#gafdhsgfjhdgfm sorry about that one sentence with Too Many Commas

[moviegroovies]

just realized i never wrote that interview with the vampire post i promised y’all, so here we go

first of all! i love it. just want to get that out there. like, 10/10 stars, would watch again, have watched again, almost twice, kind of planned to watch for a sort of fourth time tonight, might not. idk. it’s great!! it’s great both as a movie (i watched the movie first like a blasphemer) and as an adaptation of the book. actually, it’s a GREAT movie adaptation of that book, probably one of the best jobs i’ve ever seen of adapting a book into a screenplay and then getting it on film. as i said, i read the book after i watched the movie, and pretty much everything was adapted directly, even significant amounts of dialogue, to the point that it felt sort of like a novelization, if novelizations were perfect.

this is what i WISH novelizations were, actually. like, using it as an example isn’t fair because it was written before the movie, but as the kind of loser who has read novelizations (i payed. like 40 dollars for a ghostbusters one. and then like 2 bucks for a Different ghostbusters one which i haven’t read yet but don’t have high hopes for), this was what i always want them to be like. same plot, lots of the same dialogue (i HATE novelizations that try to make it their own by changing the dialogue slightly. i was reading that ghostbusters one and i don’t even think i had watched ghostbusters recently but i know the lines well enough that it threw me the fuck off when the author changed them. like if someone came into your house and moved all your furniture slightly to the left? that was what it felt like), but a few things that didn’t happen in the movie, too. deeper characterization, the kind of worldbuilding/character building you can’t really do in a limited time frame on screen. getting into the charater’s thoughts. using nuance. novelizations could totally be this! or at least i wish they were! basically what i’m saying is stay tuned for my unlicensed nuclear accelerator novelization of ghostbusters going up on this blog coming soon. 

anyway, a thing i liked about it as an adaptation of the book was that it was always true to what anne wrote (and i think she did at least part of the script, although i heard the director did heavy edits on it), but there were some lines that weren’t in the book that improved the scenes imo! like the little exchange in the theater of vampires where louis is commenting on the vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires, and claudia responds “how avant garde.” it serves both to clear up what’s going on (since we don’t have the benefit of louis’ narration at this point in the movie) and to humanize them a little. most of the added dialogue did that, and that’s something i really like--especially that line as louis watches new orleans burn and thinks that lestat deserves his revenge. Loved that. and him getting to see the sunrise again through film? oof!!!! honestly i liked the ending of the movie more than i did the book, which makes me feel blasphemous. it seems like louis is just doing... better in the movie. i don’t want to give too many spoilers or anything, but in the book he ends up completely detached, and never gets that gay power moment of telling armand he’s not going to give up his pain and then leaving him, so What’s The Point. on a more positive note, another thing i liked was the “you used to eat rats?” exchange. that was a much needed cute family moment.

oh! and they put some stuff from the vampire lestat into this movie, too, which, again, i liked, or at least, i like now that i know that’s what was happening. lestat being able to read minds and louis not being able to. lestat only wanting to drink the blood of evil doers. a lot of the added stuff helped make lestat more sympathetic, which was a definite necessity. actually, tom cruise acted the hell out of that role, which was surprising. not really that he could act (i’ve seen things i liked him in) but that he could be lestat, a flamboyant vampire prettyboy. wasn’t tom cruise the one who punched someone for implying he was gay? idk. 

actually, i was really surprised how gay this movie was for a movie starring tom cruise and brad fucking pitt. like, tell me before i watched it that those two were the stars and i would have been expecting (i was kind of expecting) the most no-homo rendition of the movie possible. and yeah, they toned it down a little from the book... but not that much. louis’ narration is a lot less overtly homo than lestat’s anyway, and brad pitt really fucking Nailed being louis. 

(which i find hilarious, because while tom cruise apparently got really into the vampire chronicles while they were filming this and had all these opinions in like movie promoting interviews about how lestat was actually a good dude, and loved louis (smthn along those lines i skimmed the shit about this), which really came through in his characterization of lestat, brad read like, one chapter of the book and lost interest. i loved the book, myself, but what a fucking icon.) 

that almost-kiss with armand at the end? also iconic. 

really, the only sexual stuff they actually tuned down was the louis/claudia shit, which i’m all fucking for. like, claudia is a grown woman, but it’s still so awk in the book whenever she’s coming onto louis, especially considering how often he reaffirms that she’s his daughter. even worse when he comments on her sensuality, or when she kisses him.... ick. plus, kirsten WASN’T a grown woman, so that would have been really nasty if they kept it.

oh and christian slater!!! i didn’t know he was in this until i started watching it, and i was very excited to see him. that’s my heathers love talking. i was talking to my dad after i saw it and apparently river phoenix was supposed to play daniel before he died, and my dad thought he would have been a lot better for the role i guess, but personally i think slater really picked up the part. he also didn’t shy away from being a little homoerotic, especially toward the end. he got the part right. plus, heathers. 

and i can’t gush about the actors without talking about kirsten dunst. she was 11 when she was in this (apparently her parents wouldn’t let her actually watch the movie when it came out, which, ha), but she absolutely conquered the part of the 60 year old woman in a child’s body. there were times when i actually forgot that she was just an eleven year old, because she was that good. the scene with the body in her bed isn’t in the book (not quite, although something else happens with claudia and leaving bodies around), and it’s one of the best in the movie imo. you can see lestat doting on her but not understanding her, you can tell why she would resent him, you can see her resentment and before she even snaps at him you can see that she’s an adult woman stuck inside a child (like that villain from batman the animated series--did anyone else think of that?), pissed off that she wants to be treated like the grown person she is but continues to be given dolls. also, there was some peak murder family moments in that scene, with louis standing there lowkey horrified. we never got the exchange with claudia telling louis that she’s going to kill lestat and him telling her Do Not Do This Thing, unfortunately, which was something i liked more from the book, but his concern and confusion in this scene kind of speak to that. you can especially tell that he still hasn’t realized that she’s grown--he’s seeing her the same way lestat is. aww.

so, i read the book and watched the movie in pretty quick succession, and i’m writing this a day after finishing the book and a few hours after my kind-of rewatch and about a week after the last time i saw it all the way through. my memory of both being pretty strong rn, there are only a very few things that i can think of which changed from book to movie outside of things necessary to take it to the screen and keep the movie from being like twelve hours. claudia is necessarily aged up from 5 to 11--it’s just practical, a 5 year old would not nearly have had the range that kirsten did for this. armand is changed from looking like a 17 year old redhead to antonio banderas (is it bad that i’m so uncultured that before this i only knew him as the dad from spy kids?), age 34, in a Really Bad black wig. (in general i’m all for banderas in the role, and he definitely acted it well, but what the FUCK was that costuming. why does his hair look like that. i digress but they did him dirty, especially considering how much Better everyone else looks as a vampire.) the subplot with lestat’s blind father living with him and louis at first is cut, which is kind of a shame imo. i really liked how on edge lestat was when begging louis to kill him (not as bad in context), how it kind of breaks the mask lestat tries to wear and shows that he’s confused and vulnerable and he really just doesn’t know much about being a vampire--that “and why should i know!” outbreak they put in did a good job of being the movie’s counterpart to that scene, however. the ending is changed a bit, altho i’ll leave the spoilers of how exactly up to your imagination. some things should stay sacred, right?

one thing i’m REALLY glad they added was louis freeing the slaves on his plantation.  i think it was a nasty choice on behalf of anne rice to write her sympathetic, thoughtful protagonist as a slave owner in the first place, especially one who by his own admission didn’t see slaves as people for a long time, and it’s unfortunate to me that it had to be adapted in that way (although i don’t think ignoring that aspect entirely would have been a better movie solution), but the slaves were at least made free men before louis moved to new orleans. in the book, louis still burns the house, but he doesn’t free the people enslaved there, and he never reflects on that. fucked up if true, i guess. i blame mostly anne for that whole thing.

ooo, that scene with lestat killing the two prostitutes was good. it’s pretty much adapted word for word from the book, but the book doesn’t have the visual of tom cruise leaping over the coffin to sit on it while she’s in it, and that was one of the sexiest scenes i can remember. so.

just remembered at the last moment that i liked the “i’m going to give you the choice i never had” thing, both because it gives a little hint of lestat background (and makes him more sympathetic/adds to the whole breaking the mask thing that i like) and because they did a Very fucking good callback with it at the end.

there’s probably more about that movie that i have Opinions on, but when i remember them i’ll just have to make another post, ig. i will say tho? that last scene they added is so FUCKING good. cue up sympathy for the devil on my way out, will you?

#interview with the vampire #text post #louis de pointe du lac #lestat de lioncourt #claudia de lioncourt #every time i talk about two versions of a thing (like i did with heathers) and only one of the versions is a movie i feel #like i'm cheating by putting it on this blog #but lbr i can't put this kind of bullshit on my main #and it's movie centered #gafdhsgfjhdgfm sorry about that one sentence with Too Many Commas