Tag: american gods

I love the question and it’s one that I get asked, every single time something of mine is turned into a film or into something for TV. I always wind up saying, “No, it’s nothing like the thing in my head,” and then people always look sad. And then, I have to explain that the most faithful adaptations in the world couldn’t be the thing that I had in my head. If I had written, “Two people were having a picnic in a meadow under a tree,” and you picked me a meadow and a tree, it still won’t look like the one in my head. For that matter, if I write a script and direct it myself, and work with the art directors and everybody else, what I’m shooting is not going to be the thing in my head, either. I’m okay with that. What you do is you delight in what your collaborators do and what your collaborators bring. Occasionally, you wind up saying, “No, it really isn’t like that,” or you do what I did with Sandman, over the years, where an artist would do something and you’d go, “Okay, well, you did this thing. Next time, could you do it more like this?” You try to push it towards the thing that you have in your head, but you know that not only do you never get there, you also know that the joy and the magic comes from seeing what other people have in their heads.