Brad Pitt says 'Interview with the Vampire' was a 'miserable' experience

Interview is 100x better than Queen of the Damned. That one is painful to me to watch.

 

I worked on the second Lestat movie, Queen of the Vampire, for over a month with the director, editor, and producer. I heard a lot of stories about how difficult the casting was on it. I told the director I was disappointed that he had to cut out about 3/4 of the book for the film. He laughed and said, "Marc, if we had filmed everything in the book, the movie would've cost $1 billion and run 10 hours long!" Which is absolutely true.

While Stuart Townsend is not a famous name, he was a better Lestat in this film that Tom Cruise was in Interview with a Vampire. But it was not a great movie and did not do well in theaters. I can say that they arranged a screening for Anne Rice and she was very pleased with it as a movie.

 

A reboot of this was in the works a couple of years ago but it fell apart. It's a good story, I agree, but I got about 30 pages into the book before I put it down. Purple, purple prose, ya'll.

 

Here's the latest on the reboot:

An Update on Interview with the Vampire Reboot »

 

Except of course in "12 Monkeys", probably his best, over the top performance of his early career (1995).
I realized when I saw this in the theater in 1995 it was one of the most remarkable performances I had
ever seen. Here's just one of many insane clips of him from the film.......

 

And here's one more of Brad from 12 Monkeys. I love how he says "probability matrix".

 

It's been a long time since I've seen that sequel. I remember it being watchable considering its less ambitious scope.

 

Whoops, make that Queen of the Damned! (I think I've been deliberately trying to forget that film.)

It is, but it has some fun moments.

 

Yes, sixties, I've told people for years that Pitt's best acting was in 12 monkeys. Totally agree

 

Wow. Its cool to know there are people in the industry posting here.

Although, Queen of the Damned had its flaws I enjoyed it. I think they could have found someone better to act than Aaliyah, but I understand her appeal at the time. Movie seemed rushed at parts.

With all the reboots going on lately, where are the Vampire remakes? Any news from Hollywood?

 

Interestingly, Mel wanted Jason Patric to play Wallace not himself, but he couldn't get the financing to make it unless he starred in it too...

 

I can tell you that they were thrown into panic once Aaliyah died (very tragically and unexpected), and the studio basically shelved the movie and delayed its release for about a year. The problem there is that they spent a ton of time editing and re-editing and thinking and re-thinking the project, to the point where every scene had been changed and put back about two dozen times. If they had had the benefit of having Aaliyah to come back and do maybe a week of reshoots, it's possible it could've been better. As it was, they had to hire an actress and (I think) Aaliyah's brother to do the ADR on some of her lines. It was definitely a mess. To me, eliminating all of the Queen's back-story made her too distant and remote as a character.

There are some writers out there where they write one thing, but the moment somebody tries to turn the novel into a movie, it just doesn't translate well. So far, Robert Heinlein, Anne Rice, and Ray Bradbury are three I can think of: all extremely successful authors whose works haven't generally made good movies. Some things work better in print. Even Arthur C. Clarke never had much success beyond 2001, though that was a pretty big movie. Clarke's books sold millions of copies and made him extremely wealthy, and I think a dozen of his other stories were optioned for films and TV series but never made, for a variety of reasons.

 

Sorry to hear that. I still like the movie.

 

Brad Pitt says 'Interview with the Vampire' was a 'miserable' experience

I have to agree! Had that same feeling.

 

Well, you must not like the taste of fresh blood. Type A, Type O.....serve it up!

 

Well that just sucks!

 

Loved the book and enjoyed the movie.

 

I wasn't aware she died before the film's release. How creepy. Her role in the movie should have be fleshed out more, but it makes sense now after what you said.. It felt like I was watching 2 different movies at the same time. (if my memory of the movie is correct)

Oddly, Anne Rice wrote a book under pseudonym which someone used the general premise of, and made 50 Shades of Grey.

I really hope Hollywood will revisit the Vampire series and do it justice. We dont need a remake of Blade Runner but it would be awesome to have more of the Vampire Chronciles on film.

 

I first read Interview with a Vampire back in 1978, just two years after it was first published, and I thought, "man, this would make a helluva film if they could figure out how to make it." Nowadays, I think the way to do it would be to do a 20- or 30-episode made-for-streaming series for Amazon or Netflix or Hulu, and just call it The Vampire Chronicles, then shoot the story exactly as written and cast it with unknowns who really look the part. But this wasn't possible 38 years ago.

As it was, the director of Queen of the Damned told me that there was a lot of back-and-forth struggle with the studio and with the MPAA in order to just get an R rating. I'm not sure if an extended version came out on DVD or not -- I only worked on the theatrical version.

 

I really enjoyed reading Interview with a Vampire. I thought it was very gothic and rich. I probably wound up going on a long journey to New Orleans partly because of it. I agree with your comments on her writing though. I couldn't get through any one of the other books she wrote and I tried. Even the erotica she wrote was very leaden...or so I hear

I also think Brad would have been the better Lestat but this isn't a poll on that topic.

 

I agree, it would make a great series. Like what has been done to the Game of Thrones.

Had no idea the book was from the 70s. Thats cool, I thought it was a product of the 90s.

You mentioned authors who's works didnt translate well to film adaptations, and subconsciuosly I mentioned Blade Runner... Philip K. Dick is one author who's works have made great films. Another off the top of my head would be H.P. Lovecraft.

 

Another big one is Isaac Asimov. For whatever reason, nobody has really done a good job at making movies or TV shows out of his ideas (and I would include the terrible I, Robot movie from several years ago). Frank Herbert (Dune) is another author who I think has done work that is difficult to translate to the screen.

There are also authors where I think their work could be done exceptionally well, but for legal reasons, it's not gonna happen. J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is a good example of a famous novel where the author steadfastly forbid anybody from ever turning it into a film.

I think all of Rice's vampire books are actually pretty good, but she does get, um, a bit "flowery" with her description. I once wrote a sort-of review of one of her books where I mentioned Rice took about 1000 words just to describe a character walking up to a house, then another 1000 words to get her inside the house, and another 1000 words before the character met somebody in the house.

I'm all for mood and description and all that stuff, but it goes on for pages and pages and pages and pages.

 

I wasnt a fan of I, Robot with Will Smith. Recently there was a film staring Antonio Banderas about robots which could have made a better adaptation. The film was Automata from 2014.

How crazy would it have been if Jodorowsky would have made Dune? With HR Giger doing on special effects, staring Orson Wells and Salvador Dali, and music score by Pink Floyd. Alejandro Jodorowsky - Wikipedia »

David Lynch did a great job but Jodorowsky vision would have been epic.

 

Sucking is alright but it's considered bad manners to gulp....