Until the end of November, there is a drive active on Kickstarter for an animated film of Neil Gaiman’s “The Price,” a short story most recently featured in the anthology Sympathy for the Devil and originally printed in Smoke and Mirrors. (It appears to be online here.) It is a “true” story in the manner of true stories that aren’t quite—it’s metafiction, very lightly veiled—about a cat, a devil, and a very lucky family that might not be so lucky in the near future. After watching the proposal video, narrated by Neil himself (who is interested in the project and providing his time to promoting it), I was fairly intrigued.
Give it a watch on this page, where Mr. Chris Salmon explains why he wants to do the film, why he needs the money and what it will be put toward, and where he expects to show it once it’s complete.
This is an idea I’m fascinated by: sourcing out the making of a film by a fan to the other fans. It skips the part where a potential watcher has to worry about the accuracy and interest of the folks making the movie because it’s being paid for and made by fans themselves. Plus, the parts of the story shown in the proposal video are nifty and rather strikingly attractive. I’d be interested to see how it looks in the end if the drive succeeds.
I also like movies with low but well-loved budgets; they tend to perform narratively much better than the big-ticket blockbusters.
(I’ve been Neil Gaiman-ing up the place lately somehow; Halloween just encourages it, I think.)
Lee Mandelo is a multi-fandom geek with a special love for comics and queer literature. She can be found on Twitter and Livejournal.
