Interview With the Vampire, a look back.

Interview With The Vampire, A little nostalgia.

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I thought it would be fun to re visit the inspiration behind the collection, and share some tid bits gathered from articles across the internet! After you read this get yourself a nice bottle of red wine, put on Interview for your Friday night, sit back and enjoy.

Interview with the Vampire stayed the highest grossing vampire movie for over ten years. As of 2016, it is still the highest R-rated vampire movie of all time. River Phoenix was originally pegged to play the interviewer Malloy, but the role was given to Christian Slater after Phoenix’s death. Slater would go on to give his entire $250,000 salary to two of Phoenix’s favorite charities. “In Memory of River Phoenix, 1970-1993” was also included after the film’s credits.

The Vampire Chronicles consists of 12 books, which were released in a span of four decades. Rice announced in 2016 that she now owns all theatrical rights to the series, and has hopes of turning it into a Game of Thrones-like TV series with her son Christopher.

Christina Ricci, Dominique Swain, Julia Stiles, Erin Moore, and Evan Rachel Wood were all up for the role of Claudia, but in the end, it went to Kirsten Dunst. Her parents wouldn’t even let her watch the final film when it was released, saying it would be too scary for her.

The rights to the film version were optioned to Paramount even before Rice’s novel was published in 1976. John Travolta was originally pegged to play Lestat. By the time the film went into production, however, Travolta was too old for the role, and Cruise was cast. Rice was so infuriated by Cruise’s casting, she was quoted as saying, “it’s almost impossible to imagine how it’s going to work.” She eventually wrote Cruise a letter of apology.

Other actors who almost portrayed Lestat: Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp, Jeremy Irons, Daniel Day-Lewis, John Malkovich, and even Pitt. Rice had enjoyed Hanks’ performance in Philadelphia so much that she met with the actor, but he would turn down the role for Forrest Gump.

Cruise isn’t exactly known for his towering figure. In some scenes, he was given a platform to stand on so that the height difference between Lestat and other vampires wasn’t quite so noticeable. He also had inches added to his boots, and at one point Pitt walked in a specially made ditch to lower himself to Cruise’s level.

The makeup process for the movie was time consuming: All the actors playing vampires were required to hang upside down for up to thirty minutes at a time during the make-up application. This would force all the blood in their bodies to rush to their heads, causing the blood vessels in their faces to bulge out. The make up artists would then trace over the swollen veins creating the eerie translucent-skinned vampire look. Unfortunately for the actors, they would have to repeat the process several times over, as the blood would quickly drain from their heads. This, in part, accounts for the lengthy make-up process.

In an EW interview in September 2011, Brad Pitt revealed that he had a miserable experience while making this film. He recalled the discomfort of the makeup, colored contacts and particularly filming in an enclosed dark indoor area. He said at one point he called his friend and producer David Geffen and begged him for a way out. Learning that it would cost $40 million, he toughed it out for the remaining months.

Tom Cruise spent three and a half hours every day in the make-up chair.

Kirsten Dunst said in a recent interview that everyone she knew at the time of filming said "You're so lucky you kissed Brad Pitt," referring to their kissing scene. But the young Dunst said she thought it was disgusting." Years later she said "Kissing Brad was so uncomfortable for me. I remember saying in interviews that I thought it was gross, that Brad had cooties. I mean, I was 10." She said she did it out of her love for acting, but the experience put her off kissing any more men for a few years. The next person she locked lips with onscreen happened at the age of 15.

Kirsten Dunst lost out on an award as Best Supporting Actress at the Chlotrudis Awards for her performance in this movie and also for Little Women (1994). She lost by a single vote, given to Dianne Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway (1994).

A gay subtext to the novel was omitted from the film; Lestat expects Louis to sleep with him; Lestat, Louis (and later Claudia) are a family. Anne Rice mentions "stone walls" in the novel, which could be an oblique reference to the gay rights movement of the same name.

Due to Anne Rice's fear that her novel was not being adapted because Lestat and Louis could be perceived as homosexuals, at one point she rewrote Louis as a woman, and considered Cher for the role. While eventually the role went back to being a man, Cher would write along with Shirley Eikhard a song for the movie's soundtrack, "Lovers Forever", that wound rejected by the producers and eventually released on Cher's 2013 album "Closer to the Truth"