Parallels
David Arnold — The Theme That Got Left in the Car
momentary distinctions
Aziraphale, beaming: You know, Crowley, I’ve always said that, deep down inside, you’re really quite a–
tv!Crowley, shoving Aziraphale into a wall:
Shut it! I’m a demon. I’m not nice. I’m never nice, nice is a four-letter word. I will not have–
book!Crowley:
All right. All right. Tell the whole blessed world why don’t you.
Was the Idea to Make the Voice of God a Woman, a Deliberate One?
Neil Gaiman: It was absolutely deliberate. But it began in a way of just looking what I’d made in terms of what the scripts were and going, “Oh, it’s pretty male!”. We have some fantastic women in here. We have Anathema, we have Madam Tracy but overall it is very male and there are a lot of men in it all the time. I want a female voice, just for balance and it’s all very very English so let’s have an American voice for balance. So balance was the beginning thing. Honestly, I’ve enjoyed very very much discovering that the sort of people who would not like Good Omens anyway don’t like Francis McDormand voicing God. So I think it’s great that the first thing that happens on screen is Francis McDormand talks and we see Adam and Eve and they are black, because if anybody has problems then we are only four and a half minuted in and they can stop watching that.
EPISODE 1
By the time Gaiman and director Douglas Mackinnon had finished cutting together Episode 1, it was about 75 minutes long, “which meant that we needed to lose 20 minutes,” Gaiman said. “And that 20 minutes was really hard to lose, because it was 20 minutes of beautiful material.”
Among those cut minutes was an extended scene of Crowley disabling the London mobile phone system, as he later reports to the demons in the graveyard during his evil deeds-of-the-day rundown.
“We built a huge set in South Africa for the BT Tower,” production manager Michael Ralph said. Crowley enters the lobby and tells the security guard he’s been sent from Rataway Pest Control to do a preliminary inspection. He’s taken up to the top floor, which is infested with hundreds of rats — rats summoned to do the demon’s bidding. (The rats were animated.) Crowley walks over to the computer room and tips tea from a thermos into the network controller, which makes the lights flicker and go out. Mission accomplished!
The scene then included people on the city streets experiencing the interruption in their mobile service at the worst possible moments (when they need to close a deal, arrange a pickup, or stave off a breakup), and Crowley walks away smiling. “We shot the whole thing, including helicopter arrivals to the BT Tower,” Ralph said. “There was a massive amount of work involved there,” cinematographer Gavin Finney agreed.
“What we wound up doing as our solution to bringing Episode 1 into focus was throwing out anything that was not directly part of the story,” Gaiman said. “We wound up with something that’s incredibly fast-moving and feels very full, but also runs just a hair over 50 minutes.”
EPISODE 3
The most elaborate sequence — a 30-minute cold open — is not based on anything from the book per se. “It’s an exploration of the characters that [are] in the book in its heart,” Mackinnon said, “but it needed to be externalized. It needed to be shown.”
The trick was that it was rather expensive to cover about 6,000 years of history, with different looks and locations, and the production had to get creative to keep it viable. The spot in South Africa used for Noah’s ark in Mesopotamia in 3004 B.C. is the same location used for the crucifixion in Golgotha in 33 A.D. — just from a different angle. The crucifixes, Ralph noted, were the hardest part; he had to make them oversized so they would have an impact on camera, and he used a river of red cloth on the ground to suggest an abstract river of blood. Ancient Rome in 41 A.D. was built in the same studio later used to double for a dungeon during the French Revolution in 1793.
A location scout for the camp for the kids’ playground gave the production the idea of where to stage Arthurian Britain in 537 A.D. — a valley in Surrey where a castle turret was visible. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be fantastic in the mist?’” Ralph said. “We didn’t need to build anything. We only needed to add the fog.”
“A ridiculous amount of fog,” Finney agreed. “We were just riffing on ideas from Excalibur and Monty Python there.”
The next period of history, Shakespearean London in 1601, brought a bit of luck — Good Omens got to be the first fictional production to shoot inside the Globe Theatre. The catch was that they could only shoot for five hours, which wasn’t enough time to manage a shoot with 500 extras in period costume. The solution? Turn a full Globe Theatre into an empty one, and make Shakespeare’s play a flop. (“It’s funnier,” Gaiman said.)
Revolutionary France brought its own set of difficulties. Ralph researched how to make a working guillotine, and had the perfect spot to set it up – at the University of Cape Town, which was filled with architecture reminiscent of 1793 France. “I was going to build a platform and have hot water washing the blood down and steam coming up,” the production designer said. “But we ran out of time to do it before the university opened.” They came up with the solution to hear the guillotine outside a dungeon cell (built in the studio) instead.
Somewhere within this sequence — perhaps after Shakespearean England but before Revolutionary France — was supposed to be one more time capsule: Aziraphale opening his bookshop for the first time. Gabriel shows up to tell Aziraphale that he’s been promoted and can go back to Heaven, but Aziraphale doesn’t want to go. Crowley turns up with chocolate and flowers to congratulate Aziraphale, and overhears the conversation, so he instead turns around and sets up something where Aziraphale needs to intervene, to prove to Gabriel that Aziraphale’s appearance on earth is vital. “It was really funny,” Gaiman said. But his justification for taking it out was that it didn’t push the story forward as much as the other moments did.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” is used the most, particularly in the first episode, with the demon Crowley (David Tennant) arriving at his meeting to discuss the coming of the Anti-Christ as Freddie Mercury sings that “Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me.” Snatches of the song can also be heard as Crowley receives his orders on where to deliver the infant Anti-Christ and his arrival at the hospital. The song shows up again at the end of episode 5 and the start of episode 6 (though different clips are used) when Crowley dramatically arrives at the USAF base where the end of the world starts, at the wheel of his burning Bentley.
Episode 2 plays “Bicycle Race” in the background of Crowley’s car, as he gives a lift to bicycle-riding witch Anathema Device, after the two collide with one another. Episode 5 opens with Crowley racing through the streets of London to “You’re My Best Friend,” as he tries to reach the book shop run by his best friend, the angel Aziraphale. When Crowley discovers the shop is on fire and concludes that someone has killed Aziraphale, he emerges from the flames to Queen’s gospel-inspired hit “Somebody To Love,” having finally come to grips with his feelings for the angel.
“Another One Bites The Dust” is used in episode 5 of Good Omens, as Crowley becomes stuck in traffic on the M25 freeway around London and “I’m In Love With My Car” blasts forth as Crowley drives through the wall of fire surrounding London. Queen’s power ballad, “We Will Rock You,” plays as Crowley and his flame-engulfed Bentley “rock the world” of an unfortunate neighborhood watchmen in the village of Tadfield, whom Crowley asks for directions while seemingly unaware that his car is on fire. Finally, a brass band can be heard playing “Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon” as Crowley and Aziraphale meet in the park just before their respective abductions.
whatwecanfic asked:
So you mentioned that Aziraphale's referring to “velocipede” was not a call-back to Michael Sheen’s character on 30 Rock, but I'm curious. Was Crowley's ice cream with the flake a call back to Tennant's previous characters in Broadchurch and Blackpool?
neil-gaiman answered:
No. It was a callback to a joke Terry used to make about a Mister Whippy with a Flake.
bisexualchemy asked:
I saw a post that pointed out the bikes Pepper and Adam were riding at the end and how Pepper’s bike wasn’t the one she described as having gotten before (which she was upset about because it was a girl’s bike with a basket) and Adam’s had a basket like the one she described. Did Adam trade bikes with Pepper to make her happy?
neil-gaiman answered:
That was my theory too.
chequerootlurks
