Interview with the Vampire

Tom Cruise was thrilled to be cast in 1994’s ‘Interview with the Vampire’ - he'd been a fan of the books since his teens. Imagine his surprise when he found out that author Anne Rice absolutely hated him. Join Chris and Lizzie as they break down this bloodsucking behind the scenes battle of the wills! Find out why this movie took almost 20 years to make, what made Brad Pitt utterly miserable on set, and which part Cher almost played! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

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• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:15Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Hello, dear listeners. Before we get into our main episode on Interview with the Vampire today, I want to remind you that this week, on Wednesday and Thursday, October 8th and 9th, we have our first-ever live show in New York City. We're gonna be covering twin films. It is Deep Impact versus Armageddon. We are so, so very excited. Now, those tickets for the actual in-person events, they are sold out. But that doesn't mean that you can't watch the live show. If you are a patron, for at least $5, You can watch a live stream of our very first live show on Thursday, October 9th. The show will start at 9:30 PM Eastern Time. And again, if you are at least a $5 patron, you can watch the show.

• 2:23Lizzie Bassett?

  So come on over, join us on Patreon and come experience our first ever live show with us. We're so excited and we would love to see you there.

• 2:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a century spanning pseudo romance starring two of Hollywood's straightest actors. As always, I am Chris Wintermeyer, joined by my co-host, Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, what do you have for us this evening?

• 3:20Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm sorry, pseudo romance? Come on, come on.

• 3:25Chris Winterbauer?

  It's very romantic.

• 3:27Lizzie Bassett?

  It's very romantic. We have Interview with the Vampire today, as this is our first episode in October. If you did not already get a chance, please listen to the primer that we released on De Vampire, just vampires in general, all of them, as many of them as I could possibly pack into a primer, I did. That came out on Friday, so give that a listen. We're not going to be discussing, you know, a lot of sort of vampire film history, or even really the history of vampires that much in this episode. If you want to hear more about it, go back and listen to the primer. But today, Chris, we've got a really fun, really fun What Went Wrong, because so much more went wrong than I had any idea.

• 4:10Lizzie Bassett?

  And I will let you go first, but I love this movie. So I'm very curious to hear what your thoughts were upon watching it this time. If you'd seen it before, what do you think?

• 4:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Seen it once before, when I was probably too young. So my uncle and his ex-wife were huge Anne Rice fans.

• 4:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 4:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Huge, like enormous. Anne Rice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. And the two biggest influences on my taste in especially genre film are my dad and my Uncle Mike. And my Uncle Mike sat me down, I don't remember how old, and we watched this movie at one point. And I did not understand most of this film. I was too young. And I didn't go back to it. There were many other things that he introduced me to that I loved and went back to. This was not one of them. This was my first watch in 25 years, I would say.

• 5:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 5:05Chris Winterbauer?

  I have, this is a conflicting, I guess, point of view. I think this movie is incredible. I think it is sumptuous. It is exquisite. You can sink into it like velvet. I think every below the line department is straight up flexing in this movie.

• 5:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 5:21Chris Winterbauer?

  The lighting, the cinematography, the costume design, the makeup, the production design, the production value, the direction, it's all really exquisite is the word. Every frame I want to step into. And I really think it's a remarkable movie, even though at the end of the day, I still strongly feel that two people are miscast.

• 5:48Lizzie Bassett?

  I think at least one is very miscast and it's probably not who you think.

• 5:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Brad Pitt's miscast.

• 5:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, Brad Pitt is horribly miscast.

• 5:56Chris Winterbauer?

  And he has more screen time than Tom Cruise as Lestat.

• 5:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, he's the lead, even though he's not who's on the film poster, but yeah.

• 6:03Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. And Cruise settles into it, I feel, by the end. And there's a pain to his character that once he's, spoiler alert, once he's in the downturn of his existence, I think it starts working better.

• 6:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I agree. He's really good.

• 6:20Chris Winterbauer?

  I think they're both generally miscasts. Pitt more than Cruise.

• 6:26Chris Winterbauer?

  And you can really tell when Kirsten Dunst enters the movie.

• 6:30Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 6:30Chris Winterbauer?

  And acts circles around both of these grown men. But also Stephen Ray is fantastic. Antonio Banderas is so good.

• 6:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 6:40Chris Winterbauer?

  So many of the rest of the cast fit seamlessly into this world that Neil Jordan has created. And my only other complaint, I do think that the ending cheapens what is a very nuanced and thoughtful exploration of loneliness and immortality and ultimately parasitic or narcissistic relationships that all of these vampires are, you know, attempting to find some form of companionship and harming each other in the process in a way that feels very human. And the ending feels like a more typical horror schlocker, the monsters in the back of the car. And it's fun, don't get me wrong, but it just, those are the only, my only complaints would be those two casting decisions, which I, look, that's

• 7:24Chris Winterbauer?

  how you get the exquisite look because this movie must have cost a bunch of bucks.

• 7:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah, buddy.

• 7:30Chris Winterbauer?

  It is a testament to everybody involved that I still found this movie endlessly watchable. It never lost my interest. And even though Pitt stood out like a very pretty sore thumb for a lot of the film. So that's my two cents.

• 7:46Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree with you mostly. I think Brad Pitt is bad in this movie. God, his hair is pretty. It's so pretty and it's not a wig.

• 7:57Chris Winterbauer?

  And his eyes and his jawline.

• 7:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Except that he looks worse when they turn him into a vampire. He's the only one. Somehow, you know, it just, everybody's supposed to get hotter when you turn, except Brad Pitt, who just gets a little sallow and just looks lost. He looks lost the whole movie. The other thing I really noticed with him is that he seems to struggle big time with those teeth. Whereas I think Tom Cruise pulls them off. I think Antonio Banderas, it's like he was born with them, may be an actual vampire.

• 8:28Chris Winterbauer?

  That enhances it, yeah.

• 8:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. So I don't agree with you on Tom Cruise. I think he's very fun in this. I think that he. I think he pulls it off. As we will see, it was his casting that was quite controversial for I think some valid reasons, but between the two of them, I think he is much more successful in this world, in this movie. I think he's way more fun to watch. I am bored of Brad Pitt every time he is on the screen in this. Again, his hair is so pretty and that is his saving grace across this movie. But you're right. I mean, everybody else who is opposite him, whether it's Kirsten Dunst, who is just, I cannot believe that's an 11 year old child. She is phenomenal in this movie. Even Tendiway Newton, who shows up for just a couple scenes at the beginning.

• 9:14Chris Winterbauer?

  You can tell she's going to be a movie star when she shows up.

• 9:17Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And it's so interesting to watch Brad Pitt, because this was arguably his first big, leading man role, and it's not super successful. So I think it's interesting that he was able to jump from this into the Brad Pitt that we really know.

• 9:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Can I offer one thesis as to why he may not have bumped as much? His character is such a tourist in this movie.

• 9:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, he did bump.

• 9:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah. Well, but I guess what I'm saying is like, the reason at the end of the day, it didn't make me want to turn off the movie is he is ultimately this kind of, he is an outsider. He is strange, right? Compared to all these people.

• 10:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Chris, Chris, it's sitting right there for us. He is Bella Swan, okay?

• 10:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 10:06Lizzie Bassett?

  He is the Bella Swan of this movie. He has essentially nothing likeable about him.

• 10:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. He's, he's the most merciful, the most human, and yet he's the least likeable and has nothing to do.

• 10:17Lizzie Bassett?

  And yet I'm rooting for the vampires that are eating everyone. Yes.

• 10:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. I think Brad Pitt in a period piece in general.

• 10:23Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a little tough.

• 10:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Like in anything that comes earlier than 1955.

• 10:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep.

• 10:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I think is, is a struggle.

• 10:30Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. To me, it's the only thing that detracts from this movie. Otherwise, I think this movie is absolutely phenomenal. I love that they did not dumb it down. I love that they didn't gay it down. You know, it's great. I think we're going to get into that a little bit, but you know, people would call this movie, or even the source material, homoerotic. I don't even think that's an appropriate term. I think that there absolutely there is romance in this and in Anne Rice's work.

• 11:00Lizzie Bassett?

  And it's, I think it's very sexy without showing any sex, which I think is pretty cool. Obviously, there are some naked ladies in this, but not sort of in the way that you might expect them. Actually, I think all the nudity in this is done very well and is used to a very disturbing effect.

• 11:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, like I will never have a woman's body and I'm gonna covet this woman's body in this moment. That serves a very specific narrative function.

• 11:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I just, I think it's phenomenal. And I honestly, upon this viewing, so I have seen this movie many times. I really love this movie. I love, I love vampires. I love vampire content. I love period piece vampire content. So this is really, this is really my thing, my cup of blood, if you will.

• 11:43Chris Winterbauer?

  For me, it's, I will watch the worst zombies ever and enjoy it.

• 11:47Lizzie Bassett?

  I will watch the worst vampires ever.

• 11:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. I think everyone has their genre monster that they will watch no matter what.

• 11:53Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a vampire. I love them. I absolutely love them. I love the mythology. I really enjoyed doing the primer and learning more about sort of how it built and evolved and how vampires have changed so much as our own fears have evolved. And I love that they're a monster that looks pretty much exactly like us. I think that that's an interesting element to them. The one thing I noticed upon this viewing honestly was Antonio Banderas. I don't think I gave him enough credit in earlier viewings. He's so good. He's so creepy, but very charming. And I, he just doesn't tip his hand at all across this movie. Like, I think by the end, you realize that he is this sort of, you know,

• 12:36Lizzie Bassett?

  whichever way the wind blows parasite.

• 12:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, he's the most evil of all of them, right?

• 12:42Lizzie Bassett?

  He is, he is.

• 12:43Chris Winterbauer?

  He intentionally gets Claudia killed so that then he can get his coven killed so that then he can have Brad Pitt to himself, but he never reveals it. And yet he looks emotional at the end.

• 12:54Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. His performance is amazing.

• 12:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I've been obsessed with him. I saw Desperado at a young age and he is so. Unbelievably captivating in that movie.

• 13:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 13:06Chris Winterbauer?

  I've always thought he is one of our best talents in front of the camera. He's so good.

• 13:12Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree, and I think it's the early decisions that he made coming into Hollywood are so fascinating because he was an enormous star in Spain prior to, you know, coming over to the US in the early 90s. But the choices he made are so bold. He did Philadelphia the year before this. That was his first big break. If you have not watched Philadelphia, obviously it's a wonderful movie. He's one of the most moving performances in it. And of course, he plays Tom Hanks's partner in that, which was, that's a very risky role to take as somebody, you know, coming into Hollywood as a potential heartthrob. And then he does this. And he's so good. He's so good.

• 13:55Chris Winterbauer?

  I think he smartly just wanted to work with the most interesting directors and most interesting actors out there.

• 14:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I think so too. Yeah. And I also think he just doesn't pick dumb content like he really.

• 14:07Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I mean, the El Macho Var stuff he does, like he's very. And, and even the Robert Rodriguez stuff, you can tell he's picking edgy. Like this is a really cool take on.

• 14:16Lizzie Bassett?

  The Mask of Zorro.

• 14:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 14:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Is great. Like, I know that that's, you know, the biggest, most commercial thing that he did at that point in his career, but that movie fucking rules. So I just think he knows how to pick great content and, you know.

• 14:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Don't call it content.

• 14:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Sorry. Great movies.

• 14:34Chris Winterbauer?

  This is content.

• 14:35Lizzie Bassett?

  I love it. That's true. I love it. All right. So Chris, today we're going to find out how this groundbreaking novel, because of course it was a novel first, took almost 20 years to become an equally, I think, groundbreaking movie. Why everyone thought it was going to be an absolute disaster. And who was the most opposed to Tom Cruise's casting? So before we dive in, basic info as always, this was released November 11th, 1994. It is rated R for vampire violence and gore and for sexuality, although, as we discussed, there isn't really any sex in this. There is some nudity. It's directed by Neil Jordan, produced by the Geffen Company, and therefore David Geffen.

• 15:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater, and Stephen Ray. It is written by, do you know who wrote the screenplay? Oh, no, I didn't. I wasn't paying attention. It's Anne Rice. Oh, great. With a little help from somebody else, which we're gonna get to. Okay. As always, the IMDb logline is, "A vampire tells his epic life story: love, betrayal, loneliness, and hunger." If you aren't already familiar, Anne Rice was an author who was most famous for writing The Vampire Chronicles. That is a 13-book series that begins with what, Chris? Is it with The Interview with the Vampire?

• 15:58Lizzie Bassett?

  That is correct. Interview with the Vampire. It was her debut novel, released in 1976, and despite somewhat mixed critical reviews, it was a massive commercial success. So, let's talk a little bit about her. She was born in New Orleans, obviously, as Howard Alan Francis O'Brien in 1941. Her mother had thought that giving her a man's name would afford her an advantage in life. The name did not stick around, obviously, and unfortunately, neither did Anne's mother, who died of alcoholism when she was only 15 years old. In fact, Rice told Horror Feminista, quote, "I think she swallowed her own tongue." Anne married Stan Rice at 20 years old and welcomed a daughter a few years later,

• 16:43Lizzie Bassett?

  all while struggling with her own intensifying alcohol addiction. Now, in 1972, when her daughter Michelle was five years old, she died of leukemia.

• 16:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Obviously, this is just an unfathomable loss, and it was for both Anne and Stan Rice. So Anne threw herself into writing to cope with the loss, but she was also spiraling deeper and deeper into alcoholism. In 1973, she returned to a short story that she had written years earlier, and she began expanding that into Interview with the Vampire. Even though this is Gothic horror fiction at its finest, it was also extremely personal because there are three major elements she drew from her own life. One, Chris, can you guess what a big one is in this, given what I just said?

• 17:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Claudia, the character of the child that cannot die as her own daughter.

• 17:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, yeah. She channeled the loss of Michelle into the concept of a child who, as Chris said, could never die. Also, Louis. Louis' struggle with the need to drink human blood, she pulled directly from her own addiction when writing about Louis. If you think about it, he's very much an allegory for alcoholism. He's consumed by his need to drink. It's all he can think about. He feels shame about it. And Lestat as well, but I'm going to let Anne explain the personal inspiration for Lestat herself.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  He was really inspired by my husband Stan, especially when Stan was a young man. Stan, I actually took the physical description of Stan and gave that description to Lestat.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  And Lestat was a man of action, the way my husband was a man of action. And he's also an atheistic vampire, the way my husband was an atheist in life. And that self-confidence and speed and feline movement, all of that I saw in my husband Stan.

• 18:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Stan?

• 18:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I know. A lot of questions.

• 18:38Chris Winterbauer?

  I kind of like Stan. I like that description of Stan. A lot of qualities to admire.

• 18:42Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true. She said some very interesting things about her husband. I think overall, they, they did have a very happy marriage, although I believe it was quite tumultuous early on. I think they both struggled with alcoholism. And I know one thing that she said that she pulled very much for this was that Stan, like Lestat, was someone who would encourage the drinking. And drinking to the point of like, almost being ready to explode. I believe they both got sober with the birth of their second child, though. So she added a ton to vampire canon that we really see reverberate across so many TV shows and movies in the 21st century. Just to name a couple of things, vampires can fly without shape shifting.

• 19:26Lizzie Bassett?

  They're more beautiful than humans and this transformation happens as soon as they're turned, unless, again, you're Brad Pitt and then you just look a little worse. They can live off the blood of animals if they want, but it's not as satisfying. So this is the idea of a quote unquote vegetarian vampire Twilight. Twilight is literally Interview with the Vampire. It's a massive ripoff.

• 19:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. TikTok with the vampire.

• 19:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 19:50Chris Winterbauer?

  It's not as interesting.

• 19:52Lizzie Bassett?

  They are not affected by the stereotypical vampire offenders like, you know, the sight of a crucifix or garlic. They can see themselves in mirrors. But most importantly, Chris, what is the big change that Anne Rice made to vampires and the way that their stories are told? Do you know this?

• 20:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Was sunlight not a part of this until now?

• 20:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Sunlight is, no, sunlight is. That's actually Nosferatu in 1922 that introduced the sunlight.

• 20:18Chris Winterbauer?

  No, what's the big change?

• 20:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Basically, it's that she made the vampires the protagonists.

• 20:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, OK, sure.

• 20:24Lizzie Bassett?

  They are the heroes of the story.

• 20:26Chris Winterbauer?

  They're no longer the villain.

• 20:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 20:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Got it.

• 20:29Lizzie Bassett?

  They're the heroes of the story and they are very much human. They're struggling with human things, you know, it's, we are following them, we care about them. Prior to Anne Rice, this really was not the case. I think that you could maybe argue there are elements of this to Dark Shadows with Barnabas Collins and a couple of other examples, but she really blows the lid off the coffin, as it were, and changes the way that people start to portray vampires. And yes, before people come after me in the comments, I know that Gary Oldman's performance in Frezis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula is very, you know, human longing, like we see him lose his love at the beginning of it, yada, yada. That was influenced by Anne Rice. That is not pulled.

• 21:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, that was 16 years after the book.

• 21:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. But and also it's not pulled so much from the source material of Bram Stoker as it is pulled from this.

• 21:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Got it.

• 21:21Lizzie Bassett?

  So she set much of the novel in her hometown of New Orleans and she found herself really coming back to life when she wrote about her city through Louis's eyes. When speaking to horror feminista about the experience of writing the novel, she said she, quote, "Didn't know it at the time, but it was all about my daughter, the loss of her and the need to go on living when faith is shattered." "The lights do come back on, no matter how dark it seems, and I'm sensitive now more than ever to the beauty of the world and more resigned to living with cosmic uncertainty." So you've got a commercially very successful novel that's also extremely personal. It generated a lot of love within the gay community because, as you see in the film,

• 22:03Lizzie Bassett?

  the relationship between Lestat and Louis, while not overtly sexual, is, I would argue, most definitely romantic. I mean, they have a, they have a child together, like they're, they are a family.

• 22:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and there's a way in which the teaching and like the initiation of Louis by Lestat, it has the feel of a more experienced lover teaching

• 22:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 22:24Chris Winterbauer?

  a less experienced one. It's as overt as it can be without being explicit.

• 22:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. She pretty much confirms as much in the next novel, The Vampire Lestat. And also, I believe in this world vampires don't have sex.

• 22:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 22:41Lizzie Bassett?

  They do kiss and they do engage, obviously, in erotic and romantic relationships, although they don't kiss in this movie, and boy, do I wish they would.

• 22:48Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought Armand and Louis were going to for a moment, right at the end there.

• 22:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Me too. Even though I've seen it before, I was like, are you guys gonna kiss?

• 22:57Chris Winterbauer?

  I know. Bandettas wanted that one.

• 22:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Just give me a bessel right here. Brad Pitt, we'll get to this, he looks the most uncomfortable with all of that, to me, than anybody else in this movie. And it does take away from it. Everybody else is like all on board.

• 23:12Chris Winterbauer?

  No, Cruise, the reason I, and I, by the way, completely agree with you, Cruise works endlessly better than Pitt.

• 23:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. He's not the best choice for that, I don't think, but he's good.

• 23:23Chris Winterbauer?

  That's my point.

• 23:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 23:25Chris Winterbauer?

  But Cruise throws himself at it with total abandon.

• 23:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Which I really appreciate.

• 23:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. That's why it works by the end.

• 23:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 23:37Lizzie Bassett?

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• 25:21Lizzie Bassett?

  So, pretty much as soon as it was released, Paramount licensed the film rights to interview with the vampire. But internally, absolutely no one at Paramount wanted to make this movie. Chris, any guesses why?

• 25:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Was it the homosexual content of the book?

• 25:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, the gayness of it all. Absolutely. So Anne Rice, she was very much an LGBTQ ally, always, even would go on to say that she felt she herself transcended gender. And Chris, of course, what was happening in the early 80s in the gay community that might have been stoking a different kind of horror slash fear?

• 25:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, we have the AIDS crisis, which is a disease communicable through blood. And so there's an added layer to the conversation now.

• 26:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it gave a whole new angle for homophobia to prey on. So the movie rolls around in development hell at Paramount, but according to some reports, they did offer the role of Lestat to one actor who I actually think could have been really good. Any guesses, Chris? This would have been very late 70s, probably early 80s. He would have been young, pretty young.

• 26:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Pretty young.

• 26:31Lizzie Bassett?

  He dances real good.

• 26:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Patrick's, no, John Travolta?

• 26:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 26:36Chris Winterbauer?

  John Travolta. Interesting.

• 26:38Lizzie Bassett?

  You know what?

• 26:39Chris Winterbauer?

  No, he's a great actor. I really like John Travolta as an actor.

• 26:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I think he would have been good.

• 26:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, maybe. Maybe a little campy, but maybe that's okay. Lestat is a little campy.

• 26:48Lizzie Bassett?

  So I think he would have been good. I think that the thing that he may have been able to pull off even a little more convincingly than Tom Cruise is the love in this movie and sort of the affection that I think Lestat does have. There's actually one person that Anne Rice was thinking of when she wrote the character of Lestat. So Lestat is tall, blonde, European. Any ideas?

• 27:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Of the 70s? Is he an actor? You're thinking it's an actor?

• 27:16Lizzie Bassett?

  It's an actor. This is probably too hard. It was Rutger Hauer. If anyone's not familiar, he, of course, probably most famously plays Roy Batty in Blade Runner.

• 27:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Would have been excellent. Is Roy Batty both gentle and domineering, sensual and aggressive?

• 27:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Athletic, feline. Yes.

• 27:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Imposing. You know, not svelte. He's a big guy, but beautiful.

• 27:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Lestat's big. He's tall.

• 27:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. Yes, I guess I meant.

• 27:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Not in the movie.

• 27:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Thin. No. Well, much taller than Tom Cruise in the movie, but there's only a couple inches between him and Brad Pitt in the movie, and that is not the case in real life.

• 27:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. But alas, Chris, the project continued to languish in its grave. And if you're wondering why, according to Anne Rice, quote, "One reason the 15 or so scripts of Interview with the Vampire hadn't worked was that people tended to make Lestat a stereotype of a horrible gay person." And she was not having it. So while Paramount still held the rights, producer Julia Phillips, who had become friends with Rice and even worked on a few versions of the screenplay with her, wanted to turn Interview into a Broadway musical.

• 28:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Tell me, tell me, do you wanna die?

• 28:32Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm gonna give you the choice I never had.

• 28:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Take this little girl and live. Yeah.

• 28:40Lizzie Bassett?

  This is my child. So if you don't know who Julia is, she was the first woman to win a Best Picture Oscar for The Sting. She also produced Taxi Driver and Close Encounters of the Third Kind alongside her producing partner, her husband. I believe by the early 80s Paramount had let the rights lapse. So in October of 1985, Anne Rice finally published the long awaited sequel to Interview, which is The Vampire Lestat, which debuted at number nine on the New York Times Bestsellers list. So at this point, studios are like, okay, I guess we can't ignore this property anymore. And the rights to both The Vampire Lestat and Interview with the Vampire were purchased by Lorimar. Lorimar, not huge or super well-known production company.

• 29:25Lizzie Bassett?

  They'd had more success in TV than film and definitely were not a major player in terms of studios at the time, which I think is interesting. These are massively successful books with a huge fan base. I, I have to imagine this is still coming back to people perceiving this as being homoerotic, you know, gay-friendly content and not wanting to touch it. That's my guess.

• 29:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, also though, just think of what's programming well in the mid 1980s. It's the summer blockbuster.

• 29:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I think Lorimar made Alf. I'm pretty sure that was their biggest success.

• 29:56Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I'm just saying that this is the birth of the Macho Man, the action hero. We're in Schwarzenegger.

• 30:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Very much.

• 30:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Bruce Willis is about to hit the scene, Mel Gibson. And this vampires are at a bit of a nadir right now in terms of their popularity. I feel like the interest wouldn't spark again cinematically until we have Fright Night, mid 1980s.

• 30:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm hmm. You got the Lost Boys.

• 30:20Chris Winterbauer?

  The Lost Boys, a couple of years later.

• 30:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Lost Boys, I think, is 87?

• 30:24Chris Winterbauer?

  87? That's what I was thinking. Yeah.

• 30:26Lizzie Bassett?

  And then there's, yeah, there's Lost Boys, there's Near Dark, but again, none of these are like blockbusters.

• 30:31Chris Winterbauer?

  No, these, Near Dark is a tiny film, amazing film, but tiny film.

• 30:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. So in 1988, Warner Brothers bought Lorimar. And this is how Interview with the Vampire made its way into the hands of David Geffen. So a little bit about David Geffen. As of 2025, he is worth, you want to guess, Chris?

• 30:54Chris Winterbauer?

  A billion dollars?

• 30:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Eight point eight billion dollars.

• 30:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I knew he was rich. I didn't know he was that rich.

• 31:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Geffen never studied film or entertainment or anything, actually. But in 1964, he lied his way into the mailroom at the William Morris Agency. And that is where his career in the industry started. In 1982, he founded the Geffen Film Company. 94, of course, he founds what, Chris?

• 31:18Chris Winterbauer?

  DreamWorks.

• 31:19Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the G is David Geffen. He also does music. David Geffen does everything. Asylum Records, Geffen Records. He's got Guns N' Roses, Elton John, Nirvana, Joni Mitchell. It's a lot of, a lot of money, a lot of people. He also publicly came out as gay in 1992.

• 31:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:40Lizzie Bassett?

  According to the Wall Street Journal, he was a man, quote, "whose reputation in business was one of complete ruthlessness, who was once called the merciless Macbeth of Hollywood's gay mafia, and who won ex-girlfriend, Cher, in the 1970s," also, this is not her last appearance in this episode, "described as being able to out yell anyone." That's fun.

• 32:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:02Lizzie Bassett?

  What a good skill.

• 32:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I believe if I'm getting my history correct, there are rumors that he was very much little fingering Jeffrey Katzenberg in a, in a desire to fuck Michael Ovitz over because Ovitz had gone and started CAA and he hated Michael Ovitz is my understanding. And then Ovitz was at Disney and Geffen's like, yes, Jeffrey, come to the dark side. Fuck Disney. And then they start DreamWorks.

• 32:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, he's very smart. He's very smart.

• 32:31Chris Winterbauer?

  He's very, very smart, very successful.

• 32:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Also, merciless Macbeth of Hollywood's gay mafia is a little rough. Come on, guys. Except, who knows?

• 32:40Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know how you get eight, win eight billion dollars for being a little merciless.

• 32:44Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true. Also, if you can out yell, share. Good luck.

• 32:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Lizzie Bassett?

  So the Geffen Company would produce with Warner Brothers handling distribution. All the while, Julia Phillips kept championing the project. She's still very much involved. In fact, when Laura Mar was purchased, she checked in with Geffen about the project. She said, quote, Laura Mar's merged into Warner's. David Geffen, who has been staying in touch with me about these books, has a relationship with Warner's. I asked him to read Anne's Bible. He says he likes it. He asked if we have a problem with the rights being assigned to his company. I confer with Mike, that's her husband, and we agree that being in business with this guy is the closest we will ever be to getting the fucker made.

• 33:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Probably true.

• 33:23Lizzie Bassett?

  So she's just like, whatever. This is gonna get it made? No problem. Except that there would be a problem. So in the late eighties and early nineties, Anne Rice was also trying to move the project forward. She and her longtime editor, Victoria Wilson, played around with the idea of a gender swapped interview with the vampire where Lestat and Louis were played by women. Angelica Huston was of interest for the role of Lestat.

• 33:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, she'd be good.

• 33:48Lizzie Bassett?

  I like it.

• 33:49Chris Winterbauer?

  She'd be in Nicholas Rogues, the witches shortly thereafter, and she's really good in that.

• 33:54Lizzie Bassett?

  And also, the way Anne Rice explained it was that at the time, obviously, a woman couldn't be a landowner. So it could have been a situation where a woman was dressing as a man in order to own property and sort of operate in this space. According to Nerdist, Chris, we were also robbed of the most insane version of this movie. I promised you she was coming back where Louis would be played by?

• 34:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Cher. Wow. I mean, as close as you'll get to an ageless vampire, and I mean that as a compliment.

• 34:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Dude, she's amazing. She still looks and sounds incredible.

• 34:27Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know what she's drinking, but I would like some.

• 34:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Seriously.

• 34:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Lizzie Bassett?

  I have great news for you, though. She actually wrote a song for the movie, and it exists. It's called "Lovers Forever," and I'm gonna play a little bit of it for you now.

• 34:44Lizzie Bassett?

  I love Cher.

• 34:55Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like Night at the Roxbury meets The Interview with a Vampire.

• 34:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Surrender to me now.

• 35:02Chris Winterbauer?

  What doesn't work about this version is that both Sheen and Jelica Huston are both like alpha vampires, so you can't have two alpha vampires together. It just doesn't work.

• 35:12Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 35:12Chris Winterbauer?

  But it would've been great.

• 35:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Cher could be Lestat. She's not Louis. That doesn't make any sense.

• 35:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you're just casting two Lestats.

• 35:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Alright, well sadly, we didn't get that version of the movie, but in 1991, something happened that will change the course of this film, Chris. Julia Phillips published her tell-all memoir, "You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again." Are you familiar with this book, Chris?

• 35:35Chris Winterbauer?

  I've heard about this book. Yes, I have. I've never read it.

• 35:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, we should both read it. I read a little bit of it for this episode, but not the whole thing, but it pissed a lot of people off. She was very candid, and one of those people was David Geffen. Here's why. Here's what she had to say about him, just a few tasty selections. Quote, "He's selfish, self-centered, egomaniacal, and worst of all, greedy. Geffen, who always seems to dress in polo shirts and jeans, presumably to impress you with what a casual guy he is, is telling me his impressions of Steven Spielberg. I think it is a pretty good description of him." Another quote, "We walk to his building, unusual in L.A. Emblazoned all over the door, it says the David Geffen Company. Think this guy's got an ego problem?" And then finally, "The meeting is very long, almost

• 36:20Lizzie Bassett?

  three hours, which means that David Geffen is having what is called fun in Hollywood. This generally means running someone around the room, preferably someone more talented and less powerful than you." So what do you think happened next, Chris?

• 36:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I'm guessing if he's as merciless and egomaniacal as it seems, he's just gonna put that script in a drawer and not let anybody touch it.

• 36:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Wrong. She's big time fired.

• 36:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, no, no, I agree. I'm saying she's out and that project's dead, but he's not gonna release it to somebody else. You know what I'm saying?

• 36:52Lizzie Bassett?

  No, because he knows a good project when he sees it. So he just fired her and now he is in control.

• 37:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I will say, if, as he is her technically boss.

• 37:05Lizzie Bassett?

  100%. Those are wild things to say about your boss.

• 37:08Chris Winterbauer?

  If you were to just go on Twitter or LinkedIn and put those things about it, you're getting fired. Like, I

• 37:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 37:14Chris Winterbauer?

  I appreciate it because I want the book, but your ass is grass.

• 37:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, 100%.

• 37:20Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm kinda with Geffen on this one. She got, she's gotta go.

• 37:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I, I don't disagree. So Anne Rice continued tinkering with the script, including a version where vampires are even more explicitly bisexual and Lestat was more sympathetic. You can actually read that version online. But by the early 90s, all three of Anne Rice's novels in The Vampire Chronicles were bestsellers and she had a fourth coming out in 1992 and they still haven't made this frickin' movie. Why, Chris? Well, Warner Brothers is waiting for another movie to come out in 1992 before they shell out the cash to make Interview with the Vampire because they wanna make sure that there's an audience for this. Any ideas what that would be?

• 38:03Chris Winterbauer?

  It's not Philadelphia, is it?

• 38:05Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 38:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Sorry. What is it?

• 38:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Bram Stoker's Dracula.

• 38:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, Bram Stoker's Dracula. I was like, are we still on the gay thing?

• 38:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Bram Stoker's Dracula, second only to Philadelphia.

• 38:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Right, right, right.

• 38:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 38:18Chris Winterbauer?

  They wanted to make sure they could miscast a movie as horribly as Keanu Reeves and Bram Stoker's Dracula and still make money. Got it.

• 38:24Lizzie Bassett?

  No, they did worse. Keanu Reeves is more fun in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Way more fun.

• 38:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know about that, Dracula. He is. Oh, sir. Oh, wait. You're not gonna sign the contract? What?

• 38:38Chris Winterbauer?

  I have to get back to my wife.

• 38:40Lizzie Bassett?

  I love that movie. Don't you besmirch Keanu Reeves in that?

• 38:44Chris Winterbauer?

  That movie is great.

• 38:46Lizzie Bassett?

  That movie's incredible. All right.

• 38:47Chris Winterbauer?

  That movie is Francis Ford Coppola saying, Gary, just turn it. You gotta go to 12. Keanu's at five. You gotta go to 12.

• 38:54Speaker 04

  I have crossed oceans of time to find you.

• 38:58Lizzie Bassett?

  If you want to hear our episode on that, go back and listen to it. So Anne Rice, at this point, is pissed. She told Dallas Morning News in January of 1993 that studio moguls, quote, "have millions and millions and they're making these movies that have a huge impact on America and they're idiots. They're stumblebums." She ain't wrong. But lucky for Anne, Gary Oldman in a giant furry bat suit did just fine financially.

• 39:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, it did.

• 39:23Lizzie Bassett?

  So after more than 15 years, Interview with the Vampire was going to be made into a movie. So Chris, step one, find a director. And great news, Anne already had some in mind, specifically Ridley Scott and David Cronenberg.

• 39:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay.

• 39:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, those are both pretty good choices. Ridley Scott I like.

• 39:43Lizzie Bassett?

  It would be a lot less historically accurate.

• 39:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, they would have had planes in New Orleans in 1872. So fuck off, mate. It's a movie. But.

• 39:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Everyone's got cigars.

• 39:56Chris Winterbauer?

  We'll, we'll get to him, but I think Neil Jordan was particularly suited for this.

• 40:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 40:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Cronenberg, Scott, great directors. Could have been really interesting.

• 40:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Cronenberg said, no, thank you. And Scott was interested, but allegedly wanted a better script. So speaking of the script, it's not in great shape, which is understandable. It's gone through a bajillion revisions at this point. There were people saying Anne Rice couldn't write dialogue very well. I don't know about that, but I, obviously, writing a book is a very different skill than writing a screenplay.

• 40:29Chris Winterbauer?

  The dialogue in books sucks. It does. Novel dialogue. I read Stephen King books. Mr. King, I love your books. No one talks like this. This is ridiculous.

• 40:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Chris Winterbauer?

  The one strength of screenwriters, of a good screenwriter, a great screenwriter, they write, and playwrights too, they write incredible dialogue. And maybe they're terrible at prose, but dialogue from books is generally bad. That is my hot take and I stand by it.

• 40:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I think you're spot on. Also, it's extremely personal material. It's probably very hard to have somebody edit this.

• 41:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 41:01Lizzie Bassett?

  So Geffen brought in Michael Christopher, who had adapted The Witches of Eastwick and Bonfire of the Vanities. Oopsies, that didn't work. So Geffen turned to another screenwriter, Stephen Katz. Turns out Geffen had gotten the rights to the first three books, and he was trying to get Katz to schmush them all together into one. That also didn't work. Not a good idea, Dave. Meanwhile, he is desperately trying to get a director because now there is a resurgence in sexy Gothic vampire interest, thanks to Gary Oldman and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

• 41:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 41:30Lizzie Bassett?

  So Geffen approached Irish director Neil Jordan. Now, you said he is specifically suited to this. I agree. Why are you saying that?

• 41:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, The Crying Game was 92, right?

• 41:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it was.

• 41:44Chris Winterbauer?

  And Mona Lisa, which I don't know if you've seen with Bob Hoskins, was a few years before that and explores. Neil Jordan was maybe the most prominent director at the time who explored what would be broadly considered taboo sexual often relationships and humanized them in a way that was really different, like radically different than most other mainstream directors. And in The Crying Game specifically, it's a very complicated movie, but ultimately, the core relationship is between Stephen Ray, an IRA member.

• 42:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, who of course appears in this movie and many of Neil Jordan's films.

• 42:19Chris Winterbauer?

  And who is just an unbelievable actor.

• 42:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 42:22Chris Winterbauer?

  And can carry the weight of the world on one expression. He's so, he has this like amazing, amazingly expressive face. Anyway, and then his relationship, I think Jay Davidson is the actor.

• 42:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I think that's right.

• 42:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Who, he ends up in a relationship with a trans woman who is the ex-lover of a British soldier, Forrest Whitaker, who he was arguably responsible for the death of. It's very complicated. It crosses racial lines, sexual lines, like at the time. And it really broke the doors down, I think, in a lot of ways because it tells this really compelling story and really wraps you into it.

• 42:57Lizzie Bassett?

  And it's very human.

• 42:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Very human. It was the first time I'd seen a trans character in a movie, was The Crying Game, I think.

• 43:04Lizzie Bassett?

  I think for many people, that's true.

• 43:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. And Mona Lisa was also Bob Hoskins. It's a love story with a sex worker. That's also, again, it's not as radical as The Crying Game, nor was it as big a hit, but it's a great movie, too, that you guys should check out.

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• 44:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, you just did my job for me in terms of setting up Neil Jordan. He's wonderful. He is Irish, we should mention. He was sort of brought up and mentored by John Borman, who has come up multiple times across the podcast. But yes, it was The Crying Game, which came out in 1992, which he wrote and directed. That's something that he always said he wanted to be able to do, was write the screenplay that he was also directing, that really put him up for this job. He also, he won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for The Crying Game. And if you haven't seen it, watch it. It's fantastic. Chris set it up better than I ever could. Now, Anne Rice agreed. She told Movie Line, quote, "He'll know how to work with those characters without being afraid of their homoerotic quality." I agree, and I think he does that very successfully. I think he is the perfect person to have directed this.

• 44:44Lizzie Bassett?

  So Jordan was on board with one condition. He wanted to rewrite the script himself. But he did not go to the most recent draft. He went back to Anne Rice's original draft and the book itself. This is why Anne Rice got solo writing credit. They basically threw Stephen Katz's draft in the garbage. And by all accounts, Neil Jordan did do an enormous amount of work on this script and actually tried to get a co-writing credit. But with the WGA, the director has to have added at least 50% of the material in the script. Chris, I think you are familiar with this process. They decided that Anne Rice had done the majority still. I think most likely because of the source material. That's my guess.

• 45:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and even if you rewrite, you could rewrite every line of dialogue. But if the structure is more or less the same, they will say you did not change a significant amount of the script.

• 45:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Which I think is true.

• 45:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, in an effort to protect the writer, they really focus on the structural elements, what characters you have, the themes. They do not focus on dialogue. And I can say that from personal experience.

• 45:49Lizzie Bassett?

  And he had gone back to her draft was very much following the structure of that. He actually added in scenes from the book that she had not even put in. So there's no bad blood between them, though. She told Movie Line, Neil Jordan, by the way, is extraordinarily nice, one of the most gentle, kind human beings. In fact, I fear for him in Hollywood. I don't know how somebody decent can survive with those Panthers out there. So she's not pissed at Jordan, but she was pissed at the studio. It had taken 17 years to get this movie off the ground. And low and behold, the script that finally did it was the one that was the most faithful to her source material. So I think she felt at this point, I was right all along. Why did this take 15 plus years to get off the ground?

• 46:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Time. She was ahead of the times. That's just the truth. And things take time. And it takes time for people to come around, you know what I mean, to ideas and whatnot as well.

• 46:40Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. But that's not how Anne felt.

• 46:43Chris Winterbauer?

  No. Well, she's also right.

• 46:46Lizzie Bassett?

  She is right.

• 46:46Chris Winterbauer?

  But I think it's good that it came out when it did.

• 46:49Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I don't think it would have done anywhere near as well if it had come out earlier.

• 46:52Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 46:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Jordan was given a budget of 60 to 70 million dollars, and it looks like it.

• 46:59Chris Winterbauer?

  It looks like $100 million. This movie is flawless. And again, credit to everybody involved, from the stunt performers to whoever ran the pyrotechnics, to the choreography, to the location scouting.

• 47:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, the stunts in this are insane.

• 47:15Chris Winterbauer?

  The first shot, when we do the first flashback to the New Orleans plantation, that when Brad Pitt rides the horse down, you just go, holy shit, the scope of this movie is incredible.

• 47:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, he referenced Gone with the Wind in terms of the scope that he was trying to achieve, and he does it.

• 47:32Chris Winterbauer?

  And then you get a frame of Gone with the Wind later in the film, obviously, when Louis is watching all the movies. And you can see, you know, the references that Jordan's pulling from.

• 47:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, big time. And also as New Orleans is burning and they're escaping, yeah. Now, as we mentioned, Anne Rice had originally wanted Rutger Hauer for Lestat, but at this point, he's way too old. So, poor Rutger is out like tears in rain. Rice was adamant that Lestat should be tall, blonde, overpowering, and most importantly, androgynous.

• 48:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Four things that do not describe Tom Cruise.

• 48:08Chris Winterbauer?

  So, it should be Tilda Swinton, basically.

• 48:11Lizzie Bassett?

  It should be Tilda Swinton.

• 48:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 48:13Lizzie Bassett?

  She put forth French actor Alain Delon, who, honestly, pretty old at that point. That's an interesting choice.

• 48:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 48:18Lizzie Bassett?

  And someone who I think made a lot of sense, Julian Sands.

• 48:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Julian Sands would have been great. I had an idea. He's not blonde, but I was thinking Day Lewis.

• 48:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Hold that thought, you snake.

• 48:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Sorry.

• 48:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Just very briefly, if you don't know who Julian Sands was, because unfortunately, we lost him a couple of years ago, really brilliant British actor, blonde, handsome, tall, very feline, kind of looks like a lion, almost.

• 48:48Chris Winterbauer?

  David Thewlis' handsome older brother. That's how I always thought of him.

• 48:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Very much, very much. He's wonderful in A Room with a View. He's great. He would have been good for this, but he was not a big enough name at the time. So, they actually, they originally want Brad Pitt for Louis. There's kind of

• 49:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Weird.

• 49:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Not a lot of other consideration there. I agree, it's weird, but for Lestat.

• 49:08Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought Johnny Depp for Louis is who I kept thinking of. I thought.

• 49:12Lizzie Bassett?

  He has more ennui, and that would have been better, I think.

• 49:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. And also, you know who else, and it's gonna sound insane, but just hear me out, he was so tormented in Moonstruck, Nicolas Cage. Just throwing it out there. I know, I know. Maybe I'm crazy.

• 49:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Nicolas Cage does have his own tomb in New Orleans that's ready and waiting for him, so.

• 49:34Chris Winterbauer?

  I know. And like, when you can get him to contain it, I do think there's something tortured about him.

• 49:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, I love Nicolas Cage.

• 49:40Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know, just a thought.

• 49:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. Well, Chris, you snakey snake, you hit the nail on the head. They wanted Daniel Day Lewis for Lestat.

• 49:48Chris Winterbauer?

  There are not that many actors at this time who have not been built from the ground up as hyper masculine. Right? Like so many actors at this time, I feel like they've, because of the action stars.

• 50:00Lizzie Bassett?

  We're gonna get to it. There's someone else that Anne Rice really wanted, who I think would have been the primo choice.

• 50:07Chris Winterbauer?

  All right.

• 50:08Lizzie Bassett?

  But Daniel Day-Lewis, obviously, he can do anything. He can be a tree. Of course, he could be Lestat.

• 50:12Chris Winterbauer?

  He could be a shoe.

• 50:13Lizzie Bassett?

  He could. He's been a shoe.

• 50:14Chris Winterbauer?

  He could make a shoe.

• 50:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Neil Jordan knew right away, though, Daniel Day-Lewis is not gonna do this.

• 50:22Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 50:22Lizzie Bassett?

  But he did consider it for a really long time.

• 50:25Chris Winterbauer?

  That's the problem, though.

• 50:27Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 50:27Chris Winterbauer?

  He's probably gonna say no, and it's gonna take him forever to get there.

• 50:30Lizzie Bassett?

  It took him six months. He was like, ah, maybe. No. Well, no.

• 50:36Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm gonna go be a cobbler. I'll see you later.

• 50:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Reportedly, he declined because he didn't want to do more costume dramas, but Pitt had a different take. He told Rolling Stone, quote, "When they had offered the part to Daniel Day-Lewis, I heard his response was that he didn't like what it would do to him. Look, he's one of my favorites, but I thought, more actor bullshit. Now I'd say, I understand a little bit of what he was talking about." Ooh, foreshadowing. All right, so Rice is like, what about John Malkovich? What about Alexander Gudnov?

• 51:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Malkovich had already played Nosferatu, right?

• 51:12Lizzie Bassett?

  He'd also done Dangerous Liaisons, I think.

• 51:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Lizzie Bassett?

  But then she shouts out one name that I think would have been absolutely perfect for this.

• 51:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Kevin Spacey?

• 51:24Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 51:25Chris Winterbauer?

  That was a joke.

• 51:26Lizzie Bassett?

  No. Jeremy Irons. Come on.

• 51:29Chris Winterbauer?

  He's, I mean, he's wonderful and he's handsome. How old is he at this point? That was my only, maybe he's the same age as Day-Lewis.

• 51:35Lizzie Bassett?

  I think he is. I don't think he's that old at all.

• 51:38Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, he would have been delicious, I feel.

• 51:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Absolutely delicious. You have no idea. If you've never seen Reversal of Fortune, get out there and watch it. Fantastic. But Geffen is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you. What about Tom Cruise? Great news, I've already called him. That's right.

• 51:55Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right.

• 51:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Without running it past Anne Rice, David Geffen called Tom Cruise and essentially offered him the role on the spot. And Cruise was extremely excited. Turns out he'd been a fan of the book as a teenager. Now, Chris, based on what you know about Lestat, why do you think Tom Cruise might not be the first person that comes to mind?

• 52:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Tom Cruise is short.

• 52:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure. That's the least of his offenses, I think, in terms of this character.

• 52:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, Tom Cruise is, I don't know if this is specific enough, he's really American. Really American. Lestat is very European and erudite. And Tom Cruise is not that. He's high energy. He's so aggressive. He doesn't feel like a patient, ageless, timeless vampire. And his most recent performances, A Few Good Men was the same year, or so it was close to this. I can't remember. But even something like Rain Man or later Jerry Maguire, like it's sold on, he's so, I love him. He's a great actor.

• 52:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, but he's totally wrong for this on paper, for sure.

• 53:00Chris Winterbauer?

  It's right. Like that's versus Lestat.

• 53:03Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know if you've had a chance to watch the interview with the vampire TV series that has been on AMC. It's really good. I'm really enjoying it. But Sam Reid, who plays Lestat in that, he is pitch perfect. I think he, he hits what you're talking about. And there's like a languidity to him. The way that he moves, the way that he speaks, he's got time, you know, with Tom Cruise.

• 53:24Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a sense that this character is playing the long game, whereas the fun of Cruise is watching him improvise in a very high stakes situation. It's the opposite of Lestat.

• 53:34Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I agree. Anne Rice would very much agree with you, Chris, but who cares what Anne Rice thinks? Tom Cruise was officially cast as Lestat and all hell broke loose. Or should I say Anne Rice broke loose because here's some of her public comments, public comments on the casting news. Quote, "The Tom Cruise casting is so bizarre. It's almost impossible to imagine how it's going to work. And it's really almost impossible to imagine how Neil and David and Tom could have come up with it. I have one question. Does Tom Cruise have any idea of what he's getting into? I'm not sure he does. I'm not sure he's read any of the books other than the first one. And his comments on TV that he wanted to do something scary and he loved creature features as a kid.

• 54:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, that didn't make me feel any better. It's a little unfair, Anne." Another quote, "I do think Tom Cruise is a fine actor, but you have to know what you can do and what you can't do."

• 54:26Chris Winterbauer?

  But the appeal of Tom Cruise is he thinks he can do anything.

• 54:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. She didn't like his voice. She said, quote, "I say, you know, Lestat's voice was purring in my ear, or the voice was like roughened velvet, and here's this actor with no voice. Maybe he will drop out." And finally, "Tom Cruise is no more my vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler." She even went so far as to suggest that Cruise was pushing them to tone down the homoerotic elements of the script. But I want to note, David Geffen and pretty much everyone else involved, including Neil Jordan, say this is absolutely not true. I believe that because as we discussed, I think he pulls it off way better than Brad Pitt does. He does not look uncomfortable at all.

• 55:13Lizzie Bassett?

  He's all in. He's not holding back. So Anne Rice begged them, "Hey, you know what? Swap the roles." Which, to be honest, I mean, Brad Pitt may have been better as Lestat.

• 55:27Chris Winterbauer?

  I say can Brad Pitt, and I like Brad Pitt. I think-

• 55:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Get him out of this movie.

• 55:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Cruise as Louis actually may be more interesting than Cruise as Lestat.

• 55:37Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I think, I don't think she's wrong about this.

• 55:40Chris Winterbauer?

  No. Yeah.

• 55:41Lizzie Bassett?

  But Geffen and Neil Jordan stuck to their top guns and they would not budge. This is an expensive movie. They needed Tom Cruise to justify the money they were spending. And remember that Brad Pitt was not the superstar that he is today at this point.

• 55:54Chris Winterbauer?

  And Julian Sands, all due respect, wonderful actor, is going to get you an indie film budget. It's just not-

• 56:01Lizzie Bassett?

  It's not going to be a $60 million movie. But Neil Jordan in particular was adamant that Cruise was the right pick. He told Variety, "He had a conviction and a kind of chilling centrality to him." Yes, he is dead behind the eyes. That's me, not Neil. "That I thought he'd be great in this role. It struck me that a huge Hollywood star was forced into a life not unlike the life that Lestat led. They have to avoid publicity, avoid crowds, keep their legend intact, keep a certain unknowability about them, and I thought those things were part and parcel of Tom's life. And maybe they would make him a great Lestat, and it turned out to be the case."

• 56:37Lizzie Bassett?

  It's very smart. He also was like, you know what, Anne, just, you know, shut up, shut up, sit down. Like, sometimes you can cast against type and it works.

• 56:45Chris Winterbauer?

  And I think he smartly realized, look, ultimately, Tom Cruise is going to be in, what, 40 minutes of this movie, 45, in terms of total screen time?

• 56:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 56:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Maybe an hour. And with him, we are going to get to make the most expansive, luscious, fully-realized version of this book ever.

• 57:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 57:05Chris Winterbauer?

  And not only is it an interesting meta riff on Tom's persona, but everything I know about Tom tells me he'll do anything I ask him to do.

• 57:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Hundred percent.

• 57:14Chris Winterbauer?

  In service of trying to get this character right.

• 57:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I think he was probably a lot easier to work with than Brad Pitt. So naturally, Warner Brothers was pretty pissed at Anne Rice for this. Robert Friedman, the president of Publicity, essentially accused her of doing this to try to drum up support for her own books, calling it "good old fashioned hucksterism." And Geffen didn't mince words either. He said, quote, "Anne is a difficult woman at best, and what her motives are remains somewhat beyond me. But for her to attack this movie for her own self-importance when she has been paid $2 million and stands to make a lot more money selling her books is just capricious. It lacks kindness, it lacks discretion, it lacks professionalism. I do not want to be yelled at by David Geffen. I feel like it would hurt a lot."

• 58:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Just turn up the share. Just turn up the share as loud as you can. You won't hear him anymore.

• 58:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Surrender to me now! Of the whole process, Anne Rice said, quote, "You can't imagine how much I despise Hollywood producers and the studio system and many of the people there. I think they're awful. I can't warn writers enough to stay away from them. They will kill you." At this point, Anne Rice exits stage left. She's like, "I'm done. I want nothing to do with this project." And she cut off all communication with Geffen, the cast, the production team, and Neil Jordan.

• 58:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Lizzie Bassett?

  So Cruise was paid around $10 million for the role, which was a shit ton for a vampire movie, but was actually a price cut for him, which just goes to show you, he wanted to do this.

• 58:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Can I offer a quick hot take? I don't care what authors think about adaptations. I don't care. I think there is a need for respect. They should have a voice in the room and ultimately they should exit stage left because you're making a movie and it's a different medium and it needs to be entrusted to those folks and if they get it wrong, they get it wrong.

• 59:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, but her fan base is particularly engaged and when she came out publicly and talked about this, it was bad news for this production.

• 59:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, no, no, I agree. I'm just saying, me personally.

• 59:21Lizzie Bassett?

  I, yeah.

• 59:21Chris Winterbauer?

  I, I don't really, meh. So it's different to the book. Then we get something different.

• 59:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 59:27Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, that's always interesting.

• 59:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Tom Cruise, his feelings were hurt by Anne Rice. But being Tom Cruise, he put everything into preparation for the role. He read all of her novels again. He learned piano. He lost 12 pounds on a strict diet regimen. He traveled to Paris with Nicole Kidman, immersed himself in the city and the architecture. He wore vampire teeth everywhere to practice how to speak properly.

• 59:52Chris Winterbauer?

  You can tell.

• 59:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, he pulls it off way better.

• 59:55Chris Winterbauer?

  And he kissed Nicole with them and.

• 1:00:00Lizzie Bassett?

  He studied lions. He really throws himself into this. Now, a ton of young actresses auditioned for the role of Claudia, including Natalie Portman, Christina Ricci, Julia Stiles, and even Evan Rachel Wood, who would have been, I think, really young. But it was 11-year-old Kirsten Dunst who got the part after her acting coach made her redo her audition. She said, quote, "He was outside of the room. He listened on the door to hear like what I was doing. He knows I didn't nail it and I walked out and he was like, no, you go back in there. Apologize to the casting director. She didn't do what she can do." Yikes, but she got it.

• 1:00:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, she had been working since she was teeny tiny. I think her first role was at six years old in a Woody Allen short film, but this was her big break.

• 1:00:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Longtime Neil Jordan collaborator Stephen Ray joins and Antonio Banderas rounded out the cast, along with, as we said, a very young Tandy Way Newton. Chris, do you know who was originally cast to play the Daniel Malloy role, the reporter?

• 1:01:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Christian Slater.

• 1:01:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Christian Slater's role, yes. It was River Phoenix.

• 1:01:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, okay. Yeah.

• 1:01:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you know, I like Christian Slater a lot. It's a small enough role. I don't think it matters that much, but Phoenix would have been really interesting. And he's a hair younger than Slater, I think.

• 1:01:22Lizzie Bassett?

  A little bit. They're pretty close to contemporaries. I think Christian Slater reads as older than he is.

• 1:01:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Because his hair was receding maybe a little bit. But I wonder if Phoenix is almost too beautiful, because Slater's desperation, you know, wanting what Pitt has, I feel is supported. Not, I mean, Christian Slater's a very handsome person, but compared to, you know, the beautiful vampires, he's, he's not. Whereas Phoenix is almost Brad Pitt 2.0, you know, at that point in his career.

• 1:01:53Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true. Well, more on that momentarily. In October of 1993, filming began in New Orleans. In downtown New Orleans, sets were built in the French Quarter along the Mississippi waterfront to stand in for colonial New Orleans. It looks fantastic.

• 1:02:09Chris Winterbauer?

  So good.

• 1:02:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Husband and wife duo Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Scavo oversaw production design. Sandy Powell led costume design. It, as Chris said, absolutely phenomenal.

• 1:02:19Chris Winterbauer?

  The way they costumed Claudia in those iridescent blues and greens.

• 1:02:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, it's so good.

• 1:02:23Chris Winterbauer?

  So she just stands out from the background. And they give Lestat just enough of a punch of blue in his outfits as well. And then the muddy, kind of muted browns of Brad Pitt's Louis. It's great. And it's really smart because then his eyes pop in a different way. And you can just see every department's working with each other so well.

• 1:02:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Cinematographer was Philippe Ruselot, who was fresh off an Oscar win for A River Runs Through It. Of course, also starred Brad Pitt. Cinematography in this is incredible.

• 1:02:52Chris Winterbauer?

  And just props to the gaffer, whoever lit it. I mean, it's amazingly well lit.

• 1:02:56Lizzie Bassett?

  So I could be wrong about this. I'm going to double check it. I believe this is lit, a lot of this is lit by candlelight.

• 1:03:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah. However, they did it.

• 1:03:03Lizzie Bassett?

  It's gorgeous.

• 1:03:04Chris Winterbauer?

  It's very painterly. It's very beautiful.

• 1:03:06Lizzie Bassett?

  By the way, over the course of the 100 day shoot, there were only two and a half days of daytime photography.

• 1:03:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's so dark and beautiful.

• 1:03:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. And yes, Ruselot used only lanterns and candles to illuminate the sets.

• 1:03:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, Chris, who did the makeup effects in this movie?

• 1:03:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Stan Winston.

• 1:03:25Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right.

• 1:03:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Saw that one in the credits, yes, and it looks great, very subtle, very well done.

• 1:03:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Unbelievably, though, he almost didn't get this job.

• 1:03:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 1:03:33Lizzie Bassett?

  He actually had to fight for it, and it's because he was coming off of the enormous success of Jurassic Park, because they thought, oh, the dinosaur guy, why would the dinosaur guy want to do this, that he had to really be like, no, I can do this, and it's amazing, that neck that gets sliced open on Tom Cruise, the transitions look fabulous.

• 1:03:53Chris Winterbauer?

  From the subtlety, the way that they make the veins of the vampires look like they are, subdermal right below the skin, that's so hard.

• 1:04:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I can tell you how they did that.

• 1:04:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Tell me, because it's amazing.

• 1:04:06Lizzie Bassett?

  It is amazing. They actually tested foam rubber vein prosthetics to create that, and it didn't work, they stood out a little bit too much, so they would hang the actors upside down for 30 minutes, so the blood would rush to their heads and their veins would protrude, so the makeup artists could trace the actual patterns of their veins.

• 1:04:24Chris Winterbauer?

  So that's why it looks natural.

• 1:04:25Lizzie Bassett?

  It's why it looks natural.

• 1:04:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Because if you guys are watching on Instagram, you can see my frickin' freak old man veins coming down the side of my face, and they wouldn't have even had to hang me upside down.

• 1:04:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, no, it's incredible.

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• 1:05:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, as we mentioned, River Phoenix, just a few weeks into filming, tragedy struck. He collapsed outside the Viper Room in West Hollywood. He was 23 years old when he died. The Los Angeles Times reported that toxicology showed, quote, "lethal levels of cocaine and morphine in his system." Brad Pitt's True Romance co-star Christian Slater stepped in very quickly to replace him, but the circumstances weighed very heavily on Slater, so he actually did not accept any money for the film and donated his entire $250,000 salary to two charities that River Phoenix supported.

• 1:05:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow, good for him.

• 1:05:56Lizzie Bassett?

  It hit everyone in the film really hard, and some even viewed it as a bad omen for the production. Meanwhile, back on set, the energy was not really very good. Paparazzi dogged the New Orleans set. According to Esquire, since filming began, quote, "The papers have been filled with unconfirmed reports about tension on the set, beefed-up security, secret tunnels connecting Cruise's dressing room to exterior locations, and other extraordinary efforts to protect the star from the press. The unit press agent has been so besieged with silly rumors that she has given up denying them. I hope he had tunnels to his dressing rooms, how fun." In addition to trying to get a glimpse of Tom Cruise, the gossip rags were quick to report tensions on set between Cruise and Pitt.

• 1:06:41Lizzie Bassett?

  According to a 1993 Entertainment Weekly article, quote, "Sources claim Cruise was obsessing over how much better co-star Brad Pitt looked on screen. Cruise reportedly demanded to know Pitt's height and then ordered platform heels for his boots." That one might be true.

• 1:06:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, but more likely...

• 1:07:00Lizzie Bassett?

  The cinematographers, yeah, like, make him the same height.

• 1:07:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly, like Neil Jordan in this DP just looked in the frame and said, "Okay, we need to get Tom a, you know, an apple box to stand on because he's out of the shot."

• 1:07:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Get him a three-inch heel. He knows how to walk in heels, he's doing great.

• 1:07:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Brad Pitt's only 5'11", by the way, he's not like, super tall.

• 1:07:18Chris Winterbauer?

  What a pipsqueak.

• 1:07:20Lizzie Bassett?

  What a trip. Neil Jordan said, "It was like the entirety of the United States was out for me, really. It created a little paranoid world for us. We were shooting large scenes in San Francisco, New Orleans, London, and Paris, and in each case, we had to shield ourselves off from paparazzi. It was like we were making the movie like vampires in a strange way."

• 1:07:41Lizzie Bassett?

  But despite all the media attention and Anne Rice nipping at his little ankles, it turns out Tom Cruise had a great time on this. And it was Brad Pitt who had an absolute shitfest. Now, he'd expected an introspective philosophical role based on the book, but he claims he didn't see a finished script until two weeks before filming began. And when he did, he did not like it. He's like, all Louis does is mope around, which is true. He told Entertainment Weekly in 2011, "There was no script. I knew the book, and in the book you have this guy asking, who am I? Which was probably applicable to me at the time. Am I good? Am I of the angels? Am I bad? Am I of the devil? In this book, it's a guy going on this search of discovery.

• 1:08:26Lizzie Bassett?

  And in the meantime, he has this Lestat character that he's entranced by and abhors. But that's really not what was showing up on the page. This was his first major studio-leading role, though, so he did not have the star power to ask for the rewrites that he says today he would have asked for. He's gone back and basically said, "I would have required rewrites, or I would have left."

• 1:08:46Chris Winterbauer?

  You know what's so interesting? You can absolutely see he is stumbling for the performance that he would eventually give in Meet Joe Black as the version of death that is exploring, "Who am I? What does this mean? Am I good? Am I bad?" There is a naive, childlike, wide-eyed wonder to the character in Meet Joe Black that I feel he wants to give here, but can't because of the circumstances. And by the way, I love him in Meet Joe Black. I think he's very well-suited for that. And so I do think, in an interesting way, that movie was what he may have been looking for here.

• 1:09:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Well, in 2011, in a tell-all interview with Entertainment Weekly, he said of the experience, quote, "I am miserable. Six months in the fucking dark. Contact lenses, makeup, I'm playing the bitch role."

• 1:09:38Chris Winterbauer?

  It should not be overstated, understated, excuse me. Those contacts are brutal. You cannot see anything.

• 1:09:45Lizzie Bassett?

  But Tom Cruise ain't complaining about the contacts.

• 1:09:49Chris Winterbauer?

  If Tom Cruise is the standard that we hold ourselves to, this man will happily jump out of a plane until his ankles break and say, "Let's run again."

• 1:09:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I think these two did not get along.

• 1:10:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Of Brad Pitt's unhappiness, Neil Jordan said, "It simply wore him out. Brad's a very active guy. That was the direction he wanted to go in and the passivity of the character got him down." Still, it did seem like Brad Pitt was enjoying himself in New Orleans. He really fell in love with the city. He would go on to own a home there with Angelina Jolie at one point. I just want to say this now, I'm not going to get into it in this episode because it's not immediately relevant to what we are discussing, but if you're unfamiliar with what happened between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on a private airplane in 2016, do a little Google. Unfortunately for Brad Pitt, production moved to London from December of 1993 to January of 1994, and he hated it. He hated it.

• 1:10:44Lizzie Bassett?

  He said, quote, "Life's too short for this quality of life."

• 1:10:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Shooting nights is also...

• 1:10:51Lizzie Bassett?

  It's bad.

• 1:10:52Chris Winterbauer?

  It's insane. I don't know how anybody works a night shift.

• 1:10:55Lizzie Bassett?

  And shooting nights in London, too. Like, New Orleans, it's still, it's very vibrant. It's alive. There would be stuff to do, like it, London would suck.

• 1:11:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Noted hellhole, worst place on the planet.

• 1:11:06Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a beautiful city, but I would not want to be stuck there doing night shoots, for sure.

• 1:11:10Chris Winterbauer?

  It's hard.

• 1:11:11Lizzie Bassett?

  In fact, Chris, he was so miserable that he called up David Geffen to find out how much it would cost to buy himself out of this movie.

• 1:11:20Chris Winterbauer?

  And that's when Geffen said, "More than you got, buddy."

• 1:11:22Lizzie Bassett?

  No, Geffen very calmly told him $40 million and Brad Pitt's like, "Okey dokey, back to work.

• 1:11:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, there you go. Yep.

• 1:11:33Lizzie Bassett?

  So Kirsten Dunst reportedly had zero issues with the violence and gore on screen. She mostly had a great time on this movie, I think. The only thing she thought was gross was the blood syrup she had to suck out of the actors' sweaty, disgusting adult necks. And of course, there was one thing that she did have an issue with in this movie. Chris, there's something she did not want to do that was in the script.

• 1:11:58Chris Winterbauer?

  She does so many things. I don't know. What's the one thing?

• 1:12:01Lizzie Bassett?

  She's fine with all of them, except for one. And that one is where she, an 11-year-old child, has to kiss Brad Pitt, a 30-year-old man.

• 1:12:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yes. Wow. That's, I didn't even think about that.

• 1:12:13Lizzie Bassett?

  She thought it was disgusting.

• 1:12:15Chris Winterbauer?

  It is. That's really weird.

• 1:12:17Lizzie Bassett?

  It's really weird.

• 1:12:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Outside of the context of the movie, it's very, very, very weird, which is what makes it a very striking image in the movie.

• 1:12:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I think it's something that she was very uncomfortable with. I've watched interviews of her talking about it since. I don't know that she, well, I know she did not like the experience. This is tough because it's not like they're doing it in the movie to be gratuitous or for any kind of, you know, pedophilia, like that's, that's not what it is. She is like a century old or more at the time when it happens and it, it does really demonstrate in such a striking visual, how strange their relationship is. But she thought it was really disgusting and it wasn't just her first on-screen kiss. It was also her first kiss, period.

• 1:13:08Lizzie Bassett?

  In 2013, she told Bullet Magazine, quote, "It was just a peck. I remember Brad would watch lots of Real World episodes. He had this long hair. He was just a hippie-ish cool dude. Everyone at the time was like, you're so lucky you kissed Brad Pitt, but I thought it was disgusting. I didn't kiss anyone else until I was 16, I think. I was a late bloomer." But she didn't just talk about it 20 years later, Chris. She talked about it at the time. Here is an interview for Little Women, which came out, I think, the same year. And she is answering a maybe inappropriate question from the reporter.

• 1:13:41Speaker 05

  Did you really hate kissing Brad Pitt?

• 1:13:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, because, well, you know what? Um,

• 1:13:49Speaker 06

  I, I love Brad. He's so nice. It was just like, it feels awkward. I mean, I'm 12 and he's like 31 now and I'm, it's like he's a man, so why would I enjoy kissing him?

• 1:14:04Speaker 05

  Samantha, how about you? If you had a chance to kiss Brad Pitt?

• 1:14:07Speaker 07

  Oh, I don't think I'd turn it down. He's a wonderful actor, too, though. But I understand, you know? Maybe you're not into kissing boys yet, so I can relate.

• 1:14:19Speaker 06

  Well, especially because Brad is 31. I mean, he's not exactly a boy.

• 1:14:23Speaker 05

  If he were 15, maybe.

• 1:14:25Speaker 07

  It might be better. There we go.

• 1:14:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Guys, why does she need to be the one that's explaining this? But he's so dreamy. I mean, if I could have kissed him when I was 12. Did you practice with your dad? Did you? It's like, what are you talking about?

• 1:14:43Lizzie Bassett?

  That's her co-star, by the way, Samantha Mathis. You can hear who the way she's talking to her in that interview really grossed me out.

• 1:14:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Seems so deeply uncomfortable.

• 1:14:50Lizzie Bassett?

  The way she's like, maybe you don't like kissing boys yet. And I love that Kirsten Dunst is like, well, he's 31.

• 1:14:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, he's not a boy. I mean, he does have the taste of a boy watching The Real World, but he's not a boy. No, I mean, my quick take, you can't ethically capture that.

• 1:15:10Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 1:15:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Sorry, period. I just don't think you can. Best of intentions, I agree what they're trying to portray is not inappropriate in the way that it is in real life, but it just is. Use a body double if you have to.

• 1:15:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a compromise that you make.

• 1:15:23Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true.

• 1:15:23Chris Winterbauer?

  But that's my, that's my opinion. I just don't think you should have 11-year-olds kissing 30-year-olds little, you know, period in order to make your art.

• 1:15:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Especially when it's her first kiss. You're right, use a body double.

• 1:15:33Chris Winterbauer?

  And the fact that she is saying that, and by the way, that's on Neil Jordan.

• 1:15:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:15:38Chris Winterbauer?

  And I don't think they should have done it.

• 1:15:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree with you. This did impact her career decisions down the road. Four years later, she was offered the Mina Suvari role in American Beauty, and she turned it down because she didn't want to be playing a grown man's object of desire at 15. Of course, that would go to Mina Suvari, who I think was 19 when she took on the role. Meanwhile, Anne Rice continued to froth the pot against Tom Cruise, to the point where fans would stand outside her book signings, holding anti-Tom Cruise signs, not Mylostat. There were also constant rumors that Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise didn't like each other, and Brad Pitt sort of denies it? I don't know. Here's what he had to say in Rolling Stone. Quote, "I tell you, the machine Tom runs is quite impressive.

• 1:16:26Lizzie Bassett?

  I wouldn't want to live like that, but still, Tom Cruise is good in this film. I like the guy. I honestly like the guy. But at a point, I started really resenting him. In retrospect, I realized that it was completely because of who our characters were. I realized that it was my problem." I think they fucking hated each other.

• 1:16:44Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know. I don't know. It seems like just an incompatible.

• 1:16:46Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know if Tom Cruise didn't like him.

• 1:16:48Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what I was gonna say, exactly. I don't know, but.

• 1:16:50Lizzie Bassett?

  I think he really didn't like Tom Cruise.

• 1:16:52Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a completely incompatible set of working styles.

• 1:16:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:16:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:55Lizzie Bassett?

  On top of all of this, people kept pestering Daniel Day-Lewis about why he didn't take the role.

• 1:17:00Chris Winterbauer?

  And he's like, "I'm still considering it. I'm still thinking about it."

• 1:17:03Lizzie Bassett?

  "I could go in and be Tom Cruise." So, let's talk about post-production very briefly. Rob Legato was hired as the visual effects supervisor, and this was actually his first feature film. He had done visual effects on the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, and also had been a live-action producer. He absolutely nails this. In fact, Ron Howard was so impressed with his work on this that he hired him for Apollo 13, which also looks fantastic. And then Jimmy C. of the Concrete Boots hired him for Titanic, which led to him winning an Academy Award. He's someone who never set out to do visual effects, and he becomes kind of like an accidental VFX legend. So, pretty cool.

• 1:17:45Lizzie Bassett?

  He faced several major visual effects challenges in this movie. One, showing Claudia's hair growing back after being cut. And boy, does that look good.

• 1:17:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, combining the prosthetic teeth with digital enhancements to create that realistic growth effect. I think they also nail this. You know, he made the point in a more recent interview that like now you could just tell a computer to do that, and it would be no problem. But you couldn't do that back then. They really had to do what they did best in Jurassic Park and what Stan Winston, I think, does best in terms of working with the VFX producers and make it look like the teeth are growing. And I think they did.

• 1:18:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, I'm sure this was done in tandem with Stan Winston, but when Lestat is dying

• 1:18:30Lizzie Bassett?

  It's so good.

• 1:18:31Chris Winterbauer?

  And his body's kind of shrinking and shriveling, that transition looks great.

• 1:18:36Lizzie Bassett?

  It's phenomenal. And yes, that would have been done with Stan Winston.

• 1:18:41Lizzie Bassett?

  So let's talk briefly about the score. Jordan wanted to use George Fenton, who he'd worked with on High Spirits and We're No Angels. Fenton was hired and he had even been composing score for this film for quite a while, but apparently David Geffen felt his music was too slow and understated and it was not working for the film. I think he actually may have recorded some of the score for this. With very little time left, David Geffen fired him and replaced him with Elliot Goldenthal, who only had three weeks to compose a whole new score. Goldenthal had scored Alien Cubed, Alien Three, and Demolition Man, interesting choice for this, but he came in, he crushed it. I think the score is wonderful.

• 1:19:24Chris Winterbauer?

  It also still feels pretty subdued to me. I mean, it's wonderful choral arrangements.

• 1:19:29Lizzie Bassett?

  It gets a little avant garde, I would say.

• 1:19:32Chris Winterbauer?

  No, no, sure. I'm just saying it's not, this is not like a bombastic, driving, enormous, Demolition Man style score. I, I think it suits the material wonderfully.

• 1:19:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. He got an Oscar nomination for this and he would go on to win for a FIDA. So at this point, the early November release was swiftly approaching and in addition to firing the composer, David Geffen took another unusual risk. On September 21st, he sent Anne Rice a screener of the film. And Chris, what do you think her reaction was?

• 1:20:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I bet you she really, really, really liked it.

• 1:20:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Chris, she went in expecting a turd burrito and she absolutely loved it. She did a complete 180.

• 1:20:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Join Scientology.

• 1:20:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Said, I'm in. She called up Gethin. She said it went way above her expectations. She even called Tom Cruise to personally say that she was wrong and that he was wonderful. That is a pretty classy thing to do.

• 1:20:29Chris Winterbauer?

  And then she sat down at her typewriter and said Bradley Pitt is the worst actor. I'm just kidding. No, I mean, you'd have to because Cruise, based on what her expectations were, Cruise clears that bar.

• 1:20:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, big time.

• 1:20:42Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's, again, the commitment.

• 1:20:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Chris Winterbauer?

  If I were an author and I saw this level of commitment to the world that I had created on the page, I would be blown away. Oh, my gosh. No expense spared.

• 1:20:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Especially because she was so in Brad Pitt's corner and Brad Pitt kind of sucks it up in this movie. Just like absolutely.

• 1:21:00Chris Winterbauer?

  So hard on him.

• 1:21:02Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't care. I have, I don't have a lot of love for Brad Pitt. He's a good actor, but.

• 1:21:05Chris Winterbauer?

  But when, when everything is operating at like basically 10 out of 10 levels from, as we mentioned.

• 1:21:12Lizzie Bassett?

  And you're operating at a three, it stands out.

• 1:21:15Chris Winterbauer?

  At a six, but.

• 1:21:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Four and a half tops. It's my final offer.

• 1:21:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay. Agree to disagree. My point is he does, he stands out because everything else is chugging along pretty seamlessly.

• 1:21:27Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. Well, her stamp of approval came just in time for her fans' rage to subside before the movie came out. And Chris, do you think she was remorseful about how she had handled everything?

• 1:21:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Nope.

• 1:21:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Nope. Go in. She said, quote, "I understand and accept what happened, but to me, movies and books are not like sports. There is no immediate consensus on whether a player had scored a homerun or a touchdown. So it was okay to speak my mind on the casting. I don't have any regrets." Good for her.

• 1:21:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Tom Cruise printed those articles, stuck them on his vision board and said, "Anne, I will make you love me the way I made Nicole love me." And he did it.

• 1:22:05Lizzie Bassett?

  You know what? It worked. Good job, Tom.

• 1:22:14Lizzie Bassett?

  This is a little fun fact. The film's promotional tour included an interview with Oprah Winfrey, who admitted that she walked out of the LA screening she had been in.

• 1:22:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I remember that. She didn't like all the blood.

• 1:22:28Lizzie Bassett?

  She said, "There are forces of light and darkness in the world, and I don't want to be a contributor to the force of darkness."

• 1:22:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, all right, uber capitalist Oprah Winfrey.

• 1:22:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, okay.

• 1:22:41Lizzie Bassett?

  But on November 11th, 1994, Interview with the Vampire was released. Warner's had actually moved the date forward from November 18th to capitalize on the Thanksgiving box office holiday, and it worked. It was a hit. It outperformed blockbusters that November, such as Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein, Star Trek Generations. It was, of course, overtaken by the Santa Claus, though. What a year.

• 1:23:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Tim Allen waltzes in and says, "Hold my fart," and then he makes a billion dollars at the box office. And Alan Rickman goes, "Oh, God." Yeah.

• 1:23:23Lizzie Bassett?

  But it did very, very well. It did receive, as we said, an R-rating for nudity and violence and sexual content, which Anne Rice really pretty heavily criticized.

• 1:23:34Chris Winterbauer?

  This is, this is an appropriate R. You have...

• 1:23:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I agree, but she had some commentary on it. She said, quote, "My last question, why was this film an R-rated film? Couldn't it have been just as significant and just as thrilling without being an R-rated film? I am assuming, of course, that the R-rating has to do with the nudity and the misogyny in the film, the sadism towards women with heavy sexual overtones. If I'm right, then why was that necessary?"

• 1:24:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I don't know. I mean...

• 1:24:02Lizzie Bassett?

  I think what they show is showing something about the vampire. I don't know. I, I don't have a problem.

• 1:24:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, she, I think she's specifically mostly referring to, well, there's Lestat who preys on sex workers, obviously, and then 10 Day Way Newton, but it's probably the Grand Guignol sequence in France, right?

• 1:24:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:24:20Chris Winterbauer?

  But by the way, Grand Guignol theater was very much a real thing. It was extremely graphic, and the fact that the vampires are hiding their consumption of humans inside of this thing, and they're presenting this virgin woman. I think it's illuminating of those characters and it ultimately shows why Brad Pitt should not trust Armand and yet he fails that test. So I will stand by Neil Jordan's decision to make this a little shocking. I think it's a deserved R and it's a good R.

• 1:24:52Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I think that sequence is extremely well done. The fact that it's humans in the audience watching and this woman is saying, please, please help me. And they're all just watching going like, this play is great.

• 1:25:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:04Lizzie Bassett?

  It's very disturbing. It's very creepy watching that actress sort of realize that no one is going to help her. You know, as she's up there, she's exposed both physically and emotionally. She's in threat the entire time. And then she just kind of gives up. I, I think it's a great sequence. Could you have done it without her boobs out? Sure. I don't have a huge problem with it.

• 1:25:28Chris Winterbauer?

  And they strip her down entirely, which is very violating. And I think that's the point is to make it violating. I don't know, it doesn't feel leering in that way. It feels.

• 1:25:38Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 1:25:39Chris Winterbauer?

  It feels like it's implicating the audience in an, in an interesting way.

• 1:25:43Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree with you.

• 1:25:44Chris Winterbauer?

  But also then he slices Stephen Ray's torso in half with a.

• 1:25:49Lizzie Bassett?

  With a scythe. Yeah.

• 1:25:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, scythe. And then, so you're gonna get the R rating no matter what, I think, even if they were to cut back on certain sequences.

• 1:25:58Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm with you, but Anne Rice is gonna haunt you from her grave. So despite positive box office returns, Brad Pitt was done with this movie. In a December 1, 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, when he was asked, he said the following, you know, Legends of the Fall was great. And then when asked about working with Tom Cruise, Pitt gives an earnest look, quote, I'm telling you, Antonio Banderas is the greatest guy.

• 1:26:27Lizzie Bassett?

  This is why I think he hates Tom Cruise.

• 1:26:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I think he checked himself afterwards and had to, you know, come back and say, "Oh, it was all me, you know, Ty love Tom, Tom's great, love Tom, love Tom so much." No, you don't, Brad. No, you don't. Critics, and also according to Reddit, 90s audiences, came down pretty hard on Brad Pitt's performance. Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly said, "As a character, Louis stays tangled up in his own gloomy remorse. Forget the casket, he might as well be living in a confessional booth." And watching Pitt, "About all we register in his stony, simian stare, the thick lips and zombie eyes, the look of vague dyspepsia that could be anything from fear to constipation."

• 1:27:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, the film received two Academy Award nominations, Best Art Direction and Best Score. Kirsten Dunst was nominated for a Golden Globe, I think robbed of a Best Supporting Actress nomination for this, because she-

• 1:27:23Chris Winterbauer?

  When did Anna Paquin win for the piano?

• 1:27:26Lizzie Bassett?

  93. Okay, so one year before.

• 1:27:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, so I wonder if Anna Paquin's win as the precocious child actress, Hollywood said, "Okay, it's cute."

• 1:27:41Lizzie Bassett?

  We did it.

• 1:27:42Chris Winterbauer?

  But, uh, "Some of us, uh, have been doing this for a long time, guys." "We want our hardware." And, yeah, the voters are notably a lot older than these children, so I wonder if there was a little bit of a, "We've been there, we've done that."

• 1:27:57Lizzie Bassett?

  I think Kirsten Dunst was absolutely robbed, and also-

• 1:28:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree.

• 1:28:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Anna Paquin's great in the piano, but it is not this performance. Kirsten Dunst believably plays a 100-year-old woman trapped inside of a child's body.

• 1:28:11Chris Winterbauer?

  An 11-year-old and a 100-year-old.

• 1:28:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. She is absolutely incredible. So, Interview with the Vampire pulled in over $220 million worldwide, narrowly beating out Bram Stoker's Dracula for the title of highest grossing R-rated vampire movie ever. And I believe it was only recently dethroned from that title by what movie, Chris?

• 1:28:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Big old tripod Nosferatu, is what we're talking about?

• 1:28:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Certainly not. We're talking about Sinners.

• 1:28:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, Sinners. Okay, yes. Yep, that is R-rated vampire.

• 1:28:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Which I think was way better than Nosferatu.

• 1:28:49Chris Winterbauer?

  What did Nosferatu make? Made 181.3. So not as strong, but that's very good.

• 1:28:56Lizzie Bassett?

  It's good. The Interview with the Vampire beat that in 1994.

• 1:29:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, that's true. When people went to the theaters. Sinners' accomplishment is

• 1:29:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Remarkable.

• 1:29:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Very impressive because we are in a post-COVID streaming world now, and still people rush to theaters to see it.

• 1:29:12Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right, because it was real good. All right, Chris. Well, that wraps up our coverage of Interview with the Vampire. What went right?

• 1:29:23Chris Winterbauer?

  I would like to give my what went right for this film to everybody below the line.

• 1:29:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:29:31Chris Winterbauer?

  If you worked on this movie in any capacity below the line, bravo. This is, to me, I am so upset that I never got to see this in a theater.

• 1:29:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 1:29:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Almost physically upset. The images are so unbelievably beautiful and immersive, but not in any way distracting from the story. It does not feel as if any department is attempting to stand out or outshine the rest of them. It's so harmonious in the way that it is constructed. And I worry that we're... The strength of the Hollywood system was that people were brought up, you know, apprenticed in many of these roles. And I think that we've started to move away from that because it's expensive and because people don't want to support

• 1:30:23Chris Winterbauer?

  unions and because Hollywood movies in this budget range specifically, right? You know, the 40 to 70 million dollar movie. They're a bit of a rare breed now. And I don't think you see movies that look quite this good very often anymore. I mean, Sinners looks great, to its credit.

• 1:30:40Lizzie Bassett?

  It does.

• 1:30:41Chris Winterbauer?

  But, man, this movie is beautiful. I think it will, it stands the test of time.

• 1:30:49Chris Winterbauer?

  And a lot of early 90s movies don't, and this movie does. And it's just, so to anybody who worked on this below the line, and also of course, kudos to all the actors and Neil Jordan, et cetera. But wow.

• 1:31:00Lizzie Bassett?

  No, I agree with you.

• 1:31:01Chris Winterbauer?

  What an incredible collaboration.

• 1:31:02Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 1:31:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Just incredible.

• 1:31:04Lizzie Bassett?

  And just the scope of it is stunning.

• 1:31:06Chris Winterbauer?

  It's magnificent. And it never feels like, even when they do the montage of Claudia's drawings to show all the cities that they visit, because obviously they're not going to show all those cities, it doesn't feel as if it's cheapening the story in any way.

• 1:31:20Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 1:31:21Chris Winterbauer?

  It doesn't feel like a shortcut. It really, every decision that they make, oh god, the catacombs, that sequence when they're bursting out of the coffins on fire and Brad Pitt's walking through the flames. It's great. And I will say to Brad Pitt's credit, when his character becomes more active,

• 1:31:37Lizzie Bassett?

  He's a lot more fun.

• 1:31:38Chris Winterbauer?

  He does get a lot better. He's a lot more fun.

• 1:31:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I will say, as soon as my what went right arrives on screen, he also lights up quite a bit. My what went right is 100% Kirsten Dunst in this movie.

• 1:31:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Once she lands this movie, we're like, okay, great. We know where we're going now.

• 1:31:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:31:54Chris Winterbauer?

  This is great.

• 1:31:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Without her, I don't think this movie works. It's beautiful. I think it would be fun to watch, but if that role had been miscast, because she is a huge part of this movie. I understand she's a supporting actor, but-

• 1:32:07Chris Winterbauer?

  She's the heart of the movie.

• 1:32:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Basically, all of the action revolves around her in this movie.

• 1:32:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Because her creation is kind of the original sin, more than the creation of Louis.

• 1:32:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:32:20Chris Winterbauer?

  And her death is-

• 1:32:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Horrible.

• 1:32:22Chris Winterbauer?

  -mortifying.

• 1:32:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Technically impossible, the sun would never go directly over the wall in Paris. It's a little too high latitudinally, but I'm just kidding. Just kidding! But no, it's, and that image of her and her mother, the Pompeii-like image. I mean, it's devastating.

• 1:32:39Lizzie Bassett?

  I just think, had that role been miscast, had that role been a child actor who was not able to-

• 1:32:47Lizzie Bassett?

  The thing about her is she seems so adult, but in a way that makes sense in the context of the character. Sometimes you watch child actors on screen and they seem adult in a way that feels icky, like they've been forced to grow up in a way that is not necessarily fun to watch. There's almost like a pretension, like a self-awareness to them. She doesn't really have that, I think, which is amazing.

• 1:33:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:12Lizzie Bassett?

  That she manages to pull off the age of this character, the agelessness of this character. And as you said, she remains an 11-year-old child while also carrying the weight of a century-plus of life on her shoulders.

• 1:33:26Chris Winterbauer?

  She's still petulant, she still likes dolls, and yet she has this sense of grief over the life that she's never gonna live.

• 1:33:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:33:34Chris Winterbauer?

  As she lives forever. It's so complex and she's so good.

• 1:33:38Lizzie Bassett?

  And I don't think anybody else could have done this. I just think she is phenomenal. So my What Went Right absolutely is Kirsten Dunst. And as I said, I think she lights Brad Pitt up, too. I think that once she shows up, his performance gets way better.

• 1:33:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Their scenes together are much better than his scenes solo with Lestat.

• 1:33:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:33:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Although I do think he works better, again, at the very end, when he meets Lestat in the old home and Lestat is rotting away, I think once Pitt's more secure with himself, I buy his character more.

• 1:34:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, although I agree with you, I think he is the least successful opposite Tom Cruise.

• 1:34:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 1:34:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Than anybody in this film. He does better with Antonio Banderas, he does better with Kirsten Dunst.

• 1:34:21Chris Winterbauer?

  He does well with Stephen Ray, where they're mirroring each other. That's fun.

• 1:34:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. Honestly, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm just like, I think he just doesn't like Tom Cruise.

• 1:34:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:29Lizzie Bassett?

  And that may have been what was happening.

• 1:34:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Look, at the end of the day, it's a love story. And so if your two characters in a love story don't have chemistry.

• 1:34:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Which they kinda don't.

• 1:34:38Chris Winterbauer?

  They kinda don't, and that's a problem. The thing with Banderas, Banderas has chemistry with everybody.

• 1:34:44Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 1:34:45Chris Winterbauer?

  He really does because he's just, he's that charming and effortless in the way that he does it. And Stephen Ray's kind of like that, too.

• 1:34:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:52Chris Winterbauer?

  And that's the, I think that's the tell of a real, really seamlessly talented actor is that they can kind of spark chemistry with almost anybody.

• 1:35:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. And Kirsten Dunst does it. As an 11 year old, she does it.

• 1:35:05Chris Winterbauer?

  She's so good. She's so good. But I just also like Kirsten Dunst should not have had to be the person who was saying, maybe I shouldn't be kissing a 32 year old man.

• 1:35:14Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 1:35:14Chris Winterbauer?

  And so, again, as much as we celebrate the performance, I'm very sorry that that, you know, was something she had to deal with in the movie.

• 1:35:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. And I love her and I think she deserves an Oscar and it's gotta be coming. It's gotta be coming.

• 1:35:29Chris Winterbauer?

  As she just said recently, give her Minecraft, too. As she said, I'd like to do a movie and just make some money.

• 1:35:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Good. Give her some money. I hope she and Jesse Plemons can redo their kitchen. Absolutely.

• 1:35:39Chris Winterbauer?

  What kind of Minecraft player are you? Well, Lizzie, before we dive into next week, I did want us to do, since you're such a vampire fan, I made a list of my top five vampire movies. I also watched Neil Jordan's Byzantium, because I'd never seen it and I was curious. If you guys are interested, it does feel a bit like he is making the gender swapped version, a little bit of Interview with the Vampire. It's Gemma Archerton and Saoirse Ronan. It almost feels like a continuation of Claudia's story with Madeleine if they had continued on. Also, you could have called it Bordello of Blood, because Gemma Archerton is a vampire who runs a whorehouse in the film.

• 1:36:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Great.

• 1:36:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Excuse me, a sex worker joint. I didn't know what to call it. Okay, top five vampire films. Do you want me to go first, Lizzie?

• 1:36:27Lizzie Bassett?

  No, I want to go first. So I'm not going to rank them because I can't. I love them all. But these are my top five films. Interview with the Vampire absolutely is on this list. I genuinely, genuinely love this movie. It's inspired me to finally start reading the book, which I'm really enjoying. I'm really enjoying the show. I'm, I'm in an Anne Rice kind of mood this October. Let the Right One In, the Swedish original. It's on my list. It is so fabulous. Listeners, if you have not watched this, please go watch it. There is a sequence towards the end of the movie in a swimming pool that I will not spoil for you, but it is one of the most beautiful and horrifying sequences I've ever seen on film. Gotta Put What We Do in the Shadows in here. That movie will never not make me laugh. I just

• 1:37:12Lizzie Bassett?

  think it's so funny. Again, I also really enjoyed the TV spinoff of that. I love living in that world. Love Taika Waititi. Obviously, everybody involved in that production is incredible. Also, I don't know if you saw recently, but some very fun vampire cameos showed up at one of the vampire councils on that show, including, of course, Tilda Swinton. And fun fact, Eric Northman did show up in that episode, Alexander Skarsgård. Isn't Evan Rachel Wood on the council? I think she is, yeah. They they've got like every famous vampire for one of the episodes, which was great. I will put Sinners on this list. I thought it was fantastic. I really enjoyed what they did with that movie. I talked about this a little bit in the primer,

• 1:37:53Lizzie Bassett?

  but I think that that movie is maybe one of the first times since Interview with the Vampire that we are breaking away from the need to humanize vampires. I think what Ryan Coogler did so brilliantly in that is that they are something completely other, both in the way that they think about their own community and their own purpose for afterlife, and in the way that they operate and look and feel. It's just so well done. I really, really loved it. The music is fantastic. There is a sequence in it that shouldn't work, but it really does. Anyway, Sinners, wonderful. And then, Chris, what would this list be

• 1:38:36Lizzie Bassett?

  without Twilight? And yeah, I know, everybody's There it is. Everybody's gonna give me shit for this. I don't care. I love Twilight. I think what Stephanie Meyer did, yes, it's a rip off of everything. No, it's not super original, and yet it is. No, it's not very well written, and yet I read all of them. And you know what Catherine Hardwicke did with the first movie is just so fun. I love it. I love vampire baseball. They are my comfort movies. I can put them on anytime and really enjoy them. I used to like them ironically, and now I like them uh sincerely. So you know, that's just, that's just the way that it goes. All right, Chris, what are your top five?

• 1:39:16Chris Winterbauer?

  So we overlapped on two.

• 1:39:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 1:39:19Chris Winterbauer?

  And I'll leave Interview with the Vampire out, even though it probably would be in my top five. So the two we overlapped on were Let the Right One In and What We Do in the Shadows. But I anticipated we might, so I will actually omit those because I want to give some people a couple more suggestions. So in no particular order, Near Dark, Catherine Bigelow, Bill Paxton.

• 1:39:37Lizzie Bassett?

  I knew you were gonna choose that one.

• 1:39:39Chris Winterbauer?

  I love Near Dark. I think it's great. Another great child vampire performance in that movie. Anna Lily, Amir Pors, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Weird, like revisionist, black and white Iranian Western vampire van. Yeah, it's great. Thirst, the Korean vampire film from 2009. I highly recommend it. Very weird. And then, okay, a couple that maybe folks like or, you know, or maybe not. The Addiction, Christopher Walken. Have you seen that one, Lizzie?

• 1:40:12Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 1:40:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Very strange, mid 90s independent film. I don't want to spoil anything too bad. And then the last one, because it's just so ridiculous, and this is not a great movie, but I think it's so fun. Have you ever seen Daybreakers with Willem Dafoe and Ethan Hawke?

• 1:40:27Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 1:40:28Chris Winterbauer?

  And Sam Neill, about a world where everyone's vampires and they're running out of blood.

• 1:40:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Great.

• 1:40:33Chris Winterbauer?

  And Willem Dafoe is like a vampire hunter and Ethan Hawke is a vampire scientist who's trying to make a synthetic blood. And Sam Neill is the equivalent of like RFK Jr. basically saying, we need pure blood. And it's, it's this Australian directing duo. They did a couple other films with Ethan Hawke, and I'm totally blanking on the name of the time travel one that they did. But anyway, it's so fun. It's so ridiculous. It's so over the top. It's so goofy. And so I'll just throw that one out there as well.

• 1:41:02Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, I'll put it on my list. I'm gonna add two more honorable mentions if you wanna do a massive vampire movie marathon, which I think we have to mention The Lost Boys. It's very fun. I do love that one. I think it owes a lot to Lestat, even in the style of The Lost Boys. And then Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive.

• 1:41:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Gotta throw that one out here, too, which stars actual vampire Tilda Swinton.

• 1:41:24Chris Winterbauer?

  And Tom Hiddleston, kind of, too.

• 1:41:25Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true.

• 1:41:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Last thing I'll mention, if you guys are interested in any other Breakfast on Pluto is pretty good, Neil Jordan with Killian Murphy.

• 1:41:34Lizzie Bassett?

  It's great.

• 1:41:34Chris Winterbauer?

  And then, one of the movies that he did that I think is really overlooked, because it was overshadowed by In Bruges, which I think was the same year, is Undine, which is Colin Farrell. And it's, I think it's called a selkie mythology. It's a bit of a mermaid mythology. It's about an Irish fisherman who's a former alcoholic who rescues a woman and believes maybe she's a mermaid. It's actually, at least the first hour, is a really wonderful magical realism love story. And Colin Farrell, I think of 2009 as kind of the rebirth of Colin Farrell here, because you had In Bruges and you had Undine. And he's so good in it, and he's so love-lorn and hangdog. So I would recommend that one as well.

• 1:42:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Great. All right. That wraps up our vampire coverage, but we've got a whole month of spooky movies coming up for you all, spooky scaries. And Chris, what do we have coming up next?

• 1:42:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Sweet dreams are made of these. Freddy's gonna kill you in your sleep. Nightmare on Elm Street.

• 1:42:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Great.

• 1:42:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Very excited. Very excited. We are excited to get into the birth of New Line Cinema.

• 1:42:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Fantastic. Well, there are several ways to support this podcast. You can tell a friend. You can leave a rating or review. You can subscribe on whatever podcatcher you are listening to this on. You can also get some bonus content. And there are a couple different ways to do that. You can, of course, join our Patreon, and Chris will tell you momentarily what those tiers mean and what you get with the different Patreon subscriptions. But now, guys, you can also just subscribe on Apple Podcasts, and you will get at least one, more likely two, bonus episodes every single month. And Again, those are paywalled, so you need to either subscribe on Apple Podcasts

• 1:43:17Lizzie Bassett?

  or subscribe to our Patreon. Chris, what can they get on Patreon?

• 1:43:22Chris Winterbauer?

  If you head to www.patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast, you can join for free and just get some free musings and updates from us, mostly me. If you join for a dollar, you can vote on films that we cover. Nightmare on Elm Street was the winner of a recent poll. For $5, you not only get an ad-free feed, our bonus episodes, if you sign up, you can see a live stream of our first live show, October 9th, Thursday, at the Caveat Theater in Manhattan, 9:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. We are live streaming it to Patreon for our $5 members or higher. And of course, for $5, you can get a shout out from the vampire Lestat himself, or herself.

• 1:44:04Speaker 04

  All right, I will try to approach this performance with the same gusto that Tom Cruise did. Here I go, my attempt to convince Anne Rice from the afterlife that I too could play the vampire Lestat. I assume I need no introduction. Adam Moffett, Adrian Pangkorea, Angeline Renee Cook, Ben Schindelman, I'm gonna give you the choice I never had, Ben, Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Brittany Morris, Brooke, Brooke, Brooke, Brooke, still whining Brooke,

• 1:44:43Speaker 04

  Cameron Smith, C. Grace B., Chris Leo, Chris Zaka. I've had to listen to this whining for centuries. D.B. Smith, David Friskalanti, Darren and Dale Conkling, Don Schible, Ellen Singleton.

• 1:45:06Speaker 04

  M. Zodiac. There's life in these old hands still. Evan Downey. Film it yourself. Galen and Miguel, the Broken Glass Kids. Grace Potter. Half Grey Hound. Why are you only half a greyhound? Is it because I ate the other half?

• 1:45:26Speaker 04

  I would never, that's only for stupid Louis. Jake Killen. James McAvoy. Jason Frankel. Jen Mastromarino. JJ Rapidow. Jory Hillpiper. Jose Salto. Jose, what have we told you? Never in the house. Kay Cannaba. Kate Ellington. Kathleen Olson. Wendy Elgashlager McCoy. An old world vampire, are we, Wendy? Felicia G. Lon Relad. Lena. Lydia Howes. Matthew Jacobson. Michael McGrath. Nate the Knife. Nathan Centeno. Rosemary Southward.

• 1:46:10Speaker 04

  Ro Jurr. Sadie. Just Sadie. Scary Carrie. Sermon Chinani. Steve Winterbauer. Suzanne Johnson. And the Provost Family. The Os sound like Os and I bet you taste delicious. All right. Thank you all so much for listening and we will be back next week to watch Johnny Depp get eaten by a bed. Bye.

• 1:46:40Speaker 08

  Go to patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast to support What Went Wrong and check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom Podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman with research from Laura Woods and additional editing from Karen Crebsaw.