#reading iwtv 1994 script

[vampsstan]

he trully wanted to be a mommy

[i-want-my-iwtv]

Hi! I have some IWTV qs after seeing the movie&the internet isn't helping me at all. Hoping you could! 1.I've seen book explanations for why Lestat survived the fire, but is there something I missed in the movie to explain it? 2.What did Armand mean when he said he'd die if Louis left? 3.Why was Louis so weak and feeding off rats towards the end?Traumatized by the fire or something? 4.If Louis hated being a vamp so much,why didn't he just kill himself? &my last question will be in another ask...

^1/3 5. Is a possible interpretation of the ending that Louis&Lestat are working together again? Lestat said he could go out again if he had Louis but Louis said he had to go. Lestat then somehow ends up going after the guy that Louis was just talking to? Obvi not a coincidence so maybe he's just following Louis...but what if he's doing what he said? He's going out again bc he has Louis. Louis set up Malloy; or at least did so only after his reaction to his story? Maybe a stupid theory lol. ^2/3 anyway, sorry to come at you with all these questions, I just can't find answers anywhere else. Loved the movie and would just like to understand it better. I also think Louis&Lestat could be working together again because if Louis has resigned to killing people to survive, which is all Lestat ever really wanted him to be, is there any real reason they can't be in eachother's lives anymore? Thank you so much for any time you can give me and my questions lol! ^3/3

Wow, Anon, that's a lot of questions! Thanks for asking me 💗

The 1994 movie doesn't say how Lestat escaped the fire. In the book, Armand first tells Louis that Lestat had died, but much later, Armand tells Louis that Lestat left the theatre before Louis returned to burn it down:

Here's the script for Interview with the Vampire. It's similar, but not the same as the movie! It doesn't explain why Lestat survived the fire, but it's a fun read.

In the Vampire Lestat, Lestat says Armand took him by carriage to Magnus's tower after the trial, and after Claudia died, probably before the fire.

Hit the jump, cut for length.

2. Armand needed Louis to "quicken him once more," but he wasn't really dying in the physical sense. It's more like he saw in Louis a way to live again, having a new relationship with a New World vampire and experiencing the technology and culture with Louis is a reason to live. In the books, Armand forms a relationship with the interviewer Daniel, and they explore technology, culture, etc. of the time together (it's in Queen of the Damned). Armand wanted that kind of companion in Louis but Louis wasn't interested.

3. I think you meant Lestat? Bc Louis isn't eating rats at the end, it's Lestat. Lestat was weak from surviving the fire that Louis set on him before he and Claudia left for Europe, and an injury from Armand*.

*In the Vampire Lestat, he's on the roof of Magnus's tower with Armand, after Claudia's death, and Armand apparently punches Lestat off the tower, further injuring Lestat:

So, Lestat was pretty weak and horrible-looking, and would have had trouble going into places with people to kill them without freaking them out, so feeding on animals was easier:

4. Louis, deep down, didn't actually hate himself enough to want to kill himself. But he does try later in the series, depending which books you include as canon. Personally, I think Louis has conflicting feelings about how much he loves art, nature, humanity, Lestat, and the other vampires... he loves how his senses were enhanced by becoming a vampire, but it's also somewhat shameful, bc the price of those things he loves comes at the cost of continuing to take human life to fuel his existence.

I think Louis really was ready to kill himself for giving into his nature and feeding on a child, and that's really why Lestat turned Claudia, to protect Louis from the overwhelming guilt of having killed the most innocent victim. Luckily it seems like Louis didn't go for any more children, so Lestat didn't have to turn any more of them!

5. Tackling this in a separate post and I'll link to it 😎 [X]

[licncourt]

What's your opinion on the iwtv movie?

I really like the 1994 movie! It's visually stunning, absolutely immaculate costume and set design and quite faithful to the book aside from a few changes that makes sense for the sake of the transition from book to film. The practical effects are so much fun and even the CGI is very well-applied.

It's not a perfect movie, there are some cut scenes I think should've stayed from the book and from the original script, plus the fact that it's pretty clear the story has been a bit straightwashed with things like giving Louis a dead wife and child instead of a brother and cutting the Only One Coffin scene. It was the 90s though, and it's honestly very impressive how much they managed to get onscreen, so props for that. It can't have been easy to get even what they did into a big Hollywood movie with A-list actors.

As far as standout elements, the casting of Kirsten Dunst in particular was absolutely perfect, she's incredible as Claudia, truly the standout performance in my opinion. Tom Cruise was fantastic too and that's still wild almost thirty years later. I hate to give the scientologist credit, but he did his homework and really put his whole pussy into playing Lestat. He deserves the praise he gets for sure.

Brad Pitt...okay listen. I am a Brad Pitt Louis apologist. I think if you look at his performance as a reflection of Louis' dissociation and apathy during that time in his life, it reads quite well. I just wish there were more emotional peaks and valleys, even just a few, to offset and highlight that monotone approach and make it feel like a character choice rather than BP sulking (which is what it was). However, anyone who's followed me for any length of time knows how I feel about the sewer scene. That was the serve of the century and I was so glad Jacob Anderson resurrected that expression in the show. That's a little baby your honor.

My main gripe with the movie is how flattened Louis' character was. He's presented as a direct opposite to Lestat, the stick in the mud who simply objects to feeding on humans because it's wrong to kill, no more and no less. I really missed the hypocrisy and contradiction that makes Louis LOUIS. We only get it in the (brilliant) prostitute scene and that's a shame.

I also wish they would've kept Louis' religious trauma as a focal point of the story rather than a single mention with Armand. It's so integral to his character that its absence is really noticeable. Still, I understand that it's a movie and there's only so much depth you can include. I think it could've been done a bit better in that regard though.

The highest praise I can give the movie is that they actually added a few things I wish were in the book:

Louis eating some lady's poodles

GRAPE THROWING

Lestat's retort where he yells "why should I know these things? Do you know them?" I think it really hits at the heart of Lestat's pain regarding his turning and provides a great moment of vulnerability

Claudia's line "why do you say such things?" It doesn't fully change the scene, but it drives home the father-daughter relationship in a really poignant way.

Generally speaking, I think it's a great, if inevitably imperfect, movie and definitely one of my favorites. I always use it as an entry point to get people to read the book and it's never failed me.

[sofipitch]

YOUR TAGS LEGIT KILLED ME! Yeah Lestat gets to be part of the family this time! Yeah!

YES! If there's anything we are DESPERATELY missing in IWTV is enough family scenes. I believe there are some in the 92 script AR wrote (which I still have yet to read) but based on screenshots I'm very sad they cut them. So happy for more murder family

Also my friend's homophobic dad likes the 1994 movie bc he missed the subtext. He would have a VERY different experience with the TV show

[xxgothchatonxx]

Right, here’s my brief thoughts on the previous two Lestat actors/performances (I know there was the musical but I’ve never seen it sooooo I can’t really judge it, can I?)

I thought Tom Cruise did a great job in the 1994 IWTV film. 

I may be a bit biased because he was my first introduction to the character (I read the books after seeing this film) but this is a really good performance! He was funny, sassy, angry, a massive drama queen, it’s the only time I’ve EVER found TC sexy, and that last scene with him and Louis at the end just breaks my heart. So, yes the script did scoop out quite a bit of development that our Brat Prince had received in the books following Interview, but I thought Tom did a great job at making film!Lestat a fully-fledged, engaging character. 

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about Stuart Townsend in the Queen of the Damned film... 

but I can’t put the blame entirely on him.

That script was awful. The dialogue was hilariously pathetic (except for that One Line about the librarian! That made me laugh intentionally!), I don’t know ANYONE who could’ve made it sound realistic. With that said... would it have killed him to put some emotion in his voice? Seriously! It’s no secret that while this is a so-bad-its-good film, it’s an atrocious adaptation, and this “Lestat” is the main reason why it was so bad. I mean... this was not Lestat. Not in the slightest. But, I have no hate towards Stuart in general, I’m sure he’s a nice guy, he just got given a terrible script. 

So, we had one great film!Lestat, one awful film!Lestat, and now we have a great TV!Lestat. 

[i-want-my-iwtv]

I've seen Brad pitt get a bit criticized for his role as Louis, but maybe it's the script's fault too?

Part of that criticism was about his appearance, to be fair, not matching the book description. I think he wanted to keep the long hair for Legends of the Fall, which is listed as 1994 (release date January 13, 1995):

But yes, there have been articles/interviews in which Brad has said that he signed on for IWTV partly bc he was drawn to the religious struggles the character went through in the book, and at some point along the way, it was pretty much all cut out. There's a tiny bit of talk about evil with Armand, briefly!

Brad Pitt, in an article by Mike Scott, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune:

“Another big problem was the script, which was written by Rice herself, taking her first shot at writing a screenplay. Pitt hadn’t seen it until two weeks before shooting started. When he finally did get a copy, he realized that everything in Rice’s book that was interesting about his character … was gone.

And so here he was, a rising young actor and budding sex symbol, stuck in an uninteresting, passive role.

“In the book you have this guy asking, ‘Who am I?’ Which was probably applicable to me at that time: ‘Am I good? Am I of the angels? Am I bad? Am I of the devil?’ In the book it is a guy going on this search of discovery. And in the meantime, he has this Lestat character that he’s entranced by and abhors. … In the movie, they took the sensational aspects of Lestat and made that the pulse of the film, and those things are very enjoyable and very good, but for me, there was just nothing to do — you just sit and watch.”

@merciful-death's tags [X]:

#[ Interesting to read this ]

#[ I’m inclined to agree with Brad Pitt ]

#[ because while I do love the movie there’s definitely big differences between movie-Louis and book-Louis ]

#[ going only off the movie you would think Louis to be passive ]

#[ but in the book he’s got a lot more depth and definitely is not ‘passive’ ]

#[ Louis doesn’t really shed that passivity until the burning of the theatre in the movie ]

#[ while in the book you have him fighting Lestat from the start ]

#[ and I will always find that scene with the priest a big turning point]

#[ which is why it makes me so sad that they scripted it but never filmed it ]

Then, the filming itself, I think all that filming at night and being miserable all the time ended up taking more out of Brad than he thought it would:

“I’m telling you, one day it broke me. It was like, ‘Life’s too short for this quality of life.’ I called David Geffen, who was a good friend. He was a producer, and he’d just come to visit. I said, ‘David, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do it. What will it cost me to get out?’ And he goes, very calmly, ‘Forty million dollars.’ And I go, 'OK, thank you.’ It actually took the anxiety off of me. I was like, 'I’ve got to man up and ride this through, and that’s what I’m going to do.’”

…Still, he says he doesn’t necessarily regret “Interview with a Vampire.”

“I don’t lament the failures,” he said. “The failures prepare you for the next one. It’s a step you needed to take, and I’m all for it.”