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