The VAMPIRE STRIKES back

Possibly no major film project shot this year has caused more controversy and scandal in the US than Neil Jordan’s Interview With The Vampire, the film adaptation of the novel by Anne Rice. First published in 1976, “Interview” delivered an unprecedented take on the living dead genre, creating creatures that were not only sympathetic, but sexual, powerful and attractive. After years of script-mongering and failed production attempts, the book has finally been brought, rather miraculously, to the screen by Neil Jordan.

Taking on a Hollywood monster is one thing, but taking on a cult phenomenon such as the one created by Anne Rice over the last couple of decades proved an even tougher prospect, as Jordan was to discover. Racked by setbacks and controversy throughout production, the buzz began all over again last weekend as the final creation hit the screens. Jordan has without doubt proved his worth by delivering a formidable, stylish and atmospheric baby. But not without shipping a few battle scars along the way.

The phenomenon of the Vampire has come in and out of fashion ever since Count Vlad Dracul perpetrated a few atrocities back in 15th Century Romania. In 1764 Horace Walpole’s Castle Of Otranto renewed interest, followed by Polidori’s The Vampyre in the early nineteenth century. But for the last hundred years or so, popular culture has been taken with what Neil Jordan’s script describes as “the vulgar rantings of a demented Irishman,” namely Bram Stoker, whose Victorian Gothic tale Dracula appeared in 1897.

Various vampires followed, manifesting themselves first in print, on stage and finally – in the 20th century – on the movie screen. The original Nosferatu filmed in Germany in 1921 was a ghastly ghoul, but ten years later the inimitable Bela Lugosi fired up the depression-ridden American public with his unmitigatedly sexual portrayal of the sleek Count Dracula. This and several other Dracula films made Lugosi a major star in the Thirties and Forties.

In the Fifties, era of late night American TVs Vampira and I Was A Teenage Werewolf, the image faded not a little, until there was only room for spoofs like Polanski’s Fearless Vampire Killers (1966) or Love At First Bite (1979). In the late eighties, a new kind of creature emerged, manifesting in the forms of Kiefer Sutherland in rural California as leader of The Lost Boys (1987), or Nicholas Cage developing unnatural urban urges in Vampire’s Kiss (1989). But all these even the fabulous, over-the-top excesses of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Coppola, 1992), were directly derivative of the most influential turnaround in Vampiric history (when you’re talking vampires, hyperbole is the only way to go) . . .

Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire, a novel which had originally appeared in 1976, had created a whole new generation of the undead, with as its high priest, one Lestat de Lioncourt, a fictional character who would reach such powerful dimensions as to haul one of Hollywood’s real life top-box-office stars over the proverbial coals of moviedom public opinion.

Lestat, a charismatic sophisticate endowed with exceptional beauty, was blond and gorgeous, fed bisexually and went from feudal Lord to rock star in a matter of centuries, taking in rococo Venice, ancient Egypt and Napoleonic Paris along the way. His choice of a young French plantation owner in the New World as eternity-partner lent a whole new aspect to the idea of the vampire, and formed the basis of the novel.

Louis in turn creates Claudia, a pre-Lolita vampette who forms the third ghoul of what Jordan calls “a very dysfunctional family.” Blood-letting, rat nibbling, neck tearing, head fucking, burnings alive and enthusiastic sadism are all part of the book’s charms. It sold over 5 million copies in the US alone and was followed by an equally popular sequel, The Vampire Lestat.

Whether you consider “the vampire books” (as they are usually called) as trash or genius, nobody can doubt the phenomenal success of Anne Rice’s tenebrous realm. Meticulously researched in terms of the occult and of ancient myth and folklore, but infused with a seething sensuality and deliberate grandiosity, Rice’s style combines the popular romance genre with highly crafted, imaginative writing. The characters, driven by a heady blend of unmitigated passion and cruelty, live enhanced existences they read minds, fly, see colours more vibrantly, and unlike Carmilla or Count Vlad, suffer dreadfully.

Rice’s vampires are tortured by the dilemma of eternal life, their own loneliness and an elusive quest for everlasting peace and love. By portraying the vampire from a personal, post-existential angle, Rice turned the tables on a jaded form and caught the imagination of the reading public. Stoker’s evil creation shocked a society of self-righteous Victorians, but Rice’s passionate young men bare the soul of a confused, scattered age in the throes of mass violence, self-destruction and greed.

Alternative, snobbish, baroque, sensual, vio-lent and guilt-ridden in the way only a Catholic girl knows how, Rice’s “Interview” is a book that drags the reader into the lugubrious world so loaded with metaphorical possibilities that it has been interpreted in a myriad of ways. Originally, those vampires were the ultimate gay outcasts, forced to live on the edge by a homophobic society. In the Eighties, their outcast status and quest for fresh blood and eternal life became inextricable from the fears and horrors of the AIDS crisis. In the Nineties, yet another take sees vampires (essentially celibate since they merely bite as opposed to copulate), as an attractive symbol for distressed ex-libertines now restrained within the boundaries of safe sex!

Whatever your bag, film-makers have been hot on the trail of Louis and Lestat since their mid-Seventies birth. Proposed celluloid manifestations of the work have been many and often disastrous. At one point Louis became a woman, and at yet another Elton John saw it as a musical. It was even to be made into a dreaded TV mini-series with Richard Chamberlain, but Rice did not renew her script-rights option with Paramount after that one, and the project continued in limbo for several years. The main problem was the homo-erotic overtones in the book, which worked against any serious financing deals in Hollywood.

Then enter David Geffen, an openly gay producer who also happens to be a billionaire. Rice was excited at Geffen’s determination, but although every major director in Hollywood was approached, and scores of script versions were produced, still nothing happened.

Finally, into this void stepped Neil Jordan, whose fresh-off-the-front-pages The Crying Game had apparently caused Geffen to a) flip out and b) reach for the nearest phone. Rice had a similar reaction. She told Geffen that “only Neil Jordan” could now direct her movie and extended Geffen’s rights option accordingly. The next – and greatest – hurdle only came when Daniel Day-Lewis, who was not considering any other roles during the making of In The Name Of The Father, repeatedly refused all offers to play Lestat. Geffen was eventually forced to look elsewhere. After a high level tete-a-tete he and Jordan came up with squeaky-clean American all-star, Tom Cruise.

With a true vampire’s supernatural force, Rice exploded a scandal of unprecedented proportions. She went on record, in every forum possible, against Cruise. He was definitely not her Lestat. She insulted him in a personal and explicit manner on TV, radio and print, remarking that himself and Brad Pitt would be more qualified to play “Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn” than the gorgeous ghouls. Even internet systems were spared no details of Anne Rice’s opposition to the production.

It was war, and the press of course loved it. Jordan’s argument was that he wanted someone already “larger than life” to play the formidable Lestat. His idea was to cast someone already so huge that his own superstar power would match the super-creature that the written Lestat constitutes.

But Anne Rice’s was not the only nose that Tom Cruise got out of joint. A massive negative reaction followed from the Gay Community, within which there were already an impressive variety of rumours and speculation concerning Tom Cruise, his sexuality, and worse: his reported stipulations as to how he would play the role.

“What disturbed the Lesbian and Gay Community were reports that Tom Cruise had agreed to appear in this role only on the condition that the homo-eroticism be reduced or removed,” explained Donald Suggs of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “And anyone who has read the book can tell you that that is a fundamental aspect of the work and is vital to holding it together as a piece of art. He is obviously a huge player in Hollywood, and there is a concern in the Gay Community about image. While probably the biggest star out there today is Tom Hanks, who played a gay man with AIDS, there is a very long and not so laudable history in Hollywood of playing us in a negative stereotypical way or not portraying us at all.”

The widely reported but ultimately unsubstantiated charges of homophobia on Cruise’s part added fuel to the fire, and Gay activists quickly joined the veritable army of Anne Rice aficionados (organised now on an international basis), and a substantial body of the press.

Jordan’s wisest move was to withdraw into secrecy for the rest of the film’s production, and he quickly announced that no media or outsiders were to be granted access to the filming or post-production process. But that wasn’t the end of it.

The second shocker that sent “Interview” back into the headlines from what might have eventually have petered out into a quiet shoot came two weeks in, when River Phoenix, cast to play the young journalist who interviews Louis, spontaneously combusted on a Hollywood sidewalk after a fatal speedball. This produced more consternation, remedied by bringing in River-like substitute, Christian Slater. The latter announced forthwith that his entire salary for the project would go to the dead actor’s favourite charities.

Rumours of problems on the set filtered through, despite the fact that obligatory, across-the-board confidentiality contracts had been signed, and unprecedented security was in place at each location. It was reported that tensions raged between Cruise and Pitt on the set (since confirmed by Pitt in a Rolling Stone interview), and American Trash TV had transmission orgasms when it managed to broadcast illicit footage captured by an audacious crew in a Louisiana bayou. In the post-shoot period, Tinseltown gossips had a field day as first prints were rumoured to be either brilliant or disastrous.

Then, as swiftly and sharply as she had rocket-launched her initial smear campaign, Anne Rice struck again with another media coup. Late last September, she took out two-page advertisements in the show biz bible, Variety, America’s largest Gay and Lesbian publication, The Advocate and The New York Times, which proclaimed:

“I loved the film. I simply loved it. I loved it from the start to finish, and I found myself deeply impressed with every aspect of its making, including its heartfelt and often daring performances by all the actors and actresses, it exquisite set design and cinematography, and its masterly direction. But most personally, I was honoured and stunned to discover how faithful this film was to the spirit, the content and ambience of the novel Interview With The Vampire, and of the script for it which I wrote. I was shocked to discover that Neil Jordan had given this work a new and distinctive incarnation in film without destroying the aspects of it which I hold so dear.”

While this threw Rice fans, gay activists and movie buffs alike into complete confusion, it also served to heighten expectations regarding “Interview’s” release. Various other fun tid-bits led up to that event – like the one where splatter-talk-show host Oprah Winfrey walked out of the theatre at the point when Lestat yummily chomps on a chubby rodent at the dinner table. Even the all-star Hollywood premiere had its wimp-outs, with several viewers spied sheepishly heading for the toilets. But then our man Mr. Jordan has never been one to skim on a good special effect – as we saw in Company Of Wolves – and on its day of eventual public release, all of the crucial film critics have praised the film. Vanity Fair says Cruise delivers a “startlingly sensual and stirringly malevolent portrayal.” USA Today confirms that “Neil Jordan proves his magic touch.” Janet Maslin of the New York Times described it as “a sumptuous film . . . as strange and mesmerising as it is imaginatively ghastly.” She adds that Cruise “is flabbergastingly right for this role. The vampire Lestat, the most commanding and teasingly malicious of Ms. Rice’s creations, brings out in Mr. Cruise a fiery, mature sexual magnetism he has not previously displayed on the screen.”

Even Judy Wieder, Arts and Entertainment Editor at The Advocate lets it off respectably on the homoerotic stakes by simply observing that “there wasn’t enough”.

But for others, the homoeroticism so roundly denied by everybody from Cruise to Jordan is rather gorgeously present after all – and it is, in the very best Jordan fashion, truly erotic, perceptible more through nuance and feeling rather than blatant sexual display. But then as he recently suggested to Movieline magazine, “once you eliminate the sexual act, everything becomes erotic”.

The vampire seduction scenes are certainly erotic, others disturbingly so. In fact, the whole film constitutes a kind of sense-fest of the richest proportions. Dante Age Of Innocence Ferretti’s production design is flamboyant, Sandy Powell’s velvet and lace costuming delicious, and the sensuality of Philippe Rousselot’s cinematography renders the vampires’ world almost tactile, if one might use that conceit regarding screen images.

Cruise, although hard to take for Vampire Chronicle devotees for at least half an hour into the film, does grow on you. Foppish, capricious, funny (even at one point, bitchy), he lends the role a humour not evident in the book, which is a welcome turn. By the end of the movie, conversely, the evident miscasting is that of blond and sunny surf-pumpkin Brad Pitt.

In a role that, if we (must) talk Hollywood, should have been Johnny Depp’s – Pitt is most unfortunately unconvincing as the brooding, sensitive, fitful Louis. Only the overall success of the film compensates for this: its lush mastery lends even Pitt a certain style.

While it is too early as yet to gauge box office realities, the initial response has been rapturous and the certainty is that it will put many bums on seats and fill many a newspaper column for some time to come yet. Not to mention the fact that a smartly re-shot ending makes blatant proviso for a sequel.

And the lesson to be learned after all this class of carry-on? Never underestimate the genius of Neil Jordan.

• Inrerview With The Vampire will open in Ireland in the new year.