Recently, Anne Rice, an American horror writer and the original author of the movie "Interview with the Vampire", announced that the tv series adaptation rights of her "Vampire Chronicles" series have returned to her hands, and she and her son Christopher Rice are preparing to adapt a TV series with an open-ended ending.
Anne Rice.
Anne Rice's same-sex romance with vampires
Interview with a Vampire, published in 1976, was the first work on the "Chronicle of the Vampire" and laid the foundation for Anne Rice as a popular contemporary Gothic writer. Over the next 25 years, Anne Rice wrote more than a dozen works about vampires, including The Vampire Lestat (1987) and The Queen of the Damned (1989), constructing an epic of the vampire race. Among them, only "Night Interview with the Vampire" and "Vampire Queen" were put on the screen. "Vampire Chronicles" works, many characters, time span of thousands of years, such a grand narrative, not at all lost in the "Game of Thrones" series that has been very popular in the United States in recent years.
Some of the works in the "Vampire Chronicles" series introduced by Yilin Publishing House.
Unlike most vampire works of the past, Anne Rice's vampires were not trapped in the night of decay or struggling to escape human predation. They are young and handsome, and their lives are good. All the vampires except Louis did not have any moral burden at all, they enjoyed killing and sucking blood, enjoyed eternal life. Rice even created claudia, an innocent-looking girl killer. In short, Rice's vampires are not surrounded by decaying images of castles, coffins, and bats, but thrive in the human world.
The English edition of the "Chronicles of the Vampires" series.
In addition, unlike the love stories depicted in contemporary popular culture between vampires and the opposite sex (such as the movie "Twilight" and the American drama "The Vampire Diaries"), the blood of the "Vampire Chronicles" series is also infiltrated with a lot of same-sex ambiguous emotions. The story of "Night Interview with a Vampire" begins in a gay community in San Francisco, where the boy who interviews Louis the vampire and Louis himself meet at a local bar. As the plot unfolds, the reader learns that Lester was initially attracted to Louis and then transformed (i.e., turned the other person into a vampire by sucking blood and having the other person suck their own blood). Later, the two even had a "daughter" Claudia (Luis sucked Claudia's blood and Leicester transformed her), and the three lived together as a family. Later in the story, Louis meets the vampire Amun again, who becomes Louis's new companion.
The entire series of "Vampire Chronicles" chronicles a large number of same-sex couples. In "Night Interview with the Vampire", we meet our partner Louis and Leicester and Louis and Amon; in "Lester the Vampire", we learn about The Story of Lester and Nicolo who was still human at the time, we know Amon who tries to start a relationship with Leicester, and we know about the possible reunion of Lester and Louis. In addition, there are Amon and Daniel (the reporter who interviewed Louis) in "Queen of the Damnes" with the reunited Louis and Lester, and Lester in "The Tale of the Body Thief" and his ultimate soul mate David. Anne Rice's portrayal of same-sex feelings in the novel makes the "Vampire Chronicles" series unique among its peers.
It has been suggested that the vampire imagery in early folktales exemplifies the pre-industrial culture's interpretation of the process of death and physical decay. Beginning in the 19th century, vampire imagery shifted from horror to mystery and even charm. In essence, vampires are the "outsiders" of society, the other, but the taboos that vampires break carry many human desires that are impossible in the real world.
In vampire literary works, the act of "blood sucking" can be understood as a metaphor for sexual behavior, and the Pun of the Word Stage in English can reflect this precisely, which is both a piercing of the skin by fangs and a hint of sexuality. In Rice's book, Louis also experiences intense sexual pleasure when he sucks the blood of a maid. Therefore, the transformation of vampires into same-sex humans and the vampire's consumption of same-sex humans can be seen as a kind of homoeroticism, and the vampires' own strong and agile physique and superpowers become the basis for them to break through the heterosexual constraints of human beings.
However, in the film version of the "Vampire Chronicles" series, the same-sex elements embodied in the original book are undoubtedly weakened a lot. In Night Interview with the Vampire, Louis loses his wife and children (in the original book, his brother dies), Louis is having sex with a prostitute when Lester discovers him (there is no such thing in the original book), and Louis's first victim is a maid (a male servant in the original book). In the original book, on the first night of Lester's conversion of Louis, Lester said that he did not have an extra coffin, so the two of them had to sleep in one coffin. However, if you think about the scene of Brad Pitt and Atango, who are known for their tough guys, they are obviously too gay if they are filmed, but Claudia later shares a coffin with Louis from time to time. Considering that Lewis was the narrator of the story of The Night Interview with the Vampire, his heterosexual portrayal undoubtedly reinforced a social norm that was more acceptable to the public at the time. Even Lester, who can be seen by the audience as homosexual, looks more like the "mother" of a family of three because of his teaching of Claudia. The scene where he kisses and sucks two prostitutes with Louis gives him a vague bisexual character. The same-sex elements in the film are almost concentrated in the long-haired and handsome Amun alone.
However, as a film launched in 1994, "Interview with the Vampire" can be said to have been born in an era when the public's general acceptance of homosexuality is generally lower than today, and how the new "Vampire Chronicles" series of TV series will interpret the emotional clues in the original book, readers and viewers can wait and see.
"It's the best time to bring your work to the TV screen"
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Anne Rice said that although most of the plans are still undecided, they want to start with their second work, Lester the Vampire. The TV series may start from Lester to Vampire, and the story that completes the entire book may take two seasons. Rice plans, though, for far more than two seasons, and she envisions an open-ended, ever-filmed TV series that would best keep the story going into the present.
Rice said it's the golden age of TV dramas. "Look at Game of Thrones, Neil Jordan's Borgia Family and Netflix's The Crown. The value of TV production and the level of TV performance are top notch, not to mention that there is still huge room for development in the TV industry, and now is the best time for authors who want to adapt their own works. ”
Rice wants her son Christopher to be the executive producer of the series, and she herself is in a position to assist, though she will still be involved in every stage, including casting. Rice believes that releasing an entire season at once is an innovation in the TV drama industry in recent years, and she also hopes to release all the results at once after the long production process is over.
Casting: To look good, to be particularly good-looking
In the movie "Night Interview with the Vampire", Anne Rice was very dissatisfied with Tom Cruise's decision to play the vampire Lester, and she did not shy away from her disappointment in the casting in front of reporters. However, two months before the film's release, Rice said that her previous dissatisfaction was out of thin air after seeing the edited film, and praised Tom Cruise's acting skills in many media.
Stills from the 1994 film Interview with the Vampires of the Night.
Regarding the casting of the TV series, Rice said: "First of all, I think the actor who plays Leicester should look like this role. Because the character's appearance is an important part of the character itself: six feet tall (about 183cm), blonde hair and blue eyes, he himself is also known for these qualities. So it's best if you can find an actor who meets these characteristics. In addition, he also has to have an uninhibited sense of humor, perhaps even a little naughty. Then there is the need to have an elegant and strong athlete's physique. ”
Rice hasn't yet thought of the right person to play Leicester, but she says it could be an actor who is already well-known or a new actor who hasn't made an appearance yet. She wasn't worried about casting because "in this day and age, it's not too hard to find a suitable actor."
As for Louis's cast, Rice said the first requirement was to be "good-looking" and "to be particularly good-looking" because it was Louis's beauty that attracted Leicester. "I wanted to play Luis as a good-looking actor like Matt Bomer (nicknamed 'Peacock', masterpieces 'Detective Thief' and 'Ordinary Heart'), a person incredibly beautiful. In the film version, Brad Pitt is brilliant, and later actors have a hard time surpassing his physical beauty. ”
Matt Pomo in the American drama "Detective Mysterious Detective".
At the end of the interview, Rice, a big fan of "Ripper Street" and McFiddon, said that she hoped that British actor Matthew Macfadyen (masterpieces "Ripper Street" and "MI5") would be willing to play marius, a key role in the "Vampire Chronicles" series. "'Ripper Street' is so good!"
Matthew McFidion in the British drama Ripper Street.