It took
Neil Gaiman nearly twelve years to complete his dark children's tale
Coraline.
The award-winning fantasy author, whose fans are legion, first began writing the book in 1990 for his eldest daughter Holly, whom he described as "this little sort of Wednesday Addams kid."
"She liked creepy stories. So I thought, I'll write her one," Gaiman told
CityNews.ca in an interview earlier this week. "I got about 10,000 words into it, (and) I remember showing it to an editor back then who looked at it and said, 'It's very good. It's un-publishable.'"
Gaiman's then-editor couldn't figure out whether the eerie tale of an adventurous girl who stumbles upon a deceptively perfect alternate reality was supposed to be for kids or adults, or both. So, the project got shelved. Nearly a decade later, in 1998, the writer dusted off the unfinished manuscript and handed it to his new editor in the U.S.
"She phoned me up and said, 'It's wonderful, but what happens next?' I said, 'Send me a contract, and we'll both find out,'" he related. Over the next two years, Gaiman - having become a household name amongst sci-fi and fantasy fans for his Sandman graphic novels and other works of fiction - used the small amount of spare time he had before bed writing 50 words a night, or about a page per week. It took him two more years, but he finally finished it. It hit bookshelves in 2002.
Gaiman admits that he took more time to write Coraline than he did anything else in his extensive bibliography. Now that story is the focus of a feature-length film, in theatres Friday. It's a visual stunner, and the first-ever picture to be made using stop-motion animation and 3-D technology.
"People say to me now, 'Did you know when you were writing it that it was going to be a puppet play and a musical and a stage play and a film and all of these different things?' And I say, 'Look, if I'd known that, I would've actually worked on it a lot harder,'" Gaiman quipped.
The novelist had one person in mind when discussions of a Coraline film began: Henry Selick, who directed Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and the film version of Roald Dahl's classic tale James and the Giant Peach.
"I'd seen James and the Giant Peach, and thought, 'This guy is absolutely amazing. He is the master,'" Gaiman noted.
Making the film version of Coraline was almost as time-consuming as the writing of the story. It took nine years to bring the film to the screen. At an hour and forty minutes it's the longest stop-motion animated film ever made, and the only one completely in 3-D.
The film's $35 million budget was spent in part on dozens of sets and animators. Gaiman suggested that at one point there were more than 50 sets going at once with more than 40 animators. On a good day, one or two seconds of footage was captured, giving a sense of just how long it takes to create a stop-motion film.
Now that the film has hit theatres, the response has been almost universally positive. But what do Gaiman's toughest critics, his three children, think of the story, since it was written for them in the first place?
"I was really nervous, especially for Holly, the oldest one, because when I finished the book she was 16," Gaiman explained. " I gave her an advanced printed copy and was very nervous for the whole weekend that she was wandering around with the book. She came up to me at the end and said, 'I've finished.' I said, 'Well, were you too old for it?' She looked at me and said, 'Dad, you're never too old for Coraline.'"
Check out
Neil Gaiman's Twitter feed.
His Take/Her Take: Coraline
Coraline facts:
- The 'Ranft Bros. Moving Company' that moves Coraline's family into their home, are based on real-life brothers Jerome Ranft and Joe Ranft. Both brothers did work on The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) with director Henry Selick.
- Coraline has also been made into a stage musical, produced by MCC Theater in New York, with music and lyrics by Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields.
- At one hour and forty minutes long, Coraline is the longest stop-motion film to date.
- The first stop-motion animated feature to be shot entirely in 3-D.
Courtesy IMDB