Exfanding Review: Talking With Gods

I've been meaning to write up a quick review about the documentary film, Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods, for a while now. I received a copy of the DVD for Christmas, and I watched it right away, but somehow managed to forget about writing up a review.

And yesterday, while going back and forth between working from home, shoveling, and being awed by the amount of snow that had fallen overnight, I started thinking about Grant Morrison.

And how cool his life up on a hill, in a centuries-old mansion overlooking a lake in Scotland, must be. Sitting in his office, drawing and writing and typing. Madnesses and fantasies and horrors and magicks flowing from his head to his hands and into the completed work.

Grant Morrison doesn't have to shovel snow, I kept thinking.

But, on the off chance that he might someday have to shovel snow, he'd probably be able to overcome such a tedious chore with magick. Which alone makes Grant Morrison way cooler than anyone I know.

But this post is about the film, Talking With Gods, and alas, is not about the hypothetical situation wherein Grant Morrison must shovel snow but instead of exerting himself physically, he uses magick. And the snow vanishes.

Talking With Gods is an inside look at one of comics' most eccentric personalities, and one of its greatest minds.

Creator of mind-bending, and ground-breaking, titles such as The Invisibles, We3, and The Filth, and the complete re-imagining of the classic Silver Age super heroes, the Doom Patrol, and writer of All Star Superman (which is quite possibly the best run in the history of that character), Grant Morrison is on a level in comics reached only by the likes of...well, Alan Moore.

And, possibly with the exception of the great Mr. Moore, Grant Morrison is the comics creator surrounded by the most amount of intrigue and mystery and near-mythical stories of his personal life.

He practices magick and he's done more drugs than The Beatles and he lives in a castle and he's seen the apparition of John Lennon. He's traveled the world, and he's lived in other universes, and he knows the answer to the Great Mystery of Life.

He's also happily married, incredibly witty and funny, and one of the hardest workers in the comics industry.

In Talking With Gods, we see all sides of Morrison. We hear his life's story from the man himself and we learn things about him from friends and associates.

We get an inside look at his creative process--he fills notebooks with ideas and drawings, then he lays out his comics in thumbnail sketches. And we hear firsthand about the avalanche of ideas he brings to creative summits.

If you're a fan of Morrison's work, then this should be on your movie shelf. The filmmakers do a great job in presenting the material, and the high production values lend the film's look the same credibility that the subjects bring to it.

This one gets the Official Exfanding Stamp of Approval, so you know it's good.

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You can watch the trailer at the film's official website.