The one who wrote Coraline, and co-wrote the book of Good Omens and made the TV show, also the Sandman comics writer and co-creator who made the Sandman TV show. Quite nice really.
(Look here is lots of you can stop reading now if you want to space)
….because the Metatron left the line open. The circle, once illuminated, is a connection, a doorway. Aziraphale is trying to stop Shadwell stepping into the circle because he will be zapped straight to Heaven.
Having said that, you shouldn’t step into the circle without preparing for it. And Aziraphale hasn’t.
Part of the fun in writing the Good Omens series has been writing scenes that we don’t get to see in the book. One of them is what happens to Aziraphale, at the other end of the circle…
We sat in a car parked outside his office, and we were recorded by Dirk Maggs, sitting in the back. Terry couldn’t read his lines, so I read them to him, and he’ d act them back. Then I’d read one of my lines, and he’d think it was one of his and he’d do it too. It was strange and silly and odd, but no stranger, sillier or odder than anything else we’d done in the previous thirty years.
Today I was interviewed about Good Omens, the TV show, and I told this story about the BBC Radio 4 adaptation, and Terry and my cameo in it.
Terry and I would joke about how I had to write a scene where Aziraphale eats sushi for the TV series, and then we would sit in the background as extras as our cameo, and we would eat sushi. The scene is in the script, but I don’t think I could ever be an extra in it.
Your headcanon is your headcanon. The characters in your mind are what they are, and nobody is trying to take them away from you. Think of the Good Omens TV series as a stage play: for six full hours, actors are going to be portraying the roles of Crowley and Aziraphale, Shadwell and Madame Tracy, Newt and Anathema, Adam, Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian and the rest. Will they look like the people in your head? The ones you’ve been drawing and writing about and imagining for (in some cases) almost 30 years?
Probably not. Which is fine.
The people in your head and your drawings are still there, and still real and still true. I’ve seen drawings of hundreds of different Aziraphales over the years, all with different faces and body-shapes, different hair and skin, and would never have thought to tell anyone who drew or loved them that that wasn’t what Aziraphale looked like. (And a couple of years after we wrote it, I was amused to realise that the Aziraphale in my head looked nothing like the Aziraphale in Terry’s head.) I’ve loved every instance of Good Omens Cosplay I’ve seen, and in no case did I ever think anyone was doing it wrong: they were all Aziraphales and Crowleys, and it was always a delight.
Good Omens has been unillustrated for 27 years, which means that each of you gets to make up your own look for the characters, your own backstories, your own ideas about how they will behave.
The TV version is being made with love and with faithfulness to the story. It’s got material and characters in it that Terry and I had discussed over the years, (some of it from what we would have done it there had been a sequel). Writing it has taken up the greater part of my last three years. You might like it – I really hope you will – but you don’t have to. You can start watching it, decide that you prefer the thing in your head, and stop watching it. (I never saw the last Lord of the Rings movie, because I liked the thing in my head too much.)
Remember we are making this with love.
And that your own personal headCrowleys and headAziraphales and headFourHorsemen and headThem and headHastur and headLigur and headSisterMary and all the rest are yours, and safe, and nobody is ever going to take them away from you.
The Variety article also originally completely failed to credit Terry Pratchett as the co-author of the book, and only corrected it after both he and Terry’s reps noted it.
I get the feeling they tried to jumpstart the apocalypse and published before they were supposed to, based on Neil’s being a bit tetchy in his tweet - on all the American Gods news he’d basically retweet seconds after the original story “broke.”
It was Variety leaking the story. And yes, I was tetchy, as were we all. It’s not the way you want the news to go out, and there are lots of people making this and lots of voices that weren’t heard…
Neil Gaiman - Terry Pratchett: Elveszett próféciák
Végre, nagy várakozással álltam elé, és megfelelt a várakozásomnak, nem okozott csalódást, végre.
Szeretem az olyan történeteket, ahol mindenféle okkult és misztikus dolog bukkan fel (talán kicsit irigylem az embereket, akik ezekben hisznek, érdekessé teszi számukra a világot, de nem is biztos, hogy erről van szó, érdekes a világ a racionalitásával is, inkább azt irigylem, hogy fontosnak hiszik magukat tőle). Az olyan történeteket is szeretem, ahol megjelennek angyalok és démonok, és főleg akkor, ha az derül ki, nem minden fekete és fehér, Azirafaelt, az angyalt a jellemhibái, az apró csínyek miatt kedveltem meg, Crowleyt, a démont a belső jósága miatt. És emellett tök jól, intelligens humorral van megírva. Gaimant amúgy is szeretem, Terry Pratchettől eddig még nem olvastam, de ideje lenne.
I’ve never seen that cover before (Hungarian?). And I love it.
tomhaldenby-deactivated20180818 asked: Do you know what platforms (netflix, Amazon ect) good omens will be on when it releases? And can you to tell us how closely it's going to follow the book?
Amazon are paying for it, so I think it’s a dead certainty that it will be on Amazon.
It follows the book very closely, although it also includes things and people that Terry and I had talked about over the years as things we’d do if we made Good Omens into a film or into TV (a lot more angels, for a start), and it includes a sort of mini movie about Aziraphale and Crowley’s friendship over the last 6000 years, and I also did some stuff to the plot at the end to stop anyone who has read the book from becoming too complacent during the final episode.
I mentioned while I was on my talking tour a few weeks ago that we were a couple of days out from announcing some of the casting for Good Omens. Which I said because that was what I’d been told was happening, and because I’d just written my quotes for the press release.
I just learned that the BBC and Amazon are holding off on announcing because of reasons. (Sensible ones.)
You probably have a month left to speculate, place your bets, and hypothesise. Who will play Crowley? And who Aziraphale? And what about Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell?
