“Coraline” – first in Gaiman’s 2002 book and then in last year’s Oscar-nominated animated film – is a bored young girl who opens a mysterious door, only to find a magical wonderland on the other side.
Everyone on the other-side has buttons for eyes. Cute! Until Coraline realizes hereyes are next . . .
“What do you think your attraction to the dark side of things is?” Altschul asked.
“I think the thing that crystallized it for me, the moment that I actually understood it for myself, was a quote from Ogden Nash, the great American poet and humorist, where he said, ‘Where there’s a monster, there’s a miracle.’
“And I realized that that, for me, is the joy of the monstrous. It’s the joy of ghosts, fiction, joy of vampires. It’s the miraculous.”
The monstrous and the miraculous have been kind to Neil Gaiman. He’s sold millions of novels, comics and kids’ books, from “Sandman” to Batman to Coraline. None other than horror master Stephen King has called him a “treasure trove of story.”
You can view the video interview + transcript by clicking the image above!
Patrick Weibel 