Hello. French here. Just wanted to point out that a "rossignol" is a nightingale.
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@richbigyear
Hello. French here. Just wanted to point out that a "rossignol" is a nightingale.
🥺 ngk
A fashionably winterly Miles in Leyendecker’s style for the holiday season. Hope everyone’s having a nice time with plenty of food and wine <3
everyone knows Crowley and his plants are trauma reenactment but why does no one see the same thing with Az and books? he was guarding Eden and "failed" and then Crowley was about to tempt Eve and humans gained Knowledge and then is fretting if he did the wrong thing so he spends all of time amassing knowledge trying to prove to himself that yes knowing stuff is worth it but also he doesn't sell his books because he is still trying to protect people from knowing stuff while loving knowledge
oh FUCK. and in the tv show, he was “on apple tree duty,” meaning he was also involved with the whole thing…
he failed to guard knowledge once and he doesn’t want to fail again!
hi thanks I hate this
Crowley & Aziraphale: Book vs. Miniseries
(and just to be REALLY CLEAR, I love them both. But the differences are fascinating, since it’s the same author adapting his work after almost 30 years. And how often do you get to see *that*?)
Crowley
Okay. So Book!Crowley is healthy. Just, absurdly well-adjusted. This is a man (demon) just happy with who he is and where he is in life. Sure Hell is annoying, but they mostly leave him alone, and he’s supposed to do paperwork, but… doesn’t. (They never check on the other end, it’s fine.) Aziraphale might be a little hung up on Heaven & similar, but he’s coming to his senses. Slowly. It might be another couple thousand years. But Crowley can wait.
But Series!Crowley is *trying* so very hard. To be cool, successful, appreciated. Book!Crowley gets an award for the M25 motorway, Series!Crowley gets blank stares and stupid questions. This is someone who wants recognition, who wants love, and isn’t getting it. He’s erratic and fragile, kind of chip-on-his-shoulder, and part of this is David Tennant himself (who has never *once* played a character I would describe as “emotionally stable.”) But part of it is the way Series!Crowley is written.
I’m thinking of the paintball scene where Aziraphale calls Crowley “nice.” Book!Crowley rolls his eyes and says, “All right, all right. Tell the whole blessed world, why don’t you?” (”Yes, Az, I know, but I’m on the clock right now and my boss is not happy.”) Series!Crowley, well. Memorably slams Aziraphale into a wall with, “SHUT IT. I’m a DEMON. I’m not NICE. I’m never NICE. NICE is a four-letter word.” @everentropy has a very nice meta about Crowley’s issues with the word nice, but no matter how you slice it, this says (loud and clear) that Series!Crowley is not comfortable with his softer side. Not even a little bit. He is “Cool Demon Crowley” because at least that’s safe.
The terrified houseplant joke also gets a different varnish in the show. In the book, it’s as if Crowley skimmed a magazine, read an article about talking to plants, read another article about the benefits of screaming into pillows, and then sort of combined them? This comes right after the joke about Crowley’s speakers (which his expensive sound system doesn’t have, because he wasn’t aware it *needed* speakers). This makes “threatening the houseplants” feel more like an “angels and demons trying to understand humanity, but subtly missing the point” sort of joke.
But on the show it’s more sinister. In Crowley’s big moments of pain and anguish, he is surrounded by those plants. With the show-specific “de-motivational” posters lining Hell, I think it’s fair to day that Crowley treats his plants this way because that’s just how he thinks motivation works. That’s how it works in Hell.
Series!Crowley is real danger of saying “Screw it. These jokers (Hell) (Aziraphale) don’t APPRECIATE what I do. What is the point of any of this. I’m OUT.” And then, actually leaving.
Aziraphale
Book!Aziraphale is a little mysterious. We don’t spend *that much* time inside his head, and the time we do get mostly revolves around his books. But we do learn that his taste in books is kind of… subversive. Here’s an angel who likes to collect books of prophecy (accurate and inaccurate) and bibles with printing errors. Aziraphale says he’s loyal to the Great Plan and the Word of God and all that, then turns around and attributes the entire book of Revelations to bad mushrooms. And when he’s drunk, he turns into a clever little rules lawyer. Nope, Book!Aziraphale has absolutely been Doubting Heaven, sneakily, for a long time. And he lays on the angelic Sweetness and Light a little thick for Crowley’s benefit.
Book!Az is tough, and a little ruthless. He’ll do things like glare at customers, and scare mobsters away from his shop. Killing the Antichrist is his plan, not Crowley’s. But Series!Az is just pure sweetness, and pure light. There’s no part of him that isn’t the sugary lemon meringue frosting you get on the surface. And the show makes it very clear that that is strength. You don’t have to be tough to be strong.
And that’s the difference. The 1990 novel was about questioning authority, questioning structures, questioning whatever role society hands you. The Antichrist just… refuses to be the Antichrist, and that saves the day. Crowley is our model: neither angel nor demon, critical of both, happy in his own world. Az is the one who needs to finish shaking off his programming. And when I was a teenager, that was exactly what I needed to hear.
But now… Adam says that Satan cannot punish him, because Satan did not love him first. This series is about the terrible risks of loving, and the strength that comes from being honest, being vulnerable (”I’m just a kid” “That’s not a bad thing to be.”) The importance of letting yourself be known. Series!Az and Series!Crowley switch bodies at the end. How much more *known* can you get?
But, it’s hard. It’s so hard for both of them. It’s hard for Crowley to take down all his defenses, and publicly acknowledge that he would rather die than never talk to Aziraphale again. And it’s hard for Aziraphale to stay sweet and pure and emotionally honest, and in love, because it can hurt so much. But they do it. It’s worth it. And that’s the message I needed now, Mr. Gaiman. Thank you.
Behind-the-Scenes of BBC’s Staged
With extra thanks, appreciation, and credit to the Instagram and/or Twitter accounts of Georgia Tennant, Anna Lundberg, Lucy Eaton, and Simon Evans
Hello Mr Gaiman,
Is the attention to details in season 2 of Good Omens as perfect as in season 1?
P.S: Love Good Omens
I'm afraid not.
For example, in Season 1 of Good Omens, the part of a demon named Crowley was played by actor David Tennant. Budget cuts in Season 2 mean that the part of Crowley in Season 2 will be shared between a glove puppet, a dear friend of the production manager's named, I believe, Raoul, and five trained fennec foxes wearing an overcoat.
Some time ago I promised to post a photo of Aziraphale's computer. I don't think I ever did. So here it is. And as a bonus, a photo of Michael Sheen and Derek Jacobi on set, about to film the scene with Aziraphale and the Metatron. (There are actors less celebrated and adored and respected than Sir Derek Jacobi who would have refused to come and act with someone in a scene they wouldn't be in, or that their part in wouldn't be filmed for several months to come. Derek Jacobi is a mensch as well as a marvel.)
You get a sense from the picture of Michael and Derek of how cold the bookshop was. It was December, and we'd lost a day of shooting to a snowstorm already. We couldn't heat things up too much because cameras coming from outside would have steamed up...
Wait does he not use a mouse? Does he just keyboard command everything??
Back in 1985, when Aziraphale bought his computer, there were no mice on computers with no graphic interfaces (which is to say, anything that wasn't a an Apple Macintosh. I remember seeing Douglas Adams' Mac in 1985, and being amazed by the way he would hold this thing on his desk and click on things and drag them to a little bin on the screen, and then complain because now something had stopped working because he had dragged the wrong thing to the little bin on the screen. It was like magic.
So, this is a pretty fancy computer! You can tell because it doesn’t have a 5 1/4” floppy drive easily accessible. This means that Aziraphale doesn’t have to load DOS every time he turns on his computer. His computer must have a hard drive on which his OS resides.
Not fancy at all. As Aziraphale would say, quite the opposite in fact. This is an Amstrad computer with two floppy drives over on the right, one above the other. (I didn't own one at the time, but several friends did.) The operating system wasn't DOS, but one called CPM, and you loaded it in from a disk in the first disk drive. The second disk drive was what you wrote and saved your documents on.
And these weren't the 5 1/4 inch floppy disks, or the 3.5 inch floppy disks that followed them. These were 3 inch floppies, CF2s. Per https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/CF2_Compact_Floppy_Disc. "Capacity is 180 Kbytes per side (the discs can be flipped to access the other side, giving a total of 360 Kbytes per disc)" and how the boss of Amstrad got to "sign a deal with the manufacturers of three-inch disk drives to sell him units at a fixed percentage beneath the lowest-priced 3.5-inch drive, he got the cheapest option going for generations of computers. ... Towards the end, it was rumoured, Hitachi had to keep a factory going just for Amstrad — it lost money on each drive, but not as much as if it had broken the contract."
The CPM vs DOS story is a fascinating one. One wrong decision on the part of Gary Kildall, who created CPM, made DOS the brand leader and Bill Gates very rich, and left CPM nowhere and Gary Kildall dead. https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0707/6001336a.html?sh=3ebcdb9a140e
Ineffable Con 2020 Fun Facts
Fan facts from the Ineffable Con 2020 guest panels :):
Neil Gaiman, Douglas Mackinnon and Rob Wilkins
David G. Arnold (the music composer)
Claire Anderson (the costume designer)
Peter Anderson (Peter Anderson Studio created the opening title animation and in-show graphics)
Paul Adeyefa (Disposable Demon)
Jeremy Marshall-Roberts (the owner of Mary the Bentley)
1. Neil Gaiman, Douglas Mackinnon and Rob Wilkins
What do they have from Good Omens:
Rob has the statue from St. Beryls, all four motorbikes from the four horsemen, Crowley’s Devon watch, box signed by David Tennant with Crowley’s sunglasses and Aziraphale’s cocoa mug with Michael Sheen’s DNA :).
Douglas has the playing cards from Episode 1 and heavily annotated Good Omens book they used for filming with inscription by Neil: ‘For Douglas, make us love, make us cry, 3rd August 2017’.
Neil has Aziraphale’s chair from the bookshop that he bought from the BBC and he uses it for Zoom meetings.
What is their favourite thing that was not in the book and was added to the TV show:
Neil: all of the first half of Episode 3 - an absolute joy.
Rob: also the beginning of Episode 3.
Douglas: David Arnold’s music and Peter Anderson’s front titles.
Could Aziraphale get out of the Bastille easily if he wanted to?
Neil: if he could: absolutely. Did he have any conception of the mess he was in: probably not. It’s one of Neil’s favourite pieces of acting - the absolute delight on Aziraphale’s face when he realizes that Crowley’s there and then he turns around and rather petulantly, grumpily goes oh it’s you - that moment of joy on Aziraphale’s face when he realizes that he’s been rescued is one of Neil’s favourite things.
Neil and yoghurt starter: I had this slightly mad thing where I would explain to everybody that fans were yoghurt starter. And I said, ‘Basically you start out with yoghurt starter and you put it into your warm milk and you leave it, and the yoghurt starter goes off and turns the entire thing into yoghurt.
Neil realized that there was a cat in his house (Neil doesn’t have a cat :)). After the panel Neil said that he wss going to look for the cat with a can of sardines and Douglas joked that he would find Michael Sheen in a cat costume.
What was the best and worst about making the series:
Douglas: the best - the camaraderie, getting to know the people, the cast and crew.
Rob: the best - realizing that the book could be translated to the screen and watching it happen. The worst - coming to the end of the shoot and saying goodbye to everybody.
Neil: the best - the amount of love from everybody, the worst - fighting budget battles (producers wanted gone all of the cold opening and the death of Agnes Nutter).
Did they expect that Good Omens would attract so many LBGTQ+ people and how they feel about that:
Neil: Yes, absolutely. There are definitely people out there who seem to think that I accidentally wrote a love story with all of the beats of a love story including a break-up halfway through, without somehow noticing that I’d written a love story. And I may not be the brightest candle on the candelabra, but as an author who’s been doing it for a long time, I’m very well aware of when I’m writing a love story, thank you very much. And so from my perspective I knew that the love story would be one of the driving things that would get us from the beginning to the end. And I also made a bunch of decisions about our angels and our demons in terms of casting, in terms of gender that everybody backed me up on, which I loved. You know, the idea that the archangel Michael is played by Doon [Mackichan] is something that is… or Beelzebub is Anna Maxwell Martin, whatever, there’s… it’s not like we are going: these are women, there are men, we are going: these are demons, these are angels. They… this is not a thing. And also doing something like Pollution, where you go in and go: okay well if we were doing this in… if 1989 was now, if there were they pronouns, we probably would have done that. We didn’t think of it at the time but that’s no reason why we can’t do it now. And we did and I remember having a… not exactly a battle, but a… my very tiny skirmish with one of our execs who was very nice and very bright and was like: ‘Why are you saying they?’, and I’m like… and I… explaining, and he’s like: ‘Well I’ve never heard of that before.’, and I’m like: ‘Oh, okay, but trust me, just trust me, it’s all fine, just trust me.’
Douglas: And you know I have to say, just following on what Neil’s saying, I’ve been directing for quite a while, and I tend to notice if characters are falling in love, I tend to notice a love story happening in front of me, and I think it’s there, and everything is meant, guys, everything is meant.
Neil added: I would just say, there are some things that you do while you’re writing a script intentionally. The fact that… I wanted to do this, well, it was a thing I did that I really enjoyed doing… where whenever people accuse them of being a couple: they don’t deny it, they don’t argue, there’s no flustering on their part. They absolutely… you know, everybody… what I’m trying to say is: yes, other people in the story are perceiving them as a couple too. And here is Uriel perceiving them as a couple, here is wonderful Dan [Starkey, playing the passerby] …and you know, you do scenes like that because that’s… you are trying to make a point here and you’re trying to make a point on how people are perceived.
Season 2, yes or no [fiends, all three of them!]:
Douglas: What’s that?
Neil: Of what?
Rob: Is it muted for me as is for everyone else?
Neil confirmed that they are going to be Funko Pops. [yay!]
2. David G. Arnold (the music composer)
He didn’t read the book before he was approached to do the music. He was asked to do it by Douglas Mackinnon he knew from the Victorian episode of Sherlock and he said yes before even knowing what it was about because he wanted to work with Douglas again.
The first piece of music he wrote for the show was the brass band doing the Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon [Episode 6, in the park before the kidnapping].
The second piece of music he wrote was the lullaby that Crowley sings to Warlock. He always liked the lullabies like in Mary Poppins so he said to Neil: Why don’t we do it like Walt Disney, but if Walt Disney was possessed by Satan? That was about 7 months before he needed to write anything again while they were shooting and it kept going round his head the whole time - the melody stuck with him and when it came to the Opening Title of the show, this became the middle bit.
The original opening title was Everyday by Buddy Holly and each episode was supposed to be closed with a different version of it: a death metal version, an angelic choir version, a carmina burana version… and he actually made all those. But he likes to find the musical identity of the show and put it in the opening titles because it’s important and it tells you: ‘This is the word you’re going to experience’, so he wrote his own opening title with the lullaby in the middle and played it to them [probably Neil and Douglas] with Buddy Holly as the backup and: Neil just turned around in his chair and said, ‘That’s Good Omens.’. From that point the instructions were with no rules, just to create whatever he wanted: the further you can go the better, the weirder and the stranger you can think the better. It’s a rare thing to be shown a world like Good Omens and be let free to run around in it.
His favourite ending title is the Queen one in Episode 1.
One of the reasons he didn’t do a theme for Crowley and a theme for Aziraphale is that the theme of the show is theirs - it’s theirs and they share it and it’s both of theirs and there is no separating in that regard.
About Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship reflected in the music score: It’s interesting isn’t it, because the relationship changed in a way slightly frequently and majorly infrequently. It seemed right from the start that their relationship was somehow seeded and planted and had begun by the time we saw them even though they may not have realised it themselves, you know, with the pair of them on the wall, considering one is a demon in the Garden of Eden and one is an angel. They act very charitably towards each other and they act with a lot of things you might not expect. And underneath that there is a sort of sense of togetherness and support even though they both know that their paths are going to diverge and they have different responsibilities. So I always felt like, right from that moment, when the wing came up on the wall, that there was something special about their relationship. Three moments that stuck with him: in Episode 3 saving the books in the church when they completely rely on the other for survival in the way that they were very open about, one in the car outside the nightclub in 60s Soho - the Holy Water, you go too fast for me, that genuinely tearing, that there was reluctance in those words that he spoke and that sort of things as a composer is gold, it’s about making those moments more, and in the last episode in a scene they’re not event in when we see Adam and Dog in the fields and Anathema that music there which celebrates Crowley and Aziraphale’s music which is the theme of the show - their shadow has passed over everyone’s emotional journey, and everyone’s emotional journey is theirs as well. The argument in the bandstand was important as well.
His favourite leitmotif from the series is the lullaby.
About the scene in the car in episode 2 when Thomas Tallis changes into Queen: Terry’s favourite piece of classical music was the Thomas Tallis piece [Spem in Alium] so Neil asked if they can go from Thomas Tallis - a choral piece from 16th century - to We Will Rock You, and: ‘You never say no. You don’t say that you can’t do it. What you have to do is to be the first person who solves the problem.’ In the end it was a two-days work just for this little bit and he mentioned that he never had these sorts of challenges anywhere else before.
His favourite non-musical detail in the show - the crucifixion, how the scene was shot, how it was upsetting, and how it was made more effective by Aziraphale and Crowley’s inability to stop it, that they had to observe and watch it, that it had to happen. I remember seeing that at the time and thinking, I wasn’t expecting that level of brutal honesty, in terms of the pictures that I was looking at and what they chose to show. And I think all the more effective for it.
3. Claire Anderson (the costume designer)
When creating the costumes for the characters she started with mood boards.
Aziraphale - she knew that he needed to have something winglike in his collar so that’s why there are sweeping lapels very often. Using velvet [for the waistcoat] because that was nice and soft and had all the appropriate qualities. His watch and fob that has little gold wings hanging from it and other tiny bits of symbolism. Tartan bow tie. Beautiful cashmere checkered trousers - not quite tartan but a nod to it. A mid to late Victorian coat, Michael only made his decision on the coat a couple of days before the filming. Aziraphale in the present settled on a ring with angelic symbol and harp cufflinks, earlier his ring in ancient times has got a much more roughly hewn set of wings on it, so before jewellery making became sophisticated he modernised slightly - he magicked it up to be a bit more modern, more gentleman signet type of ring, but he never modernises entirely. His heart is much more in the past.
After they began to define Aziraphale they started to look at how the Heaven army of angels might look - the element of tartan came sort of from Aziraphale and the angels have a not-tartan kilt with a semi military type jacket and a military band across that might hold arms or not, because they are not really violent. She used spats to make them look quite neutral and genderless so hiding fastenings and concealing little details like that seemed a way to do that.
Gabriel doesn’t wear spats because he’s on Earth such a lot. His shoe has a cover with two buckles on the side giving the same neutral element. He wears a cashmere light-as-air suit.
The other angels are all in bastardized versions of what era they may have died in, so they could have died in the 1930s or the 1800s and the costume would have an element of that era about it - though of course as an angel you can change things.
The Quartermaster Angel - the costume is a combination of slightly Indian type military, maharaja pants, longer spats from another era, all combined pieces of military tailored to be magical and slightly nonsensical, as Heaven might be.
Crowley - she felt that he wrapped around like a snake sheds its skin so she wanted something double breasted because that seemed to envelope his snakey charm. David wanted to be more casual than wearing a suit. Under his collar he always has a flash of red like the snake that he comes from - the red belly. They put a red seam into the sole of his boots so always there is a hint of where he came from. The red tie in the blitz. He was more rock and roll than Aziraphale and modernised more to a snakehipped rock and roll star really. His present jacket - the fabric there is quilted, they found an 80s jacket that had elements of things they enjoyed - part of that was that it had a slightly quilted quality to the fabric which was like a textured snakeskin. It took quite a long time to create the fabric and then to make the jacket from that - they quilted some fabric and washed and whooshed it repeatedly to create a bit of puckering in it. He has a snakey scarf around his neck like a chain mail linked scales of skin scarf that he wore that complemented his neck chain. The trousers he wore in Victorian times are the same he wore in the 60s when he meets young Shadwell. His present trousers - slightly waxy denim - we just were looking for a slithery finish. Crowley’s neck chain - there is only one in the world - her tailor has a Gothic church full of interesting stuff like busts and drapes with old things, this chain mail scarf was there and David was looking for something to complete his costume and liked it.
Hastur and Ligur are her favourite characters - they were so enjoyable to create. She had an amazing book of 1920s and 30s criminals and they used that as a starting point, because they were all quite worn out and bedraggled and poverty stricken and like hell might be ideally. They burnt and decayed the bottom of them as if they were rotting from the Earth and rotting back into the ground - all demons have sort of gators as if they were rotting from the ground up.
One of the most difficult things was the demons - when they realized they had a few days to create hundreds of demons in South Africa (4-5 days for almost 200 demons). It was as if I had been dissolved in holy water when they asked me for another 150 costumes.
The sleeves of Anathema’s coat have been inspired by a Victorian cycling coat.
The historical costume that Newt’s ancestor wore influenced his and Shadwell’s costumes - they used elements of the historical costume to put a little cape on Newt and Shadwell and their wax coats to give them the quality of that look. Newt’s costume has a lot of mustard to make him feel a bit awkward and uncomfortable - it’s not the most flattering colour on a northern European complexion.
The nuns’ headdress needed to look a little bit demonic - she bought a whole book on nuns’ headdresses for research. They also used the V in the nurse’s apron because that was nicely demonic. The nurses’ watch has got this Satanic symbol at the top - a little take on the medical since old nurses’ uniforms used to have watches.
For Madame Tracy she went back into the 70s, slightly Biba-esque makeup and a cape. They had only one pair of her goggles so it was always a nightmare to find them.
Which part of the cold opening is her favourite: I love ancient Rome because there is at least 6 to 12 metre of fabric in a toga and that was quite fun wrapping that around the boys and creating those., and her favourite was the Globe.
The lapels represent wings in every way and every shape and every form. Wings are very important.
4. Peter Anderson (Peter Anderson Studio created the opening title animation and in-show graphics)
The first thing that the director Douglas Mackinnon (with whom he worked on Doctor Who and Sherlock) said to him was: for all the graphics, for all the title sequence, for everything, I want you to promise me one thing, and that is very, very simple, promise that you send me emails that say: ‘this might be absolutely nuts, but my idea is…’.
The opening title it’s full of easter eggs - it’s a type of sequence that’s been designed to watch a thousand times, for example: on the escalator down to Hell there is one character running up deciding that he doesn’t want to go to Hell or the sea is full of plastic bags because we don’t look after the planet.
Every single face in the title sequence is either Crowley’s or Azriphale’s, they are repeated all the way through - inspired by Neil saying that there’s good and evil in all of us, so there is a grand procession of people of all the characters from the story - marching towards Armageddon - but all the characters have been taken over by good or evil. And along the way our two heroes are kind of playing tricks on each other, doing good, doing evil
The opening title combines multiple elements - two dimensional animation elements, three dimensional animation elements, CGI and live action (the people in the procession were created by live action on a travelator). So the result is a kind of strangeness - such as 3D figures with 2D animated tracked heads - which makes it unique.
Their first idea and version of the opening title was based on tapestries of old, subverting them, but then they wanted something more new and fresh.
Both Douglas and Neil were an important part of the opening title creation process.
The opening title sequence took about a year to make from the creative start with four intensive months towards the end.
One of things that inspired him was a Bauhaus theatre image from 1930s.
Question if the hand-drawn font for the graphics will be a purchasable font: no, because it was original and it’s unique and it was created just for this - it was for the love of the show and the story and it will be kept there.
In the scene where there are three photos of witchfinders - Neil and Douglas revealed in the DVD commentaries that two of them are their grandfathers - the third one is Peter’s great uncle.
Originally the signs telling us things like ‘Thursday’ or ‘Mesopotamia’ - were done as if somebody (who was living inside the television screen) ran up close to the screen and showed us the sign. In the end they simplified it, only showing the signs. The one time that it was sort of left in the show was when in Episode 5 a little demon in the video game shows a sign ‘GAME OVER’.
Outside of his work on it, what was his favourite thing on Good Omens: spending time with Douglas and Neil, and also working with Milk VFX - I think I can honestly say it’s the best job I’ve ever worked on with the nicest people.
5. Paul Adeyefa (Disposable Demon)
He first read the book when preparing for the audition - the character wasn’t in the book but he got into it, loved it and couldn’t put it down.
He didn’t know about the name Eric until the script was published and people started calling the demon that, he really likes the name and thinks it fits.
There was a version of the script where the demon was going to be dressed in different costumes each time he was discorporated (for example one in long hair wearing a dress) - they would be all the same but different incarnations, in one version they had different accents.
The first scene he shot was the one where the demon goes to Heaven to deliver the Hellfire (and also wants to hit ‘Aziraphale’ which was cut). That first day was also his favourite moment of shooting because there was an immediate welcoming atmosphere and everyone was lovely and in love with the production.
Disposable Demon is like a permanent intern, running errands for the higher ups in Hell.
His favourite part of the costume were the eyelashes (though he loved the whole costume).
If he could change anything about the costume he would also want cool contact lenses - some brightly coloured ones.
Question what animal (like other demons have on their heads) comes to mind when we see the Disposable Demon: he didn’t think about it at the time, but later he saw people talking about his horns as bunny ears and found it interesting, and also the facts that there are so many of him and that he is quite happy and friendly for a demon so the bunny makes sense, so he might be a sort of a rabbit. Or perhaps something goat type because of the horns.
Question if there is another role in Good Omens he would have liked to have played: he always thought that the four horsemen were very cool and Pollution was his favourite so probably Pollution (also was the most jealous of Pollution’s contact lenses).
If there were a season 2, he would be there in a heartbeat.
Question about Eric’s feelings on Crowley, if he’s a bit of a Crowley fan: I think he might be. There is something about Crowley and how he is somehow a little bit different from the rest of the demons. - and the Disposable Demon has, much like Crowley, interest in the human world. He could well be 6,000 how many years old, the same as everyone else, but he seems to have this younger vibe and I think he thinks that Crowley is quite cool.
Good Omens fandom is his first experience with a fandom of this scale. It speaks a lot, the fact that this kind of very, this minor character, a character who is only on screen for a very short amount of time gets any kind of attention at all, it’s quite amazing really, it goes to show how big and enthusiastic the fans are. I never experienced anything like that.
6. Jeremy Marshall-Roberts (owner of Mary the Bentley)
When Crowley used a miracle to switch off the Bentley lights in Episode 1 at nuns manor it was done by: there was actually a very small guy called Louis turning on and off the switches quickly.
David Tennant was allowed to wear the snake eye contacts for only 3 hours a day otherwise they could damage his eyesight.
For Mary, the Bentley, it was the second time she was ‘blown up’ on film - first being in the Endeavour with Inspector Morse about three years earlier.
He was a bit nervous during filming the bookshop fire scene because the Bentley was so close to a real fire - not wanting the paint to blister. The car was moved off after a few minutes of filming but still.
About the damage to Mary: Unfortunately, we overran, and Rob my stunt driver had already booked a holiday and off he went and so when he returned in January, on the 10th of January, I had this new driver who really had no clue how to drive old cars, so I showed him around, I showed him to go around corners. He came around the corner, the door was not closed properly for some reason and the door flew open as he went around. And instead of slamming on the brakes which is extremely efficient and would stop him straight away he kept on going, hit another car and really smashed the door quite badly. It did take the car off the roads for 10 months. The door was completely remade because of this accident and it cost the total of £24 000 to rebuild the car to get it back to running as it is today.
The Bentley’s part most difficult to maintain and service is the engine.
Would Mary be available for a potential season 2: definitely!
Good Omens: a gentle reminder
Your headcanon is your headcanon. The characters in your mind are what they are, and nobody is trying to take them away from you. Think of the Good Omens TV series as a stage play: for six full hours, actors are going to be portraying the roles of Crowley and Aziraphale, Shadwell and Madame Tracy, Newt and Anathema, Adam, Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian and the rest. Will they look like the people in your head? The ones you’ve been drawing and writing about and imagining for (in some cases) almost 30 years?
Probably not. Which is fine.
The people in your head and your drawings are still there, and still real and still true. I’ve seen drawings of hundreds of different Aziraphales over the years, all with different faces and body-shapes, different hair and skin, and would never have thought to tell anyone who drew or loved them that that wasn’t what Aziraphale looked like. (And a couple of years after we wrote it, I was amused to realise that the Aziraphale in my head looked nothing like the Aziraphale in Terry’s head.) I’ve loved every instance of Good Omens Cosplay I’ve seen, and in no case did I ever think anyone was doing it wrong: they were all Aziraphales and Crowleys, and it was always a delight.
Good Omens has been unillustrated for 27 years, which means that each of you gets to make up your own look for the characters, your own backstories, your own ideas about how they will behave.
The TV version is being made with love and with faithfulness to the story. It’s got material and characters in it that Terry and I had discussed over the years, (some of it from what we would have done it there had been a sequel). Writing it has taken up the greater part of my last three years. You might like it – I really hope you will – but you don’t have to. You can start watching it, decide that you prefer the thing in your head, and stop watching it. (I never saw the last Lord of the Rings movie, because I liked the thing in my head too much.)
Remember we are making this with love.
And that your own personal headCrowleys and headAziraphales and headFourHorsemen and headThem and headHastur and headLigur and headSisterMary and all the rest are yours, and safe, and nobody is ever going to take them away from you.
It’s funny to read this, from August of 2017, after the first casting announcements had been made. At the time it was written I was having to deal with so much anger, upset and outrage from people who saw the casting announcements and were angry that Michael Sheen was too thin, or that David Tennant wasn’t whatever the Crowley they imagined was going to be, or that any of the other characters didn’t look like the person in their head. And that they were taking whatever we were doing as a personal attack.
As I said, and as I think most people who have seen it now understand, we were making it with love.
(explanation)
Let’s remember last year’s Good Omens book celebration! :)
The painting process of Miss Fell. It’s still the same old grisaille & glazing technique. Of course Sargent painted very directly but I’m not confident enough to follow that yet.
So Crowley needs to learn that he doesn't need permission to be forgiven. Does that mean Aziraphale needs to learn that he doesn't need permission to be loved?
I think Aziraphale needs to learn a lot more than that...
A Note About Good Omens
So some of you might have seen me reblogging this picture:
Because right there in between Jon Hamm and Michael Sheen, rocking no hair and a wheelchair and a massive cardigan, is me, Kat. AKA tumblr user mouldygoblin. And at the back on the left is @neil-gaiman. (And my parents are in there too, bless them.) How did this happen? Well, I’m about to explain…
Keep reading
Good Omens: a gentle reminder
Your headcanon is your headcanon. The characters in your mind are what they are, and nobody is trying to take them away from you. Think of the Good Omens TV series as a stage play: for six full hours, actors are going to be portraying the roles of Crowley and Aziraphale, Shadwell and Madame Tracy, Newt and Anathema, Adam, Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian and the rest. Will they look like the people in your head? The ones you’ve been drawing and writing about and imagining for (in some cases) almost 30 years?
Probably not. Which is fine.
The people in your head and your drawings are still there, and still real and still true. I’ve seen drawings of hundreds of different Aziraphales over the years, all with different faces and body-shapes, different hair and skin, and would never have thought to tell anyone who drew or loved them that that wasn’t what Aziraphale looked like. (And a couple of years after we wrote it, I was amused to realise that the Aziraphale in my head looked nothing like the Aziraphale in Terry’s head.) I’ve loved every instance of Good Omens Cosplay I’ve seen, and in no case did I ever think anyone was doing it wrong: they were all Aziraphales and Crowleys, and it was always a delight.
Good Omens has been unillustrated for 27 years, which means that each of you gets to make up your own look for the characters, your own backstories, your own ideas about how they will behave.
The TV version is being made with love and with faithfulness to the story. It’s got material and characters in it that Terry and I had discussed over the years, (some of it from what we would have done it there had been a sequel). Writing it has taken up the greater part of my last three years. You might like it – I really hope you will – but you don’t have to. You can start watching it, decide that you prefer the thing in your head, and stop watching it. (I never saw the last Lord of the Rings movie, because I liked the thing in my head too much.)
Remember we are making this with love.
And that your own personal headCrowleys and headAziraphales and headFourHorsemen and headThem and headHastur and headLigur and headSisterMary and all the rest are yours, and safe, and nobody is ever going to take them away from you.
What's Crowley up to now that it's July and everything's still trash?
Rolled over in bed, opened one eye, sighed and set his alarm clock for October.
Small thoughts about stories
I just googled a short story of mine because, reasons, and found myself on the TV Tropes page. And was fascinated to see a couple of “Neil says…” things that someone had interpolated that simply weren’t true. (The gender of the narrator is intentionally not revealed, and the person the letter is being written to is not canonically murdered by anyone after reading the letter.) And both of those things leave me fascinated by peoples’ desire for closure and clarity. The story is the story, it stops where it stops. The narrator can have any gender you wish, and anything you imagine could happen after the story ends. What’s there and written is only the story, and all the story there is.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/FeminineEndings
I remember once, long ago, talking about Frank R Stockton’s story, The Lady, or the Tiger, with a friend, and saying “So which do you think it was? The lady or the tiger?” And my friend gave me an odd look and said, “The point of the story is that he makes you wonder, not that there’s an answer.”
Obviously, I still wonder. But the story is the story, and it stops where it stops for a reason. It makes you imagine, but it’s not a puzzle to solve, not quite.
Here’s the story in question, Stockton’s, not mine, for the curious:
http://www.english-literature.uni-bayreuth.de/en/teaching/documents/courses/Stockton1.pdf