Of the directors who carved their place into the history of cinema, Guillermo del Toro stands out as an inventive visionary, a master of the whimsical dread, and a father of monsters and curious creatures. His films are different from most in the fantasy genre, the result of multiple influences that have shaped the Mexican director over the years. Mr del Toro’s Lovecraftian accents and fatherly love for horror tale monsters are but two of the elements that have defined his cinematic art since before he even picked up his father’s Super 8 to film his own version of ‘Planet of the Apes’ (1968).

Starting with ‘Cronos’ (1993), his first feature-length movie, and going through ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ (2001), ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ (2006), to his more recent ‘Pacific Rim’ (2013), ‘Crimson Peak’ (2015), and ‘The Shape of Water’ (2017), it is easy to spot the director’s love of everything weird and spine-tingling. But if one wishes to truly understand Guillermo del Toro, one must first journey from his Guadalajara childhood all the way into Bleak House, his beloved museum of creepy, fantastic and otherworldly. There is plenty to unpack.

‘PAN’S LABYRINTH’ (2006), ©ESTUDIOS PICASSO/WILD BUNCH

Monsters, Cinema, Death

These are the three things that best describe del Toro’s imagination and its cinematic manifestations. In ‘At Home with Monsters: Inside His Films, Notebooks, and Collections’, the companion book to the eponymous Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibit from 2016, he writes: ‘When I was a child—a very young child—a hairline fracture became evident in my soul. I felt growingly disfranchised, puzzled, and at odds with the adult world. It was made up of rules and notions that were both alien and unexplained, and life came to feel like a rigged game. It was entirely composed of lies.’

As adults, we lie about almost everything—how much money we make, how tall we are, what our natural hair colour is, what our dreams are made of. We lie to others and we lie to ourselves, and yet we frown upon fantasy and consider it childish. It was this sense of creative injustice that fuelled del Toro’s love of stories ever since he was a little boy.

‘THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE’ (2001), ©EL DESEO/TEQUILA GANG

Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1964, Guillermo del Toro was mostly raised by his Catholic grandmother. His childhood, which he frequently revisits in his films, was marred by repressed Catholicism and bullying classmates. It was saved by books, movies, and horror comics. He started drawing at a young age, much like the orphaned Jaime in ‘The Devil’s Backbone’, and he hasn’t stopped since. His notebooks are standalone works of art that have nurtured his imagination and have given birth to memorable monsters. It’s where he records ideas, lines of dialogue, various lists and images—food for his films, he’ll say.

His love of cinema comes from this period, too. He devoured pretty much any B-movie and horror film that he could find, as well as the more classical works from Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel. He loved the Universal monster movies that made it to Mexican television, and he voraciously consumed fan magazines. Del Toro taught himself English in order to understand the slang and puns of American periodicals like ‘Famous Monsters of Filmland’.

A YOUNG GUILLERMO DEL TORO WITH RON PERLMAN

In his teenage years, he worked as a projectionist for his local cinema club, watching several movies every week and passionately discussing them with other cinephiles. It was Luis Buñuel’s ‘Los Olvidados’ (1950) that proved the art value of cinema to a young del Toro, his love of film only matched by his love of comic books. Moebius (Jean Giraud), Frank Frazetta and Richard Corben count as his earlier influences in illustration. This later transpired into adulthood through his work on two Hellboy films with Mike Mignola.

There are a couple of other elements that were absorbed into his cinematic work. One came in the form of James Whale’s ‘Frankenstein’ (1931), as del Toro identified with the outsider status of Boris Karloff’s confused and abused monster. He found in Frankenstein an eloquent analogy to his directorial approach, since his movies are collages of used, discarded and different source materials that were given new life and purpose.

BORIS KARLOFF AS ‘FRANKENSTEIN’ (1931)

Growing up in ‘60s and ‘70s Guadalajara, Guillermo del Toro had several disturbing confrontations with death, the second other seminal element. He saw corpses in the streets more than once, as well as in a morgue and in the catacombs beneath the local church. He was pummelled by the notion of the original sin and even subjected to the horrors of exorcism because of his grandmother, in a useless attempt to obliterate his obvious love of monsters and fantasy. Today, the director is an outspoken critic of institutional Catholicism, saying: ‘The fantastic is the only tool we have nowadays to explain spirituality to a generation that refuses to believe in dogma or religion.’

In his films, the prospect of immortality that is promised in Catholic doctrines as a reward for obeying the church is translated into an arrogant desire that ultimately leads to the self-destruction of those who chase such wild dreams. In the end and despite the array of both wonderful and terrible experiences, del Toro walked into adulthood with a clear sense of belonging in the world of horror fantasy. ‘I really think I was born to exist in the genre’, he says. ‘I adore it. I embrace it. I enshrine it. I don’t look upon it or frown upon it in a way that a lot of directors do. For me, it’s not a steppingstone, it’s a cathedral.’

ANGEL OF DEATH SCULPTURE, INSPIRED BY ‘HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY’ (2008)

Themes, Influences, Inspiration

In his films, del Toro often asks an interesting question: what happens when two opposing frameworks for understanding the world confront one another? Different protagonists fight against forces of disorder, struggling in their own way. Some refuse to admit the futility of this war, while others learn to accept chaos, emerging victoriously with greater powers of their own.

Colour plays an essential role in the way he communicates his cinematic vision. In an interview with Keith McDonald and Roger Clark, Guillermo del Toro points to Federico Fellini as a key influence. The Italian director once said: ‘When I transitioned into colour, I made a point of having the colour tell the story.’ Following in his footsteps, Mr del Toro applied similar purpose to colour in his movies. For example, he patterned ‘Cronos’ with the colours of the alchemical process—black, red, white, and gold, with an addition of water and fire elements into the overall canvas.

‘Colour gives you the key of the film in the same way that some songs are better in one key than another, and [the keys] define the genre of the song’, the director said.

‘CRONOS’ (1993), ©CNCAIMC/GRUPO DEL TORO

Many of del Toro’s creations feature children as central characters. They are witnesses, victims, or agents. Frequently, they are able to perceive alternate realities, producing unfiltered emotions in a way that adults cannot. Most importantly, the director refuses to shield his young protagonists from fear, abandonment, harm, or death. Well read in folklore and fable literature, del Toro insists that children cannot be protected, that they are vulnerable—and fairy tales often prove it. His films will sometimes reference classic illustrated editions of children’s stories from the 19^th century, with one instance being Ophelia in ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, who is dressed similarly to Alice in Wonderland as rendered by Arthur Rackham.

‘PAN’S LABYRINTH’ (2006), ©ESTUDIOS PICASSO/WILD BUNCH

Victoriana is a copious source of inspiration for Guillermo del Toro. The Victorian Period, loosely considered to cover the Romantic era and the Edwardian age, is thoroughly represented by Charles Dickens in the director’s mind. He named his beloved Los Angeles personal residence/museum of curiosities after the English writer’s ‘Bleak House’ novel. Houses in both Victorian novels and his films are endowed with pasts as complicated and unresolved as their inhabitants. Mr Dickens’s memorable melange of realism and fantasy is but one of his many influences that can be found across the whole span of del Toro’s work.

INSIDE BLEAK HOUSE, ©JOSHUA WHITE/JWPPICTURES.COM/LACMA

Filled with puzzles, talismanic items, secret keys and quests for forbidden knowledge, his films draw their strength from a vast collection on the topics of magic, witchcraft, and the occult. Many of his characters are scientists, whom he considers ‘contemporary successors to the monks and alchemists who explored the boundaries between the holy and the unholy’—this is brilliantly exemplified by the fourteenth-century alchemist who kickstarts the present-day action in ‘Cronos’ with his scarab-like device that gives immortality along with a thirst for blood.

Guillermo del Toro also cites H.P. Lovecraft as one of the key influences in his creative life, whose work is foundational to both the horror and science fiction genres. The American writer’s vivid expressions of madness, transformation and monstrosity have been the source of inspiration and frustration to numerous directors, and Mr del Toro is no exception. There is a smidge of Lovecraft in almost each of his films. ‘Lovecraft did something very interesting with the traditional Gothic and horror narrative. He brought a scientific and existential point of view to it’, says del Toro in his exhibition book.

LIFE-SIZE STATUE OF H.P. LOVECRAFT IN BLEAK HOUSE, ©CHRIS MOORE

However, it’s the freaks and the monsters that are the true building blocks of his films. To him, they’re all fascinating—the movie ones as much as those found in nature, literature, in myths and in art. ‘It’s either tragedy or superiority that makes a good monster’, del Toro notes. These creatures are beautiful and heroic in their individuality, and they are also mirrors of society’s hypocrisy. According to the director, ‘the conventional standards of perfection that surround us in commercial culture are corrosive, demonizing the imperfections that characterize us all.’

While he usually identifies with the tragic type of monster, Mr del Toro is equally skilled at creating truly horrifying and indestructible fiends, too. The creation process begins with him thinking of the monster as a character, not merely a mixture of terrifying elements or a force that impacts the plot in one way or another. The creature must be visually convincing from every single point of view. Most importantly, his monsters strive to be instantly recognizable, impossible to forget, and downright iconic.

Many of them have insect-like features and behaviours. They’re designed for survival, usually in an elegant manner, but they still manage to cause an emotional reaction of fear and revulsion in most people.

‘PACIFIC RIM’ (2013), ©WARNER BROS.

Bleak House

‘I built a house made of books, art, film, and monsters. A house of many stories: dark and stormy stories. A house with secret passages and sliding bookshelves and portraits that follow you as you walk by. I dreamt it all those years ago, alone in the dark, but I only got to build it at age forty-four’, Guillermo del Toro speaks fondly of his home. It inspired an extraordinary exhibition that could be admired at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Art Gallery of Ontario in recent years. Parts of his collections were taken from Bleak House and put on display for the whole world to see the creepy and wondrous things that make his mind click.

Bleak House isn’t just Guillermo del Toro’s residence. It is a cornucopia of objects, notebooks, maquettes, drawings, paintings, film concept art, and artefacts—assemblies of film memorabilia, art, and literature which he considers to be essential sources of inspiration. Bleak House feeds his very soul. These collections grow organically, not chaotically. Del Toro is precise and personally involved in the arrangement and curation of every object. There is purpose in this dedication, as Bleak House is crucial to his working process.

GUILLERMO DEL TORO IN BLEAK HOUSE WITH A LIFE-SIZE STATUE OF SCHLITZIE AND H.R. GIGER ORIGINAL ARTWORK, ©JOSH WHITE/JWPICTURES.COM

Life-size sculptures of Hans and Schlitzie from ‘Freaks’ (1932), Edgar Allan Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft are among the more memorable ‘residents’, along with a plethora of monster figurines, and portraits and/or miniatures of Forrest Ackerman, celebrated magazine editor and literary agent who once represented Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, giants of science fiction; makeup effects legend Dick Smith, whom the director studied under; and revered stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen.

The house is crafted into thematic sections, and there is an enormous head of Frankenstein’s monster adorning the foyer. A history section includes busts of magicians Harry Houdini, Howard Thurston, Chung Ling Soo, and Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin. In the rain room, there is a life-size sculpture of Boris Karloff in chair as he’s transformed into Frankenstein’s monster by renowned horror makeup artist Jack Pierce. Linda Blair as Regan MacNeil from ‘The Exorcist’ (1973) is also present.

THE FOYER OF BLEAK HOUSE, ©JOSH WHITE/JWPICTURES.COM

One will find thousands of books, as well, of both fiction and non-fiction. Among his most prized possessions, Mr del Toro mentions the entire collection of ‘Man, Myth & Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the Supernatural’, a twenty-four volume set that was published in 1970, and which the director loved to pore over as a child. Alas, Bleak House is any fantasy and horror aficionado’s dream home.

Into the Future

Guillermo del Toro has recently finished penning the script for Disney’s upcoming ‘Pinocchio’ (2021) and ‘Nightmare Alley’ (2021), along with a sequel to ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’ (2019). Mr del Toro has also found a certain joy in animation with ‘Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia’ (2016-2018), and he is currently moving ahead with ‘Wizards’, the third instalment of the Arcadia series.

For almost a decade, the director has struggled with a repeatedly cancelled adaptation of Lovecraft’s novella, ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, originally published in 1936. Refusing to surrender and constantly surrounded by portraits and busts of the writer at Bleak House, del Toro continues to plot and work on a way to bring this particular story to the silver screen.

GUILLERMO DEL TORO IN BLEAK HOUSE NEXT TO A LIFE-SIZE STATUE OF EDGAR ALLAN POE, ©JOSH WHITE/JWPICTURES.COM

Refusing distinctions between high and low culture, Guillermo del Toro is utterly unapologetic about what moves him in this life. Having found inspiration in the comics of Bernie Wrightson and Alan Moore, in TV shows like ‘The Twilight Zone’ (1959-1964) and ‘The Outer Limits’ (1963-1965), in the moving images of Federico Fellini and James Whale, and in the art of Francisco Goya and James Ensor, he uses his influences as instruments for crafting deeply philosophical themes.

Like an alchemist, del Toro takes these bits and pieces and transmutes them into incredible film worlds where monsters and innocents are given new purpose, driven by the very mystery and uncertainty that defines the human condition.

Writers and screenwriters have found common ground in the following statement: adapting a novel into a feature film is a double-edged blade. On one hand, the literary purists (particularly the fans of said novel) will expect adherence to the original story. On the other hand, production companies and movie audiences will expect the source material to be compressed into a digestible format. And even if you’ve ticked all the boxes, chances are there will still be viewers/readers voicing displeasure regarding the end result.

Taking a story from the pages of a book and trimming (or, in some cases, chopping) it into a film that works is no walk in the park. In many cases, the writers work hand in hand with the screenwriters to make sure the essence of the story is not lost along the way. In a few rare instances, the writers don’t get involved and simply sell the film and TV rights to the highest bidder. James Patterson is usually situated among the latter, and it shows. His books are exquisite thriller pieces. The adaptations, however, are less than stellar. Usually, the author will retain credit as an executive producer: it’s one thing to help pen the screenplay and back away from the project, and a whole other thing to stick around and make sure that the production and post-production processes run smoothly, without butchering the source material. Screenwriters can attest to the fact that major changes can be slipped into the story even in the middle of principal photography.

‘FIGHT CLUB’ (1999), ©FOX 2000 PICTURES

Not all adaptations work. Some books simply aren’t meant to be made for the silver screen. I have a hard time seeing anyone take on John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ without getting cancelled halfway into pre-production or fumbling the gargantuan task of transferring the poetry into a screenplay that producers simply cannot put down. The same goes for H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, which is a superb horror masterpiece—to this day, Guillermo del Toro has yet to succeed in getting the project off the ground, mostly due to studio intervention or even budgetary concerns. There are stories that do not belong in the world of cinema.

But of those that do… Well, I could talk about them for hours. I’ll settle on five that truly stand out for me, not only as masterful adaptations but also as splendid feature films that took the original story to a whole new level.

‘Stand by Me’

Written by Raynold Gideon and directed by Rob Reiner, ‘Stand by Me’ (1986) is one of the best coming-of-age stories to ever grace the silver screen. It was based on Stephen King’s novella, aptly titled ‘The Body’ and included in his 1982 ‘Different Seasons’ collection of short tales.

The film was critically acclaimed, its screenplay was nominated for an Oscar, and it is widely remembered as one of the most wholesome, strange and nostalgic creations out of Hollywood. It is, to this day, an adaptation worthy of praise, and it stands well enough on its own. ‘The Body’ is slightly better, though, mainly because there were precious parts of it that didn’t survive into the movie.

‘STAND BY ME’ (1986), ©COLUMBIA PICTURES

One memorable scene is when Gordie sees the deer on the train tracks. It is a pure moment that generates some powerful thoughts from adult Gordon as he reminisces about that particular discovery. ‘The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them. It’s hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life’, Stephen King writes in ‘The Body’. Throughout the book, Mr King drops plenty of thoughts and ideas that not only make it a great read, they also make us think about the way our actions can affect the rest of our lives.

‘The Body’ and ‘Stand by Me’ are each exquisite and memorable works that are worth revisiting more than once, but the difference persists in the depth that can be reached in the book—a depth which most films simply fail to capture.

‘True Grit’

Charles Portis’ novel was adapted twice since its publishing as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post, back in 1968. There aren’t many writers who can display a humour as dry as Mr Portis’s in ‘True Grit’, not to mention his other works. If you don’t pay attention, it might fly right over your head. The book is an astounding work of fiction, but the aforementioned sly humour slipped through the cracks with its first adaptation.

In 1969, Henry Hathaway took on the complicated task of telling Mattie Ross’ story for the cinema. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite capture the essence of the book. Marguerite Roberts’ screenplay didn’t retain the jokes despite her devotion to the source material, and Mr Hathaway simply couldn’t pinpoint the snippets of humour that the original writer had injected into the tale. The result, despite starring John Wayne—who also got an Academy Award for his performance, falls rather flat.

‘True Grit’ (1969) is more of a throwback to the westerns of the ‘50s than anything else. A wonderful movie that is worth watching and re-watching, of course, as Mr Wayne is his usual gritty self, and Kim Darby brilliantly plays Mattie Ross, the hard-headed revenge seeker.

‘TRUE GRIT’ (2010), ©PARAMOUNT PICTURES

‘True Grit’ (2010), written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, is a slightly different and more complex affair. Starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin, this second adaptation of Mr Portis’s novel is remarkable, though it also fails to capture the original’s spirit. The writing is sterling, to say the least, and the Coens are masters of their craft, but something still doesn’t stick.

Both versions were true to the novel in different ways and always a pleasure to watch, but neither is able to bring forth what makes ‘True Grit’ special and impossible to put down.

‘The Big Sleep’

Raymond Chandler is the uncontested champion of noir crime. His books are works of literary art and have changed the way in which we think of detective stories. ‘The Big Sleep’, considered a masterpiece of its genre, is noted for its complexity and the way in which its characters double-cross each other. Most recently, it was included in Time magazine’s ‘List of the 100 Best Novels’.

So, naturally, expectations for its movie version were high. In 1946, Howard Hawks, better known for ‘Scarface’ (1932), ‘Bringing Up Baby’ (1938), and ‘His Girl Friday’ (1940), took Raymond Chandler’s book to a different level. ‘The Big Sleep’ (1946) brought Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall together on the silver screen. Their sizzling dynamic is downright mesmerizing and impossible to forget.

‘THE BIG SLEEP’ (1946), ©WARNER BROS.

William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett penned the script, doing justice to Mr Chandler’s original work. In fact, the author was so pleased with the film, he once noted that Hawks’ version shows ‘what can be done with this sort of story by a director with the gift of atmosphere and the requisite touch of hidden sadism.’ Truth be told, the mixture of highly commercial genre and sharply individual intelligence delivers an endless fascination, which is why Howard Hawks’ vision was compatible with Raymond Chandler’s writing. In this case, the book and the adaptation are equally tremendous, each carrying their own artistic glory for slightly different reasons.

The former is intense and hardboiled, an incisive study of human nature, while the latter is rife with timeless magnetism, most of it due to the enhancement of Lauren Bacall’s character, Vivian.

‘The Big Sleep’ (1978) was Robert Mitchum’s take on Mr Chandler’s novel, starring Robert Mitchum and Sarah Miles. It was nowhere near as good as Hawks’ version, mainly because the story was transplanted into England and most of the story’s original nuance was lost along the way. Despite its many redeeming qualities, the second adaptation fails to even approach the first’s degree of excellence.

‘No Country for Old Men’

Cormac McCarthy is one of the world’s greatest writers, at least in my humble opinion. His hallucinating narrative style put his fifth novel, ‘Blood Meridian’, on Time magazine’s list of the 100 best English-language books in 2005. ‘All the Pretty Horses’ earned him a National Book Award, and ‘The Road’ won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. ‘No Country for Old Men’ stands apart from the other nine titles he has so graciously given us, mainly because it was originally written as a screenplay and thus carries a simpler style.

Joel and Ethan Coen also stand apart for their ability to transform marvellous books into equally marvellous works of cinema. With ‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007), their adaptation of Mr McCarthy’s violently beautiful novel, the story is given a distinctive tang. Usually, the process of cropping a book for the screen leads to leaving a lot out from the source material, mainly due to the structural incompatibility between the two mediums.

‘NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN’ (2007), ©PARAMOUNT VANTAGE/MIRAMAX

But with ‘No Country for Old Men’, the exact opposite happened. The Coen Brothers change very little. The beat and the tone, the twists and the turns—everything that made the book so enthralling is faithfully and splendidly conveyed in the movie. Featuring first-class performances from Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, and Javier Bardem, ‘No County for Old Men’ won four Academy Awards, including the grand prize for Best Motion Picture of the Year, all well deserved.

‘Jojo Rabbit’

There were plenty of other household names that would’ve looked just as nice alongside the above. Edith Wharton’s ‘The Age of Innocence’ and Chuck Palahniuk’s ‘Fight Club’ come to mind. But given Taika Waititi’s historic Academy Award win this year, I decided that ‘Jojo Rabbit’ (2019) deserves to sit amongst the giants of incredibly good book-to-screen gems.

Adaptation is, by its nature, a transformative process. Changes must be made in order for the story to work on the big screen. Most readers will judge an adaptation by its fidelity to the original, which isn’t always a good avenue of objective critique. It’s actually deeply subjective. But Mr Waititi’s accomplishment with Christine Leunens’ ‘Caging Skies’ manages to stand out without galvanizing or upsetting fans of the book.

‘JOJO RABBIT’ (2019), ©TSG ENTERTAINMENT

Even though the U.S. version’s jacket describes Ms Leunens’ work as ‘darkly comic’, it’s actually difficult to consider ‘Caging Skies’ funny in any way. It is bleak and heart-breaking, and certainly not what is brought to life through Mr Waititi’s screenwriting, or the outstanding performances of Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson, or Roman Griffin Davis. Hell, Taika Waititi’s half-witted Hitler proves the impossible—that a Nazi story can be made into a deliciously weird but triumphant comedy.

At its core and despite its WWII setting, ‘Jojo Rabbit’ is a whimsical coming-of-age tale that follows a deeply indoctrinated Nazi boy as he begins to understand that the world he’s been brainwashed into believing is right is, in fact, horribly wrong. ‘Jojo Rabbit’ merely follows a similar path to ‘Caging Skies’ in broad strokes, at most. It has left behind significant parts of the book, focusing more on wrapping the tragedies of that era in delicious layers of ridicule. The end result, however, is a cinematic masterpiece and vivid satire that will leave us smiling and with a shattered heart, all at once.

I will never forget the day I discovered Neil Gaiman. I borrowed a copy of ‘American Gods’ from a colleague in film school, and I remember being unable to put it down. A little over a day later, I’d finished it, and my mind had just opened up to incredible new possibilities in terms of creating fantasy with compelling characters and unique worlds.

From a literary point of view, Mr Gaiman has earned his spot among the titans of his genres—yes, genres, because he is an incredibly versatile writer, authoring now-classical oeuvres such as ‘The Sandman’ series for DC Comics/Vertigo, the aforementioned ‘American Gods’, ‘Neverwhere’ and ‘Stardust’, among many others. Perhaps still a youngling at heart, he is able to delight readers of any age with his fantasy stories—from the brave Coraline who stumbles upon a strange and sinister version of her home, to Nobody ‘Bod’ Owens who was raised in a cemetery by ghosts, to Shadow Moon, the ex-con who finds himself sucked into a war between the gods themselves.

NEIL GAIMAN, ©MASTERCLASS

Neil Gaiman isn’t afraid of the strange or the unfamiliar. Maybe that’s what makes him a master storyteller—a fact further evidenced by his Masterclass course, which is, by far, one of the best things that any aspiring writer could spend their money on. His mind is clearly full of wonders, and we can only strap in and enjoy the ride.

Most of his novels have been or are currently being adapted for the screen, which makes him quite the asset for the cinematic industry. ‘The Sandman’ is getting its own TV series, as is ‘Anansi Boys’, following the roaring success of Canada Film Capital and Fremantle’s production of ‘American Gods’ (2017), which is currently distributed by Starz!, Amazon Prime and StudioCanal. Pretty much everything that Mr Gaiman touched has turned to gold, so no wonder he’s in demand.

Young Neil

Born in Portchester, Hampshire in 1960, Neil Gaiman was raised in a predominantly Jewish and Scientologist family—although, when asked about his personal religious views, he once said: ‘I think we can say that God exists in the DC Universe. I would not stand up and beat the drum for the existence of God in this universe.’

A VERY YOUNG NEIL GAIMAN, ©NEIL GAIMAN

Able to read from the age of four, young Neil devoured literary materials perhaps too complex for a child. When he was about ten years old, he completed the works of Dennis Wheatley, whose ‘The Ka of Gifford Hillary’ and ‘The Haunting of Toby Jugg’ left quite the impression on him. But it was J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy that really set him on the path of someday becoming a writer.

C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Mary Shelley, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, and Lord Dunsany also count as early influences on young Neil. When he was only nineteen, he wrote a letter to his favourite science fiction author, R.A. Lafferty, asking for advice on becoming an author. Mr Lafferty wrote back with an encouraging message, filled with literary advice. That was a pivotal point in the early days of Mr Gaiman’s career, though perhaps the most influential author is still Roger Zelazny—easily noted from Neil’s writing style and choice of topics.

Of Journalism and Other Things

In the early 1980s, Neil took up journalism to learn about the publishing world and to make connections that would eventually get him published. He spent his days conducting interviews with agents, publishers and writers, and writing book reviews, particularly for the British Fantasy Society. He published his first short story, titled ‘Featherquest’, in Imagine Magazine in May 1984.

His discovery of Alan Moore’s ‘Swamp Thing’ gave him the drive and the courage to write his own book. He started with a biography of the band Duran Duran that same year, then quit journalism altogether in 1987, stating that ‘British newspapers regularly publish untruths as fact.’

NEIL GAIMAN, ©DAVID J. MURRAY/CLEAREYEPHOTO.COM

After releasing ‘Don’t Panic: The Official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion’ in the late ‘80s, Neil Gaiman went on to write the opening of what later became his critically acclaimed collaboration with Terry Pratchett on ‘Good Omens’. He also formed a friendship with comic-book writer Alan Moore, which, in turn, got Neil into writing comic books of his own. It was around this time that he also met and became friends with his favourite artist, Dave McKean, producing ‘Violent Cases’ and ‘The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch’. These two works got him a job with DC Comics in February 1987.

He wrote the limited series ‘Black Orchid’ for them and was later noticed by Karen Berger, later head of DC Comics’ Vertigo division, who invited Neil to rewrite an old character of theirs, The Sandman, but with his own spin on the previously unexplored entity. Needless to say, it was smooth sailing from thereon, as ‘The Sandman’ is, to this day, one of the most compelling and exquisite comic book collections ever written.

MORPHEUS, ‘THE SANDMAN’, ©DC COMICS/VERTIGO

The series, following Morpheus, the ageless and anthropomorphic personification of Dream, began in January 1989 and concluded in March 1996. Working with Mike Dringenberg, Neil introduced Death, Dream’s older sister, in ‘The Sandman’, and she became almost as popular as the title character himself. DC’s Vertigo line was, in fact, launched in 1993 with a limited series named ‘Death: The High Cost of Living’, which was a resounding success. This further established Neil Gaiman as a preeminent writer of comics, and he even ended up as a co-writer with Jamie Delano for the ‘Swamp Thing’ series centred on Rick Veitch. Unfortunately, an editorial decision from DC caused both Gaiman and Delano to withdraw from the project.

Neil produced a number of additional stories for the DC Universe, including some Batman, Riddler and Poison Ivy-related tales, but he didn’t stick to that side of the aisle for long. In 2013, his Angela character, created with Todd McFarlane for his ‘Spawn’ series, was introduced into the Marvel Universe as part of the last issue for the ‘Age of Ultron’ miniseries. That whole collaboration ended with a lawsuit, however, which led to a joint ownership of the characters he created for McFarlane. One thing that stands out about Neil is that he understood the publishing industry and all its facets from a very young age. It helped him protect his literary works in the long run.

In the comic book world, Neil was known as a creator of characters, though he didn’t always stick around for the writing part, focusing mostly on his work for ‘The Sandman’. In an interview, and with regards to his passion for comics above other forms of storytelling, he said: ‘One of the joys of comics has always been the knowledge that it was, in many ways, untouched ground. It was virgin territory. When I was working on Sandman, I felt a lot of the time that I was actually picking up a machete and heading out into the jungle. I got to write in places and do things that nobody had ever done before. […] But with comics I felt like – I can do stuff nobody has ever done. I can do stuff nobody has ever thought of. And I could and it was enormously fun.’

The Books of Strange and Wonderful

Neil Gaiman’s first novel, a collaborative effort with Terry Pratchett titled ‘Good Omens’ was published in 1990. It was an instant success, chronicling the struggles of an angel and a demon who really don’t want the world to end, despite the fact that the Apocalypse has already begun.

In 1996, the novelisation of his teleplay for the BBC mini-series ‘Neverwhere’ came out, and the world was never the same again, even though he has since revised the novel twice—the first time to familiarize the American audience with the London Underground, and the second time because he simply felt he could do much better than the original. It’s a defining trait of Mr Gaiman’s, in fact, to try harder, to give more than what he’s already gifted us with.

‘NEVERWHERE’ COVER, ©WILLIAM MORROW/HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS

Influenced by Victorian fairy tales but with a fun and fresh twist of its own, ‘Stardust’ hit the bookstores in 1999. However, it was ‘American Gods’, published in 2001, that changed everything. It became an instant bestseller, gathering award after award for years before the idea of a TV adaptation was even considered. Fun and maybe a little terrifying fact: it almost didn’t get published because it was considered too long.

He followed it up with ‘Anansi Boys’ in 2005. Though not a direct sequel to ‘American Gods’, the book does tap into that specific universe by following Mr Nancy’s two sons—one a demigod and the other a simple Englishman, as they explore and eventually get tangled in their common heritage. In 2008, Mr Gaiman published ‘The Graveyard Book’, a work that was heavily influenced by Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book’, securing its spot on the New York Times Bestseller Children’s List for fifteen consecutive weeks.

‘THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE’ COVER, ©HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS

With ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’, released in 2013 and voted Book of the Year at the National Book Awards, Neil touched on the search for one’s self-identity and the ‘disconnect between childhood and adulthood’ in a most fascinating style. ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ was adapted for the stage and ran from 3 December, 2019 until 25 January of this year, at the National Theatre’s Dorfman venue in London. In-between the novels, he has also published several children’s books (‘Coraline’, ‘Mirror Mask’, and ‘The Wolves in the Walls’ among them), along with several collections of short stories, such as ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ and ‘Trigger Warning’. 

Most recently, Neil Gaiman has given us a beautiful retelling of Viking myths with ‘Norse Mythology’, where he took the time to compile, chisel and whittle through various pieces of folklore in order to produce a brilliant rendition of the Norse gods and their world, from their early days to their end in Ragnarok. 

Neil Gaiman, Executive Producer and Screenwriter

One thing is clear at this point and considering his illustrious career thus far. Much like with Stephen King, Neil Gaiman’s works are not easy to adapt for the screen. There have been a couple of misses, like with ‘Beowulf’ (2007), directed by Robert Zemeckis and featuring the voices of Angelina Jolie, Ray Winstone, and Crispin Glover, or the ‘Eternals’ animated series (2014).

‘MIRRORMASK’ (2005), ©SONY PICTURES

But everything else that has come from his stories has been exceptional from beginning to end. Take the case of ‘Mirrormask’, directed by Dave McKean, as a first example. Considered by most as an ‘underground art film’, ‘Mirrormask’ follows a young girl named Helena through a fantasy world of opposing kingdoms, playing mainly on the metaphor of a girl trapped in another world as a symbol of growing up. Its ‘Alice in Wonderland’-esque allure turns it into a magical children’s movie, and it certainly stands out through its overall visual design.

In 2007, ‘Stardust’ made it onto the big screen with a screenplay by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, the latter also its director. Featuring brilliant performances from Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Robert De Niro, ‘Stardust’ brought the fairy tale back into the world of cinema in a most unexpected and charming fashion.

‘Coraline’ (2009), adapted for the screen and directed by Henry Selick, made its mark as a peculiar but truly unforgettable film for children. Starring Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher, ‘Coraline’ is also a stunning work of stop-motion animation. Nominated for the 2010 Academy Awards and Golden Globes, it won a BAFTA Children’s Award for Best Feature Film.

MICHAEL SHEEN AND DAVID TENNANT IN ‘GOOD OMENS’ (2019), ©AMAZON PRIME/BBC STUDIOS

His masterpieces remain ‘Good Omens’ (2019), starring David Tenant and Michael Sheen, and ‘American Gods’ (2017-present), with Ricky Whittle, Emily Browning, and Ian McShane. The former, produced and distributed by Amazon Studios and BBC Studios, was written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Douglas Mackinnon. The latter, created by Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, has 16 episodes written by Mr Gaiman, along with his extensive involvement as an executive producer. Both are exceptional works of television, not only because of their source material, but also because the source material’s author stayed on and made sure his vision was accurately represented on the screen.

Neil is not one to shy away from changes between a book and a screenplay. But one could easily tell he was not directly involved in the writing and production of ‘Lucifer’ (2015), except for him voicing God. Based on a character created by Neil for DC Comics which was first seen in ‘The Sandman’, the FOX-then-Netflix production paired Lucifer Morningstar with an LA detective to solve crimes while dealing with his complicated and frustratingly divine family—it’s basically a supernatural cop procedural and hard to love. 

Aside from Tom Ellis and Lesley-Ann Brandt’s stellar performances, however, the show steers so far away from the original comics that it’s hard to even take it seriously, sometimes. In a Twitter Q&A, Neil has stated that ‘Lucifer’ is its own show, and on another occasion, he expressed relief when Netflix saved the series after FOX’s cancellation. Had Tom Kapinos and the original producing network relied more on Neil’s comics, I’m certain we would’ve seen something infinitely superior than what has somehow made it through 5 seasons. It’s a fun show, mind you, but the ‘real’ Lucifer Morningstar’s stories are infinitely more complex and fascinating, since he’s got more important things to do than solve crimes in Los Angeles.

‘AMERICAN GODS’ (2017-PRESENT), ©STARZ!

That being said, ‘The Sandman’ has finally been greenlit for the screen. Netflix ordered a series which boasts Neil Gaiman, David S. Goyer, and Allan Heinberg as its creators. Little is known about the project so far, but given that the author himself is involved, there’s little doubt that it might fail. ‘The Sandman’ is one of Neil’s most precious works, and he will do everything in his power to do it and its metaphysical characters justice, though he has repeatedly said that he prefers being a novelist before a showrunner. Then again, if you want something done right… 

‘The Graveyard Book’ and ‘The Thing About Cassandra’ have also been announced. According to The Guardian and as of 2017, Neil is also in the process of writing ‘The Seven Sisters’, a sequel to ‘Neverwhere’ which is partly inspired from his work with the UN’s refugee agency. It doesn’t have a formal release date, but those of you familiar with Neil’s writing will likely agree that we’re in for quite the treat.

And to think that, according to an interview with MTV, George R.R. Martin was once approached by a ‘skinny British kid dressed in all black’ who had an idea for a character he wanted to introduce in Mr Martin’s ‘Wild Cards’ anthology—he blew that kid off, since he didn’t have any credits to his name. That same kid gave us ‘The Sandman’ just years later.