yeah. But I loved reading. There was a book called Death's Deputy that I enjoyed and a book called Fear that I really enjoyed. And they stayed in the church throughout your life? Yeah.

Huh. So the church grew around them? Yes. I mean, they were there. Yeah. Interesting. But I think for me— Your sibling Scientologist?

Yes. But I think for me, what was really interesting was just having all of the access as a, even as a really small kid, to fantasy novels and science fiction novels. They were always around the house. I'm still not sure, looking back on it, quite who was reading them. Yeah. Because I don't think my dad was ever a big science fiction reader. Yeah. And I know my mom never read science fiction, and it certainly wasn't my sister's.

So they must have sort of come through with people leaving them there. But it's like when I was about seven, there was a box of comics, American comics, that was left in the house. Yeah. And I remember discovering for the first time the Justice League of America and Green Lantern and Brave and the Bold comics and all of this kind of stuff. And for years, it's baffled me. Where did they come from? Who left this giant box of American

comics? And the last conversation I had with my dad before he died, I was saying there was this box of comics. He said, oh, yeah, I know where that came from. I will tell you. And then he died. Stop it. No, it's true. He did. And I never found out where that box of comics came from.

How long ago was that? That was 2009. So not too long ago. Not too long ago. Now, so, why don't more, you know, how come there's not more

weird Jewish shit in the stories? There's a certain amount of weird Jewish shit. Yeah. I like to think of myself as being somebody who has weird Jewish shit in the stories. Yeah. My favorite is.

I don't know them well enough to maybe make that statement, but maybe you could tell me, lead me to some. Well, for example, a lot of the stuff that I tend to put in is, I think, point of view. Yeah. I tend to put in is I think point of view yeah um looking at something like good omens yeah where I think of Crowley the demon yeah as incredibly Jewish okay because at the end of the day he just wants answers from God he thinks that there's so much stuff in the world that doesn't make sense yeah he's a demon because he asked questions, because he hung around with the wrong people. He would still like answers.

And he's questioning God. He's arguing with God. He's wrestling with God. That's the great Jewish tradition. And that, for me, is who Crowley is. And that, for me, is one of the giant, the engine that runs and drives good omens, is Aziraphale, the angel who fundamentally is convinced that God probably knows what God is doing. So you must leave God's plan alone.

Sure. You may have to fix things if it looks like it's going to hurt people. But yeah, but he's very sure that heaven is on the side of good. Yeah. And then you got Crowley, who's just like i think it's all screwed it doesn't make sense explain this stuff why would why would any why would any sane deity organize things he's improvising exactly so that for me is is fundamentally incredibly and you were conscious of that when he created it and when you were doing absolutely okay um but

then you know there are things like you know the the the old jew saying the shema before he dies in the series in the series that's a beautiful scene isn't it you know that was the i think that's the first death that you see because that's um that's a heavy episode there's a couple episodes that really kind of got me in because i watched all of them and you know, having read the comic years ago and my feelings about who Sandman was to me and who the character was in the comics, it was faded enough to where, you know, I could see that the guy fit the framework and it looked like the comics. And my girlfriend, who's younger than me, is like a huge Neil Gaiman fan. So she brought me a bag of things. She's got, you know, you defined her adolescence. And maybe she'll be here when you leave and it'll be a big day.

But going into the series, the first couple episodes, I'm like, all right, I get this from the comics. I don't know that, and I understand where we're at. But the diner scene with Thoulis, and that character I don't think is in the comics. He is, but he looks kind of, in the comics he looks shriveled and skeletal and weird. So that whole story with the mother, that's all directly from the comics? It's all from the comics.

Well, that scene in the diner, in terms of, see, I need, one of the reasons I'm fantasy adverse is I need a human entry point that functions as emotional in a human way. So that whole thing, that got me in to the series. It was those interactions, the truth thing, telling the truth and where it goes. And then by the time we get to death making her rounds, all that stuff is, my humanity's open and it functions as something beautiful

and devastating. But yeah. That was what, that was the way that I hoped it would work. Episode five in the diner is grueling. It's really hard.

It's not comforting. Awful things happen to people that you love. But it's the struggle of humanity. Absolutely. In a practical way. It's about being human. Right.

And it's these people and it gives you a story that you can hold on to, go through. It's going to leave you a little shaken. But then I feel like we give you episode six we give you death and we give you hobb and morpheus meeting in the pub every hundred years and they're healing and they're both in their own way about connection right right just about the world working and the world those are the episodes that grounded in the world in a way, like in day-to-day stuff. And once I'm able to sort of suspend my disbelief in terms of just walking through these landscapes that are – when you have the dream world and you're just sort of like, I'm building dreams towards the end.

You want to come see what I'm working on. I'm like, all right. I can do it. building dreams towards the end. You know, you want to come see what I'm working on. I'm like, all right. You know, I can do it. I can make the jump. Only because it's grounded so strong in his relationship with the waking world. If, you know, for me, I like using fantasy to talk about things that matter to me and talk about the world that we're in. That's just the way that I use it. I don't think I could go and write a Tolkien-esque fantasy where we're completely in another world. engines i i hugely admire what george rr martin did in game of thrones because for me i if i wanted to do that thing i'd probably set it much more on earth and i think it would have been much more of a mistake to have done i i love what he did and i love the way that it works um but for But for me, a lot of what matters in fantasy is just who we are, shining a light onto us, giving us something to hold on to.

And that was important for me in American Gods. It was important in Neverwhere or the Graveyard Book. And it was important, incredibly important all the way through Sandman. When what stuck with you about the sort of childish Sandman character, you know, that's the one that stuck with you. And when you started to build Sandman, what were the priorities? So the priorities for me were I was going to have to come up with a story every month because the comic was going to come out every month.

And I had no idea if i could write a story every month yeah so i thought okay what i need to do is create some kind of template that will allow me to do anything so if i've got any kind of idea for a story i can probably go and do it if i have a strict kind of template you know it's it's the monster of the month or whatever sure then by episode five i'm going to be tired of monsters of the month and the whole thing is going to fall apart sure so i need something that gives me something big and the idea of the title character of dream of morp Morpheus, of the Sandman, being an entity as old as the universe,

being something that is in everybody's dreams. I thought, well, it gives me historical. It gives me fantasy. It gives me horror. It gives me science fiction if I wanted to go there. It gives me all of this kind of, gives me so much stuff to go there it gives me all of this kind of gives me so much stuff to go into and everything basically it's a story machine he's been there forever and he's in people's dreams and he's in people's dreams so that gives me a way into story and that was for me the most important thing just the most important thing that i could hold on to i and that was so you ask what was in

my head yeah when i started creating what was in my head right at the beginning was just how do i i gotta write a story every month how do i do that practical but what's lovely is once you start doing that and you start building what i realized i was building was the foundation and i could see the shape of the foundation and that told me the shape that the building would be sure so it allowed me to actually come up with by the end of the first year yeah so what i did was i figured okay this comic will be like most comics where a minor critical success is also a major commercial failure. So they'll cancel it about issue eight. They'll probably give me a year

because they tended at that time to give you a year. So I'll get the phone call at issue eight saying you canceled. I'll have four issues to sort of finish off with. I can do that. So I'll work out an eight issue long storyline. So that's why the first issue of Sandman is eight issues. It's because I figured I'd get the phone call there saying you're canceled.

Yeah. What came as a complete shock was when at issue eight we were selling more comics than anything like that had ever sold. And I thought, oh, I'm safe. I think I'm okay. They're not going to turn and cancel me. And you saw it as something you could do with your life. Yeah. I was like, okay, I'm going to get to finish the story I started,

which I didn't think I was ever going to. You know, I built things in in the beginning of sandman that i knew would only pay off if i got to the end of the story in the way that i wanted it to go but i didn't ever think i'd get there the real end of it i mean you know how many episodes 70 75 75 issues yep so you you you saw you you knew enough about the arc at in the first eight episodes that you saw your destination? Absolutely. I didn't know how long it would take to get there. I figured I'd be there by about issue 30 and was absolutely wrong.

Oh, okay. But I knew, you know, it's the equivalent of I'm in New York. I'm going to hitchhike to Los Angeles. I know where I am and I have an idea of the kind of places I'm probably going to go on the way. But then you hitchhike and sometimes you don't quite go to the place you thought you were going. And sometimes somebody that you meet on the way becomes incredibly important to you. But at the end of the day, you still have that journey. It just took you twice as long.

I get it. So but when did you start? have that journey it just took you twice as long i get it so but when did you start i mean so right at the beginning you knew that you were going to integrate you know most it's mostly religious mythology really right it's all sorts it's all you know i mean what i love about sandman is it's kind of a unified field theory of mythology and fantasy in that it's set in a universe in which everything is true right and i remember doing a storyline called season of mists and i thought let me just see how far i can go with this and i started bringing everybody onto the stage and now i'm bringing the greek gods and i brought the norse gods on okay how about if i bring on fairies it's

going to collapse if I bring on. Okay. No, it's still the plates are still spinning and I've got fairies. And now I'm going to bring on chaos and order from DC Comics ripping off Michael Moorcock. Oh, yeah, that's still working. Okay. What about angels? It's going to collapse if I bring on.

No, it's still working. And it was a fascinating experience doing that. So that's the process. That was definitely the process of that show, of that story. And then you could bring them in. I mean, that must have led you to American Gods in some way. I think in a lot of ways it did. By the time I'd finished Sandman, I was fascinated by the idea of new gods.

And, you know, it wasn't original with me. People like Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny and various people had talked about the idea of gods and belief. But it was definitely a thing that by the time I finished Sandman, all of the stage was set for American Gods. Yeah. And what do you think was that point? Why Sandman at that time, did it take off like that? I mean, we talked a little bit about how it wasn't some pre-adolescent male fantasy. You know, it was the opposite. It was slightly sexualized.

It was kind of feminine, but very masculine in a certain way. Unrepresented masculinity. sexualized it was it was kind of feminine but very masculine in a certain way what unrepresented masculinity so one of the things so year one of me doing sandman yeah the people who showed up at signings were uniformly male yeah they were uniformly aged between 15 and 23. Yeah. And they were the guys who were there in line to get their comic book signed. Yeah. By year two, I was going to comic conventions and large, sweaty guys, unshaven guys would spot me and they'd come over and they'd go, I got to shake your hand, man. You brought women into my store. No women had ever come into my comic book store

and you bring women. You're the Sandman guy and you bring women into my store. Man, I got to shake your hand. And by sort of year three, there were as many women as there were men in the signing lines. And what was also happening was that I think a lot of the times the guys have been trying to get their girlfriends into comics and failing.

Right. And then they'd give them Sandman and the women would go, oh my gosh, there's something here and this is really interesting. And then when they'd split up, the girls would go off with the Sandmans and they'd give them to the new boyfriend. Oh, yeah. So, it was, Sandman was spreading sexually. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sexually transmitted comic. Oh, that's amazing. And you were getting that. And then a couple of years later, I go and do signings. And I could no longer tell who was somebody's mother. Oh, yeah. Who was someone's mother, who was someone's girlfriend, because actually these people were all Sandman fans,

and they weren't somebody there to get something signed for somebody else. And that thing of just having created an audience who hadn't existed before. But did it eventually become more women? No, I think it pretty much stuck 50 50 oh yeah um the you know sandman readers what we did was just expand the comics readership from people who had only been reading comics to people who were coming into stores to get their sandman fix and with luck would discover Love and Rockets or, you know, 8-Ball or whatever else is going to make them happy. That's where I went.

I mean, that's, you know, I went. I always was sort of prone towards S. Clay Wilson and R. Crumb because that stuff is viscerally human to me and disgusting and filthy and sexy. And, yeah, but I like 8-Ball. I like Charles Burns a lot. I like Charles Burns a lot. Oh, Charles Burns is brilliant. Oh, my God. Many, many years ago, I was hired to do a film script based on Black Hole.

Oh, my God. And I was collaborating with Roger Avery. Yeah. And who did Killing Zoe and Pulp Fiction. Yeah. And we did a script and I was so proud of it. And I got a phone call one day from Roger saying, hey, they've got this famous director on board to direct.

And I said, that's great. He said, no, it's not. He said, we'll be fired next week. And I said, really? He said, yeah, the director's come on board. Yeah. He's going to want lots of different drafts. He's going to fire us. But drafts he's gonna fire us but they

used our draft to get him and i said oh are you sure you're kind of cynical roger and then a week later we were fired did the movie ever get made movie never got made and it makes me kind of sad because i think we did a great script based on that graphic novel because i love black hole so much oh it's amazing you know yeah incredibly beautiful the the full series in a book is great too yeah yeah yeah so like okay so once you get sandman you've built this fan base and i and is that when you start running the short stories and the novels you know is that so uh good omens was written with ter Terry Pratchett while I was doing Sandman. But having done that once, I never wanted to do that again because I would do occasional short stories and let them mount up.

But once Sandman was over, that was when I published Neverwhere and Stardust, the first short story collection, Smoke and Mirrors. And then rolled up my sleeves and did American Gods. And I loved that Sandman had given me that. It also meant that I could go back to Sandman whenever I felt like, whenever I missed it, basically. So every few years I'd go back and do another Sandman project. Yeah. And the guy who did the covers?

Dave McKean. Dave McKean. And he also did Hellblazer, right, for a while? He started out doing the Hellblazer covers. Yeah. And then he was doing Hellblazer and Sandman. Right. I think that's why.

That was probably the gateway for me. Yeah. Because I was reading Hellblazer. So many people came to Sandman because of Dave McKe that's why. That was probably the gateway for me. Yeah. Because I was reading Hellblazer. So many people came to Sandman because of Dave McKean's covers. Because they didn't look anything like anything else in the comic book store. And do you have a relationship with the creator of Hellblazer? Well, the creator of Hellblazer, I guess, was Jamie Delano. Yeah.

Was writing it. And Jamie and I have been friends for years. guest was jamie delano yeah was was writing it and jamie and i have been friends for years and of course the original creators of uh john constantine were alan it was alan moore steve beset and john toddlebin and swamp thing in swamp thing and and that came about because steve and john really loved drawing sting and they'd started drawing Sting in in the background of things. And they said to Alan, can we draw Sting some more? And that became... Make him a character.

Exactly. So Alan wrote him in as this sort of basement level occultist. Yeah. But like an occult detective. Yeah. And I had enormous fun because in Sandman the comic i got to do one john constantine story but also got to introduce you to his ancestor lady joanna constantine

from a few hundred years ago and uh so on the tv show oh so that's joe that is that's a real character so that was why i went well we've got got Joanna Constantine anyway back in the 18th century. Nobody coming to the TV show is necessarily meant to be familiar with anything else. We're kind of starting in our own universe. I was, and I'm sort of like, is that supposed to be John? Did they replace John? We replaced John with Joanna. But you'll also, that's because we were also going to do Joanna back in the

French Revolution right yeah and we're gonna have some fun with that too interesting so that was interesting that the way you put the the show together what's been your experience with TV I mean I mean because a lot of people just sort of writers especially here are kind of like alright you know you kind of get pushed out I've had really interesting experiences with TV. My first experience was making the TV show of Neverwhere in the 1990s. And just trying to do something that there wasn't a system in place to do in the UK at that time, which was frustrating.

I wrote an episode of Babylon 5, which was enormously fun, and then came back and did more television with some Doctor Who episodes, and that was more educational than anything I can possibly say because I wrote two episodes and was incredibly proud of both script, and I felt like one script made it to the screen,

and that one won awards and everybody loved it yeah and one script kind of got shot but it wasn't it wasn't done terribly well it wasn't done in but you're part of history you're part of history but i also looked at it and went hang on and you know i should have been i couldn't control anything yeah right which meant that when good omens started happening at the bbc i said look i think i actually need to be the showrunner on this not because i want to be a showrunner because i really don't yeah um but because i want to look after this and the only way that I know that I can look after it and stop other people cutting things I wouldn't have cut or casting people I wouldn't have cast is if I'm in charge. So I got to cast David Tennant and Michael Sheen.

I got to make my show. Yeah. And because I'd made a show and got a lot of love and attention and eyes on it, that meant suddenly Warner Brothers looked at me for Sandman. And up until that point, they'd spent 30 years going, well, the writer of the original comics should be as far away from the property as possible while people make movies movies or whatever because what would a writer of the original comics go and suddenly warners are going hang on the unique selling point of the sandman tv series would be neil gets to oversee it and be in charge of it and make it the thing that he wants it to be and suddenly i was in this world in which I got to make the Sandman that until that point would have been impossible. I'd watched so many bad Sandman movies fail to get made over the decades. Just because you were just a writer.

Because I was just the writer. And also, you know, I remember my first ever meeting. It was probably about March 1990. Yeah. And I was out here in L.A. for a Sandman. And I was sent over to Burbank to the Warner's office. Yeah. And going to see a president of Warner Pictures.

And I'm asked, Neil, we've been, you know, there's a lot of interest in a Sandman movie. Yeah. What do you think? And I said, please don't make it. I'm just getting going with the comic. It's just getting good. If somebody tries to make a movie now, it's going to throw everything off and it will be really weird. And I remember the exec saying to me, very puzzled. She said, nobody's ever come into my office and asked me not to make a movie before.

And I said, well, I am. And she said, okay asked me not to make a movie before and i said well i am and she said okay we won't make the movie and so that gave me about six years so that was based just on what how many comics uh at that point i was in season of myths so we would have been around sandman 20 really um that was bold. Absolutely. But I knew what we were doing, and I wanted to be able to finish the comic that I'd started. Wow. And then there were various other movies, and good people trying to do this thing.

The problem with the thing they were trying to do was they were trying to condense 2,000 pages of story into a two-hour movie. And you can't do it, because by the time you've thrown everything out that you need to make it a two-hour movie, it isn't Sandman anymore. Well, that's what I was wondering when I was watching this.

A couple of questions. How many seasons do you see? As many as we can do to finish the story. I think it's very silly in this weird era we're in to be over-optimistic. Of course. Especially, were you in Netflix? I'm in Netflix, but I think I would have the same worry if I were at HBO right now, or even if I was at Amazon or whatever. So you really don't know.

It's sort of like when you first started writing the comic. You might have to figure out a way to wrap it up after season three. Absolutely. of like when you first started writing the comic you might have to figure out a way to wrap it up after season three absolutely what you get you get the they press the button to let you do the next series when the first one has aired and they've got the numbers in and they go yeah okay that's safe and you can do another one now but this is but this first 10 is exactly as you wanted them it really is i'm so proud of it. And I think it's so, it's not like anything else on television. I think that's true. And also I think that, you know, your casting choices were, you know, righteous.

And it was clearly a decision. Yeah. So how did that go? What went was, we'd look at the original comic. And when each character would come on, we would say, OK, here is a character. Is there any reason why this character needs to be white? Is there any reason why this character needs to be male?

A lot of the time the answer was yes. Cain and Abel, they both need to be male a lot of the time the answer was yes cain and abel they both need to be male actually they wound up played by two two actors both of indian descent they're great very funny but that was pure coincidence because they were the funniest and the best that we auditioned so we had them um that wasn't even righteous. That was just going for the brilliant ones. And the Corinthian has to be the Corinthian. The Corinthian has to be the Corinthian. So you look at things like that.

But wherever we would get a character where it's like, okay, Lucian the librarian. What is important about Lucian? Yeah. What is important about Lucian is Lucian has been with Dream for over 10,000 years. That's right. He was like an old man, wasn't he? Lucian was the first raven. Yep. He was like an old man, wasn't he? Lucian was the first Raven. Yep, he was a tall, very tall man.

And Lucian is a librarian. Yeah. Is there any reason why that character specifically has to be male? No. Is there any reason why that character specifically has to be white? No.

Okay, that's good. Because what that does is double the number of people that we're going to audition white. No. Okay, that's good because what that does is double the number of people that we're going to audition for the role. It doesn't mean we won't audition white male actors. But what it means is we can get a lot more people in

until we find the right person. And that's the whole idea of it is that the more voices, the better. You can get surprised. That's the amazing thing. I mean, chiang pong is just amazing and she's wonderful and she lands the part and two minutes in she owns it and you know who she is you know what she is and that's amazing with death which was a hard part to um the the the casting process was really weird yeah the first one that we had to get

right we didn't get it right we didn't have a show was morpheus yeah i thought he was good he's amazing but and he lands it and he came in the first email from the casting director you know she had had four she'd done four auditions she sent them over tom was the one from that that we liked and tom then had to basically wait while we saw in the end over 1500 auditions for um forheus. No. Yes. We, because we wanted him, but we kept looking at other people. And then we were sure that we wanted him, but Netflix weren't quite convinced. And then the pandemic happened. Were they not quite convinced because they wanted a celebrity or a star or a name?

I think they would have loved a celebrity star name. But I think they also just weren't sure. And they also just weren't sure we'd found the best. So when the pandemic happened, they were like, oh, well, we're not shooting in May now. We won't shoot till November. So why don't you guys take another few months? And you haven't looked at every actor in Australia yet. There are actors in.

They grow good actors in Australia. They do. So we got all the Australians and we got. And at the end of the day, it was still Tom. Death was the other way around. We had to cast death correctly. death was the other way around we had to cast death correctly we saw auditions yeah from hundreds and hundreds and hundreds yeah of actresses who didn't land it for us we had that we had a few things that we needed to be sure of we needed to love you yeah we needed

we needed you to be able to talk to dream as his big sister and tell him off and we needed to believe that and you had to be able to deliver the dialogue convincingly. We had supermodels auditioning. We had so many actresses of all possible skin tones and shapes and sizes. So you're lucky you had the pandemic. We really went to town. It gave us so much extra time. And with Zoom, the sort of unfolding as the way of communicating, gave us so much extra time yeah and and and with zoom the uh sort of unfolding as the way of communicating it's so much easier oh my gosh it is to make an appointment no one's

doing anything it's it was fabulous and we got we i think we got some amazing people just because they wanted to get out of the house yeah um and also we got some amazing people because they were sandman fans and that was so how are the fans going to react to Satan being a woman? Given that the Satan, the Lucifer in Sandman, when we see Lucifer naked, has absolutely nothing going on between their legs. I don't think people are going to have much problem. And she's great. Oh, she's amazing. Lucifer was based at the time visually on on david bowie on young david bowie as a folk singer when he when he had

curly hair yeah he had a perm yeah and an acoustic guitar i know i did a movie that i don't know if there's a movie called stardust that i did i got very up to speed on that Bowie. So that early young Bowie was the one that I visually based Lucifer on. And so when we started, we were just going, okay, we want somebody who can do that. And Gwendolyn Christie is six foot three. She is a human special effect anyway. You just look at her and she goes up. I think she's great. And I thought, she can do...

She can bring everything I need to that part. And then you give her wings, which take her up to about seven foot six. Yeah. And then she towers over Tom Sturridge. And again, it was an idea of, okay, we need to find somebody who can go up against tom that you would believe and that casting uh boyd holbrook as the corinthian

again we needed somebody who was in every way his opposite who's much more easygoing he's southern he's charming charming so funny and lovely. Yeah, that scene where- He's also a monster who will eat your eyes. Yeah, exactly. But that scene at the cereal convention, you know, where Sandman puts him in his place or returns him or destroys him is,

you know, it really, it is loaded up because of, what's the guy's name who does Sandman? Tom? Tom. Because he is subtle and then but when he needs to bring the hammer down he can do it he really can in the face of anybody in the face of lucifer or the corinthian i mean one thing that i'm certain of right now i have no idea whether or not sandman is going to be whether it's going to work or not i know that i love it i know that we made something

that that i'm proud of and that honestly is all i care about is i can hold my head up and go i made a really good sandman so i don't know if it's going to be a huge success or not but what i do know is that 24 hours after sandman drops tom sturridgeurridge will be a star. Uh-huh. Because you can just see it. It's like people are going to go, what? There's this guy and he can do that? Well, I think a lot of the acting,

because of the sparsity of the worlds, you know, even when they're in the real world, that the sort of, when you say land a role in this context, I mean, they've got to own it, you know, in such a way that fills up the whole story in their moments. Like even despair, which had very little screen time, like just her physicality was genius. That's yeah. That's a marvelous actress called Donna Preston. Yeah.

And she, I, I in awe of what she does because you just look at her on screen and she's every sad, wet, lonely Sunday afternoon that you would probably kill yourself if you could just be bothered. But instead, you're just going to sit here being completely miserable. Oh, my God. And then what was the device? Is that from the comics where she just sort of digs that hook into her face? That was in the comics. And it's just interesting how she... With the ring on.

Yeah, well, it's interesting the way she does it because it's almost like it's secondary. Yeah. It's just in conversation. It's what she does. And then when you're watching it, you're like, of course that's what she does. It's such a powerful performance. And that kid, Mason, as Desire. Aren't they brilliant?

Yeah, amazing. Very little screen time, but just owns the whole fucking thing. Mason got cast through Twitter. Really? Really. Mason tweeted me. Mason was in Cowboy Bebop, and while waiting to be filmed in cowboy bebop which was shooting in new zealand they were in uh managed isolation quarantine so which basically and i've done it they put you in a

hotel room for two weeks and they let you out two weeks later yeah um so i think mason was going out of their mind yeah in and looking online and loved desire and actually had a desire tattoo which they showed me on saturday and yeah so just sent me a tweet saying have you cast desire yet and who's your casting agent yeah and i thought there's something about this tweet that is not just a fan yeah yeah there's something interesting about this that is not just a fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's something interesting about this. And I looked at Mason, went to their web page, looked at a few videos of them acting and performing in Hedwig and things,

and thought, oh, you're really good. And just dropped a note to Alan Heinberg, the showrunner, to say, Alan, I think I may have found desire. And just tweeted back and said, you want Lucinda Sison, who's our casting director? And that's how it happened. And that's how it happened. And then you got the real Hedwig in there, too. You got John Cameron Mitchell in there.

Such a genius. Great. He's great. You know, he's great. And, you know, you've hidden Mark Hamill being a pumpkin head, which is nice. That's a nice Easter egg in general, kind of. I think it's always a great. And, you know, you've hidden Mark Hamill being a pumpkin head, which is nice. That's a nice Easter egg in general. I think it's always a great. And I love that we've got scenes with Matthew the Raven.

Patton. I know Patton. Patton. You know, putting Patton in context here. Yeah. The first time I was aware of meeting pattern yeah it was about 2000 and i was doing a signing sure at the stinking rose restaurant and a reading in san francisco no in la however the first talking to pattern I discovered the first time I met Patton was in 1992.

In Baltimore? No. San Francisco. I was doing a signing at Comics Experience for Season of Miss in Hardback, and Patton stood in line for three hours to get his copy of Season of Miss signed. That's when I knew him. I lived in San Francisco. We were both comics. We both got to San Francisco at the same time. And he's a real comic nerd.

He really is. So he got his comic signed by me back then. And so for him, getting to play Matthew the Raven is the biggest dream come possibly true. It's so funny. Is Matthew some, is there like, what's the backstory? Kit, my partner uh partner was at you know saying it was based and rooted in swamp thing it's rooted in something it was the idea of matt cable yeah matthew cable who had died in swamp thing um killed essentially drunk driving and then spent a while in hospital and i loved the idea because i was perverse that I would never actually say that in Sandman. But you learn that he died drunk driving. You know his name is Matthew.

You know he did some bad things. So people put it together. I think that when you do another series, just to suggest, just my only note is make Patton do the crow noise too. I think anything that we can do just to make things harder on both Mark Hamill and Patton,

make them work a little more, I think we should do that. No, I thought it was all great. I mean, all the acting. Thouas was amazing and all the supporting parts were great. And once I got into it, it's a challenging thing to do that world.

You know, because it's its own world. And, you know, you have it engaging with the world that we live in. But even that is a special place. Well, it's also a thing that we do in there where each episode is different. Oh, for sure. That is not a thing that you normally see on television. If you look at something like Game of Thrones, if you like Game of Thrones,

the next episode of Game of Thrones is going to be a lot like that last episode that you liked. The same sort of stuff is going to happen. So operatic. It's going to be, you know, there's going to be some fighting and some breasting, and there's going to be some betrayals and big things. And that's what it is, and that's what it does episode to episode.

Sandman is going to reinvent itself. It's like a movie, and it's still the same story. But you could be in an urban horror story one episode. You could be in high fantasy the next episode. You could be in something approaching a gentle, sentimental story about fantasy the next episode. You could be in something approaching, you know, a gentle, sentimental story about life. Right. Next episode. But the threat is serving this grand arc of 75 issues.

And you have to make these decisions about how to make 10 and then another 10. Exactly. And then hopefully another 10 and then hopefully another 10. And then that's it. Maybe another 10. Exactly. And then hopefully another 10 and then hopefully another 10. And then that's it. Maybe another 10 after that. Well, I wish you all the luck in the world. It was great. It was great talking to you.

Thank you, Mark. That was so much fun. Neil Gaiman. I think I did all right with that. I think I did all right with that. The Sandman is streaming on Netflix this Friday, August 5th. Please hang out for one second. Can you guys hang out? Can you? Just stay right there.

It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? We'll be right back. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an

actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. All right, so look, I talked to James Acaster up in Montreal, and I'm going to post that episode on Thursday.

We had a nice talk. You know, we got into it about an hour and a half, and I had watched his stuff, and I was very impressed with his colored mic and his interesting mic cord. And I needed to know where he got it. We'll find out on Thursday. On August 10th, I will be at Largo. Here's where you go. Largo-LA.com. I will be there on August 10th. Okay? It's not on my site for some reason because I'm a fucking idiot. But this week I'll be in Columbus, Ohio

at the Southern Theater on Thursday, August 4th. Indianapolis, Indiana. I'm at the Old National Center on Friday, August 5th. Louisville, Kentucky at the Baumhardt Theater this Saturday, August 6th.

What's that wheeze? Then I'm back at Dynasty Typewriter in LA on August 14th. That might be a Q&A show. I'm thinking. What do you think of that? Lincoln, Nebraska at the Rococo Theater on August 18th. Des Moines, Iowa at the Hoyt Sherman Place on August 19th. And Iowa City, Iowa at the Ingwert Theater on August 20th. In September, I'm in Tucson, Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, Boulder, Colorado, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In October, I'm in London, England, and Dublin, Ireland.

Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info. And again, Largo, I just forgot. Is it too late to put it up on the site? Either way, Largo-LA.com if you want to go to largo on the 10th um and that's like that's good that's about it that's i think that's all i gotta say and now i'm gonna go look at my sandman comics i pulled them all out and i got a lot more comics than i thought i did i wouldn't call me a nerd or a collector, but I have a few.

And also some extended guitar stuff. What is that? Sorry, I just hiccuped. Excuse me. Excuse me. © B Emily Beynon © transcript Emily Beynon © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon BOOMER LIVES Boomer lives. Monkey La Fonda. Cat angels everywhere.