Together Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary joined forces with director Robert Zemeckis to translate their version of the oldest English story in existence, Beowulf… the one you probably had to read in high-school. Gaiman and Avary hunkered down with the press in L.A. to give their reasons for taking on Beowulf, the original source material, and how they feel about the current writer’s strike.

Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary on the writer’s strike.

GAIMAN: I come from England, where about eighteen months ago the various producers made absolutely sure that the writers have a fair share of DVDs and downloadable media , because they think it’s absolutely the right thing to do. It’s very strange for me that the idea in America from producing organizations would claim a level of poverty that we in England obviously don’t have. I also think that if a strike is necessary to point out to these people that writers do deserve a fair share of DVD revenue and a share of the revenues that don’t yet exist.

AVARY: When the residuals were originally negotiated as a deferment against salary up-front, it was done at the dawn of VHS and it was possibly one of the poorest deals ever done. Had the Academy of Motion Picture and Television Producers not completely pulled residuals off of the table and then only agreed to put them back after the writers had agreed to empower, the negotiating committee with the authority to strike. I think it was a huge tactical error on the part of the producers. I think you’re going to see a lot of people lose their homes. It’s not like 1988. Multi-national corporations, who now own and operate the studios, are better entrenched. However, I’ve never seen this much unity and resolve within writers. These people never tend to leave their homes and they came out in droves. There’s an overwhelming feeling that this is a requirement because of the amount of corporate greed that’s currently fighting against us.

Gaiman and Avary on their reasons for doing Beowulf:

GAIMAN: The elements of Beowulf were what excited us about it. We didn’t come in and steal from Beowulf and think we like the dragon, we like this, [so] why don’t we do the thing and we’ll call it Ernest. Ernest comes in and saves them from a monster called Reginald. That’s what we could’ve done, but what excited us most was the fact that Roger and I read Beowulf when we were young and did not know that it was meant to be good for us. We experienced it as a story, which we loved; it was filled with blood and gore and excitement and monster fighting and dragon slaying. These are wonderful, magical, exciting things to have in a story and, to be honest, the Beowulf purists who criticize us for adding material would’ve only been satisfied with a version of Beowulf in which somebody stands on an empty stage and recites the 1300 lines of the poem in the original Anglo Saxon until the film ends. It would probably take about 35 minutes and then it would be done and it would have been acceptable to whatever they had in their heads.

AVARY: “There were many additions that were made, but there was only one real change that I think any Beowulf scholar may question. That was that Beowulf does not return to Geatland and instead stays in Denmark. That was one large piece that was made; however, all of the other changes were actually additions in a quest to find motivation. They actually arose from questions that Neil and I had about the text. Why does Beowulf emerge from the cave with the head of Grendel and not the head of Grendel’s mother? We only had Beowulf’s telling and we never get to see the battle with Grendel’s mother.

Gaiman and Avary on the original material:

GAIMAN: You’re looking at a manuscript that was only recorded for us by a monk, a Christian monk, and you wonder, “Okay, what did he leave out or put in?”

AVARY: The elements of Christianity were added into the poem when the manuscript was drafted, not before because it was seen as a pagan eulogy in poem form.

On the story of Grendel’s father.

GAIMAN: [He] was, we thought always one of the strange things about the story of Beowulf. You learn who Grendel is and you learn who Grendel’s mother is, and you’re never told who Grendel’s father is.”

AVARY: … Yet there are indications. Hrothgar’s kingdom is under a curse and Grendel is never actually after Hrothgar, he’s only there to torment him. These led to a lot of questions, like, “Why is Grendel tormenting Hrothgar?” It wasn’t a very big leap, actually, to suggest that perhaps Hrothgar’s kingdom was built on a lie.

Roger Avary on the difference between Neil Gaiman and Quentin Tarantino:

AVARY: I’ve been blessed with the quality of my collaborators. Quentin and Neil could not be more different, and yet both of them are, in my humble opinion, absolute geniuses in what they do. I think that really comes from a love of myth and tradition.