Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have women in them, are
Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they
Speaker 2: have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephi, bast start changing it
Speaker 2: with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 1: Well, where my mom is dead? Well, I Brad Pitt.
Speaker 3: At least I didn't kill her. Okay, but I will
Speaker 3: turn you into a vampire. Wow, this is a great.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I if I was at home, I would I
Speaker 1: could have really performed that, but you know, it's just
Speaker 1: not happening today. That was an attempt at introducing our
Speaker 1: interview with the vampire. I kept saying it with different
Speaker 1: nansas like interview and a vampire interview, but a vampire like.
Speaker 1: There's so many fun ways too, and none of them
Speaker 1: are The title Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name
Speaker 1: is Jamie Loftus, my name is Caitlin Dronte. This is
Speaker 1: our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens,
Speaker 1: using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point. And that,
Speaker 1: of course, is a media metric created by queer cartoonist
Speaker 1: Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace test because it
Speaker 1: was kind of co created with her friend Liz Wallace,
Speaker 1: and it has many versions, but the one that we
Speaker 1: use is this, do two characters of a marginalized gender
Speaker 1: have names? Do those characters speak to each other? And
Speaker 1: is their conversation about something other than a man? And
Speaker 1: we especially like it when it's a nice, meaty, juicy,
Speaker 1: maybe even bloody conversation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is our food discourses, our disgusting food. When
Speaker 1: the night falls, we can finally start adding discourse.
Speaker 3: Right, So today's episode is Interview with the Vampire, because
Speaker 3: I was always calling it interview with a vampire, but
Speaker 3: it's the.
Speaker 1: Interview where there's the vampire. Dude, where's my vampire? Frost Vampire?
Speaker 1: What are other movies about? Interviews? Frost Vampire would actually
Speaker 1: be a great movie. Oh my god, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it would be. That would be a fun queer
Speaker 1: Candon movie. Frost Vampire.
Speaker 3: Sure, sure, I never saw Frost Nixon. That's what you're
Speaker 3: referring to.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it take kicks it out, put in the vampire, Okay,
Speaker 1: and then I think, now we're kind of cooking. We've
Speaker 1: got a real TV event.
Speaker 3: So true, in any case, interview with the vampire. That's
Speaker 3: did I say it wrong again? Interview with the vampire.
Speaker 1: With the Oh yeah, I think it's the the where
Speaker 1: you're like the trips you up. Lestat is still a
Speaker 1: lot like he's not like the vampire. He's like acting like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Beyonce of vampires, which he's not I know, easily
Speaker 1: the vampire I like the least.
Speaker 3: Yes, they're all just one of many.
Speaker 1: Oh, Jordan's freaking out.
Speaker 3: Anyway. We've got two incredible guests. They are the hosts
Speaker 3: of Queer Quadrant podcast. It's Jordan Gustafson and Brooks Solomon.
Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 5: I know, okay, I'm personally a fan of dude, Where's
Speaker 5: my Vampire?
Speaker 4: Is pretty good?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Yes for me because I'm not a Louis fan.
Speaker 1: Interview with some vampire.
Speaker 5: I agree that he's the weakest vampire in the film.
Speaker 6: Easily every vampire is better than him.
Speaker 4: It is just a vampire.
Speaker 7: He's really interviewing though, So you could say, like interview
Speaker 7: with a vampire, but it's not.
Speaker 6: It's not. I feel like so.
Speaker 5: We we were telling Kaitlin we did this movie a
Speaker 5: very long time ago. At the very very beginning of
Speaker 5: our podcast, and we've been waiting for an opportunity to
Speaker 5: resync our teeth into it. But I remember on our
Speaker 5: podcast that interview with a vampire versus the vampire tripped
Speaker 5: us up for the whole episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's just not the vampire. I feel like if
Speaker 1: it was Unfortunately and I'm you know, I'm not like
Speaker 1: vampire Punt. I'm not caping for Lestat or anything, but
Speaker 1: he's certainly a more anti. If the whole movie was
Speaker 1: an interview with Lastat, I would buy interview with the
Speaker 1: vampire because he has energy that is like I am
Speaker 1: the vampire. He wants everyone to believe that he's He's like,
Speaker 1: don't leave the country. I'm definitely the only vampire.
Speaker 7: Even like Armand would be pretty good because he's like,
Speaker 7: I'm the oldest vampire you know, and you're like, yes,
Speaker 7: you are the grand dom.
Speaker 3: He's the og vampire.
Speaker 4: I am Dracula.
Speaker 1: Yeah what No, s Feratu found dead in a ditch,
Speaker 1: like he's the vampire.
Speaker 7: It's cool that this movie presupposes that vampires can be hot,
Speaker 7: because you know the Dawn of cinema, they're like vampires
Speaker 7: are ugly, Nos s Faratu, and this movie is like
Speaker 7: what if Antonio banderas.
Speaker 6: This is kind of like the vampire movie.
Speaker 5: I am, well, I mean, obviously there are so much
Speaker 5: but like, when I think about what I want out
Speaker 5: of vampires, this is the version of vampires that I want.
Speaker 5: I really liked that bitchy, expensive mother.
Speaker 3: Puckers rama queens. Yes, they're they're fun, They're hot, and
Speaker 3: they're fun. What is your history and relationship with this movie?
Speaker 5: I watched it for the first time for our episode
Speaker 5: that we did. I had never seen it. I just
Speaker 5: knew kind of like the cultural cachet of like, oh
Speaker 5: did you know that there's this weird, campy like sort
Speaker 5: of game vampire movie. And then I got obsessed. And
Speaker 5: I still haven't read the book, but like, I mean,
Speaker 5: this movie is ridiculous, but I think it's a very
Speaker 5: good time and I'm loving the show on AMC Plus
Speaker 5: right now.
Speaker 3: I just started it to prep for that.
Speaker 1: If I haven't seen this show, fabulous, I haven't either.
Speaker 4: It's okay, I.
Speaker 6: Know, okay, okay, I'm caught up.
Speaker 5: I think maybe I'm one episode behind, but it's like
Speaker 5: this to me, I'm very I'm very Anne Rice pilled
Speaker 5: at the moment at the moment, So yeah, I hadn't.
Speaker 6: I hadn't seen it.
Speaker 7: You're dipping yourself in a bowl of rice, trying I
Speaker 7: think all of rice.
Speaker 4: Right right, You're a rice pilled.
Speaker 7: So I watched for the first time for the Pot
Speaker 7: as well, And I think I was mostly aware of
Speaker 7: it slash interested in it because as a Tom Cruise
Speaker 7: you know fan, as someone who has seeing every movie
Speaker 7: of his, you know, it was something that.
Speaker 4: Was always lingering in the mind.
Speaker 7: And I think I was also just kind of aware
Speaker 7: of it because I think like I knew about David
Speaker 7: Geffen early because I'm such a little shop fan, and
Speaker 7: I knew that he produced it, so and he's also
Speaker 7: was kind of one of the first gay famous people
Speaker 7: that I was aware of because of like the Spielberg
Speaker 7: connection as well. So I feel like when you're like
Speaker 7: a young burgeon and creative.
Speaker 4: And you're like, who are queer?
Speaker 7: You know people in Hollywood, it's like one of the
Speaker 7: first names. So I think that was probably one of
Speaker 7: the things that led to it. But I know, like
Speaker 7: when whenever we covered it, I feel like I'm never
Speaker 7: going to listen to that episode again because it was
Speaker 7: so early and I don't even remember what my thoughts are.
Speaker 7: So this feels like a whole new experience.
Speaker 1: It's like a rebirth, like how we feel about the
Speaker 1: first like easily three years of our show at this point.
Speaker 3: We should just delete all of those episodes. But this
Speaker 3: is the thing. You're getting a chance at a new life,
Speaker 3: and we're gonna give you the choice that we didn't have.
Speaker 1: You did it to have a better opinion on interview
Speaker 1: camire old podcast episodes are so challenging. But I do
Speaker 1: feel like you're like, wow, a public record.
Speaker 6: Of bad taste you gotta learn on the fly.
Speaker 1: Or how much smarter you eventually got.
Speaker 4: Sure, that's a good way to phrase it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, how much better we got it talking to people.
Speaker 5: I think it's the.
Speaker 4: Biggest thing that's true. That's true.
Speaker 5: One would consider that a core tenant when starting a podcast.
Speaker 1: You would think, however, yeah, it's a humiliation kink mostly mostly, Yeah.
Speaker 7: It's kind of like being a vampire's a humiliation kink.
Speaker 7: You know, you're just like you can't go outside. They're like,
Speaker 7: don't you want to like come to the park with us?
Speaker 5: Like I do think vampires are the gayest like fictional creature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, possibly, I can't think of anything that.
Speaker 5: And I say that as as a compliment, but like, well,
Speaker 5: of course, I don't think anything else comes close.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that's why I'm so into vampire lore,
Speaker 3: because like, I love, not that I've like done a
Speaker 3: deep dive, really, but I love so much just like
Speaker 3: vampire stuff like media and who are your vampires?
Speaker 4: Who are your guys?
Speaker 3: I mean, welcome to WT with probably Buffy the Vampire
Speaker 3: Slayer is my biggest although she's killing vampires, but they're
Speaker 3: you know, they feature prominently. And then there's some vampires
Speaker 3: like Angel and Spike was going to become series regulars
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, and then Angel had his own
Speaker 3: show which I didn't watch nearly enough of. Oh no, Actually,
Speaker 3: my biggest vampire thing is what we do in the
Speaker 3: Shadows DA. I love the movie. I love the show.
Speaker 3: I also enjoy from Dusk till Dawn. I enjoy a
Speaker 3: girl walks home alone at night. Then we've got Blade
Speaker 3: Blade Rules, We've got And I haven't seen this the
Speaker 3: whole way through, and I really want to sit down
Speaker 3: with it sometime soon. But the Francis Ford Coppola bron
Speaker 3: Stalkers Dracula like Keanu Reeves being weird, and Winona Ryder
Speaker 3: is there and like all kinds of goofy stuff. I
Speaker 3: also really like, what's the Willem Dafoe plays nos Faratu, and.
Speaker 7: It's like, is the name nos Fachu the living Vampire
Speaker 7: or is it the other one where it's like the
Speaker 7: the other because there both came out like in the
Speaker 7: same year.
Speaker 1: Hold up, and then there's a new nose for Atu
Speaker 1: coming out right news.
Speaker 6: From the Bitch Guys, Shadow of the Vampire.
Speaker 3: Shadow of the Vampire. Yes, I also need to rewatch that,
Speaker 3: But there's just I don't know, there's something so alluring
Speaker 3: about vampires anyway, Jamie, what is your history with Interview
Speaker 3: with a Vampire?
Speaker 1: Well, I guess my bisexual card has been revoked because
Speaker 1: I've never really been into vampires. Oh ever, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't I never really connected from me. I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen this movie before. I feel like all of my
Speaker 1: vampire knowledge I like, I don't know, because our generation
Speaker 1: was like pretty pummeled with vampire media. I did watch Twilight.
Speaker 1: I read Twilight. My mom and I shared the book
Speaker 1: set is gross just she would give me her soggy
Speaker 1: copies of Twilight, but Vampire Diaries missed me. True Blood
Speaker 1: missed me, Like I just didn't. It didn't happen for
Speaker 1: me for whatever reason. Maybe it was probably honestly because
Speaker 1: my mom liked vampire stuff, and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm built so different. I'm going to read a series
Speaker 1: of unfortunate events forty times, and that's how I get
Speaker 1: my bisexual card back to just take the edginess in
Speaker 1: the other direction, exactly going library edgy. But no, I hadn't.
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen this movie before, and wow, Wow, it's
Speaker 1: so weird. I can't. I like, I don't know what
Speaker 1: word I would put. I was so enthralled. I also
Speaker 1: read about half of the book, or I listened to
Speaker 1: half of the audio book, let's be honest at but
Speaker 1: I did listen to half of the audio book at
Speaker 1: one point nine speed. And so I feel like I
Speaker 1: speak as an authority when I say that the movie
Speaker 1: is like a pretty close adaptation of the book, but
Speaker 1: what is left out is really interesting, especially because I
Speaker 1: forget what movie we were talking about this recently, but
Speaker 1: it's like the rare movie that was actually adapted by
Speaker 1: the author, which you never see. And so I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting some stuff that ends up not being there,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I liked it. It's such a weird. It's
Speaker 1: so weird. There's so many things to talk.
Speaker 6: About a rich text, there's so much.
Speaker 7: I want to quickly agree with you, Jamie on the
Speaker 7: not being super into vampires, because vampires, we talked about
Speaker 7: this before on our podcast, were like my lowest ranked
Speaker 7: of monsters. And I don't know whether maybe this is
Speaker 7: like a New England well Brooks from New England, so
Speaker 7: never mind.
Speaker 5: But also I grew up a girl, and like true,
Speaker 5: I was similarly like in the.
Speaker 7: Twy Haart era, I guess, but like for me, I
Speaker 7: was just like I guess because I had maybe like
Speaker 7: the vamp. We were so inundated with vampires that I
Speaker 7: think I went the other way, which is why I
Speaker 7: think I was like less into them growing up, just
Speaker 7: because like if there is so much, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 1: What missed me.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of what my favorite monster is.
Speaker 1: I think it's like sexy fish Guy. That's my favorite poster.
Speaker 6: I love a sexy fish Guy.
Speaker 7: Creature of Black Lagoon's my favorite monster movie because it's
Speaker 7: like a weird guy, you know, but.
Speaker 1: He's horny and sensitive and you're like, yes.
Speaker 6: I could fix him. Yes, he actually doesn't need to
Speaker 6: be fixed because he's.
Speaker 4: Like sweetie, right, he's perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he kind of arrives ready. Yeah, all he needs
Speaker 1: is your acceptance.
Speaker 4: He loves eggs, you know, it's fine, wholesome.
Speaker 1: All he needed to do is flood your bathroom and
Speaker 1: he's so he's so okay, he's ready.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1: I do feel like it was like a probably like
Speaker 1: because I also read the Twilight books in secret. I
Speaker 1: didn't like want all of my friends who loved Twilight,
Speaker 1: and it would have been easier to connect with them
Speaker 1: if I just admitted I was also reading them, but
Speaker 1: I didn't want them to know. And I also had
Speaker 1: this whole thing about magic. I think we talked about
Speaker 1: this in our really really old Harry Potter episodes. But
Speaker 1: I always was like, I didn't like fantasy because I
Speaker 1: love series of unfortunate events so much and they didn't
Speaker 1: have magic, and so magic in any other book was
Speaker 1: cheating and magic was an unfair plot device, and the
Speaker 1: Bodler orphans had to figure it out with a pile
Speaker 1: of rope, and so I'm not interested in magic, which
Speaker 1: is ridiculous, but it was how I felt for like
Speaker 1: fifteen years.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to derail this episode too much, but Jamie,
Speaker 5: have you ever read The Mysterious Benedict Society?
Speaker 1: No, I've heard that it's similar a.
Speaker 5: Great follow up to Series of Unfortunate Events. It's so fun.
Speaker 1: I'm doing a reread of them because I never listened
Speaker 1: to the audio books and they're all read by Tim Curry,
Speaker 1: and it's they're so good.
Speaker 3: Has Tim Curry ever played a vampire? Because he has
Speaker 3: so much vampire energy?
Speaker 7: This is a huge question that is really is it?
Speaker 7: You know, it kind of is vampire coded, but is
Speaker 7: obviously it's a clown. But he can be like he
Speaker 7: forms as your nightmare.
Speaker 6: You know, technically he's a demon, right he was?
Speaker 1: Okay? They say he was a vampire in The Worst Witch,
Speaker 1: which I think is a Mary Kay Nashley movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, Well, wandering his potential, I would say.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I don't know. I look up the image.
Speaker 1: I think he kind of kills it. Oh my god, wait,
Speaker 1: I need to said, I'm going to put this in
Speaker 1: the chat. He he's definitely played a vampire.
Speaker 4: Okay, this is exciting.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 3: My relationship with the movie is I had seen it
Speaker 3: many many years ago, I want to say, the early
Speaker 3: two thousands, long before I was really thinking or reading
Speaker 3: about queer reads of this movie. So I just didn't
Speaker 3: really think about it or it didn't really occur to
Speaker 3: me as like a queer text or like that there's
Speaker 3: like a queer subtext present in this movie. Because I
Speaker 3: also didn't really remember it before this rewatch. And then
Speaker 3: I started watching it again, I was like, oh, yep,
Speaker 3: there it is, I see it now right there. And
Speaker 3: then I just started the series last night, so I'm
Speaker 3: not very far into it. I'm like midway through episode four,
Speaker 3: but I can't wait to talk about the kind of
Speaker 3: adaptation changes and just the different things that the show
Speaker 3: does that the I would say movie adaptation fails to
Speaker 3: do or just kind of mishandles. So yeah, there's just
Speaker 3: so much to chat about. Wait, let me look at
Speaker 3: this picture.
Speaker 4: Picture's going nuts.
Speaker 6: It's fabulous.
Speaker 1: Oh whoa, yeah, like he I feel like probably he
Speaker 1: had that same thought at some point caate limb wher.
Speaker 1: He's like, why the hell hasn't anyone cast me as
Speaker 1: a vampire. I will do it for anyone, including Mary Kate.
Speaker 3: Nashurally, he's like, you don't even have to pay me
Speaker 3: my rate.
Speaker 4: I'll just do it for me sag minimum.
Speaker 5: Kind of perfect because you know nobody was telling him
Speaker 5: he couldn't do something on that side.
Speaker 6: He had free rate.
Speaker 7: The green screen is really good, though. I think it
Speaker 7: looks like we're actually outside at night. Like I don't
Speaker 7: think that there's any sort of tell that it was
Speaker 7: not shot on location, you know, so true.
Speaker 1: I don't know how everyone feels about the time. Cruise
Speaker 1: was like whatever, it's very nineteen ninety four casting. If
Speaker 1: I'm talking about people I think did a good job,
Speaker 1: I would be down to Kirsten Dunst and Antonio Banderis
Speaker 1: I think correct. But I was just I was looking
Speaker 1: at because I know Anne Rice was, and then she
Speaker 1: like walked to these comments back later and she's like, no,
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise was good because she probably feared the Church
Speaker 1: of Scientology. Honestly, if I was Anne Rice, I would
Speaker 1: be like, I don't think that She's like, actually, he
Speaker 1: did a good job. I think she's like, I don't
Speaker 1: wish to die. I'm putting that on wax. She's dead.
Speaker 1: We can't ask her, so it's the truth.
Speaker 4: But well, maybe she's a vampire. We don't know.
Speaker 1: It's if anyone is. But the people that were listed
Speaker 1: as potentially being cast for Lestat, like all of them
Speaker 1: were better ideas than Tom Cruise, John Malkovich, that would
Speaker 1: have been great. Jeremy Irons terrible person, would have been
Speaker 1: a good listat. It would have also been a good
Speaker 1: count all off, if we're being honest, Yo, Rightdala supposed
Speaker 1: to be scared. I just have it on the brain
Speaker 1: right now. I'm like why they always cast him as funny?
Speaker 1: He's scary anyways. Yeah, Tom Cruise is such a weird
Speaker 1: I mean, and he goes for it in the way
Speaker 1: that he's known too.
Speaker 4: That's why I like it.
Speaker 3: I will say, I don't hate his performance. And he's
Speaker 3: acting circles around Brad Pitt and Kirsten Duns is acting
Speaker 3: circles around both of them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Brad Pitt bad person, bad job, Tom Cruise,
Speaker 1: bad person, interesting job, Kirsten Dunn's great person, great job.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: I totally agree that we can give Tom Cruise all
Speaker 5: the credit for going for it. Because I think that
Speaker 5: he's honestly helped along by the fact that in the
Speaker 5: same scenes you have Brad Pitt, who is very much
Speaker 5: not going for it, and you're like.
Speaker 6: Well, I hate this. I also just I think.
Speaker 5: That the Cruise performance matches the over the top can
Speaker 5: be energy because this he moves through so much so
Speaker 5: quickly that like he has to make an impact in
Speaker 5: about an hour, and I mean he makes the damn impact.
Speaker 7: The first thirty with him are like my favorite part,
Speaker 7: just because it feels like it's bottling something so particular.
Speaker 7: And I think if you have someone of his status
Speaker 7: coming in because obviously he's such a big start at
Speaker 7: this point already, and he's delivering lines like do you
Speaker 7: still want this? Or have you tasted enough? I've drained
Speaker 7: you to the point of death. When you transition, the
Speaker 7: world becomes different. Like he's delivering all these like big
Speaker 7: vampire queer lines. And I think if you have someone
Speaker 7: like Cruise with his kind of like very fruity, you know, behavior,
Speaker 7: you have to like you buy into it, and you're like,
Speaker 7: I would also transition for Tom Cruise, this vampire, you know,
Speaker 7: because he has to have this greater than energy versus
Speaker 7: like if it was like a boring kind of maybe
Speaker 7: sexy but not like.
Speaker 4: Overwhelming, guy, would you buy into it? Would you know,
Speaker 4: become a vampire?
Speaker 1: No? I guess yeah. When you put it like that,
Speaker 1: it's like you are supposed to think. And also just
Speaker 1: like having listened to half of the book really fast,
Speaker 1: so again, scholar.
Speaker 4: You are scholar.
Speaker 1: I feel like you are supposed to get the feeling
Speaker 1: that like less that is scary, but also yeah, critically,
Speaker 1: he is also unhinged and unpredictable, and Tom Cruise in
Speaker 1: that frame is kind of.
Speaker 3: Exactly the right casting.
Speaker 1: Like actually, I know, I know, we have to recap.
Speaker 1: There is like a bizarre foreshadowing of Tom Cruise and
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey's history happening here where Oprah Winfrey saw an
Speaker 1: early screening of this movie and she left ten minutes
Speaker 1: in because she said, I believe there are forces of
Speaker 1: light and darkness in the world, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a contributor to the force of darkness. And
Speaker 1: we're like, wa, larious. There's plenty of like valid reasons
Speaker 1: to want to leave this movie, but Oprah not wanting
Speaker 1: to be allied with the forces of darkness I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure you're like friends with like Bill Gates,
Speaker 1: like you're fully out, you are kind of the you're
Speaker 1: inactive member of the force of Darkness. Anyways, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: liked that. She was just like, this movie is evil
Speaker 1: and I'm leaving.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be a part of it.
Speaker 5: For you.
Speaker 3: On that note, let's take a quick break and then
Speaker 3: we'll come back for the recap. And oh, we're back. Okay,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to do my best with this recap.
Speaker 3: I will place a content warning at the top here
Speaker 3: for suggestions of suicidal ideation as well as violence against women. Okay,
Speaker 3: So we meet Daniel Molloy played by Christian Slater. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's in a room with Louis played by Brad Pitt,
Speaker 3: about to interview Louis, and he's like, tell me about yourself,
Speaker 3: and Louie's like, I'm a vampire tih and Molloy doesn't
Speaker 3: believe him at first, but then.
Speaker 1: Already right at the top, it like, I feel like
Speaker 1: the fact that Brad Pitt appears in the present and
Speaker 1: the past just draws more attention to the fact that
Speaker 1: he just has a face that does not belong in
Speaker 1: the past. It's so distracting to see him in the past.
Speaker 1: He just doesn't whatever that thing is where it's just
Speaker 1: like some actors just don't make sense in period pieces,
Speaker 1: and he is one of them.
Speaker 3: He's one of them. Also, you're telling me he never
Speaker 3: updates his haircut in the two hundred years.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he cannot.
Speaker 3: Oh when you cut, your hair just grows back immediately.
Speaker 1: True nightmare, Like what if the day he became a vampire,
Speaker 1: you were like dirty, like you're just dirty forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you look like shit, or like.
Speaker 6: You just got of a terrible cut and you were
Speaker 6: waiting for it to grow back.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, then explain though the so when when Kirsen
Speaker 3: duns when Claudia at first her hair is like straggly
Speaker 3: and stringy and it's it's not cute, sorry to say.
Speaker 3: But then the second she becomes a vampire, now it's
Speaker 3: curly and lush and she's got these beautiful, lush curls.
Speaker 5: So like, I think the universe explanation is very Twilight,
Speaker 5: where it's like being a vampire just gets you the
Speaker 5: honest version of yourself or the most the kind of
Speaker 5: like most alluring, like attractive version of yourself.
Speaker 6: Because that's part of your way.
Speaker 3: That you that's one of your weapons deduce people.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, which makes the later Anne Rise Stephanie Meyer
Speaker 1: debacle all the more hilarious, where it's like, ladies, ladies, ladies,
Speaker 1: you are doing the same thing.
Speaker 6: Right right, It's all okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's horny vampires. Yeah, summer just Mormon.
Speaker 6: But there's space forout everybody, Okay.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so Molloy doesn't believe Louis at first that he's
Speaker 3: a vampire, but then Louis does some vampire tricks, he
Speaker 3: moves really fast, and then Malloy is like, okay, cool, cool, cool,
Speaker 3: I believe you.
Speaker 1: Now that's what I'm like at the Magic Castle, just like, Okay, no,
Speaker 1: I guess you're a magician.
Speaker 3: Okay, I believe you. And then Louis begins to tell
Speaker 3: his story. Basically, he's like, it's been eighty four years,
Speaker 3: except it's more like it's been two hundred years. We
Speaker 3: flash back to the late seventeen hundreds and we learned
Speaker 3: that Louis was an enslaver and he owned a plantation
Speaker 3: in Louisiana.
Speaker 5: It's the it's it's sae hard cut to him being
Speaker 5: like and I owned a plantation.
Speaker 1: It's you're like, oh, we will get to that, because
Speaker 1: it's it's weirdly like discussed more in the book, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I'm not going to accuse the
Speaker 1: book of having any sense of nuance, but it's at
Speaker 1: least addressed more clearly that the book is anti slavery,
Speaker 1: which the movie I don't think does an adequate job
Speaker 1: of even remotely I agree.
Speaker 3: So Louie is mourning the death of his wife and
Speaker 3: his child who passed away recently, and he's grief stricken
Speaker 3: and he wants to die himself. And this is when
Speaker 3: he meets Lastat played by Tom Cruise, a vampire who
Speaker 3: has been stalking Louis and who bites him and he's like,
Speaker 3: I'll give you the choice I never had to become
Speaker 3: a vampire and it'll be awesome actually, and Louis agrees,
Speaker 3: so Lestat turns him into a vampire. Which the lore
Speaker 3: here is that Lestat drains most of Louie's blood and
Speaker 3: then makes him drink some of Lastat's blood and that's
Speaker 3: how you become a vampire. We cut back to the
Speaker 3: present with this interview where Louie dispels some myths about vampires.
Speaker 3: He doesn't mind crucifixes, and the stake through the heart
Speaker 3: thing is nonsense. Though he does sleep in a coffin.
Speaker 1: And the son will kill him like and the sun.
Speaker 3: The sun will kill you, Like.
Speaker 1: Some stereotypes are true.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's one of the main tenants of the
Speaker 3: Bechdel casts. No, I'm kidding, But so we also learned
Speaker 3: that different vampires have different powers. For example, Lestat can
Speaker 3: read people's thoughts, and so we flash back again. Louie
Speaker 3: is trying to like get into the groove of being
Speaker 3: a vampire. Lestat moves in with him, and they're biting people.
Speaker 3: They're drinking their blood, although Louie refuses to kill anyone,
Speaker 3: so he survives mostly off of drinking animal blood. And
Speaker 3: it's like, Okay, someone read Twilight, Anne Rice plagiarism much Lastat,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, loves killing people, and he has
Speaker 3: an insatiable appetite. He prefers killing young women and girls,
Speaker 3: and like high society aristocrat types, especially ones who are
Speaker 3: evil and who do bad things. And so I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: dexter vibes sort of. But one night they go after
Speaker 3: this rich woman who had her husband murdered and then
Speaker 3: blamed an enslaved person for the murder. But even then
Speaker 3: Louis can't kill her, so Lestat is becoming kind of
Speaker 3: increasingly annoyed with Louise's refusal to kill people, and so
Speaker 3: he leaves. We then briefly meet a character named Yvette
Speaker 3: played by Sandy Way Newton, an enslaved person at Louise's plantation,
Speaker 3: and she's like, Hey, what's going on. Everyone is afraid
Speaker 3: of you and your freaky friend. You please ask your
Speaker 3: scary friend to leave. To get out of here. Louis
Speaker 3: bites her and kills her in I guess, a moment
Speaker 3: of weakness, but then he realizes what he's done and
Speaker 3: that this place is cursed, so he frees all the
Speaker 3: people he is enslaved, and then he burns down the plantation,
Speaker 3: presumably trying to end his own life in the process.
Speaker 3: But Lestat shows up again and saves him, and he's
Speaker 3: just like, this is what it is to be a vampire.
Speaker 3: You just gotta embrace it. So they moved to New
Speaker 3: Orleans together. Although Louis is still unwilling to kill anyone
Speaker 3: one night, Lestat pressures Louis into killing a woman, but
Speaker 3: again he refuses, and then he like runs away and
Speaker 3: on his little journey he finds a little girl, Claudia
Speaker 3: played by Kirsten Dunst, whose mother has just died of
Speaker 3: a plague of some kind. So Louis bites her, and
Speaker 3: then Lestat walks in just then and he's like.
Speaker 1: Whoooo laughing his you go girl, little ass off. M
Speaker 1: these guys, these guys, these guys.
Speaker 5: They're so silly. There's he canonically baby traps.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yes, you know the best way to fix a
Speaker 7: relationship is to have a baby or get married to
Speaker 7: have a child.
Speaker 4: You know, it fixes everything.
Speaker 1: My favorite letterbox trophew of this movie was like Louie
Speaker 1: says I'm leaving, and then Listat says I'm pregnant and
Speaker 1: it's yours, which is basically what he does. Yeah. God,
Speaker 1: they're just the whole movie improves in my mind one
Speaker 1: thousand percent when you know that it ends with stapping
Speaker 1: like what a fucking baby? Right, Like you're just like, yes,
Speaker 1: that's the coolest thing I've ever heard. I wish every
Speaker 1: book ended like that. I wish Twilight ended like that.
Speaker 1: It would have improved the whole series.
Speaker 6: This is one of my favorite eddings. Well we'll talk
Speaker 6: about it.
Speaker 1: When we get to it, but it's so awesome.
Speaker 6: It's one of my faves.
Speaker 3: Okay, So what happens basically is that Lestat turns Claudia
Speaker 3: into a vampire. Her hair gets so curly. She then
Speaker 3: immediately wants so much blood, and they take her in
Speaker 3: as their daughter. They like teach her how to be
Speaker 3: a vampire and how to feed on people. You know,
Speaker 3: just two gay vampire dads and their adopted child. She's
Speaker 3: very spoiled, and she's always killing her piano teachers and
Speaker 3: her dressmakers and basically anyone else who's around. Then many
Speaker 3: years past, obviously none of them have aged, and one
Speaker 3: day Claudia sees a naked woman through a window and
Speaker 3: she's like, I want to be like her and have
Speaker 3: boobs like that, and they're like, oops, sorry, your body
Speaker 3: will always be that of a child. And then Claudia
Speaker 3: is resentful for them turning her into a vampire and
Speaker 3: making her this devilish creature who will never grow up,
Speaker 3: and for taking her mother away from her. She especially
Speaker 3: hates Lastat for this, so she kills him by tricking
Speaker 3: him into drinking the blood of people who are already dead,
Speaker 3: which is like kind of poisonous to vampires, and then
Speaker 3: slitting his throat, or at least they think that she
Speaker 3: has killed Lastat, because one night after Louis and Claudia
Speaker 3: have I think they're either about to move to Europe
Speaker 3: or they have already moved to Europe, something, Lastat shows up.
Speaker 3: He's all decaying and gross and he's so mad, and
Speaker 3: Louis and Claudia set him on fire and escape, and
Speaker 3: now they're in Europe, and they spend many years traveling
Speaker 3: the world searching for other vampires, but they can't find
Speaker 3: any until it's eighteen seventy there in Paris, and then
Speaker 3: Louis finds this goofy little clown vampire doing a jig.
Speaker 3: He's doing some antics.
Speaker 1: It reminded me of that in Sync music video where
Speaker 1: they're all in the box. He's dance.
Speaker 6: He is doing the bye bye bye music video.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's in the bye bye bye box.
Speaker 4: You know, he's definitely in a bye box, if you
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of people in this movie are in
Speaker 1: the bye bye bye box.
Speaker 4: It's something weird to talk about.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, anyway, this vampire is name is Santiago and
Speaker 3: he's played by Stephen Ray, who I didn't recognize or
Speaker 3: realize I was him at first. I mostly know him
Speaker 3: from V for Vendetta, but anyway, he's there. But the
Speaker 3: more important vampire in this situation is his daddy, the
Speaker 3: leader of the Paris Vampire clan.
Speaker 1: He's actually the oldest vampire ever, oldest vampire.
Speaker 3: This is Armand, played by Antonio Benders.
Speaker 6: A truly special wig.
Speaker 3: He's wearing a wig, so Armand invites Louis and Claudia
Speaker 3: to his play, which is vampires as the actors pretending
Speaker 3: to be humans pretending to be vampires.
Speaker 1: I love when they're watching it and Claudia is like,
Speaker 1: it's so avant garde. He's like, oh, she's so right.
Speaker 3: This is art.
Speaker 6: It's dinner theater.
Speaker 4: I'm playing within a movie.
Speaker 3: It was a play that felt like a play it did.
Speaker 4: I like that.
Speaker 1: And sometimes when people say avant garde, they do just
Speaker 1: mean like not very good, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: also true.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: So then Armand shows Louis and Claudia around his Phantom
Speaker 3: of the opera, ass Underground Layer full of many vampires
Speaker 3: and Louis asks Armand, like, what are we? Who are we?
Speaker 3: Who's the original vampire? Because he still has all these
Speaker 3: questions about his identity, his vampire identity and what this
Speaker 3: all means. But Armand doesn't really answer him. But as
Speaker 3: far as he knows, he's the oldest living vampire at
Speaker 3: four hundred ish years old.
Speaker 1: Also, they're in Paris at this point, right, yes, so
Speaker 1: for what it's worth, I also made the Phantom of
Speaker 1: the Opera connection due to candles in a basement, and
Speaker 1: this would have been happening like around the same time
Speaker 1: that the Phantom would have been phantoming nearby, because the
Speaker 1: events of Phantom of the Opera were in the eighteen
Speaker 1: eighties and this is I believe the eighteen seventies, so
Speaker 1: he would have been lurking around. He could have been
Speaker 1: at that play.
Speaker 7: Fan fic idea crossover of the centuries.
Speaker 1: That meets Gerard Butler Phantom.
Speaker 4: Yes, I would pay money to actually watch this.
Speaker 6: Oh, I see it. I see it.
Speaker 5: And Christine and Louie can go be sad together. That's
Speaker 5: on a balcony somewhere.
Speaker 1: I could just go be the most bummer part of
Speaker 1: their respective movies.
Speaker 7: Right, No one really like likes. When they're back on screen.
Speaker 1: You're like, well, I guess they are the main character.
Speaker 1: Why do I hate them so much?
Speaker 3: Anyway, So at this underground Vampire Layer, Louie is thinking
Speaker 3: about how they may have actually wronged Listat by killing him,
Speaker 3: because oh what if he's just like a product of
Speaker 3: his circumstances. And then the vampire Santiago, who can read
Speaker 3: people's thoughts, is like, just so you know, the only
Speaker 3: crime a vampire can commit is killing another vampire, and
Speaker 3: Louis is like, oh, okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Oh I love their faces.
Speaker 5: We're like, oh, so we committed the crime and you
Speaker 5: can read our minds.
Speaker 6: That's really great.
Speaker 1: Oh that's actually good because I haven't done that, so.
Speaker 6: Definitely have it.
Speaker 3: So now Claudia is worried that Louie is going to
Speaker 3: leave her to like hang out with Armand, especially because
Speaker 3: Louis thinks that Armand could be the teacher that Lestat
Speaker 3: never was to him. So he's like very allured by
Speaker 3: Armand And we can talk about the adaptation difference from
Speaker 3: the book to the movie in a bid but he
Speaker 3: he's like very into Armand. But he goes home to Claudia,
Speaker 3: and Claudia has a woman there, Madeline, who wants to
Speaker 3: become a vampire, and Claudia wants her as her kind
Speaker 3: of like companion slash mother figure, so Louis does it.
Speaker 3: He turns her into a vampire, but just then they
Speaker 3: are all kidnapped by Armand's vampire minions. They steal Louis
Speaker 3: in a coffin, and then they put Claudia in Madeline
Speaker 3: in a like dungeon of sorts where they will be
Speaker 3: exposed to sunlight, and that happens. They burn to a
Speaker 3: crisp They die.
Speaker 1: Now Armand, who.
Speaker 3: Didn't realize that his minions were doing this, he rescues Louis,
Speaker 3: who then enacts revenge on Santiago and the other minions,
Speaker 3: and Armand still wants Louis to join him, but Louis
Speaker 3: declines because he still has this like conscience that he's
Speaker 3: had throughout the entire movie of Oh, it's so wrong
Speaker 3: that we kill people and blah blah blah, and Armand
Speaker 3: has no such conscience. So Louis leaves, but not before
Speaker 3: they almost kiss each other on the lips. Close then
Speaker 3: Louie wanders around for like a century or so, grieving
Speaker 3: the death of Claudia, and then he returns to the US.
Speaker 3: He becomes a huge film buff.
Speaker 1: Kind of reminded me of the end of Babylon, where
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, they're just using clips. They're just using clips.
Speaker 6: He discovers the power of cinema.
Speaker 1: That's what happens when you get a David Geffen budget.
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, just put in a clip from the movie.
Speaker 1: You got the money.
Speaker 3: Superman.
Speaker 4: Sure, Avatar should have been in there.
Speaker 3: Avatar should have been in there.
Speaker 5: No, gone with the Wind, which is a little surprising,
Speaker 5: could remind him of his roots.
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, but they just had the Babylon approach.
Speaker 1: So ye. It was kind of like, oh, m okay,
Speaker 1: I'm god sure. Kind of fun.
Speaker 3: Anyway, one night in New Orleans, Louis catches the scent
Speaker 3: of a vampire and he follows it into an abandoned
Speaker 3: probably plantation where Lestat has been squatting for who knows
Speaker 3: how long, you know, rotting, still looking like shit. He
Speaker 3: somehow didn't die after being burned and all the other
Speaker 3: things that they did to him. You know, he's been
Speaker 3: living off of rats the way Louis used to. And uh,
Speaker 3: Lestat is hopeful that he and Louis will be together again,
Speaker 3: but Louis is like, na, dude, bye, And then we
Speaker 3: cut back to the present with the interview with Christian Slater,
Speaker 3: and Louis is like, I don't know what happened to Listad.
Speaker 3: I never saw him again, and Christian Slater's like, well,
Speaker 3: that's a terrible ending. Come up with something better. He's
Speaker 3: also just like mesmerized by the idea of like being
Speaker 3: a vampire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And also it is like a lot is very
Speaker 1: audacious of Christian Slater at the end of this multiple
Speaker 1: hour story to be like, so what's the angle? You're like,
Speaker 1: shut up, like what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: And Louis is like, have you not been listening? I
Speaker 3: just told you how like cursed of a life this is.
Speaker 3: And then he disappears. So Christian Slater goes chasing after
Speaker 3: him because he's just so obsessed with vampires now. But
Speaker 3: guess who catches up with Christian Slater. It's Lastat, who
Speaker 3: is still looking like shit until he bites and drinks
Speaker 3: from Christian Slater, which like revitalizes Lestat and he's like,
Speaker 3: I'm going to give you the choice I never had,
Speaker 3: which is again exactly what he said to Louis two
Speaker 3: hundred years earlier, but.
Speaker 1: Not before calling Louis annoying as shit. And then it
Speaker 1: sort of like ends like a CSI Miami style or
Speaker 1: it's like this, Yes.
Speaker 6: That's a sympathy for the devil.
Speaker 4: A cover, right, It's great.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh god, is he still whining about stuff?
Speaker 3: I had to listen to this for two hundred years.
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah. And then he presumably turns Christian Slater
Speaker 3: into a vampire.
Speaker 4: Yes, the end.
Speaker 3: So that's the movie. Let's take another quick break and
Speaker 3: we'll come back for the discussion.
Speaker 1: And we're back.
Speaker 6: What a recap?
Speaker 3: Oh thank you?
Speaker 4: I did my best.
Speaker 1: Where to begin?
Speaker 7: I feel like it's I have a quick thing on
Speaker 7: Christian Slater just right up top.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 7: My read is that he's so you know, Anne Rice
Speaker 7: lived in San Francisco growing up, lived in the Castro,
Speaker 7: lived in the Hate during like the Summer of Love.
Speaker 4: So she's like surrounded.
Speaker 7: By gay men basically, and her son obviously is gay.
Speaker 7: My read on Christian Slater is that he's literally cruising
Speaker 7: for like a vampire or a guy, and he ends
Speaker 7: up like with Brad Pitt, in this it becomes because
Speaker 7: like in the end, he's so in love with him,
Speaker 7: and the like idea of vampiresm that I'm like, oh,
Speaker 7: you got a taste of like what you wanted and
Speaker 7: now you're like, yeah, give.
Speaker 4: Me the whole thing.
Speaker 7: So my like macro arc is that he's like cruising
Speaker 7: for his first time and ends up with like either
Speaker 7: A a vampire or b is just like a gay
Speaker 7: man for a hookup.
Speaker 4: But that's just was my read and why not.
Speaker 6: Yes, exactly, why not both?
Speaker 5: I agree because at the end, he doesn't just want vampirism.
Speaker 5: He wants to become Louise companion, and louis like ultimate
Speaker 5: curse is that everyone who he meets falls in love
Speaker 5: with him for some reason must be the baby Blues,
Speaker 5: and he doesn't want to be with any of them
Speaker 5: because he's too MOPy. And every single person is like,
Speaker 5: I would give you everything if you would come and
Speaker 5: be my companion, and he's always just like, no, I
Speaker 5: can't because reasons. And I think it's it adds a
Speaker 5: really interesting like thematic layer to the whole movie because
Speaker 5: it happens over and over again. It's the idea that
Speaker 5: he's constantly running from himself and he shouldn't be because
Speaker 5: he's never going to escape it, and that like his
Speaker 5: self loathing is all tied up in being a vampire,
Speaker 5: i e.
Speaker 6: Being queer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yes, so yeah, should we kind of start
Speaker 3: there as far as the queer readings of this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when it makes sense to go through like the
Speaker 1: different adaptations and like how overt things, because I feel
Speaker 1: like the movie, to my understanding, is the least gay
Speaker 1: version of this story. I think, so the book one
Speaker 1: of the major differences. And I'm sort of just getting
Speaker 1: into this part. But Armand's character is way way bigger.
Speaker 1: In the book. He and Louis are in a relationship
Speaker 1: for decades. They love each other. It is like overtly
Speaker 1: a queer relationship, and they like have I mean they
Speaker 1: they sound like a drag honestly, but they're very in love.
Speaker 1: They're like always talking about like they're talking about philosophy,
Speaker 1: they're talking about the meaning of eternal life. They're you know,
Speaker 1: they're like traveling the world together. They're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what it all means. And so there are like
Speaker 1: overt protracted relationships in the book, which came out in yeah,
Speaker 1: seventy six.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that as far as like our discussion goes,
Speaker 3: that's I think the biggest adaptation change which was obviously
Speaker 3: left out of the movie. And when Anne Rice was
Speaker 3: writing the screenplay for this, she was very hyper aware
Speaker 3: of homophobia present everywhere and including Hollywood. So at one
Speaker 3: point in the development of the script, she changed Louie
Speaker 3: to be a woman in order to kind of like
Speaker 3: heterosexualize the relationship between that character and Lestat, because in
Speaker 3: the movie, that's the relationship that gets most of the
Speaker 3: screen time, and there are obviously like many queer under
Speaker 3: if not overtones in that relationship, and so she was like, oh,
Speaker 3: this movie's not going to get made if like straight
Speaker 3: audiences are watching this and perceiving this, and you know,
Speaker 3: Hollywood producers are perceiving this. So she considered straight washing
Speaker 3: her own story, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: like didn't end up doing it, and then the movie
Speaker 3: was made the way it was, portraying that relationship the
Speaker 3: way that it is. And I think at the time,
Speaker 3: in you know, the mid nineties, when this came out,
Speaker 3: I don't know if people were just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's just how vampires be. They're just sort of like
Speaker 3: sucking on each.
Speaker 7: Other and like stuff flying to the sky with an
Speaker 7: orgasmic face as they change into a vampire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like a lot of straight audiences didn't
Speaker 3: really pick up on those, like those tones, but obviously
Speaker 3: queer audiences did.
Speaker 1: And I like, if you can't pick up on it,
Speaker 1: that's on you.
Speaker 4: So that's right there.
Speaker 1: I was, I would say, surprised at how queer this
Speaker 1: movie did get because I just wasn't but I wasn't
Speaker 1: aware before. Yeah, doing their research for this episode that
Speaker 1: Ann Rice said considered straight washing her story, which especially
Speaker 1: with like, you know, David Evan being one of the
Speaker 1: most prominent gay men in the world. He's a billionaire.
Speaker 1: We don't even like him. He did make Shrek possible.
Speaker 6: He did do that.
Speaker 4: He made Shrek and Little Shop of warr If possible,
Speaker 4: and like he did, do you get a pass for that?
Speaker 4: You're a billionaire, but you made.
Speaker 1: Nine point one billion Shortan so much money. But but
Speaker 1: you know, like he is like one of the I
Speaker 1: would assume, most powerful gay men in the world, and
Speaker 1: even he is not able to you know, get the
Speaker 1: armand you know, even having him committing I mean, he's
Speaker 1: very much the reason that this movie had the budget
Speaker 1: it did because vampire movies were not, you know, really
Speaker 1: popping off at all of this time. But this movie
Speaker 1: had a seventy million dollar budget, of which Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: got ten million of which is absurd. He's not even
Speaker 1: in the whole movie, but whatever. Yeah, they could have
Speaker 1: hired Jeremy Irons for twelve dollars and he would have
Speaker 1: done it. But yeah, the fact that even like that
Speaker 1: amount of power and money and influence cannot get a
Speaker 1: explicit gay relationship into the story feels very nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 5: It's pretty wild to me that. Well, there's kind of
Speaker 5: the famous Norm MacDonald review of Interview with the Vampire,
Speaker 5: which is currently my Twitter header, which says, here's my review,
Speaker 5: not gay enough. And I agree that it's not gay enough.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, it is very surprising how
Speaker 5: gay it is given this was such a blockbuster, is
Speaker 5: starring two of the biggest stars in the world at
Speaker 5: the time. Is this kind of big, sweeping, epic story
Speaker 5: like all of the people that Anne Rice suggested for
Speaker 5: lestatt Allah, the Jeremy Irons of the world.
Speaker 6: Like you said, Jamie, she could have gone them for
Speaker 6: twelve dollars.
Speaker 5: But this, like the cruise pit casting puts such a
Speaker 5: spotlight on this movie that makes it both more impressive
Speaker 5: and also more frustrating that it's not explicit.
Speaker 6: It's so close to be explicit.
Speaker 5: Like we said, he canonically baby traps this guy and
Speaker 5: says Louis was gonna leave us, and now he's not.
Speaker 7: It Louis beautiful so many times, I mean Claudia.
Speaker 6: Calls like many times the.
Speaker 7: Claudia armand thing where she tells Louis armand wants you
Speaker 7: as you want him, and there's just so many like
Speaker 7: longing glances between them. It's impossible to watch this movie
Speaker 7: and think that it's not queer. Right, It's just so textual.
Speaker 1: Right, it is textual. It's so because it's it's textual,
Speaker 1: like visually, it's textual script and I'm just like amazed
Speaker 1: that it exists in the way that it does.
Speaker 7: She's just talked about it so much too, you know,
Speaker 7: I think like since her son came out, she's obviously
Speaker 7: been more outspoken about it, but she's talked about how
Speaker 7: it is gay allegory and how like honor she is
Speaker 7: by that, and like the quote that like I think
Speaker 7: rings the most truth or like so funny to me,
Speaker 7: is like it's just interesting. She goes, I think I
Speaker 7: have a gay sensibility, and I feel like I'm gay
Speaker 7: because I've always transcended gender and I've always seen love
Speaker 7: as transcending gender. And she, I think just has such
Speaker 7: a queer sensibility. Whether or not that's because just how
Speaker 7: she grew up where she was, whether or not it's
Speaker 7: her son's influence on her, whether or not it's herself
Speaker 7: that she maybe like never got to express, but like
Speaker 7: there is such a clear queerness to how she writes everyone,
Speaker 7: and especially like queer men, which I think is super fascinating,
Speaker 7: especially coming from like someone who was identifying as a woman.
Speaker 3: So right, yeah, you know, I have some kind of
Speaker 3: I guess questions I'd like to pose because I was
Speaker 3: reading this as like obviously, you know, seeing the these two
Speaker 3: handsome men sucking on each other and you know, rolling
Speaker 3: around together and all that stuff. But then more from
Speaker 3: like an allegorical point of view, I think you could
Speaker 3: read this as like, oh, this is a metaphor for
Speaker 3: Louis realizing he's gay or bisexual or queer in some
Speaker 3: manner and struggling to accept this about himself and having
Speaker 3: a hard time like him refusing to embrace his vampire
Speaker 3: ways and drink people's blood. I feel like could be
Speaker 3: seen as like kind of a metaphor for someone struggling
Speaker 3: to accept their sexuality and you have this other character
Speaker 3: who has like fully embraced it and is like, just
Speaker 3: do it. This is what this is the life.
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 3: But I also find it interesting that that character, Lestat
Speaker 3: is an abuser. He's a manipulator, he's an enabler. You know,
Speaker 3: he's like, he's not a good partner.
Speaker 1: He's a murderer. He's a murderer.
Speaker 3: So I'm just like, I wish that if that was
Speaker 3: like kind of an intentional allegory on Anne Riis's part,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if it is, but if it was intentional,
Speaker 3: I'm just like, well, you know, that's not great that
Speaker 3: that's like the central relationship that you know, this person
Speaker 3: who's like helping or encouraging this character to embrace who
Speaker 3: he really is is also someone who is extremely manipulative.
Speaker 3: Not to say that that can't and doesn't happen, because
Speaker 3: of course it does, and I'm sure that's a familiar
Speaker 3: experience and relationship dynamic for many people, but because there
Speaker 3: was so little queer representation in movies at this time,
Speaker 3: either overt or more coded, it would have been nice
Speaker 3: to see a healthier relationship dynamic on screen, especially since
Speaker 3: the other queer relationship in the book between Louis and
Speaker 3: Armand is basically completely erased from the movie. Also, I
Speaker 3: was reading different interpretations of this movie that sort of
Speaker 3: treats vampurism as an allegory for HIV and AIDS, oh
Speaker 3: always in a way that of course demonizes queerness and
Speaker 3: demonizes HIV and AIDS, And I feel like that's a
Speaker 3: totally fair interpretation of that. Again, the movie is based
Speaker 3: on source material that was published before and also, like
Speaker 3: vampire Law in general, existed long before this. But like,
Speaker 3: I can see that as like a read of like I.
Speaker 1: Can see that as a read of the movie.
Speaker 3: But yeah, right, yeah, So I don't know if I
Speaker 3: actually posed a question that I said I was going
Speaker 3: to it at that point, but I just wanted to
Speaker 3: share some of my thoughts around.
Speaker 5: That it's interesting to think about. I won't talk about
Speaker 5: the show too much because I do think it's very
Speaker 5: much its own thing, but I think in the film
Speaker 5: armand is sort of meant to be the tethered version
Speaker 5: of Lestott.
Speaker 6: He's the better version of Lustot.
Speaker 5: He's the more kind of like teachable, interested party who
Speaker 5: could be with Louis, but it eventually doesn't work out
Speaker 5: because Louis like never can get over the death of Claudia.
Speaker 5: I think where the show really takes the themes that
Speaker 5: you pose, Caitlin and makes them significantly, I think, more
Speaker 5: layered and more interesting and obviously they have more time,
Speaker 5: is that Louis is canonically a gay man and Lestott
Speaker 5: is canonically I think he describes himself as non discriminatory,
Speaker 5: like he's canonically by a slash pan sexual. He's pan
Speaker 5: and that is something that gets brought up and is
Speaker 5: basically like played back and forth between them. Is that
Speaker 5: one of the main reasons that Louis is staying with
Speaker 5: Lestott is because he knows that it's pretty rare that
Speaker 5: he's going to be able to find a relationship with
Speaker 5: another man where the other man is fine with not
Speaker 5: hiding it and how important that is to him. And
Speaker 5: I think they're sort of shades of that of the movie.
Speaker 5: I mean, they do live together, they move in together,
Speaker 5: everyone thinks of them as an item of platonic or not.
Speaker 1: They're raising a child.
Speaker 6: They're raising a child together.
Speaker 5: I love that scene where they're trying, God, they're having
Speaker 5: Claudia try on dresses, and they're just like running around
Speaker 5: with all the fabric and the lights and the plants,
Speaker 5: like they're living their best lives. But I think that
Speaker 5: that sort of that sort of softens the read. In
Speaker 5: my opinion is that like it starts out as a
Speaker 5: usually beneficial relationship that descends into a very toxic, abusive relationship,
Speaker 5: but that at the beginning they do both give something
Speaker 5: to each other that the other one that they can't
Speaker 5: have alone.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: A couple of other things I wanted to point out
Speaker 3: about the series versus the movie, at least is in
Speaker 3: the series, the Louis character is black played by Jacob Anderson,
Speaker 3: and Lestat turns him into a vampire in nineteen ten Louisiana.
Speaker 3: So the show explores a lot of themes surrounding race
Speaker 3: and racism during Jim Crow era South in a way
Speaker 3: that I think is a smart update from the way
Speaker 3: the movie handles huge enslaved people and race in that regard,
Speaker 3: because I mean, just shout out to Sandy Way Newton,
Speaker 3: who plays Yvette and is credited in such a way
Speaker 3: that I thought she was going to be a much
Speaker 3: more significant character. But she's only in two quick scenes
Speaker 3: and then she's killed, and then she's killed, and before that,
Speaker 3: it's like a portrayal of an enslaved person who seems
Speaker 3: to like love her enslaver and is concerned about his
Speaker 3: well being. And then he she's the first person that
Speaker 3: he kills. I believe because prior to that he's like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to kill anybody.
Speaker 1: That was pretty despicable. The way that the movie frames
Speaker 1: race in general, like there's it's I would guess they
Speaker 1: were going for ambiguity, which feels so and that is
Speaker 1: not successful either, because all of the enslaved characters are
Speaker 1: presented as like we like Brad Pitt, You're like, there's
Speaker 1: no one who has actually characterized. This is also true
Speaker 1: of the book. We have no indication in the present
Speaker 1: or the past that any of the white characters or
Speaker 1: any of the vampires have any issue. Like it's just
Speaker 1: presented very matter of factly in a way that feels
Speaker 1: just like deeply gross and unnecessary. Obviously, you cannot make
Speaker 1: a movie or any work of fiction in this place,
Speaker 1: in this time that doesn't acknowledge slavery. But it's so
Speaker 1: extraordinarily poorly that in the movie, Like when I was
Speaker 1: reading the book, the fact that there there was like
Speaker 1: a passage where Louis basically says I was wrong to
Speaker 1: have He never even says he was wrong to have
Speaker 1: enslaved people. He's just like I was wrong to have
Speaker 1: underestimated enslaved people's intelligence. Like that's as close as you
Speaker 1: get to an outright condemnation of slavery. And there's I
Speaker 1: don't know the way that this movie both presents slavery
Speaker 1: in some of the most stereotypically harmful ways that you
Speaker 1: could draw a direct line back to Gone with the Wind.
Speaker 1: And this also reminds me, hasn't anyone have ever seen?
Speaker 1: There is a really great video essay from Princess Weeks
Speaker 1: about Confederacy vampires.
Speaker 6: Yes, also I love Princess Weeks so much.
Speaker 1: He's fan.
Speaker 5: It is an excellent video because why is it so pervasive?
Speaker 1: It's really Yeah, we'll in the description it's I've rewatched it.
Speaker 5: I think it's it's True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Twilight. Yes,
Speaker 5: you can group this if you're talking about the Confederacy
Speaker 5: as not like the actual Confederacy army, but like so interesting.
Speaker 1: All of these vampire franchises feature vampires who are sympathetic,
Speaker 1: lovable characters who are white vampires who fought for the
Speaker 1: South in the Civil War. It is a wild through line,
Speaker 1: and Princess in rewatching this video sort of speculates that
Speaker 1: at least some of this has to do with the
Speaker 1: popularity of Interview with the Vampire, and she includes the
Speaker 1: same passage that I'm talking about, where you know, the
Speaker 1: absolute barest minimum is done by Anne Rice in text
Speaker 1: to be like, well, slavery was bad, obviously, and Louis
Speaker 1: knows that now, but that's it, and you know, then
Speaker 1: goes on to make the argument that future vampire adaptations
Speaker 1: did even less and very much presented like Jasper Cullen
Speaker 1: bravely fought for the South, you know, in the Twilight franchise,
Speaker 1: and so that future adaptations got even more regressive. It
Speaker 1: is a very fucked up and bizarrely consistent trope that
Speaker 1: appears in vampire media of at least the last fifty years,
Speaker 1: and it seems to at least have some roots here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like this. I'm glad that the series has made
Speaker 1: serious changes and changes also has changed the time period
Speaker 1: that it's taking place in pretty significantly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it brings out the themes in such a
Speaker 5: more interesting way. Like similarly, the Louis character. He finds
Speaker 5: this newfound power in being a vampire, but also still feels,
Speaker 5: of course like the same imbalance of power in Jim
Speaker 5: Crow New Orleans, with him still being a black man,
Speaker 5: but then has the power to overpower people that are
Speaker 5: being racist to him, but also can't give away the
Speaker 5: fact that he's a vampire. It just makes it so
Speaker 5: much more complicated and makes his kind of like sad
Speaker 5: boy demeanor what's more textured and layered than this movie,
Speaker 5: because I think this movie does dirty by the character
Speaker 5: of Louis, not necessarily by like Brad Pitt, but like
Speaker 5: by his character because he's who we got, He's who
Speaker 5: we got to tether ourselves to. I mean, as a result,
Speaker 5: I think that Kirsten Dunst is unquestionably the standout performance
Speaker 5: of the film. And I almost can't even watch the
Speaker 5: scene where she gets burned to Chris because I love
Speaker 5: her so much and I think that she's like the
Speaker 5: best character in the movie, and she's probably will of course,
Speaker 5: she has the advantage of being a child, so we
Speaker 5: let her show tantrums and not understand what's happening. But
Speaker 5: she's the one who I'm like, I feel I feel
Speaker 5: like you're really really dimensional.
Speaker 4: She's like kind of the most nuanced to her as well.
Speaker 7: It's like, even though she is a baby girl, she
Speaker 7: does like love killing and she loves murdering, and I
Speaker 7: think that's puts a fun dynamic because you have Lestat
Speaker 7: who is even a little bit like Simmere down like
Speaker 7: you're going too far, and that kind of interplay there
Speaker 7: is really fun. But then she has the more close
Speaker 7: tether to Brad Pitt as a father, So like the
Speaker 7: intersection there is interesting, like the tug of war at
Speaker 7: her as a character.
Speaker 5: Brad Head has that line where it's like I saw
Speaker 5: her as a daughter, but Lstat saw her as a pupil, right,
Speaker 5: but that she also doesn't want to be thought of
Speaker 5: as a child. The age thing is interesting because I
Speaker 5: think in the book she's really young.
Speaker 1: She's like five vibe.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so she is a demon toddler and in the
Speaker 5: terrifying in the show, I would soon because they don't
Speaker 5: want to cast someone who's under eighteen. She's probably like fifteen, fourteen, fifteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they age her up in the show. They cast
Speaker 3: an actor who's a teenager, although she's kind of acting
Speaker 3: more like a ten year old, So I don't know
Speaker 3: if they're like trying to convince the audience that she's ten,
Speaker 3: the way that Little Women tried to convince us that
Speaker 3: Florence Pugh is twelve.
Speaker 4: But holding a sign.
Speaker 3: Twelve I'm twelve saying there was I was getting really
Speaker 3: nervous about the relationship between Claudia and her two father
Speaker 3: figures where I was like, oh, no, are they going
Speaker 3: to start? Is this movie going to start? Because I
Speaker 3: again I didn't really remember much about it, but I
Speaker 3: was like, are they going to start to suggest that
Speaker 3: like they're like grooming her to be their lover or
Speaker 3: is there going to be some really disgusting, like child
Speaker 3: sex abuse kind of thing happening. And there is a
Speaker 3: moment where Armand is like, oh, Claudia is your lover, right, Louie,
Speaker 3: and He's like, no, she's my daughter.
Speaker 1: Well, but also Kirsten Dunst kisses Brad Pitt on the
Speaker 1: Lifts as an eleven year old in this movie, which
Speaker 1: she later took severe public issue with and a lot
Speaker 1: of people gave her shit about. But there was I
Speaker 1: was going back and watching the press tour, which is
Speaker 1: like normal to do.
Speaker 6: But yeah, I do think it's normal to do.
Speaker 5: I think it's so odd because I think that, like
Speaker 5: I would interpret that as like a kind of just
Speaker 5: fatherly kiss, but then it that's not how AWAYS interpreted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I would. I would say I do
Speaker 1: think that. Maybe it's like because the book also seems
Speaker 1: to be playing on what the movie is playing less on,
Speaker 1: and I think smartly so. But like in the book,
Speaker 1: he like Louie is like I love her like a
Speaker 1: daughter and I'm in love with her. It's leaning into that,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't, to my not fifty four
Speaker 1: percent of the way into the book at one point
Speaker 1: nine speed, there is no it's it's all coded as
Speaker 1: an emotional attachment and it's not physical, thankfully, but that
Speaker 1: is that's not shied away from that. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: what is this relationship? Because I think and the book
Speaker 1: really you know, reminds you, well, actually she's been alive
Speaker 1: for sixty five years. Anyways, I want to just shout
Speaker 1: out the Yeah, the Kirsten Dunst interviews, because I watched
Speaker 1: like a lot of the original press run for this movie,
Speaker 1: and even like as a kid, like they were like,
Speaker 1: what was your favorite part? And she's like killing people
Speaker 1: and they're like, what's your wan his favorite part? And
Speaker 1: she was like kissing Brad Pit. But she she said,
Speaker 1: I hated the kiss so much because Brad was like
Speaker 1: my older brother on set, and it's like kissing your brother.
Speaker 1: It's weird because he's thirty one and I had to
Speaker 1: kiss him on the lips, so it was gross and
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, don't make an eleven year lad do that.
Speaker 1: Don't do that, And which was like further made weird
Speaker 1: in on the press tour because everyone she said that
Speaker 1: to as a twelve year old was like, you should
Speaker 1: love kissing Brad Pitt. She was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: To her credit, she was like, well I don't because
Speaker 1: I'm twelve, and they were like good. Oh.
Speaker 6: People were so weird to her on this press stur What.
Speaker 7: A horrible time for press conferences like that era too,
Speaker 7: specifically is like the nineties through early two thousands of
Speaker 7: people's views on like what they can and shouldn't say
Speaker 7: in press stuff is just.
Speaker 5: Kids, especially child Yeah, I feel like Natalie Portman went
Speaker 5: through it a lot during Phantom Menace and I.
Speaker 6: H yeah, even earlier.
Speaker 7: Yeah, even with it's interesting with the Claudia too, because
Speaker 7: she is so clearly based in like An talked about
Speaker 7: it being based on the death of her daughter, and
Speaker 7: like the book originated as like a form of grieving
Speaker 7: the loss of.
Speaker 1: Her daughter, who died of a blood related disease, right,
Speaker 1: So it's.
Speaker 7: Like, it's just so interesting that the intricacies around the
Speaker 7: character with regards to that, when you know that it
Speaker 7: is basically a stand in for her own child, just
Speaker 7: an interesting kind of thing to write to have like
Speaker 7: the child then be you know, bloodthirsty.
Speaker 1: That's why I was expected, like when Claudia was introduced,
Speaker 1: to have a lot more to say critically about that character.
Speaker 1: But it's just like, I don't know. I I think
Speaker 1: in general, do not have a child kiss an adult
Speaker 1: man on the mouth in a movie is an easy
Speaker 1: and correct criticism to make of any movie, particularly if
Speaker 1: that kiss is supposed to be ambiguous gross, right, But
Speaker 1: as far as like I just don't feel Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't really feel comfortable critiquing Anne Rice is writing there
Speaker 1: because it's just so deeply personal to her own life
Speaker 1: and like her sorting shit out that Yeah. Especially yeah,
Speaker 1: because in the book that's why Claudia's is five years old,
Speaker 1: because her daughter was five years old, and so it's
Speaker 1: so personal that I just, you know, I can. I
Speaker 1: can criticize Anne Rise all day for making a sympathetic
Speaker 1: planation owner her protagonist, but as far as Claudia goes,
Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, I I have no comment. That
Speaker 1: was her her processing one of the most traumatic things
Speaker 1: I can imagine going through.
Speaker 5: I'm so fascinated by the character of Claudia. I love
Speaker 5: her as a character because, like I mentioned, you forgive
Speaker 5: a lot of the instincts that she has because she's
Speaker 5: eternally trapped in this like arrested development adolescence.
Speaker 6: But I also love.
Speaker 5: How as her mind grows and she becomes like a
Speaker 5: full adult mentally, she understands Lestatt and Louis arguably better
Speaker 5: than they understand each other for themselves. When she brings
Speaker 5: Madeline to Louis, I had completely forgotten it, and I
Speaker 5: thought that she was like, here, you need a new companion.
Speaker 5: So I brought you this adult woman so that we
Speaker 5: can be a family again. And instead she like, listen, man,
Speaker 5: I know you're gonna run away with armand so if
Speaker 5: you could make me a new mother figure but for you,
Speaker 5: or run off with your new man, I would appreciate that.
Speaker 7: And like, Brad can't get into turning this woman. Like
Speaker 7: even when he does, you read on his face that
Speaker 7: this is not an enjoyable experience, whereas everything with Lestat
Speaker 7: or our Mond is much more entertaining for him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, erotic even.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like, Eh, this lady has cooties. Yes, I
Speaker 3: don't want to touch her.
Speaker 7: I'm hundreds of years old and I still think girls
Speaker 7: they have cooties.
Speaker 6: He does not.
Speaker 5: Other than the scene that we discussed, he's very much
Speaker 5: not interested in women at all. Lestott is the one
Speaker 5: who's like, let's meet up with some New Orleans sex
Speaker 5: workers and we can murder them because no one will
Speaker 5: know or care.
Speaker 3: I did want to talk about like who the victims
Speaker 3: often are? Oh yeah, Listat and kind of by proxy,
Speaker 3: Louis because it's mostly women, many of whom are Black women,
Speaker 3: many of whom are sex workers. Their deaths are often
Speaker 3: very sexualized. It kind of the movie frames like, wow,
Speaker 3: look how sensual it is when they murder these women.
Speaker 3: And I mean, I'm fine with the part where they
Speaker 3: target that rich woman who had someone else kill her
Speaker 3: husband and then she blamed it on an enslaved black person,
Speaker 3: and then it's implied that the enslaved person was killed
Speaker 3: because of it. Do the thing where you kill other
Speaker 3: bad people. But the movie is like very uncritical of
Speaker 3: any time they are targeting innocent black women, innocent sex workers.
Speaker 6: Well, I guess etc.
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I think I wish that if
Speaker 1: we had seen all of these highly sexualized killings, we
Speaker 1: had seen it across the board, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: because like, yeah, because it's not like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I can't I can't safely say like I wish they
Speaker 1: killed less people. I just wish they killed a wider
Speaker 1: variety of people, because yeah, it did feel pointed that
Speaker 1: there it was hyper fixated on women, specifically poor women
Speaker 1: and often black women.
Speaker 6: There's the one golden youth who he kills. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 6: but it's not the same.
Speaker 1: It just feels like I think in the book and
Speaker 1: I don't it was like it felt like it was
Speaker 1: made explicit that listat was evil and targeting people that
Speaker 1: he found vulnerable and that was why he was choosing
Speaker 1: his victims in the way that he was, And it
Speaker 1: was at least written that it was like, and this
Speaker 1: is a horrible thing that he's doing by specifically targeting
Speaker 1: the most vulnerable people, he can find people he perceives
Speaker 1: as people who will not be missed by society, and
Speaker 1: then he would let himself have an aristocrat, an aristocrat,
Speaker 1: an aristocrat, So.
Speaker 3: May okay, Disney movie Alert.
Speaker 1: We could have the little kitten from the Aristicats as
Speaker 1: a treat, but like an aristocrat would be a treat
Speaker 1: because that would pose a higher risk of exposure for
Speaker 1: them in the movie, that's not made it clear at all,
Speaker 1: and it's made more seen as just like a buffet
Speaker 1: of vulnerable people that the camera is highly eroticizing. And
Speaker 1: it's just like, if you're going to go for I
Speaker 1: feel like, if you're going to go for erotic kills
Speaker 1: in your movie, you cannot focus specifically on historically marginalized people,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, not unless there's you know, active commentary being
Speaker 3: made about those power dynamics, which this movie isn't making.
Speaker 7: I mean, there's a lot to you could also read
Speaker 7: into it too. It's like when you have two gay
Speaker 7: men at the center, there's the intersection of you know,
Speaker 7: the gay male, you know, internalized misogyny or you know,
Speaker 7: like the interplay between like a gender there. But like
Speaker 7: obviously that's not what the movie is going for or
Speaker 7: what the text is. But like there is again like
Speaker 7: these implicit reads that you look at the movie just
Speaker 7: because it is like mostly women who are the ones
Speaker 7: that are dying, but like the two guys are like, well,
Speaker 7: we can kill them easily, no one will care. But
Speaker 7: we don't have that line or anything to then dig
Speaker 7: into that.
Speaker 1: I also just don't understand why they were specifically targeting women.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like I guess in the movie, like
Speaker 1: Westad's motivation for specifically focusing on women was not entirely
Speaker 1: clear to me.
Speaker 5: I think it's a I think it's a movie thing.
Speaker 5: It feels like, well, of course we got butts and seats,
Speaker 5: We're going to give them some sensual bloody ladies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's find an excuse to show some boobs on screen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and again in the way that we've talked about on
Speaker 3: the podcast before, as far as so many horror movies
Speaker 3: sexualizing violence against women, Like we talked about this a
Speaker 3: lot on the like Cabin in the Woods episode, but
Speaker 3: there have been different like slasher movies and just horror
Speaker 3: movies in general that are so guilty of this, where
Speaker 3: it's like reveling in a sexual way in violence enacted
Speaker 3: against women, and it feels like that's happening to a
Speaker 3: very large degree in this movie. This is neither here
Speaker 3: nor there, But I did want to point out some
Speaker 3: striking similarities between Interview with the Vampire and Monsters Inc.
Speaker 3: Which we just covered.
Speaker 1: On the Matren.
Speaker 3: Okay, both movies feature two men who live together who
Speaker 3: come upon a little girl and become her surrogate parents.
Speaker 3: And one of the dads has like a closer bond
Speaker 3: to the little girl and like really connects with her,
Speaker 3: and then all to they part ways again. That's pretty
Speaker 3: much where the similarities start and stop.
Speaker 1: But true though, it's so pretty good, thank you so much.
Speaker 6: What I'm hearing is Monsters Inc. Queer Quadrant.
Speaker 4: It's actually it's on the list.
Speaker 1: I have it, Mike and Sully. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: that was the conclusion we came to.
Speaker 7: Yeah, every two person podcasts is inherently a Mike and Sully,
Speaker 7: you know, like there's two mics and two Sally as always.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, yes, it's true. The other silly little
Speaker 3: observation I'd like to point out is Louise's full name
Speaker 3: is Louis DuPont du Lock du Lock. You mean the
Speaker 3: Kingdom from Shrek one.
Speaker 1: That's the power of David geff It.
Speaker 4: It is a perfect place.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, it really is. I love that little song.
Speaker 4: It's so good me.
Speaker 1: Too, well, well spotted, well spotted, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Well, they don't mention his full name in the movie,
Speaker 3: but they say it all the time in the series,
Speaker 3: because they're always saying like mister Dulac, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: Shrek much you can't escape it anyway. Does anyone have
Speaker 3: anything else they'd like to discuss?
Speaker 5: My only silly little observation is that this is a
Speaker 5: movie about boys with feelings, but it is once.
Speaker 6: Not a movie about fathers andselves.
Speaker 1: Exactly about fathers and daughters.
Speaker 7: I will say, on the horror of it all, like
Speaker 7: the Stan Winston makeup, and like the horror design Tom
Speaker 7: and when he's in the chair looking decrepit, af that
Speaker 7: is really really good stuff.
Speaker 3: Good stuff. I was just reading about Stan Winston because
Speaker 3: he did the tank on Tank Girl. Yeah, for the
Speaker 3: like the Kangaroo people. Also, when Anne Rice was considering
Speaker 3: changing the gender of the Louie character in a draft
Speaker 3: of the script. Also worth noting that the director Neil
Speaker 3: Jordan wrote a draft of the script and is uncredited,
Speaker 3: and it's not super clear. I couldn't find any sort
Speaker 3: of clarity as far as like what draft ended up
Speaker 3: being shot, like how much of it was Anne Rice's
Speaker 3: original draft, how much of it was the director's. Not
Speaker 3: super clear, but just wanted to point that out. But so,
Speaker 3: when Anne Rice was considering having the Louie character be
Speaker 3: a woman, Cher was considered for the role, and she
Speaker 3: co wrote a song entitled Lovers Forever along with Shirley
Speaker 3: Eckhart for the soundtrack of the film. Cher obviously didn't
Speaker 3: end up getting the part, although a dance pop version
Speaker 3: of that song was released on a share album many
Speaker 3: years later. Twenty years later on the twenty thirteen album
Speaker 3: Closer to the Truth. So that's a little fun fact.
Speaker 4: I have a question.
Speaker 7: Yeah, just you know, let's say we have to stratify it,
Speaker 7: which like boo, we don't like doing that, but like, yay,
Speaker 7: if we have to do it, I feel like.
Speaker 4: Share would be incredible in.
Speaker 6: This Share is the gayest possible.
Speaker 1: Right, but exacts the gayest straight you can guess, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like.
Speaker 7: Imagine that flow just flying through the air, like blood,
Speaker 7: you know, coming down her face.
Speaker 5: And she probably has six inches on Tom crab Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, love that.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, if we kind of gayify it in a
Speaker 3: different direction, if it's Share, and then like Angelica Houston
Speaker 3: as Lestat.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, yes, this is making me want to rewatch
Speaker 5: The Hunger with Daviavill and Seusan Sarandon, which is another
Speaker 5: great Oh it's very queer a fire movie.
Speaker 6: It's okay, It's okay. I love that. I would immediately
Speaker 6: watch that.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, does anyone have anything else they'd like to say?
Speaker 3: Slash the movie? Does does it pass the Bechdel test?
Speaker 3: I didn't even pay attention.
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 4: I don't think.
Speaker 6: I don't think so.
Speaker 5: Maybe on a technicality between Madeline and Claudia, but but
Speaker 5: it's a maybe. I was watching and looking for it,
Speaker 5: and I'm not sure.
Speaker 6: I'm not convinced.
Speaker 1: Spiritually, No, we'll say no to that.
Speaker 3: As far as our nipple scale, though, rating this movie
Speaker 3: on a scale of zero to five nipples based on
Speaker 3: examining it through an intersectional feminist lens.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's tricky because like this has such a legacy as
Speaker 3: far as like it's it's queer reads and following and
Speaker 3: fan base, and I think that's always a beautiful thing.
Speaker 3: But there's also like the actual text that we're working
Speaker 3: with leaves a lot to be desired, obviously mends the
Speaker 3: portrayal of enslaved people really horribly. There's a quick shot
Speaker 3: of characters practicing what I'm assuming is supposed to be
Speaker 3: voodoo practices, but it's the very you know, stereotyped, false
Speaker 3: version of the voodoo religion. The explicitly queer relationship between
Speaker 3: Louis and armand that was in the source material being
Speaker 3: erased from the movie. That's very frustrating. But also it's
Speaker 3: a movie that explores a dynamic between two men Louis
Speaker 3: and Lestat, who are sometimes suckling on each other and
Speaker 3: sometimes they're raising a child together. And there's something very
Speaker 3: interesting and like weirdly unusual about that in mainstream cinema.
Speaker 3: Because this was a huge hit, Like it was a
Speaker 3: box office smash. It was like pretty critically well reviewed,
Speaker 3: but like commercially it was it was a pretty big hits.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, I think there's something really interesting
Speaker 3: about that. And I guess most of my nippleedge goes
Speaker 3: to the fact that it has this like this queer following,
Speaker 3: but I would give the series a much higher nipple rating. Again,
Speaker 3: I'm not that far into it, but if you like
Speaker 3: this movie and you but you want something more, I
Speaker 3: would suggest checking out the series.
Speaker 1: I'm going to meet you at too as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that this movie is like so like pleasantly
Speaker 1: surprisingly overtly queer for the time it's coming out in
Speaker 1: while still not being as queer as the source material,
Speaker 1: which feels rare. And I always appreciate when a work
Speaker 1: is so open to being adapted more responsibly to match
Speaker 1: the times. It seems like for the most part it
Speaker 1: was like really well received, which a lot of franchises
Speaker 1: you do not get that with. And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: as far as this specific goes, it is so campy
Speaker 1: and it is about two gay vampire dads raising their
Speaker 1: braddy daughter Like it's awesome and it also deals with race,
Speaker 1: I think tremendously badly. It doesn't have a very high
Speaker 1: opinion of women either outside of just Kirsten Dunst right,
Speaker 1: And so that is why I am going to zone
Speaker 1: in at two. I'm going to give one to Anne Rice.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give the other to Oprah Winfrey for
Speaker 1: leaving the movie due to the dark forces that it
Speaker 1: was introdesting in the first ten minutes.
Speaker 3: Of course, of course.
Speaker 7: That's with all of our podcast steps, a dark force
Speaker 7: just inherently there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you stop listening after ten minutes because of
Speaker 1: dark forces, you know, you can't blame you.
Speaker 3: Jordan, how about you.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go a little into the San Francisco sky.
Speaker 4: I'm going to go with three.
Speaker 7: And I think it's just because I like the the queerness.
Speaker 4: I think just works for me.
Speaker 7: And I think that's just I think, you know what
Speaker 7: two and a half, how about that?
Speaker 4: That feels nice?
Speaker 7: Half a nipple? You know, it's like a baby nip.
Speaker 7: I think it's just because there is just so much
Speaker 7: I think when we first covered the movie, I wasn't
Speaker 7: sure how queer it was going to be, just because
Speaker 7: I had never seen the movie. Was aware of it,
Speaker 7: but watching even watching it again, it is overwhelming how
Speaker 7: much there is in there. And I think just for
Speaker 7: our podcast and just for me in general, seeing something
Speaker 7: with that rich of a text made by a studio
Speaker 7: at that point in time is always super refreshing. Even
Speaker 7: if it had you know, there is a lot that
Speaker 7: doesn't work about the movie, there's a lot that sometimes does,
Speaker 7: and so I think, like, to be you know, true
Speaker 7: to myself, I would have to give it that that's
Speaker 7: how many nips, you know, maybe a nip for the
Speaker 7: sky floating, a nip for Christian Slater cruising, you know,
Speaker 7: why not?
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 6: I think that's fair.
Speaker 3: Oh beautiful, Yeah, broke, how about you.
Speaker 5: I'm also going to give this one too, because I
Speaker 5: do think that it's it's a pretty audacious movie for
Speaker 5: the time, and yet again Norm McDonald, he sums it
Speaker 5: up somehow still not gay enough, and I think that
Speaker 5: is what always held us back, Jordan from being like,
Speaker 5: can't we can't fully stay exactly even though we.
Speaker 4: Might want to right there.
Speaker 5: But I love what this movie has done for the
Speaker 5: vampire genre as a whole and the series that it's
Speaker 5: led to. I totally agree Kaitlin, Like, I cannot recommend
Speaker 5: the series highly enough. It's my favorite thing on TV
Speaker 5: right now. It's so funny, it's so like textually rich,
Speaker 5: everyone is beautiful, and it's extremely like sexually explicit in
Speaker 5: a good way.
Speaker 6: It really textualizes the subtext.
Speaker 5: But I think that I do love the sort of
Speaker 5: dramatic Koy way that the subtext is handled here. You
Speaker 5: just wish that the movie had more of an intersectional
Speaker 5: view too, if it's going to be like leaning into
Speaker 5: vampires in this way, leaning into like the marginalization and
Speaker 5: the outside, you know, sort of ideation that these vampires experience,
Speaker 5: and it feels like it just cracks open the door,
Speaker 5: but it doesn't really open it all the way. So
Speaker 5: for that reason, I'm going to give it two nipples.
Speaker 5: I give one to Kirsten Dunce's beautiful curls. I give
Speaker 5: the other to Antonio Vanderis's wig. Whether it deserves it
Speaker 5: or not, I just I don't know if it's good
Speaker 5: or bad, but I can't stop thinking about it.
Speaker 3: So it's flowy, it's long.
Speaker 6: It is.
Speaker 4: Proper to describe it.
Speaker 3: Oh well, thank you so much both of you for
Speaker 3: for coming on the show. Tell us about your podcast
Speaker 3: and where people can listen to it, and anything else
Speaker 3: you'd like to plug.
Speaker 5: Well, we're so honored that you had us on, especially
Speaker 5: for ye Old Pride Month, which is currently happening. It's
Speaker 5: month all year on the Queer Quadrant, but this month especially,
Speaker 5: we want to be highlighting organizations that are doing things and.
Speaker 6: Making a difference to the community and also to the world.
Speaker 5: So every episode you listen to this month, you'll hear
Speaker 5: a little extra something about the orcs we're supporting.
Speaker 6: We release episodes every two.
Speaker 5: Weeks on your favorite four Quadrant blockbusters that may not
Speaker 5: be as straight as you think they are. I cannot,
Speaker 5: in good conscious recommend our early interview with the Vampire episode.
Speaker 5: I mean, like, listen at your own risk.
Speaker 7: But I can recommend Caitlin coming on for Hobbs and Shops.
Speaker 6: Hobbs and Shop pretty good. I also I have to
Speaker 6: recommend the Titanic.
Speaker 3: Episode to Jamie was there as well.
Speaker 6: Jamie was there, It was it was a good time.
Speaker 5: But we're mostly floating around the internet on Twitter and
Speaker 5: Instagram and letterbox. I'm at brookby Solomon and together we're
Speaker 5: at Queer Quadrant. You can find the Queer Quadrant on Spotify,
Speaker 5: on Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. Give us a
Speaker 5: tweet or a DM and tell us what you might
Speaker 5: like to see us cover in the future. We always
Speaker 5: want to hear about your gay takes.
Speaker 3: Love it, Oh my gosh, thank you again. Come back anytime.
Speaker 3: And Jamie had to leave listeners, so I'll just give
Speaker 3: the plugs real quick. You can listen to our Matreon
Speaker 3: episodes at Patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast, where you
Speaker 3: get two bonus episodes every month for five bucks and
Speaker 3: it's always centering around some hilarious, awesome theme. You can
Speaker 3: follow us on mostly Instagram these days at Bechdel Cast,
Speaker 3: and then you can scoot over to tepublic dot com
Speaker 3: slash the Bechdel Cast for our merch You can check
Speaker 3: out our link tree link tree slash Bechdel Cast for
Speaker 3: some goodies over there, including our letterboxed and yeah, with that,
Speaker 3: should we go fly around and look for people to yet?
Speaker 4: Yeah, because we're.
Speaker 6: Vampire, let's go vampire cruising. Let's do it tired all right?
Speaker 4: Bye.
Speaker 3: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Speaker 3: Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
Speaker 3: by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Speaker 3: Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo and merch
Speaker 3: is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
Speaker 3: Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit
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