Showing posts with label Neil Gaiman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neil Gaiman. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Neil Gaiman and Louise Brooks, and Kathy Acker too

With Netflix's new production of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman receiving so much publicity of late, I thought I would write a post recounting just some of the many and various connections between Neil Gaiman and Louise Brooks. Here are a few.... 

As readers of this blog may know, Neil Gaiman is well aware of the actress and may be described as a bit of a fan. He has mentioned Brooks on his blog, in tweets, and in interviews, and she also receives shout-outs in his graphic novels and works of fiction. As a matter of fact, in a 1999 interview, Gaiman was asked which actors, specifically which dead actors, he might like to cast in film adaptions of his works. He answered, "Oh, that's fun. If I could cast it with all dead actors, I'd have Peter Sellars playing... an awful lot of the parts! [laughs] Hm... Oh, that's a nice one. I dunno, that really moves into dream casting. You could get the young Brigitte Bardot playing Door, and Alec Guiness playing anybody Peter Sellars isn't. The young Alec Guiness, not an Obi-Wan Kenobi. And maybe Louise Brooks playing Hunter. Or anything, really, I don't mind what Louise Brooks plays; if all she wanted to do was hang around the set and make tea, I'd be there!" 

In a 2003 interview, Gaiman was asked " If you could pick your neighbors (living, dead, real or fictional), who would live to your right, to your left, across from you and below you?" He answered, ".... Underneath ... just random, unpredictable dead people. It'd be fun to go down into the cellar and talk with them. Cleopatra and Dracula and Louise Brooks and the rest ...."

One well known character in The Sandman is named "Death." Originally, Gaiman considered having Death look like Louise Brooks "with a sort of short, black bob, and much more stylish," according to illustrator Mike Dringenberg. Because of her striking Lulu-like look, there has been speculation that she is in fact based on Brooks. But that is not quite true, almost. Regarding the character, Neil Gaiman once wrote, "Mike Dringenberg was at that time the inker of SANDMAN (Sam Keith was penciling). He read my description of Death in the original SANDMAN outline and decided that she should look less like a young Nico or Louise Brooks (as I had suggested) and more like his friend Cinnamon. Mike did a drawing of her - the same drawing that appeared as a pinup in SANDMAN, and later as a T-shirt and a watch face." (Spoiler alert, the character named Death no longer resembles LB.)

Brooks gets a shout out in Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors ("She was, from the photographs, not a contemporary beauty. She lacked the transcendence of a Louise Brooks, the sex appeal of a Marilyn Monroe....") And, Brooks is referenced in Gaiman's most celebrated novel, American Gods, which was also turned into a popular TV series. In American Gods, the character named Czernobog, an ancient Slavic god, is visiting Cherryvale, Kansas - Brooks' birthplace, and that is where he refers to Louise Brooks as "the greatest movie star of all time. She was the greatest there ever was."

I have had the pleasure of meeting Neil Gaiman on a few occasions, and even  produced a couple of events with the author, where I had the honor of introducing him. He is a good guy.


Gaiman has great fans - and his events were some of my favorites of the many I put on. Below is a picture - from long ago and far away - of me and my wife and author Neil Gaiman. Some may recognize the t-shirt I am wearing.

On some of the occasions when I had the opportunity to speak with Gaiman, we chatted a bit about Louise Brooks. At that is when he autographed the cover of one of his graphic novels, The Books of Magic, which I believe contains a character inspired, at least in part, by Brooks.... Gaiman signed the cover, "For Thomas in memoriam Lulu..."

Back in 2010, when I was writing for examiner.com, I penned a piece titled “Louise Brooks’ private journals to be revealed.” It was about the unsealing of Brooks' notebooks 25 years after her passing. Remarkably, my piece was tweeted about by the Pulitzer Prize winning film critic Roger Ebert, and writer Neil Gaiman!


 That's not the only time Gaiman has tweeted about Brooks. In 2021, he stated....

There are other connections and cross-references between Neil Gaiman and Louise Brooks, but these were the one's that I could come-up with easily without digging too deeply through my files - both digital and paper. But one last connection.... Notably, Neil Gaiman's bestselling novel, American Gods, is dedicated to Kathy Acker (1947-1997), the novelist and literary provocateur. She also happened to be a customer at the bookstore where I worked. I produced a couple of events with her, as well, and once went out drinking with her. She was pretty cool, especially when she would pull up out front of the store on her motorcycle all clad in leather.

Sometime before her death, I had a chance to ask Acker about one of her least known texts, Lulu Unchained. Acker was well regarded as an experimental novelist, and some of her best known works like Great Expectations (1983) and Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream (1986), riff on earlier literary texts. That's the case with Lulu Unchained, which riffs off of Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays and Alban Berg's later opera. Acker told me Lulu Unchained was partly an homage to Louise Brooks and her role as Lulu in Pandora’s Box. I wonder if Neil Gaiman was at it staging at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in July 1985.

That was long ago and far away.

This blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2022. Further use prohibited.

Monday, October 18, 2021

A milestone for the Louise Brooks Society blog

A rare portrait from the 1930s
Recently, I was tidying up the Louise Brooks Society blog (I hope you like what I have done with the place) when I noticed it was coming up on a milestone. Today's post marks the 3400th blog.

I started blogging back in August 2002, first on LiveJournal, and then on Blogger starting around 2009. I managed to transfer the most interesting pieces from LiveJournal to Blogger, and have been writing and blogging and posting all along. Admittedly, those very early pieces were infrequent and sometimes slight. In 2006, however, during the Louise Brooks centennial, I posted 290 times. There was a lot to report. In 2011, I posted only 69 times. The best year was 2014, when I posted 306 times. I can't imagine how I did it. The pandemic has certainly slowed things down, as there are fewer screenings and news items to write about. My goal these days is to focus on more substantive pieces and newly found material, and to post about 100 times a year. I figure it all adds up.

The LBS blog has hundreds of followers. IF YOU ARE NOT ONE, SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE IN THE COLUMN ON THE RIGHT. Since 2009, according to my hit counter, the Louise Brooks Society blog has been viewed more than 1,665,000 times by individuals from all around the world. That is pretty cool. Check the flag counter below or in the right hand column to see if your country is represented. Not surprisingly, English speaking countries lead the roll call of visitors. And of course, France and Germany (where LB made a few films) also show many visitors. It pleases me that Russia and countries in Latin America also show up, as does India. But come on New Zealand, you can do better! And so can you, Poland!

 Free counters!

As many longtime readers of this blog know, my other online writings about Louise Brooks have appeared on examiner.com, Huffington Post, SFGate (website of the San Francisco Chronicle), Open / Salon, Pop Matters, and recently Film International. And what's more, my articles have been tweeted about by the likes of Roger Ebert (twice!), Neil Gaiman, and others. That is really cool. In 2018, I collected a number of my best articles and blogs into an illustrated, 296 page book, Louise Brooks, the Persistent Star. Why not ORDER a copy today! 

Just recently, I noticed one of my past blogs caught the attention of Greil Marcus back in 2015. Writing on BarnesandNobleReview, the famous critic and author singled out a 2012 blog I penned on Louise Brooks and the Kansas-born artist Bruce Conner. Here is a screen capture of Greil Marcus' blog about my blog.

Again, I was pleased by the attention. The Louise Brooks Society blog is a proud member of the CMBA (the Classic Movie Blog Association). I was also heartened back in 2018 when the Classic Movie Blog Association profiled the LBS blog and even interviewed yours truly. That is certainly another highlight in the life of the Louise Brooks Society blog. The recognition is nice, and so is the feedback. 

My sincere thanks to the blogs which link to the LBS blog (some are linked in the right hand column), and to the bloggers (including Immortal Ephemera), online publications (including Shelf-Awareness), and websites (including Columbia University Press) which have written about its various entries. I will end this pat on the back with another little seen portrait of Louise Brooks from the 1930s. Long live Lulu!

Another little seen portrait of Brooks from the early 1930s

Sunday, May 11, 2014

More Louise Brooks on examiner.com

For five years, I've been writing about silent film for examiner.com; and for four of those years, I've also been the national Louise Brooks correspondent. My first piece appeared on May 11, 2010. I've written dozens of pieces, perhaps more than one-hundred (I've lost count). To mark my fourth anniversary as the national Louise Brooks examiner, I've put together this checklist of some of my favorite pieces about the actress. A few have enjoyed some buzz, including tweets by the likes of Roger Ebert and Neil Gaiman (each fans of Louise Brooks).

Diary of a Lost Girl, with Louise Brooks, screens in Brooklyn
May 11, 2010

Pandora's Box, with Louise Brooks, screens in SoCal
May 17, 2010

Six questions with . . . the Dodge Brothers
May 23, 2010

Interview with a bassist with an interest in Louise Brooks
June 4, 2010

Canary Murder Case screens in Rochester, NY
June 9, 2010

Daisy D'Ora, one-time German actress, dies at age 97
June 26, 2010

New short film homage to Louise Brooks
June 29, 2010

Berlin film festival features Louise Brooks
July 6, 2010

Rolled Stockings screenwriter turns 110
July 8, 2010

The Show-Off screens in Los Angeles July 10
July 8, 2010

Celebrating G.W. Pabst at Bard College
July 14, 2010

Discovering a Polish Lulu
August 2, 2010

Beggars of Life to show in Los Angeles
August 13, 2010

Louise Brooks' first review on this day in 1925
August 31, 2010

New restoration of Pandora's Box announced
September 8, 2010

The Curious Case of F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
September 13, 2010

Rufus Wainwright talks about Louise Brooks
August 8, 2010

Valeska Gert rediscovered
September 17, 2010

A Beggars of Life revival
September 21, 2010

The Diary of a Lost Girl: A brief history of a banned book
September 25, 2010

Kevin Brownlow talks about archives and Louise Brooks
September 29, 2010

Who was Margarete Bohme?
September 30, 2010

Louise Brooks’ private journals to be revealed
October 2, 2010







Louise Brooks letters revealed in Dear Stinkpot
October 16, 2010

Rare documentary part of Louise Brooks celebration
October 27, 2010

Louise Brooks films celebrated in Paris
December 23, 2010

Beggars of Life, by Jim Tully, back in print
December 29, 2010

Louise Brooks & Bruz Fletcher: Camped, Tramped, Riotous Vamps
December 16, 2010

A Girl in Every Port set to screen at BFI in January
November 30, 2010

Remembering Richard Leacock
March 29, 2011

Louise Brooks film featured at Toronto Silent Film Festival
April 3, 2011

Remembering Theodore Roszak
July 9, 2011

New Lou Reed - Metallica album inspired by Lulu plays
September 22, 2011

Pandora's Box to screen in Dubai
November 20, 2011

Rolled Stockings screenwriter Frederica Sagor Maas dies at age 111
January 7, 2012

Louise Brooks in Beggars of Life in New York
February 17, 2012

Louise Brooks' film debut screens in Syracuse
March 12, 2012

Pandora's Box in America - A Brief History
March 25, 2012

Louise Brooks stars in Montreal Film Series
May 21, 2012

Laura Moriarty talks about Louise Brooks and her new novel, The Chaperone
June 6, 2012

Rare screening of Louise Brooks film, Prix de Beauté
June 23, 2012

Sid Kay's Fellows - Music in Pandora's Box
July 5, 2012

Pandora's Box shows twice on July 14, in Chicago and San Francisco
July 11, 2012

Louise Brooks and The New Woman in Film
September 29, 2012

Louise Brooks film screens at Andy Warhol Museum
October 30, 2012

Louise Brooks and Downton Abbey
January 27, 2013

Louise Brooks stars in new music videos
May 19, 2013

Interview with British musician Stephen Horne
July 12, 2013

Beggars of Life with Louise Brooks in England and Italy
October 6, 2013

Louise Brooks, a magnet of meaning, more popular than ever
November 14, 2013

Pandora's Box with Louise Brooks shows in Seattle and Toronto
January 22, 2014

Nominate a Louise Brooks film for the National Film Registry
February 17, 2014

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloween: Louise Brooks as Death

Happy Halloween: Louise Brooks as Death



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