Dorothy Parker reviews Neil Gaiman's 1st Draft of HIGH COST OF LIVING!!!

Hey folks, Harry here with something rather special for ya. Usually you folks have us slovenly inarticulate writers like Moriarty, Quint, Harry and their ilk. Penises with Typewriters. A collective of monkeys spanking away at their keyboards hoping to coin a phrase. Meanwhile, from time to time your screen is blessed with the brilliance of the female geek mind. You have seen Alexandra DuPont and you've seen Annette Kellerman... and you've even seen the following damsel pounding upon the keys providing something for your simian brow to furl over. Well, when I came across the HIGH COST OF LIVING script by Neil Gaiman, I knew I was the wrong person to write the first review of it. I'm the perfect person to write the second review. Why? Because I haven't read a single issue of his ENDLESS world. Why? Because when I first found out about it, it felt like it was this expansive universe that I should read from beginning to end... and I've never had the issues to read. Someday, when I have 2 weeks of vacation from the day to day of the site, I'll sit somewhere and read it all. However, I do know many people that can quote chapter and verse. I decided the first review should come from one of them. Specifically, because this centered around a female Death... I should let the biggest female Gaiman fan I know have a read. This is that reviewer. Dorothy Parker and her hose... oh yes, those silk-encased legs... oh yes, she's here to let you know all about the brand spanking new 1st draft by Neil Gaiman of the HIGH COST OF LIVING... Read on.....

One of these days, goddamnit, Harry will give me a script to read that has not been adapted from some other previous bit of writing. One of these days he'll give me a script that was originally created to be a movie,( although with what writers make these days, even if you scrawl on the bathroom wall you should still think "licensing"). But Harry has promised me a look at BESSIE, so I won't bitch too loudly

All this aside, I pounced on the bait he dangled the other night. As a die hard Sandman fan, I could not wait to get my eyes on the script for the High Cost of Living, the adaptation of the Death miniseries penned by Morpheus's daddy, Neil Gaiman himself.
I must say this about adaptations: I don't like reviewing them. Why? Because it amounts to two reviews in one. On the one finger, there's the inescapable comparison to the previous comic/novel/ movie/stage play/etc and on the other finger is the desire to react to the piece on its own merits as a singular work. With these two forces duking it out a reader or reviewer can't help but feel a little schizophrenic. A word of warning: I'm no purist about a film being true to an origin book point by point. All I want is the movie to be true to the spirit of the written work and damn the details-it is being translated to another medium after all. That said, Gaiman could have completely shit-canned the plot of his three issue mini-series, written something completely different, and so long as Death was still the cute-Mary-Poppins-lovin'Death of the dark-folklore-creepy-fairy-tale-leaking-into-waking-life stories of Sandman, I'd be whistling a merry tune.

Which leads me to the warnings: there will be spoilers below! If you've read the comics, you know the lion's share of the movie, but you probably don't want any new gems revealed, and I'll try not to, but if you haven't read the comics--go read Harry's review of the script, which will come in a few days. I might give too much away like one of those two-minute discount cinema trailers.

The good news is if you are a comic book purist and were madly in love with the High Cost of Living storyline, you'll be pleased to know that here it is reproduced (almost) exactly with big ol' sweeping brushstrokes. A minor difference is this script eliminates all references to Sandman, and the Endless storyline. Perhaps this is because of ownership issues with the possible Sandman movie, but there are no little in-jokes referring to her family, nothing to confuse the uninitiated. That aside, because the source comic was only three issues, Gaiman had a great opportunity to flesh out some under developed characters and add some surprises. By and large with these minor editions and changes, Gaiman is in his element. I won't ruin any of them, but put it this way: we don't love him for giving us puppies and rainbows; we love him for giving us heartwarming moments with crazy bag ladies, serial killers, people who can't die, and drag queens-you know, folks we can relate to.

Rather than writing for a static comic book window, he makes many of the changes to tailor the storytelling to moving imagery. Mad Hettie's dove collects bits of paper from a massive collage room to tell a fortune, instead of simply having its entrails read. When Gaiman introduces Jackie's character, he uses her gloves to imply stereotypical teenage pretensions, like she's an Audrey Hepburn wannabe, before later flipping the audience's assumptions.

So all of this is nice... But there is a downside...

The chief problem with this script is lack of focus. It feels like Gaiman was tired of the story, like he couldn't find a way to get excited about it, or worse yet, like he was being asked or told to Hollywood it up a bit. There's some stupid cliches crammed in this script that fit about like a bicycle into a breast pump.

And this seems like such a shame considering Gaiman's strong suit in writing is his subtlety. He has an eastern sensibility, using a verbal negative space that creates incredible tension out of what is left unsaid. To scare you, he would prefer to imply conclusions and let you imagine the worst like a horror film that never shows you the monster. When he does leave a trail of crumbs, he carves his words in the same direct and simple style that echoes the brothers Grimm (or maybe Moses). It's a style that dares you to disbelieve what you are being told. The effect of which is that his Sandman stories have the same appeal as folk and fairy tales and his Endless characters have the same universality as any of the pantheons of gods that appear in the same stories with them. No wonder he was asked to write the screenplay for the English-Language version of Princess Mononoke.

Sandman was often called the comic for people who didn't like comics. Popular for not having 2-D characters, the comic's interest was built because fans related to his hyper-real characters: Hazel the pudgy dyke, Rose Walker the introspective hero of Doll's House, fictional serial killers who were drawn from psych profiles echoing Ed Gein and David Berkowitz. Gaiman's fans don't have an interest in hyperbolic Supervillians or absolutely evil madmen intent on taking over the world., nor has he relied on these to give any of the Endless an ass to kick.

(Warning: SPOILERS!)

So why then does this script do an about face to Gaiman's usual style and start trying to walk the fence between a typical comic book movie and Gaiman's original story? I don't know.

How bad does it get? Read on and be the judge...

Gaiman edits out a lot of meat from Sexton's monologues. This would normally be forgivable citing time constraints and the fact that most folks don't want to listen to some 17-year-old bitch like a Sheryl Crow record, but it saps the punch out of the story which is supposed to be that this whiny fuck gets an injection of Joi de Vie from none other than Death herself. Without his dissatisfaction being illustrated, the tone of the script later on sounds preachy, or even worse, trite. There's a scene where Death tells a child that death is natural, and this is nicely done, but for the last half of the movie, how many times do we need her to tell us that the simple things are what life's about, or that life is just inherently good? Why is life good? Is it because she says so? The action provides no insight to that-and if Sexton is truly maniacally or chemically depressed rather than just 'la sullen teen', her platitudes aren't going to last very long. There was a line Jackie had in the comic: "Ennui is insufficient reason to commit suicide." Maybe that should be put back in...

When the Eremite originally appeared in the comic, he was a spoof of a nemesis, not a supervillian. He ended up being chased out of a diner as a vagrant. In this he's developed into a full-fledged crazy bad guy, but without any satisfying explanation as to why other than he wants power over life and death. He feels planted, like a concession to marketing, as does the additional murder he's allowed in the script and especially the big explosion of the truck he's car-jacked.

The story also loses credibility with the Eremite around his kidnapping of Death and Sexton. It's hard to believe that the meaning of life can be witnessed in the simple things when Mad Hettie and Mrs. Robbins magically save our heroes from kidnappers and shrug off a murder so that our heroes can then casually go have breakfast in a diner and talk about the meaning of life some more. It was strained in the comic where the Eremite was just a kook, and it's ludicrous in the script where he's officially a villain and a murderer. It feels sloppy and rushed. Fans know that Gaiman can make exciting and crazy shit happen without begging our credulity too much. The Doll's House storyline is the pregnant Homecoming Queen of Gaiman's Sandman work, and put to a vote would probably win for favorite overall multi-issue serial. In it Gaiman dealt with tying up about four different story lines from serial killers, foster home abuse, a coup in the supernatural forces of the dreamworld, and how one of the characters handled her concept of reality being questioned--and it worked! It worked in a tightly woven, creepy and strangely true sounding way. If Neil Gaiman can make you believe that serial killers might get together and have a convention--just like a sci-fi comic or horror con-- with panel discussions and a movie room playing Badlands and Night of the Hunter, then you know he can work magic. He can do better than this.

There's also a delving into the soap opera arena. Rather than leave Mad Hettie as an enigmatic figure who claims to be 250-years-old and plays hide and seek with Death every hundred years by hiding her heart, Gaiman has to pin her down as Sexton's grandma. Is this the same writer who has Cain kill Abel saying, "It's the mystery that will endure and not the explanation"?

I want this script to be fixed and to be blessed again with Gaiman's magic. He has been able to mix horror with humanity as well as humor. Anyone who has read the Sandman comics, or Good Omens can think of a million reasons to bring his stories to the screen, and would feel pained if they came up as anything short of wonderful. On a selfish note, Neil Gaiman got me hooked on comics because he was the first writer I read that had interesting, believable, female characters. My friend Joey gave me the first book that Death appeared in, "The Sound of Her Wings" and I was hooked. The High Cost of Living if done right would be a landmark in comic book adaptations because the majority of the characters are women. There's a lot of Batman, Superman, Darkman, and soon Spiderman, but not a lot of TankGirl. Death and Mad Hettie would be great editions to the ranks.

On a different note, Gaiman should realize that (many) Sandman fans don't have a vast sense of humor when it comes to monkeying around with the Endless. Test it for yourself. Go find a true believer and tell them that Marisa Tomei is going to play Death. See what happens--better yet, tell them John Turturro is going to be Morpheus. I've seen reactions that rival X-men talkbacks.

As fans, sense of humor or not, we are emotionally attached to these characters. We won't be satisfied with mediocrity, especially when we know that Neil Gaiman can deliver brilliance.

- Dot