Interview With the Vampire (1994)

Matt (00:00:00):

It’s October, that’s when we transform into load bearing screams, and when I, Matt Stokes become Matt Chokes and Laci Roth becomes Laci Goth. We are very different characters, very terrifying and spooky characters talking only about the scariest movies and some of the not so scariest movies like Interview With the Vampire, which is has some legitimate scares. Fascinating movie from 1994, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Anne Rice’s Vampire Classic. A movie we’ve covered on the show before. We covered back in 2018. That was a long time ago. We didn’t know what we were doing. Now we talk for almost three hours about this movie and about the history that went into making this movie and the novel that Anne Rice wrote and the feud, very public feud she had with the movie. She was not happy with the casting of Tom Cruise and felt that she had been cut out of the decision making of the movie.

(00:00:46):

So we cover all of that. Did she ever come around to this performance of Tom Cruise as her most famous character, Lestat the Vampire? I think it’s a wonderful performance. We are kind of mixed on this movie. I like it a lot more than Laci does. Kind of rare for Laci to have us watch a movie that she ended up liking. Less than I liked it, but a lot of fun talking for so long about Interview with the Vampire. As always, look in the episode description. If you’re only interested in the movie discussion, you can skip to that part of the episode, skip right past the history section, but either way, I think you’ll have a jolly good time with Interview with the Vampire. Hello and welcome to Load Bearing Screams. I’m Matt Chokes.

Laci (00:01:46):

And I’m Laci Goth. I never remember what my name is. Is that it?

Matt (00:01:51):

That’s it’s Laci Goth, and as you all know, load-bearing screams. We do things a little bit differently. What we do is I sit down, I put on my intrepid reporter hat and I interview Laci. I ask her questions about her fascinating life. So you’re a vampire. How’s that been going?

Laci (00:02:05):

I must say it’s been rather boring the time myself.

Matt (00:02:11):

What’s the deal with you and crucifixes? Can you look at ’em?

Laci (00:02:16):

In fact, I’m rather fond of looking at them all that hog wash, all that garlic,

Matt (00:02:24):

All that bullshit.

Laci (00:02:26):

Yes, but coffins and that’s really a thing. Coffins and sunlight, all that’s not bullshit. That’s completely real.

Matt (00:02:30):

You got to have the scene in your vampire movie. If you’ve made a vampire book or a vampire movie after, I don’t know what the year is, let’s say 1950. You have to have the scene where they’re like, so listen, forget everything you knew about vampires except for a couple of things except for half of it. Yeah,

Laci (00:02:45):

Except for the shit. We thought of something cool to do on this movie.

Matt (00:02:49):

Of course, I can go out in the sunlight. Of course, I’m not allergic to garlic. Of course, the thing about crucifix is I actually rather like them, but yeah, I do have to sleep in dirt in a,

Laci (00:02:59):

The sun does kill me if I’m in a hole, but not if I wear sunglasses.

Matt (00:03:04):

Interview with a vampire. The scariest movie ever made

Laci (00:03:07):

So scary.

Matt (00:03:09):

We don’t always do scary movies in October. Sometimes

Speaker 3 (00:03:12):

Just we often don’t.

Matt (00:03:13):

Sometimes we’ll do a Casper spirited beginning. Oh, we’ve never done that. Sometimes we’ll do with a craft or we’ll do with a Beetlejuice.

Laci (00:03:21):

The craft is far scarier than this fucking movie.

Matt (00:03:23):

I agree. There’s some scary shit in that movie. The worms that come out of the wall and all that shit. So yeah, I interviewed with the Vampire, a film that we have covered before on our program all the way back in 2018, and let’s jump into the DeLorean and take a listen.

Laci (00:03:40):

Oh no.

Matt (00:03:43):

Yeah, it’s the adaptation of the NRIs story. Brad Pitt plays and it opens it with him in San Francisco in the 1990s being interviewed

Laci (00:03:50):

Christian, I don’t

Matt (00:03:52):

Back on our podcast. In those early days, we barely talked about the movie. We talked way more about Twilight in this episode than interview with Vampire

Laci (00:03:59):

Fair.

Matt (00:04:00):

You said in that episode, I don’t even think I liked this movie that much. I just read the book and then I saw the movie and

Laci (00:04:05):

That

Speaker 3 (00:04:05):

Makes sense.

Matt (00:04:06):

I recognized the things on screen and apparently we talked a lot about hair. It was everywhere. Couldn’t stop noticing it. Now I was worried. I recall from that episode, which was the first time I had ever seen the movie still, this was almost eight years ago, and I didn’t remember the movie very well, but I remember my takeaway was, well, I love Tom Cruise in this movie, and basically if he’s not on screen, the movie loses about 80% of its appeal. And I hate that. I still kind of feel the same way. I appreciate a lot more about this movie, but my takeaway is still like Brad Pitt, you are so boring

Laci (00:04:47):

And I tend to agree with you.

Matt (00:04:49):

You tend

Laci (00:04:51):

Most of the way through. I’m like, God, get some fucking personality. And then when Antonio Banderas comes in and explains, I’m thinking, why is he too boring to even get a special vampire power? Also completely forgot that this set the tone for vampires each get a special power, not the same of each of them. They all have something a little bit different. When Antonio Bandera says that he’s the oldest living vampires he’s ever met, and he has this whole fricking crew of vampires he hangs around with, but that Brad Pitt is special because he still cares about morals, still has a heart and still is eternally saddened by the role that he has to play or whatever. I’m like, okay, he’s cursed, not cursed. He’s a depress little teenager and he never grows out of that being 24 years old and just lost his wife, he’s eternally sad man. Sure,

Matt (00:05:48):

But do you think you see that in Brad Pitt’s performance? I am told that by Antonio Banderas.

Laci (00:05:55):

I don’t know what I, Matt, that little girl, Cheryl likes him.

Matt (00:06:00):

Yeah, she really does. Yeah, no, I like everyone in this movie except Brad Pitt and it’s a tough character to play. It’s a tough character who’s like, I want to be a moron man.

Laci (00:06:10):

Well, because he’s supposed to be removed and he’s supposed to be depressed and I don’t know a lot of super interesting people who are in the throes of a depressive episode. I know lots of people who get depression,

Matt (00:06:23):

But

Laci (00:06:23):

They’re not hanging out with me when they have it.

Matt (00:06:25):

Right. And I wouldn’t necessarily want to watch a movie about very

Laci (00:06:28):

Much. But this is also the issue people have with the second twilight because the entire time that character is in a depression. She’s more boring than usual. She answers with one word sentences. She sends a lot of time in her room. It’s sad to watch. It’s not interesting.

Matt (00:06:46):

But that movie can have fun with how over the top her depression is. Whereas this movie really takes Brad Pitt’s depression seriously. And reading quotes from the director Neil Jordan about what attracted him to the material and Anne Rice’s own take on it is that is everything is this moral conundrum. It is all about. And to me that is the least interesting thing about this story by far, I have never been very interested in people who are stories about people who say, I want to talk to my creator. I need to ask him why.

Laci (00:07:21):

I get it though, when you’re human, you’re walking around with a bunch of other humans, you have so much to gauge how you should be acting and reacting to things. He knows one other guy and that guy never talks about the guy that created him except for to say that he didn’t have a choice. How is that Lizette doesn’t seem like someone that’s super measured that’s like waiting around to make just the right choice. He seems like an opportunist. So I’m sure he did follow Brad Pitt around and made sure he had a mansion and he was lonely.

Matt (00:07:53):

That’s why he’s a fad character. Like, oh, who gives a shit shit about my story?

Laci (00:07:57):

But he does give a shit because if he didn’t, he’d be making vampires all over the fucking place. He’s bored.

Matt (00:08:03):

Yeah, but I think that that is also why the Brad Pitt performance suffers for me is I have such a fun performance to compare him to. And it’s the challenge of any story like this, the Great Gatsby with Nick Caraway, when you’ve got the character whose function is I observe

Speaker 3 (00:08:19):

And

Matt (00:08:19):

I’ve been reading the book Interview with the Vampire and you read it as well when you were a teenager you talked about loving that series of novels and I might continue with them, but the book a thing it can do that the movie can’t do or that it would

Laci (00:08:39):

His interior thoughts.

Matt (00:08:41):

So it’s not that the novel makes the interesting stylistic decision to be told as literally a conversation between him and the interviewer, meaning it’s not told in first person. He’s almost always talking, but it’s always quotes. The vampire continued his story and so then the interviewer will interrupt him.

(00:09:05):

So if you literally adapted that, the whole movie would be in the room with Christian Slater and Brad Pitt. You wouldn’t have cutaways to what he’s talking about. And that invites lots of interesting questions about how reliable is he as a narrator, how are we viewing this story because of the way he views his own story. And then when the movie ends with Tom Cruise reentering and jumping in and listening to the tape of Brad Pitt talking, you’re like, fucking Louis, he’s so lame. So yeah, you’re right. In fact, maybe this whole movie was a lie. Maybe everything I just saw was a fucking lie because Brad Pitt’s so boring.

Laci (00:09:38):

What do we do with that though?

Matt (00:09:39):

I don’t know. But it’s fun to think about.

Laci (00:09:42):

I’m glad you had fun at the end of the movie.

Matt (00:09:44):

No, I had fun throughout. I want to see what other people see. I want to really get into the movie.

Laci (00:09:50):

So it was actually really fun. God, it’s such so weird how the memory works. I thought I liked this movie. I don’t, I mean it’s fine. It’s weird. It’s weird enough for me to recommend it because I don’t know anything else like it. But watching it with the kid, that’s what made it fun like and our kid’s like, what is that? Why is

Matt (00:10:14):

This? What was the kids, because I wasn’t present for this. What did they think?

Laci (00:10:18):

Oh, just how horny the movie was and just how everything about eating had to be sexual. They just have a snack. Why is everything have to be turning the person on that they’re going to eat and then bring a kid into it? And that’s strange and it seemed like a gay movie before you could make a gay movie. It is just very, just say what you are and they get so close to each other’s lips and never kiss. At least he should have kissed Antonio Bendera at the end when he was pantomiming it. Commit

Matt (00:10:51):

When you are. I’ve not finished with the novel yet, but from what I can tell the novel is more overtly homoerotic. But this does seem like the thing where if they had made the movie more overtly homoerotic, it would be less sexy. The reason the movie seems so gay is because of how obviously they’re trying not to make it gay.

Laci (00:11:13):

They’re edging.

Matt (00:11:14):

Yeah. It’s like this is just a story about a gay man who’s like a guy who’s like, no, I still like women. I’ll still eat this woman out on the plantation.

Laci (00:11:24):

So it’s the fried green tomatoes of vampire movies is what you’re telling me right

Matt (00:11:27):

Now. It’s fried green tomato. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it is kind of fried green tomatoes. Fried green tomatoes could have afforded to have a little more lesbian in it.

Laci (00:11:34):

We could all afford

Matt (00:11:36):

It seems like you were not satisfied this time.

Laci (00:11:38):

I don’t know that I’ve ever been, there’s so much to want and so much to be confused by and just that it manages to make being a vampire boring. It seems really insightful. And also it pisses me off because man,

Matt (00:12:01):

Yeah, then that means I’m bored watching.

Laci (00:12:04):

Right? Even though that is the point, and Jess, it just goes on and on and on. And I do find it, I mean I think maybe the most interesting thing said are when Antonio Ben comes into the scene, the picture, and it’s the least of the story I remember. I remember all the Claudia parts. He says that they act the whole time it’s impossible to kill a vampire and then they kind of kill one, but then they show you how easy it is to actually just kill one. You put’em in the fucking son Claudia. We have to do all this whole poisoning of the children and then setting them a fire, feeding ’em to a gator. Anyway, Armand says, so few vampires have the internal fortitude to actually withstand eternity. And then it reminds me of people on the dance floor that just kind of shuffle around. I know they exist. I’m on the dance floor and I see people doing the same slow movement over and over and over again and they’re having the time of their fucking lives and I’m thinking, how boring that looks so incredibly boring and you’d be a

Matt (00:13:02):

Terrible vampire.

Laci (00:13:03):

Yes.

Matt (00:13:04):

Yeah,

Laci (00:13:04):

I’d blow my load so fucking fast

Matt (00:13:06):

And I think I’d be a good vampire.

Laci (00:13:08):

Yeah, because you’re

Matt (00:13:08):

Boring. Hey,

Laci (00:13:12):

I know. Not pace,

Matt (00:13:14):

Not it’s true. You’re like, I’m going to fuck you. You’re the John Malaney joke. A big ass HA big ass a, oh shit, I’m out of room on the banner.

Laci (00:13:21):

I mean, but it’s interesting because the movie kind of like, oh, shut up. The movie shows you what it would be like to have a whole bunch of lats and immediately you’re annoyed. I am annoyed. These guys are assholes. It’s also cynical. They just want to not just eat and drink the blood, but they want to torture someone. They want to play with their food and that’s hard to watch. So if I’m Armand and this is the best I can do, and then I meet a boring ass Louis. Yeah, yeah. We’re just going to be sitting on the porch talking most of the time that seems less annoying than this fucking guy that wants to pantomime everything I’m doing. Stop mirroring me

Matt (00:14:00):

Then I’m, we’re recording this a day before we record our movie discussion. I will watch the movie again, try to, as I said, I want to get into this movie. Everybody else seems into this movie. I want to connect with it as a story, the way people talk about feeling connected to it. Whereas right now, my appreciation is just, I think it looks great. I think it’s really well directed. I think the performances are great. The production design is great. The performances are great. It’s aside from Brad Pitt, but also this is the assignment of play A Boring Guy. So I’ll watch it again. I’ll try to pay attention and get into the Antonio Bendera. What is captivating to him about Brad Pitt that you don’t just have to do the mental gymnastics of projecting into the movie.

Laci (00:14:44):

Well, and just how tormenting it must be to be the only person like you in such a small community of vampires. It’s even smaller because even Armand who seems to appreciate how you’re different and that’s why he seeks you out, that’s why it makes him excited still fundamentally does not get what makes you different because he then tries to make you not that as soon as he has you, which is so interesting to me.

Matt (00:15:11):

What does he do?

Laci (00:15:12):

Well, he is attracted to Louis because he cares and still has a piece of him that is mortal or it feels that way and he wants to show him how to live fulfilled and he feels and not feel guilty about what it is that he does and really enjoy the rest of eternity together. Instead of finding a balance between not being these jokers and not being this sad boy. And he’s like, no, no Armand, I’m only sad boy.

Matt (00:15:44):

Yeah, I can be no other way.

Laci (00:15:46):

Also don’t let them kill my kid, man, I already did that. Now I can eternally not run from the other kid that died. Thanks, man.

Matt (00:15:53):

Although as things keep going, he seems like he figures things out. I don’t know. The 20th century wore on. I got to go to the movies having fun.

Laci (00:16:01):

God, man, do the movies help? Yeah, I’m sure they did.

Matt (00:16:31):

This is an intimidating thing to talk about because this series of novels is so huge and I think of the franchises and series that I know a lot about, and if I heard somebody talking about them who didn’t know anything and just

(00:16:43):

Had to research for a week leading up to talk, I know the Harry Potter series very well. If somebody hadn’t read the Harry Potter books but just read some interviews and was trying to talk about it, I would feel a little resentful. So apologies in advance. I’m going to get things wrong for my history section and my familiarity only goes to watching this movie and being halfway through the first book, but then reading Wikipedia summaries of the rest of the series. But my assessment that Louis is boring, I mean it seems boring out and the fact that the rest of the series is about lestat, it seems like everybody gets it. Le Stat’s where the juice is. And I was reading this. There’s this 1995 interview with Anne Rice before her fifth book in the series came out Mem Knock the Devil

Speaker 3 (00:17:31):

And

Matt (00:17:31):

The writer of that article of that interview, he gives a little synopsis and when I read it, I thought, okay,

Laci (00:17:38):

Matt loves the devil. Here we go,

Matt (00:17:40):

Quote with mem Knock the devil. The fifth volume of the Vampire Chronicles, the fates of the vampires change radically and irrevocably told in the voice of most cherished character, the vampire Lestat Meoc tells a tale as old as scriptures, legends and his modernist, today’s religious strife and meoc lesat comes face to face with his most feared, supernatural counterpart of the devil. And here’s the devil’s dreadful yet fascinating secret. It is God who made human history so murderous and it is God from whom the world must be saved with Les stat’s help the devil claims he might just be able to accomplish the task. A book about how we have to do battle against God the bad one and the devil’s the good one. Hell yeah, I’d

Laci (00:18:21):

Like to win that knew I fucking knew it, but also you can. She had to get this character out right because obviously who she was relating to this entire time, she is telling the story of Louis, she is Louis, she does not understand. She doesn’t feel like being here. She has a beautiful house, but it doesn’t make her happy. She’s guy feels a little guilt about how much she has and still she’s not happy. And so she can spend hours and hours writing a book about that and luckily enough of it stuck so she could keep going. I think she just probably becoming a success helped her pull her out of the horrible funk you’d be in after losing a child.

Matt (00:18:59):

Yeah, I think so. Alright, so let’s just talk about Anne Rice. I think you’re right and yeah, I think you’re onto something with, you have to get this out of the way. You have to get the Louie thing out of the way so you can just have fun in this world.

(00:19:12):

Ann Rice, born in 1941 in New Orleans, born under the name Howard Allen, Francis O’Brien in an Irish Catholic family in the Irish channel neighborhood of uptown New Orleans on St. Charles Avenue. And what Anne said was the Irish ghetto on her personal website in the nineties. She would answer like fan questions. Here’s what she said about her birth name. Well, my birth name is Howard Allen because apparently my mother thought it would be a good idea to name me Howard. My father’s name was Howard. She wanted to name me after Howard and she thought it was a very interesting thing to do. She was a bit of a bohemian, a bit of a mad woman, a bit of a genius and a great deal of a great teacher. And she had the idea that naming a woman Howard was going to give that woman an unusual advantage in the world.

Laci (00:19:57):

Interesting. Yeah,

Matt (00:19:58):

But Anne hated that, changed her name to Anne in first grade. Never looked back.

Laci (00:20:02):

No fucking kid. I mean he had to be, Howard could have picked a lot of names. Lady.

Matt (00:20:06):

Yeah, Howard, come on Howard. So I mentioned the 1995 Rolling Stone interview. That’s where I’m going to draw a lot of this from the writer of that. So that article is an interview but also has its own analysis. And in that analysis the writer says the book’s consumption. He’s talking here about the novel interview with the vampire. The book’s Consumption of blood was also a metaphor for alcoholism. Rice herself had been an alcoholic behavior influenced in large part by her mother. Rice later said, I think she swallowed her tongue from drinking. My mother’s drinking marked me out in my own eyes. The fact that it was a huge secret and I couldn’t tell anyone, and you never knew how she’d be when you got home. And then her mother died when Anne was 15 related to alcoholism. She died.

Laci (00:20:55):

You know what our good friend Coda, screen time Coda, I’ll bet he doesn’t even know that. And that’s the age his mom died. He was 15.

Matt (00:21:02):

Yeah,

Laci (00:21:02):

I’ll bet this is his favorite movie, but he doesn’t really even know that

Matt (00:21:06):

He’s going to hate how much shit we’ve talked about it so far.

Laci (00:21:09):

Oh, that’s okay. We’re allowed to not like his movies we’re allowed to say what,

Matt (00:21:13):

And I like this movie

Laci (00:21:15):

And I think it’s bad and good at the same time.

Matt (00:21:20):

So her father then remarried and move the family to Texas. She wouldn’t move to New Orleans again until the late eighties after she’d become a big success. But New Orleans would be with her forever. Now for those of you who don’t know, Laci and I both grew up around New Orleans and continue to live in the area

Laci (00:21:36):

And have lived in multiple places in New Orleans, proper

Matt (00:21:39):

Visited many of these locations. Lafayette Cemetery. When you were a kid, you’d go on the field trips to the plantations

Laci (00:21:47):

Where No, I never

Matt (00:21:47):

Did. Oh, well

Laci (00:21:49):

I’ve gone to one to watch a wedding.

Matt (00:21:51):

Oh, we’d get the tours and this is where the slaves live their happy lives.

Laci (00:21:56):

We’d go on field trips to the cemeteries. That’s what I thought you were going to say.

Matt (00:21:59):

That’d be fun. No, I never got to do that.

Laci (00:22:00):

Is the art class. You’re not very arty.

Matt (00:22:03):

You’re not very art. We could go, should we go make a video at Ann Rice’s tomb? Should we do that? Let’s, it’s in Matty Cemetery, which is where my grandmother’s buried.

Laci (00:22:11):

We’re going to visit her too.

Matt (00:22:12):

That’s okay.

Laci (00:22:13):

We’re going to show a little side by side.

Matt (00:22:16):

She married Stan Rice in 1961 and she was 20 years old.

Laci (00:22:20):

Stan and Anne,

Matt (00:22:21):

They moved to San Francisco to the height Ashbury neighborhood just as the hippie movement was taking off.

(00:22:26):

Though Anne always described herself as a pretty conservative person. Her husband Stan came to talk at my school when I was in seventh grade and I went home and I was like, mom, ATO author came and talked to us. His name was Stan Rice, and she said, that’s Anne Rice’s husband. I was like, okay, I didn’t know. Thanks mom. So she had ambitions of being a writer. Graduated San Francisco State in 1964 with a BA in political science and then gave birth to a daughter Michelle in 1966, and then went to graduate school, got her ma in creative writing in 1972. But in 1972, her daughter, just before turning six years old, died from a rare form of leukemia just under six years old and went into a state of alcoholism. For the rest of the seventies though, when her second child, Christopher was born, she and her husband gave up alcohol for good.

(00:23:20):

But it was while grieving her daughter’s death that she wrote her first novel interview with the Vampire and it was published in 1976. It would go on to pub to sell 8 million copies and before returning to the Vampire Series, the Vampire Chronicles, she wrote some historical fiction, some erotic fiction, and then the Vampire Lestat, she published in 1985 and Queen of the Damned in 1988. Then in 1988 she moved back to New Orleans and she told Rolling Stone in 1995. I think that since moving back here to New Orleans, I’ve begun to find some way I can accept the fact that we’re going to die. But it is true that for a long time I found it just horrifying. I found it horrifying, not so much because my life will be extinguished, but because of the possibility that the Holocaust might mean nothing or the suffering of my daughter might mean nothing.

(00:24:09):

That’s the part that bothers me, the meaninglessness of it, the utter meaninglessness of it. And I’m still fascinated by the way people convince themselves that things have to have meaning. Every time you turn on a tv, you see a reporter talking to the parent of a child or somebody who’s been hit by a ton of bricks and they’d say, there has to be meaning for this. And I’m always thinking, no, there really doesn’t have to be any at all. Despite that I now think atheism might be a bit naive and cocky. I still believe there’s possibly no meaning to anything. There’s nothing that can’t be swept off the face of the earth. Nothing end. She wasn’t a until 1998 when she returned to the Catholic church, though she continued to be a champion of gay rights and abortion rights. But yeah, I mean interview with the Vampire is very much exploring the idea of what a man who is turned into a vampire. And in a way it gets to meet God in the form of lestat and is like, Hey God, can you tell me anything interesting? And he’s like, ah, no, I got nothing for

Laci (00:25:08):

You. Right. Your search for answers just keeps going. If you’re the kind of person who’s got a lot of questions,

Matt (00:25:13):

Not only that, you’re talking to somebody who’s hostile to the idea that you’re asking questions at all. It’s like what is with you asking so many questions. There’s no satisfying answers to these questions.

Laci (00:25:25):

Just real quick, it’s very interesting to know that she was an alcoholic during her coming up with this story because I’m sure she thought of her own self as a vampire. So often the life of an alcoholic begins around noon. You’re just waking up and anyway, the majority of the time that you’re alert and awake is at night and you just start to feel completely out of touch with the people who have a nine to five or I’m sure her herself felt like she had no waking hours.

Matt (00:25:56):

That’s interesting. And that she remembered the detail of being a kid and not knowing what kind of mom was going to come home in the evening,

Laci (00:26:04):

Not knowing what kind of mom she was going to come home to in the evening. I think that’s kind of key, right? Mom’s not out there working.

Matt (00:26:10):

Yeah,

Laci (00:26:10):

I’m just saying your alcoholic mom’s not out there busting her. I was working. Yeah, I can relate to that very much.

Matt (00:26:17):

In the 2010s she distanced herself once again from organized religion. So she made a public return to the Catholic church, finished the Vampire Chronicles I going back series, then started writing a bunch of Catholic novels, and then she distanced herself from that again and returned to Vampire

Laci (00:26:34):

Office and then was apologetic for Paula Dean and then was wiped off the face of the earth.

Matt (00:26:38):

She did,

Laci (00:26:39):

If you search in rice right now, you’re just going to see pictures of Paula Dean.

Matt (00:26:42):

Oh, I didn’t see that at all. Yeah. Were they friends?

Laci (00:26:45):

I have no idea. I just saw it. I was like, oh no, that’s bad. And I could, I dunno,

Matt (00:26:51):

A couple of very, very wealthy old women relating to each other. I can’t believe it.

Laci (00:26:54):

I think it was her coming her defense for saying the N word, though

Matt (00:26:57):

Again, a couple of wealthy old women

Laci (00:27:00):

From the south

Matt (00:27:01):

Sticking up for each other. I can’t believe it. Okay, so she died in 2021 at the age of 80. And again, I’m in the midst of reading interview with the Vampire. I enjoy it and I want to keep going with the series. So the book was a big hit and right away before the novels even published, it gets purchased by Paramount Gets Option by Paramount and Anne Rice gets commissioned to write a screenplay, but the project lingers in development. Hell, for a long time now, I found this book, the Anne Rice Reader by Catherine Rahm’s Land, which is a very, very good book. It’s a collection of essays about Anne Rice, but then it also has stuff from Catherine Reland the editor, and she has a ton of information about the making of interview with the Vampire. So the movie Lingered in Development hell for a long time and eventually the rights to the project return to Anne Rice, Anne learned from Hollywood Sources that its production was stalled because it featured two male vampires with a female child caught up in an erotic relationship. Such a concept was too controversial. She dutifully rewrote the story presenting alternative versions, but Paramount still failed to get the movie into production. So there was a cycle of her being told by Hollywood, too controversial, and instead of being strident, she’s like, well, I’ll give you what you want. I mean, I’ll compromise or I’ll make changes to it. So she partnered with the producer Julia Phillips, who we talked about a lot when we did our Close Encounters episode. She’s the one who kind of burnt all her bridges in Hollywood by writing the

Laci (00:28:40):

Lunch book.

Matt (00:28:40):

Yes, you’ll Never Eat lunch in this town again. But she partnered up with Ann Rice and was like, it’s my personal ambition to get this movie made. So when she finally began to work on the treatment in an effort to fend off charges of pedophilia and to preserve Claudia in the story as a child, and decided to turn Louis into a woman who dresses and acts like a man, she wanted to model this new character on famous transvestites from the era, from the era. In this story, lesat falls under the female Louisie spell when he recognizes similarities between her and his mother, Gabrielle, and envisioned an actress like Cher or Meryl Streep for this androgynous role. Somebody else suggested Angelica, of course, Angelica

Laci (00:29:19):

Houston. Of course if you say Cher, you’re going to get Angelica Houston.

Matt (00:29:22):

Both Anne and Laura Marr, the production company, were pleased with her ideas and wanted Ridley Scott to direct the film because she had loved his work on Blade Runner.

Laci (00:29:30):

That would be fucking interesting. I’d watch that.

Matt (00:29:32):

Yeah, it would be. She also wanted an actor from the same movie, Rucker Howard to play Lestat Rucker Howard is the guy who plays the bad guy.

Laci (00:29:40):

No, I mean you’re so fucking close because he does play a vampire. It’s just in Buffy’s Vampire’s layer.

Matt (00:29:46):

Yeah, tears in the Rain. Why can’t I think of his name in the movie Batty To her Mind, he perfectly captured the coldness and cruelty she had intended for her Blonde Vampire End quote. But this wasn’t enough to get the movie made either. The rights went through just a series of mergers and acquisitions ultimately ending up at Warner Brothers who enlisted David Geffen to produce. David Geffen is a gay man, very publicly gay man. He had been a big fan of Rice’s novel and he insisted to her. He wanted to get her involved in the movie, wanted her to rewrite the script, go back to the source material, don’t get rid of the homoerotic things. It’s very crucial that they are men. But he insisted Julia Roberts, Julia Phillips, after she published that book, she cannot be involved in the production. She’ll never eat lunch in this town again.

(00:30:36):

So she was fired. So their first idea for a director after Ridley Scott refused was David Cronenberg. He turned it down. And so David Geffen made the offer to Neil Jordan to direct Neil Jordan is the director of the film Born in Ireland in 1950. Most his debut movie was Angel in 1980. That was the first time he worked with the actor Steven Ray, who had gone on to be in almost all of his movies, including Interview with the Vampire. He plays Santiago, and that was also a movie about the Troubles, which is a subject. He often makes movies about the troubles in Ireland. He made Mona Lisa in 1986, which got Bob Hoskins an Oscar nomination, and then in 1992 he made The Crying Game an international hit an Oscar contender. He won a best screenplay Oscar for it. So the Crying Game that it was a sensation, like a sort of prestige awardsy sensation in the early nineties, and you also got a billion jokes in television shows. It was the way you could joke about

Laci (00:31:41):

Tension stuff was I Right. There’s a rape shower.

Matt (00:31:44):

A rape shower.

Laci (00:31:45):

Well, crying in the shower in the fetal position.

Matt (00:31:48):

No, that’s not in that movie. But you, because you said Forrest Whitaker’s in that movie.

Laci (00:31:54):

Yeah, I’ve seen it.

Matt (00:31:55):

Yeah,

Laci (00:31:55):

I just don’t remember anything about it clearly.

Matt (00:31:57):

So The Crying Game is very famous and best remembered for having a trans character where it is a surprise reveal in the movie that this character is trans, that this trans woman has a penis from what I had always heard about this movie, I assumed this would be in the last five minutes of the movie, and then the guy who finds it out is like, oh, it’s crazy. And goes and throws up. Well, it happens halfway through the movie and it is indeed, it’s the subject of the movie. So I mean spoilers for the Crying Game, but this guy who, I’m just saying all this because I think it is pertinent to interview with the Vampire.

(00:32:34):

So the story of the movie is Stephen Ray, who plays is in Interview with the Vampire. He plays a person who works for the IRA, the Irish Republican army, and they capture a British soldier played by Forrest Whitaker, and he is in charge of just guarding Forrest Whitaker and ends up bonding with and relating to Fort Whitaker for Whitaker. Tells him about his girlfriend back in London named Dill, and then he knows he’s about to be executed. So he is like, just please go check on her and tell her that I love her. And then Steven Ray has to execute Fort Whitaker, but he feels too much.

(00:33:13):

He feels like he relates too much to him, so he just kind of fucks up and then they get raided, forced dies. Anyway, Steven Ray then has to go to London and kind of rebuild his life and is now simultaneously hiding from the government and from the IRA, but he still wants to go meet the girlfriend Dill. So he goes and meets the girlfriend Dill, and then they end up having a romance. And Dill is played by a man, Jay Alexander, a cisgender man who is gay in real life. But this was a cisgender man playing a transgender woman. What’s interesting about the movie is the word trans is never uttered. The way they speak in the movie is not how you would speak today. They’ll say, well, she’s not really a girl. And yet it is fascinating to watch people kind of struggle with this idea, including the main character who finds out that she’s transgender, but I’m still attracted to her and I still feel a very intense connection to her and how do I navigate that as a straight man?

(00:34:11):

So it’s playing with all these ideas of identity and sexuality and gender and all these complicated ways, and those were what made David Geffen think You’ll be Perfect for Interview with a Vampire, a story about a very dysfunctional family with a sensibly two gay men as the fathers and a daughter who is a perpetual child. So Neil Jordan in 2014, he said about getting the job for Interview with the Vampire. He said, I just made the Crying Game. I was sent this interview with the Vampire Script by Warner Brothers. I thought it was really interesting and slightly theatrical. Then I read the novel, which is extraordinary. So I said, I do it on the condition that I did my own script, but I didn’t get a credit. It’s very difficult to do so within the Hollywood system. I tried to make it more faithful to the book. I was just anxious to get it made. It was a piece of luck, really. It’s not very often you can make it a complicated, dark, dangerous movie and get a big budget for it. Vampire movies were traditionally made on the lower end of the scale on a shoestring, on rudimentary sets. But David Geffen is very powerful and he poured money into interview. I wanted to make it on an epic scale of something like Gone With the Wind,

(00:35:15):

And I think that that more than anything else is what makes the movie special is we made a very schlocky vampire movie, but on a huge budget and kind of did make a Gone with the Win scale.

Laci (00:35:29):

Just the different locations we get to be in and the costuming, the amount of actors inside of the movie,

Matt (00:35:36):

Just think because they’re filming in the French Quarter, we’ve been on all of these streets. They had to close all these streets down and make ’em dirty and covered in mud and stuff really to film. Yeah. If we’re going to make it look like it’s the year 1799 on this street, it can’t have a paved road, so we have to transform it. And just thinking about

Laci (00:35:57):

How much, and then they burned New Orleans down to the ground just for the movie. They

Matt (00:35:59):

Actually did that. Yeah, they knew it. So according to the Roslin book, the Anne Rice reader, when Neil Jordan read Anne Rice’s script, he really wanted to rewrite it. He said he found her script to theatrical, but when he read the novel, he was able to envision a more effective way to bring it to the screen. He replaced many of the elements of the original story that Anne Script had left out and made it primarily Louie’s story, not Les Stats, although overall he described it as the story of a deeply dysfunctional family and was pleased with the selection of Jordan. She knew his work from the Company of Wolves in the crying game and liked the way he boldly approached gender illusions and controversial sexuality. When he called Anne to tell her what he had in mind, she felt her script would be in safe hands.

Laci (00:36:44):

Was she ultimately happy with the results?

Matt (00:36:46):

So that’s where we’re moving to now. This is one of those famous high profile stories of an author being involved and then being frustrated with not being involved and making a big public show about how unhappy she is with the production of a movie

Laci (00:36:59):

Even before having seen it. Yeah, Tom Cruise is hard to picture as a blonde until you see it. I bet it is hard.

Matt (00:37:09):

I’m

Laci (00:37:09):

Just guessing that that’s the problem. That

Matt (00:37:10):

Is exactly the problem. But I think this, and Stephen King with The Shining are probably two of the biggest high profile examples because this was all playing out in public with people talking to the media,

(00:37:23):

And I know that an author being very heavily involved. To me, I understand the instinct as a movie producer, but me as a viewer, when I hear that, I get a little suspicious because I think movies and novels are very different things, and the point of adaptation is your novel exists now I’m going to turn it into something different. I’m going to take things from it. I’m going to make changes to it. And when the original creator is involved, they might muck it up because they don’t want you to change anything. So Brad Pitt got cast very early on. I mean he

Laci (00:38:02):

Already in Legends of the Fall,

Matt (00:38:03):

You just made Legends of the Fall.

Laci (00:38:05):

That hair was already there.

Matt (00:38:07):

I think he came straight from Legends of the Fall,

Laci (00:38:09):

Right? I mean the costume makes, you could see him and he seems like the cover of a romance novel or something, and he’s just got a dreamy ethereal face. The angles on his face seem impossible. Just add a few veins and it’s like, yeah, vampire vampires when they’re not being extremely disgustingly ugly, they’re the most gorgeous things you’ve ever seen. So it is interesting to have some mid vampires in this movie. Once they get over to Europe, it’s like lives with this ugly couple of vampires hanging out, didn’t turn ’em at the right time. Hug

Matt (00:38:43):

Grandma, there’s no love that says they have to be gorgeous,

Laci (00:38:45):

But they do have a glow up. As soon as they are like transformed, he grows normal man teeth with fangs. She her Claudia’s hair curls and she gets clean all of a sudden. I mean, they show them

Matt (00:38:58):

Why does her hair curl?

Laci (00:39:00):

She just becomes more beautiful. She just becomes more done up if part of they don’t totally explain what her powers are except for that she can feel what’s in people’s souls. Interesting. I guess vampires have those. She is forever a child and it just makes more sense for her to have really tight curls. That’d be more childlike

Matt (00:39:23):

In Twilight. There’s souls too and there’s like a heaven and a hell

Laci (00:39:26):

No. In Twilight, the conversation is are their souls. I don’t know that they’re ever answered. How could it be? They don’t ever die.

Matt (00:39:35):

Thought it was in there as a, there’s got to be some reason you wouldn’t want to be a vampire because in Twilight it seems like

Laci (00:39:42):

Seems like the fucking best.

Matt (00:39:43):

Yes. There’s no reason

Laci (00:39:44):

It’s the best. If you’re the, you’re just a couple of people like Lata and Louis who never really found a great gang of people to hang around with and don’t have a wonderful system for staying rich and not being super obvious that you are who you are. It seems lonely and you might hate the Cullins. I think it’s probably pretty rare to have the really good stuff because you’ve got to figure out all the social stuff too and when the whole thing is, I’m not like a human. I’m special. It’s kind of hard to figure out the social stuff. I

Matt (00:40:13):

Think you’ve bought in a little too much to Stephanie Myers Mormon propaganda where you could only be happy if you’re on a Mormon compound because the only vampires in the Twilight Series who are happy are the Mormon ones who all live under this house

Laci (00:40:25):

Anyway. It’s Bella the human who says that decides they have a soul and she’s just doing that because she wants to become a fucking vampire. She’s like, no, you do. She’s the only one that asserts it.

Matt (00:40:36):

But it’s always like the drawback is you have to live forever, but no, you don’t. You can die. They can care. Wait,

Laci (00:40:42):

They make up your fucking mind.

Matt (00:40:44):

Yeah.

Laci (00:40:44):

I mean you could, but can’t I? What if I get locked outside, I just die.

Matt (00:40:51):

And it’s like, well, it’ll be really horrible death.

Laci (00:40:54):

It seems fine. It seems kind of fast. Also,

Matt (00:40:57):

I could die horribly right now too.

Laci (00:40:59):

I can’t take a trip to Dubai. I it’s a lot of sun.

Matt (00:41:03):

So Brad Pitt was coming off of Legends of the Fall, obviously big breakout with Thelma and Louise, but he’s at that stage in his career. He did a river runs through it. He’s a heartthrob, but he’s like, but I’m like a serious actor and I want you to take me seriously.

Laci (00:41:19):

I’m not like DiCaprio.

Matt (00:41:21):

He’s doing the thing that DiCaprio would do like five years later because the next year he’ll be in seven and he will be in 12 Monkeys. And so he is trying to,

Laci (00:41:30):

Man, he really spreads it around. I mean, legends of the Fall and the river runs through it. I feel like those are pretty similar. Somehow down. Louise is like

Matt (00:41:37):

Never seen either. They both sound like the most boring fucking movies.

Laci (00:41:40):

Seven years. Tibet is a boring fucking

Matt (00:41:42):

Movie. That also sounds like one of the movie. I merge all three of those movies into my head

Laci (00:41:45):

As you should Flowy Shirt Pit.

Matt (00:41:49):

But they cast him pretty early on. They cast him before they cast Lestat. So Daniel Day Lewis was offered the role

Laci (00:41:54):

Of T,

Matt (00:41:55):

Which makes, I mean he’s an Irishman in Daniel Day Lewis fashion. He took six months to consider the role before turning it down.

Laci (00:42:02):

He had to become a vampire for six months to see if he really fell right,

Matt (00:42:05):

Or I have to inhabit the role of an indecisive actor for six months to not, I have to live as somebody who’s not sure if he wants the role or not. For six months. Then he could realize he didn’t want it. Mel Gibson Ray Fine are considered, but ultimately the role goes to Tom Cruise, who was 31 years

Laci (00:42:23):

Old.

Matt (00:42:24):

Ray find sounds interesting. He does sound interesting.

Laci (00:42:25):

Look how he’s such a baby man. It’s so nice to have a dick. I mean,

Matt (00:42:30):

He

Laci (00:42:30):

Looks like 20 years old here, but he’s 31.

Matt (00:42:35):

No, when we did Minority Report last summer, we were like, look at him. Look at him fucking, and he was in his forties, mid forties,

Laci (00:42:41):

Psycho. What did he just done?

Matt (00:42:46):

The firm.

Laci (00:42:47):

Okay, so he’s done

Matt (00:42:48):

A few. Good man.

Laci (00:42:49):

He’s done a couple. He can be serious. He’s not just like good time

Matt (00:42:53):

Charlie. Oh yeah. So he is firmly in,

Laci (00:42:55):

Yeah, top Gun. I mean, what the fuck else you want? He’s a drama king.

Matt (00:42:58):

He bursts onto the scene with all the right moves in the outsiders and risky business and then goes and becomes the biggest star in the world. Top Gun Days of Thunder and then decides, I want work with serious directors. I want to,

Laci (00:43:11):

That’s it. She didn’t want her movie being experimented on by Tom who just wants to dabble. It’s like you’re bringing all your of your centrifuge and it’s all going to land on you. It’s all going to be about you. It’s not going to be about the story at all. You’re going to suck all the fucking energy out of the room.

Matt (00:43:28):

I mean, that’s true. When you are getting the biggest star in the world, it would still be true today.

Laci (00:43:33):

Oh, of course. I’d be pissed too. It was a fluke that we got the budget we did, and now we’ve been so careful and spent so much time on the writing and the story just right. Just to fucking throw it away on the onion. The onion that’s on the burger. You know what I’m saying? When you put an onion on a burger, what you’re eating is an onion burger, not a burger. It sucks all the fucking attention.

Matt (00:43:53):

If Steven Spielberg is going to make your movie, on the one hand you’re like, oh wow. Great.

Laci (00:43:57):

On

Matt (00:43:57):

The other hand, it could movie.

Laci (00:43:59):

Yeah.

Matt (00:44:01):

Okay. This would be Tom Cruise’s first time playing a villain. Now, one reason that book I keep referencing is so great is it has lots of interviews with Tom Cruise, which is kind of unusual.

Laci (00:44:08):

I don’t think of him as a villain. It’s funny.

Matt (00:44:11):

It was just that Tom Cruise, for the first time in his career, it’s going to play a bad guy.

Laci (00:44:15):

Yeah. I mean, I could see you selling it like that, but at the end of the movie I’m just like, fuck yeah. Tom Cruise is back

Matt (00:44:22):

For me, was a great challenge. There are places you get to go with that character, with this role. The fun was playing the humor and exploring the depth and trying to make him come alive and be what I envisioned him to be.

Laci (00:44:31):

Why is the rock and him and fucking do it, give to me, give

Matt (00:44:36):

Vin Diesel. God.

Laci (00:44:38):

Now, the three guys you talk this way for,

Matt (00:44:41):

Who’s the other guy? What? Rob Lowe?

Laci (00:44:42):

Yes. Rob Lowe. These are the three.

Matt (00:44:44):

Yeah. When Rob Lowe is just an imitation of Tom Cruise is literally a stat, is the best character I’ve ever played in my goddamn life. I’m the type of person who at the end of the day wants to feel that I honestly gave every moment my best. When all is said and done, I want to look back and know that I pushed myself as far as I could. Lestat was just a monster role.

Laci (00:45:01):

Okay, so he is the rock. Tell me about his fucking dad without telling me about his dad. I got it. I already understand Mr. Cruz.

Matt (00:45:08):

So at this point, rice was not consulted about the casting and she just read it in the press. She was a little confused and she assumed, well, he must be playing Louis and Brad Pitt playing Lestat from the Rand book. It disturbed her that it disturbed her that no one from Geffen’s office had consulted her, and she felt that the vision of the movie had definitely changed. She thought that Cruz was talented and had liked what she’d seen of his films, but she insisted that he wasn’t tall enough and lacked the appropriate look for a blonde aristocratic Frenchman. He was an All-American and his voice wasn’t right. Then she says, I don’t think I’ve ever fallen under the spell of an actor when the voice wasn’t a big component. And of course, the very sad thing about Tom Cruise is he does not have that kind of distinct voice. How is he going to exert the power of Lestat

Laci (00:45:52):

With the veins bulging out of his fucking forehead and his animal magnetism, his energy alone? I didn’t even notice his voice. He might’ve been a mute this whole time, and I don’t know.

Matt (00:46:03):

Yeah,

Laci (00:46:04):

It’s his presence. It’s his gesturing.

Matt (00:46:07):

But it is interesting to point that out. He is a difficult person to do an impression of, I can’t do it. You just did it. But you’re making fun of the energy he has,

Laci (00:46:17):

Right? You’re giving energy. That is what he is. I don’t think you could do his voice because his voice doesn’t even matter.

Matt (00:46:21):

I think that this used to be more true than it is. You used to have actors like famous movie stars all had a distinct way of speaking. There’s Pacino or Robert De Niro or Jack Nicholson,

Laci (00:46:32):

They were used to, when you didn’t have pitches, they were brought up on people who thought radio voices were like the bee’s. Knees

Matt (00:46:39):

A true, well, yeah,

Laci (00:46:42):

There’s a lot of radio acting in the generation before the people you’re talking about.

Matt (00:46:46):

But then you get to the seventies actors and they all got to have distinct weird voices. But at a certain point, everything kind of just merged into a generic. Everybody talks the same and everybody kind of mumbles.

Laci (00:46:56):

Timothy Shaima has a distinct mumble,

Matt (00:46:59):

A distinct, well, I can’t hear it. Microphone technology has gotten too good. We can pick up on

Laci (00:47:04):

Everything. And then Butler, he’s got a distinct voice because he got stuck on, he got stuck on Elvis,

Matt (00:47:10):

Stuck on Marco.

Laci (00:47:12):

He’s forgiven though because he’s talented.

Matt (00:47:14):

He’s fine. So he’s fine. He’s fine. Yeah. No, Elvis is fine. No, I mean the actor. Yeah, no, he’s fine. As the Haron and guy Neil Jordan defended the, I thought these roles should be played by stars. The definition of a star is someone who’s eternally young, eternally handsome, and has made some strange contract with some power to stay that way forever. Yeah. Fuck yeah. I love that.

Laci (00:47:41):

I love that. Why not take the two hottest fucking pieces and put them together in a gay romance where I could believe them being eternally looking like this? In fact, look at them now.

Matt (00:47:50):

I know. Fuck to this day. Yes, and still they are the only two guys who end Caprio too. I want 200 million for this movie. It’s going to play in theaters. It’s going to play theaters exclusively for two months.

Laci (00:48:02):

If they are in a movie, I’m going to go see it in the theater. Count me in that. I feel the same way.

Matt (00:48:08):

Also just love him. Neil Jordan, just saying that about his stars. Obviously he made some sort of pact with a demon.

Laci (00:48:16):

He’s got energy that doesn’t even make sense for cocaine.

Matt (00:48:19):

Ann Rice went public with her unhappiness. She said to the LA Times quote, it’s like casting Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in the movie, she says, of the 50 million

Laci (00:48:27):

Project, oh, they come with an understanding of who they are so ingrained. I got it.

Matt (00:48:30):

But also just kind of young and

Laci (00:48:33):

Oh gosh, we’re just spunky little young people. I really don’t think that’s what she means. No, I think she means this is a tale as old as time coming into my movie that sits own tail. You need to a way of laundering these people’s personalities so that you can just think of them as who they are. And in that worked in Twilight. I didn’t know those actors. They got to just be who they were. So you bring Brad Pitt in as fucking Edward Cullen. You know what I’m saying? That’s weird.

Matt (00:48:59):

And Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, specific time and place, they’re situated in time and a vampire should be

Laci (00:49:07):

Worldly

Matt (00:49:07):

And ethereal and eternal. A $50 million project. Also starring Antonio Bendera, Steven Ray and River Phoenix Penn in that which is being directed by Neil Jordan for G Films. And Rice says, I was particularly stunned by the casting of Cruz, who is no more my vampire lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler. I told Jordan that myself. I’m puzzled why Cruz would want to take on the role. He’s a cute kid on top of the world and on his way to becoming a great actor on his way to becoming a great actor. Oh God, calm down Rice. This was a thing that people would say about Tom Cruise is

Laci (00:49:41):

Because he got it a little too easy. He just kind of nailed it on his first. That’s the same with Brad Pitt though too. There’s just something about him right away. They didn’t do any embarrassing stuff. Even their boring stuff is just like, oh, that was just when they were being boring, that when they were being embarrassing.

Matt (00:49:58):

The serious stuff happened pretty fast for Cruise two. He got an Oscar nomination for Born on the 4th of July where he’s like, you

Laci (00:50:03):

What? You know what? The same thing about why we keep coming across this. They were born and came of age at a time when Hollywood did a lot of different shit. You could just be in three completely different movies in a row. It was a spicy time.

Matt (00:50:19):

Yeah. Now, well, I got to play Captain Marvel and then I got to play Captain Hydra and then I got to play Captain Molecule.

Laci (00:50:24):

I need to go into the fucking pipeline so they can come out the other side with a little bit of cache.

Matt (00:50:32):

Right. And it’s not just that those roles aren’t interesting. You got to sign a 14 picture deal and we got you for four straight years. So you’re not going to have time to go work with Oliver Stone and make your Vietnam picture.

Laci (00:50:42):

Well, yeah. And the steroids you’re going to have to be on and starve yourself.

Matt (00:50:46):

So he’s a cute kid on top of the world, on his way to becoming a great actor, but I’m not sure he knows what he’s getting himself into. I’m tempted to call up Mike Ovitz, his agent and tell him that everyone will be gunning for his client. Cruz should do himself and everyone else a service and withdraw.

Laci (00:51:02):

You underestimate this man’s drive. I feel like all they had to do was put her at a table with him for and be like, okay,

Matt (00:51:10):

I know it really seems like could have just

Laci (00:51:12):

Taken a lunch.

Matt (00:51:13):

Get her back involved a little bit. Just toss her up.

Laci (00:51:16):

Although, I mean, all the publicity’s good, right? I mean, what we’re talking about it him rising to the challenge is sexy shit.

Matt (00:51:27):

So back to the Roslin book. She spoke to Tom Cruise about this. It amazed him that Anne and her readers felt such, I didn’t say this, sorry, that like today, she had her legions of fans who posted in the form of sending petitions and telegrams to the Warner brothers office. No Tom Cruise ever.

Laci (00:51:45):

We really, really don’t have him in this movie, can you?

Matt (00:51:48):

As they had done with Michael Keaton as Batman, Mr. Mom is going to play Batman. He’s a comedian. No, stop. God, were they wrong? It amazed him that Ann and her readers felt such antagonism toward his involvement, but he was determined to play the part. It was not the first time in his career that he had been discouraged from playing a role, although it was the most vehement attack still, he knew he could do it if they would give him the chance. As he learned more about Anne and what the novel meant to her, he understood better why she wanted the project to be done right. Yet he also felt that Anne as an artist herself, ought to support what he was trying to do. He had hoped to discuss the character with her, but realized that any such meeting would be impossible. And then this is a cruise talking. I would’ve asked her a lot of questions. I would’ve discussed what? For me, the pivotal scenes, like the doll scene with Claudia, I would’ve asked how she felt about Lestat or what she thought Lestat about Claudia. Why did she write the scene that way? And I would’ve asked about her feelings. In the scene where Lesat is holding Claudia’s dress, I would’ve asked her about certain characters and story points. For example, T’s humor. How did Ann Rice feel about his humor?

Laci (00:52:47):

Hey, just real quick, isn’t it weird that we’re talking about two women named Rice back to back podcasts? That weird.

Matt (00:52:53):

What did we do last week?

Laci (00:52:54):

Well, Beethoven, there’s, we talked about Beethoven a little bit. Yes, A little bit. Yes. He’s saying Rice is a weird fucking name, and it came up twice both for a woman.

Matt (00:53:03):

You’re right.

Laci (00:53:03):

Is it? Just a brief aside. Okay, go on. With the Chlorophyll

Matt (00:53:07):

River. Phoenix was cast as the reporter, but he died just as production was underway. So they had to emergency cast somebody else. Leonardo DiCaprio read for the part, but the role went to Christians later.

Laci (00:53:19):

It was the right move. He

Matt (00:53:20):

Donated his entire salary to River Phoenix’s favorite charities.

Laci (00:53:24):

Oh,

Matt (00:53:25):

Alright. The first look that Anne Rice had at the movie was a publicity still the movie released of Tom Cruise in the Stan Winston makeup. I guess this would be from the end of the movie when he’s,

Laci (00:53:36):

He’s in heavy makeup the entire time, Matt.

Matt (00:53:38):

Okay. But there’s a portion where he’s, after he goes under his undergoes his alligator transformation.

Laci (00:53:44):

I know, but why would that be the part that would get win her over when she’s worried about all the other parts?

Matt (00:53:48):

I didn’t say she was won over. She saw this publicity still. She’s like, what the fuck are they doing? What kind of movie is this?

Laci (00:53:54):

Oh, okay. I’m surprised they’d show that at all. That seems like kind of a reveal in the movie that turned.

Matt (00:54:02):

I might have to double check that.

Laci (00:54:03):

Yeah. I’m just letting you know that hair and makeup and teeth are so essential in this movie, and it’s the entire time,

Matt (00:54:13):

Not

Laci (00:54:13):

Just his ghoulish transformation

Matt (00:54:16):

Film, but as the film was in post-production, David Devin was very happy with it. He thought, I think we really have something here. And I think Tom Cruise’s performance is really special. So he just went ahead and got a VHS tape made and mailed it to Ann Rice, and he was like, just give it a chance, please. Mainly because he just didn’t want her to keep criticizing Tom Cruise in the press.

(00:54:36):

So here’s what the book said. Cruise thought sending it was a bad idea and was nervous, but Anne agreed at least to give it a shot. When the tape arrived, she felt great trepidation. What if she hated it? She would be sick over it and there would be nothing she could do to stop it. Anxious. She slid the tape into her VCR and let it roll onto her large screen theater style television. To her astonishment, she liked it. She watched it several times in a row and loved it. I was knocked out by it. I completely forgot that I had written it. I was swept up. She called Geffen to express her enthusiasm. He was both delighted and relieved. She wanted to send flowers to Kirsten Dunst. I felt special love for her. She said, because that role was so much beyond the imagination. She also had praise for Tom Cruise.

(00:55:18):

He became lestat. He did his own lestat without stealing my character from me. I was tremendously relieved. Cruz said, when he heard of her positive response, I quite honestly expected the opposite. I was disappointed in the beginning with her reaction and coming out so strongly because I had read a quote about her being someone who artistically wanted to take chances. I get excited when I hear that other actors are taking chances or trying something totally different. But then I started reading more about her daughter and I realized the project means so much to her that she wants it to be right. So I understood, really, and decided to call Tom Cruise to let her know of her deep appreciation. He was gratified and they spoke together for a few minutes. It was a classy thing to do. He observed because she didn’t have to do that. So all

Laci (00:55:59):

Was That’s nice. I mean, you bring up Kirsten. Was there ever any other actress that was going to do it because oh my God, she’s fucking phenomenal in this. I think.

Matt (00:56:11):

Oh, she’s great. She got a Golden Globe nomination for this.

Laci (00:56:14):

She was

Matt (00:56:14):

The first

Laci (00:56:15):

So many,

Matt (00:56:15):

They auditioned thousands of actors. She was the first one who auditioned and then the role just went to her. Ultimately, she’d been in a few things, but she still had to audition. And

Laci (00:56:26):

I thought, this is a breakout role, not her.

Matt (00:56:29):

She had been in, what was she? She’s in some,

Laci (00:56:32):

But just the way, I mean, how old was she when she did this?

Matt (00:56:35):

She was 11.

Laci (00:56:36):

I mean, she just completely embodies a child and a grownup at the same time is very, it’s wild.

Matt (00:56:43):

Oh, Bon Bonfire of the Vanities very briefly. And then she was in Woody Allen’s movie, Oedipus Rex, and she was in New York Stories,

Laci (00:56:54):

No idea.

Matt (00:56:55):

And in an episode of Star Trek, the Next Generation. But yeah, this was the breakout for her. And then Ann Rice bought an ad in Variety, and it was like, to my fans, please give the movie a chance. If you don’t like it, you can. It’s fine, but just give it a chance. I love it. I love Tom Cruise.

Laci (00:57:14):

That’s really nice.

Matt (00:57:14):

So the movie made $225 million worldwide. Big hit, very well received, well reviewed. Although famously Oprah Winfrey walked out of a screening 10 minutes in and considered canceling an interview she had upcoming with Tom Cruise. She said, I believe there are forces of light and darkness in the world, and I don’t want to be contributor to the Force of darkness,

Laci (00:57:33):

Gay sex,

Matt (00:57:34):

Next up on my show, Dr. Oz.

Laci (00:57:36):

Right? Who I will single handedly make into something, including Dr. Phil. I told you, it’s all about the Jawbone. Look at the series they made later. It’s nothing but pictures of two Jawbones here. It’s all I see is

Matt (00:57:55):

What does that mean?

Laci (00:57:56):

Mewing is when you make a face that accentuates your jawbone. I think it’s also an exercise to enlarge.

Matt (00:58:06):

I assume you meant make a cat noise.

Laci (00:58:08):

Nope.

Matt (00:58:09):

Alright, so Sequel Queen of the Damned came out in 2002. Now this is, I didn’t know this, but I watched the movie last week and it feels like it. This is a movie they had to make or else they’d lose the rights to Ann Rice’s books. So they’re like,

Laci (00:58:23):

Fuck, I don’t remember liking it.

Matt (00:58:24):

No one’s involved from the earlier movie. Hey, Tom Cruise, will you play list Dad again? He laughs in their face. Okay. So you have seen this movie because you know who’s very involved with this movie? Jonathan Davis. Oh,

Laci (00:58:40):

Okay.

Matt (00:58:41):

The movie features like 15 original songs by Jonathan Davis. Oh wow. But let me tell you, he needs those other members of corn because these songs sound like really, really shitty, boring corn songs, songs. But Stuart Townsend plays and the story of the movie is he decides to reveal vampires are real in the world, and now I want to be a singing star. And he wants to be the singer of a new metal band. And when he sings, he sings with the voice of Jonathan Davis.

Laci (00:59:06):

It’s hilarious. What I know about this movie is that Aaliyah was a couple of lesbians. I know. Sexual Awakening. This look is just very good

Matt (00:59:16):

And she’s captivating in it. She’s in about six and a half minutes of the movie.

Laci (00:59:21):

Yeah,

Matt (00:59:21):

It was the only thing I knew about the movie was Aaliyah. She’s in that,

Laci (00:59:24):

Yeah,

Matt (00:59:26):

2020 2:00 AM C put out the first season of Interview with the Vampire the show.

Laci (00:59:33):

And

Matt (00:59:34):

Sam Reed plays Lestat. Jacob Anderson plays Louis Jacob Anderson, his gray worm from Game of Thrones. I do not know Sam Reed.

Laci (00:59:42):

And do you know his Jawbone

Matt (00:59:45):

It Muse

Laci (00:59:46):

That does

Matt (00:59:47):

A third season will be coming out next year where they’ll be covering the Vampire Lestat, the second

Laci (00:59:53):

Book. Oh, okay. Each season is one of the books.

Matt (00:59:55):

I think the first two, they’re doing two seasons of book. I don’t know how popular this show is. I don’t know if anybody watches it. Nobody knows anything. But I was texting with our friend Coda, like You aware of this show? And he says, I haven’t watched it, but I know people do. Maybe if you ask everyone in the world, they’ll say, look, look, I’ve never seen it, but I know a lot of people love this show. So even though nobody’s ever seen it,

Laci (01:00:17):

Right, we’re all just pretending.

Matt (01:00:19):

That’s the history of Interview with the Vampire. Thank you all for bearing with me. Interview with a Vampire. Now, the second day, I’ve watched the movie again, done a close reading as I usually do for our movie discussion. And it’s definitely the most I’ve ever liked it. And I just wanted to say this up at the top that it’s the most I’ve ever liked it. I think there’s so much great stuff going on in this movie, so many great sequences. And still I just return to the central problem of both the character of Louis and the performance of Brad Pitt.

Laci (01:01:24):

I think just a big miscalculation. Can I ask a movie about a person who is depressed that finds a way to make it interesting? Because if it’s just about the act of being it and staying it, I feel like there isn’t really an arc for the person to go on. I feel like we’ve seen the move that horrible one about the man who lost all of his children in a fire Manchester

Matt (01:01:45):

By the Sea.

Laci (01:01:46):

Yeah. Not Kingston Island, Manchester by the Sea. That’s not about depression, but he is depressed. But I feel like he goes through a journey that ends somewhere different.

Matt (01:01:59):

If this were actually about depressed vampire, if this were Alexander Payne’s interview with the Vampire, if he were Paul Giamatti vampire, like, oh, I’m so sad. No, what’s the part? Then we’d have something. I think it’s that he’s an idiot and a rube and a sucker, and he’s wrong about everything, but the movie doesn’t seem to know it because of the way Pit is performing him. And I think if you subbed in Leonardo DiCaprio, me, I, Matt Stokes watching it would be like that fucking little, I’d be giddy about how much I’m supposed to dislike him and how he thinks he knows it all, but you know what he doesn’t.

Laci (01:02:36):

So you’re saying there’s something so respectable about Brad Pitt that you can’t feel torish against him?

Matt (01:02:42):

Yeah. Yeah. Damn you.

Laci (01:02:44):

Brad

Matt (01:02:44):

Pitt. He’s playing it. So

Laci (01:02:46):

He’s playing a grownup.

Matt (01:02:47):

I mean, okay. So I’m further along in the book. I haven’t reached this part of the book, but I did read in the synopsis,

Laci (01:02:53):

The interview part.

Matt (01:02:55):

I haven’t gotten to the interview. I’m really anxious to see what happens. So just looking up differences, changes they made from movie to book, book to movie, and a big change they make is in the movie. Or maybe this isn’t so big, but it stood out to me in the movie, they make it pretty clear that Antonio Banderas orchestrates the killing of Claudia and Brad Pitt says it. You knew what they were going to do, didn’t

Laci (01:03:20):

You? And he doesn’t deny it.

Matt (01:03:22):

Right. And even if they didn’t have that exchange, it really does look like Armand is setting all of this up to

Laci (01:03:30):

Once they get to Europe, you mean and he becomes aware of ’em? Or you’re saying he’s known of Louis since before he came

Matt (01:03:37):

To the concert? No, I saying once they get to Europe, he is the Mastermind pulling all the strings of all the other vampires, imprisoning Brad Pitt, and then he sets him free, and now all the other vampires look at him and it’s not like they’re like, Hey, he broke out. Get him. They’re letting him out. So it seems like it was all part of a plan. This is all the plan to kill Claudia.

Laci (01:03:56):

What I don’t understand is why did he feel Claudia was in the way at all?

Matt (01:03:59):

That’s like a whole, I guess we can discuss that. I don’t think the movie does a great job of

Laci (01:04:05):

Armand’s intentions in general. His character in general. I mean, I think he’s a sympathetic character until Louie all of a sudden is mad at him and knows things. It’s like Louie doesn’t know his heart or his soul or whatever. Claudia knows how to do that. Plus I think it’s a little sloppy that Claudia just all of a sudden has this talent now after 30 years, and it’s never shown itself before.

Matt (01:04:25):

The talent to know people

Laci (01:04:27):

To know what’s some people’s souls. She seems to say that, right? Not I can hear his in her thoughts, but I know his intentions.

Matt (01:04:34):

She has clarity about Lestat that Louie never

Laci (01:04:36):

Has. She absolutely does. But I don’t think that she vocalizes that to Louisie very well, unless her whole thing is No, I know Louie too. And if I tell him in advance, he won’t let me. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:48):

Maybe

Laci (01:04:51):

The powers of empire has how subtle they could be. I find that all very interesting. And I like when it’s kind of a surprise or that maybe they don’t develop them right away. And I like that Louis goes years and hundreds of years without even realizing he had anything special to him at all, except for that he was sad and he couldn’t seem to get with the program to learn one day in your forties that your depression was what made you special all along. Really?

Matt (01:05:17):

Yeah. With

Laci (01:05:17):

Your Cheetos stained hands and your hair, you made

Matt (01:05:21):

It. Oh, there’s the DoorDash guy. Thank you. DoorDash

Laci (01:05:25):

Keeps getting a hug,

Matt (01:05:26):

But it’s only special in that good news you’ll get to keep living. The central conceit here is the curse of the vampire is that you have to live and it’s going to kill you with how bleak it is and how lonely you’re going to feel.

Laci (01:05:38):

See, I think the other ones maybe so, but I feel like the other ones seem to die of excess,

Matt (01:05:44):

Of blowing

Laci (01:05:44):

Their load.

Matt (01:05:45):

But excess decadence is a response to this going on and on forever to eternal life. It’s the affinity, the finitude of life that gives the meaning to the things,

Laci (01:05:57):

The Donald Trump of it, all the Weinstein of it. But I have already, I got all the money. I’ve got all the fame, I’ve got all the stuff. Now I need to do something weird. I’ve already, what else is there to do except for fuck with people I know who’s defenseless. Poor young girls get in here.

Matt (01:06:14):

I get it. I was thinking like there’s some Epstein shit in here. There’s

Laci (01:06:18):

Some Epstein shit here. The little boy

Matt (01:06:19):

Candy. The little boy, little

Laci (01:06:20):

Boys. Fuck up. That’s the big tell that Armand is not great, is that that little boy was his, and he’s in the fucking stage coach to come along at the end whenever he come on, guys, get in.

Matt (01:06:31):

And it’s also the pleasure that you get from drinking this little boy’s blood that’s beside the point. We just want to see you do it. We just want to know that you’re fucked up like us.

Laci (01:06:40):

It’s all voyeurism

Matt (01:06:43):

And com.

Laci (01:06:43):

That really, oh my God, you right. This is so much more about get on the plane. I want you to be on the plane’s log by law. If you go into the air, we have to log you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):

And if you

Laci (01:06:54):

Get on a boat, we have to boat you. So get on the manifest if you’re really down with the crimes.

Matt (01:07:01):

So your gift, your reward for your gift is just congratulations. You get to keep living, but there’s no greater meaning to any of it. And that’s an interesting idea on paper that I don’t feel like the movie is able to make compelling. The book is more successful at it because it’s all being told from Louis’s perspective. But something about Pitt’s performance makes me feel like he’s not actually aware of what makes this an interesting character.

Laci (01:07:27):

How hard would it have been for him to just read the book? Everybody read the book, or I guess that can bias you the wrong way, or they seemed like they were getting mixed signals between how faithful they were going to be to the characters that Ann Rice created versus what the director was seeing for the movie. So it’s hard to say here was the source material.

Matt (01:07:47):

I think the director gets it for whatever reason in the wooden way, he speaks in the dumb expressions he constantly makes. And in the fact that he’s just always giving just bland narration. And then I was like, we were two orphans on

Laci (01:08:00):

This. Wait. But I want to point out, I love his different decades of dress though, because I love that the framing device is him dressed as a pulp fiction character. He just looks like the saddest, most boring hit man or muscle, whatever the fuck

Matt (01:08:16):

He could be. He’s the third Vega brother, and he’s talking to Christians Slater about Alabama. I forgot to ask, in true romance, does Christian Slater and Brad Pitt, are they on screen at the same time in that movie? I don’t remember. I don’t remember. So the change that they made with the Armand thing is that in the book, Brad Pitt, Louie and Armand, after Louis kills all of Armand’s coven, he and then Armand go spend several years wandering Europe together. And it’s not clear if Armand knew about the death of Claudia orchestrated the death of Claudia or not. So it’s ambiguous. And I think that that’s a more interesting change because the move, I don’t think Louis would ever be smarter, cunning enough to figure out that Armand, just like Lestat is a manipulative, mean controlling man.

Laci (01:09:10):

I for sure thought Armand was going to turn out to be the maker of Lesat and be the reason why Lesat is the way that he

Matt (01:09:15):

Is. He is

Laci (01:09:16):

He. Right. Okay. They don’t say that in this movie.

Matt (01:09:18):

He says that he’s the one who made

Laci (01:09:21):

Think T.

Matt (01:09:22):

Yeah, they

Laci (01:09:22):

Do. I didn’t watch it three times like you,

Matt (01:09:25):

But do you see what I’m saying? The book, the book, he never actually learns or he suspects, but he never gets confirmation thinks Maybe you did kill my daughter, but I’m still going to pal around with you anyway

Laci (01:09:34):

For years. What else is there to do?

Matt (01:09:36):

Well, right, but

Laci (01:09:37):

What’s 50 years?

Matt (01:09:38):

That’s more keeping with a person who’s prone to just seeking out people who are going to control and abuse you for years and years and years.

Laci (01:09:45):

I mean, well, whenever Stat wasn’t controlling and abusing, Claudia stepped in. I mean, I know that this is daughter, but she was in control. So yeah, he’s just a wandering soul that needs someone to tell him what to do, and he’s bored as hell, bored and sad. That’s just the worst two things. He even have the balls to just step on the sun and kill himself. So really you’re reward as you get to live. I don’t know. Armand might just realize that’s the thing you don’t want the most is to keep living. So I’m not going to kill you. You’re too much of a pussy to do it yourself. I don’t mean to be talking like pro suicide over here. I’m specifically for vampires. Yeah,

Matt (01:10:22):

Just for vampires.

Laci (01:10:23):

If it’s for vampires, it’s not a reward at all. He would’ve rather died with his daughter. He would’ve rather died with his daughter and his wife before he became a vampire. But he just keeps it going out of obligation to what was he going to teach another vampire to be sad a lot. He just going to be a big bummer.

Matt (01:10:43):

The disconnect for me comes from liking the movie, liking so much about the movie, but when the leap has to come, Brad Pitt, you are so special that I just don’t buy that. All the things Laci just said, that’s what makes you so special. And I’m still thinking so what

Laci (01:10:58):

I get. But that’s, you’re saying special is a good thing. I think special here just means you’re different from these other people. That doesn’t mean a rotten apple is different from all the good ones Special.

Matt (01:11:08):

Then we have the tension of, well then why is the main character the least interesting person in the movie? Then why? And I have to constantly hear him talk.

Laci (01:11:15):

Is it a commentary on how selfish depression is because it’s completely introspective and they are the main character.

Matt (01:11:23):

Yes.

Laci (01:11:23):

Everything is through their eyes. They see everyone at their speed or it was too fast.

Matt (01:11:28):

Which is why I find the ending so invigorating when you are finally not watching Louis tell his own story and Lestat comes in and takes over and he’s like, I’m cool dad. And you’re like, finally, something’s going to happen. And maybe nothing that I just saw is true. Maybe Louie is full of shit just like Lestat is. But his version of being full of shit is I tell everything about how I learned all these lessons about how smart I am and how sad everything is. But you get everlasting life. The way to live is Lestat. You just got to fuck and kill and eat and have fun no other. That’s what you got to do. So the movie opens on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Laci (01:12:10):

Ah, it’s the movie.

Matt (01:12:12):

It’s kind of interesting that the onscreen title is Interview with the Vampire. The Vampire Chronicles.

Laci (01:12:17):

Sorry. So wait, this is in California. I told the child this was New Orleans.

Matt (01:12:21):

Well, the interview takes place in San Francisco.

Laci (01:12:24):

Yeah, it looks a little New Orleans to me.

Matt (01:12:25):

Well, you can tell because it says Port of San Francisco.

Laci (01:12:28):

I don’t read things.

Matt (01:12:29):

So then it goes down, the camera goes down into a crowd of people. And there is an interesting thing where it’s at ground level with all these people and some people are looking at the camera. The camera’s a real person and then the camera swoops up. It is a vampire, like a lurking presence, observing everything. Maybe the camera literally is supposed to be list at.

Laci (01:12:49):

I like that. That’s very Lost boys. Lost boys does that a lot. Do you fly with the first person perspective

Matt (01:12:57):

With the camera? Okay. Yeah. Something very, very easy. Like film semiotics to make you feel like a vampire is I get to move in all these weird ways that I wouldn’t get to move otherwise.

Laci (01:13:11):

The whole thing that I say was, give me a million dollars and I’ll give you me making a crime happen on accident. It’s just such an interesting, I just feel like it’s so easy to accidentally commit a crime when you’ve got a lot of access to things, money or abilities. I can literally fly from this street to this street. What is stopping me from just punching a small child in the face and then flying to another street? It has nothing to do with me.

Matt (01:13:34):

The answer is

Laci (01:13:34):

Kicking a dog.

Matt (01:13:35):

Yes. The answer is nothing stopping you. And you would, and that’s why Brad Pitt so annoying in this movie, but I’m so, he can’t

Laci (01:13:43):

Do anything. He doesn’t get any

Matt (01:13:44):

Power. Also not moral enough to free your slaves.

Laci (01:13:47):

Also, he just walks around. He’s not fast. He doesn’t even know he is special. He can’t fucking know things in a different way than other people. He can’t do what AAD does. They don’t show him being super powerful and strong ever do

Matt (01:14:00):

They? Only in the very last scene with Christian Slater when he gets mad at Christian Slater, and I also don’t buy that part now I’m angry at you. Have you learned nothing from my amazing story? Christian Slater’s like, whoa, man, put me down on the ground I don’t own. So we’re 20 seconds in

Laci (01:14:20):

For Golden Gate Bridge. Alright,

Matt (01:14:21):

We meet Brad Pitt in his hair. Do you want to tell me the story of my life?

Laci (01:14:26):

See, I find Christian Slater convinced that that man’s a vampire way too fast. All he did was turn on the lights, but oh, he moves fast to turn on the lights. Like, whoa,

Matt (01:14:37):

I guess

Laci (01:14:37):

You ran sprinted your ass off. And the thing with these vampires is they’re all very good looking typically, but they have these veins that you can see. That’s it. That’s the makeup,

Matt (01:14:51):

That’s the sign of VAM as a vein.

Laci (01:14:53):

Love. I love a vein.

Matt (01:14:54):

Christian slate. So Christian Slater.

Laci (01:14:58):

Yeah, I know what to ask him about me. I really want to get the impression

Matt (01:15:03):

I either do Jack Nicholson

Laci (01:15:05):

Or

Matt (01:15:05):

Do

Laci (01:15:05):

That’s what I was doing just now.

Matt (01:15:07):

He’s like, you tell me.

Laci (01:15:09):

He’s telling

Matt (01:15:09):

Me. Do you want me to tell you the story of my life?

Laci (01:15:12):

I feel like he’s doing a Jack Nicholson impression.

Matt (01:15:15):

That’s Christian. Say this whole thing is that he’s Jack Nicholson.

Laci (01:15:17):

He even puts his hair back. I just sound like I’m crawling from underneath a staircase though.

Matt (01:15:23):

He’s like, that’s what I do. I interview people. I am a collector of lot collector of

Laci (01:15:29):

Stories.

Matt (01:15:30):

He’s like, you followed me here, didn’t you? So he’s like, he’s a reporter. He works for public radio and this is some public radio shit is I just interview people and they tell me about their lives and then people listen to it. Yeah. This, you could never put this on the radio for profit. No one would

Laci (01:15:46):

Care. It usually leads to ask cash or grass in this case, none of

Matt (01:15:52):

Those things. It led me to cash to crash.

Laci (01:15:55):

Shit. Oh, I went crash.

Matt (01:15:57):

It truly, it does even cash to crash. Alright. I like cash. What do you do? I’m a v Matt.

Laci (01:16:04):

You cannot switch between these the whole time. Is that what’s going to happen? I always end up liking your voices much more while I’m listening to the episode than in person. So I

Matt (01:16:13):

Know

Laci (01:16:14):

Do what you will. It’s a

Matt (01:16:15):

Lot of fun.

Laci (01:16:16):

Oh, okay. If you do say so yourself.

Matt (01:16:19):

I mean, just the fact that Brad Pitt, that Louis wants to tell his story, I feel like tells you a lot about him is he’s like your influencer boss who’s like, I got a lot of wisdom. I’ve learned from being a personal injury attorney for 13

Laci (01:16:31):

Years. How many hundreds of years does he need to walk the earth before he decides to tell this story? Or are you on their oppression? This is like the fifth guy. He’s grabbed and t’s like, come on again. Is that why t’s flying around, following him, following him? Like, this guy’s got a little pin and a little pad.

Matt (01:16:46):

I love. There he goes

Laci (01:16:47):

Again.

Matt (01:16:48):

I love that. I mean, Lestat again, tell our secrets is very much acting like this is the first time he has done this. But it would be fun if he’s like, yeah, Brad Pitt’s always telling some reporter of the whole,

Laci (01:16:58):

Well, he is trying to blow us up, right? He is trying to make people aware that we exist so that when crimes are happening, there’s only so many places in a city you can go drain a couple people dry single night and not eventually have to move. That’s such a pain in the ass. You don’t have special moving discounts or whatever. You got to get a U-Haul just like everybody else. You got to pack all your shit just like everybody else. I’m just saying, moving to a new town, it’s not nothing. So I don’t need this fucking sad vampire who hates our kind, telling everyone about us, making it real hard for us to fucking have a good time. I’ll bet that is what he does.

Matt (01:17:35):

You’re

Laci (01:17:35):

Rat.

Matt (01:17:36):

And I’m very much on the side of whoever is against Woody for fucking those, for that very reason. Rat. Yes.

Laci (01:17:41):

He’s eaten so many of them that he’s become one.

Matt (01:17:44):

So I was waiting for you. I was watching you watch me and Christian later is like, what were you going to do? Kill me drinking my blood? That sort of stuff. So Louie convinces him very fast that he’s a vampire. I mean, you say that Christian slate’s convinced way too fast, but it is the thing of you’re watching a movie and you don’t want so much shoe leather to be spin on. I, come on. I don’t believe it.

Laci (01:18:05):

Yeah. No, I’m thankful in the long run. But it’s so fast because it’s done with the lights off. The trick is that he turns the lights on real fast, but that’s also a smart little trick, meaning they didn’t have to do any special work to show his trick happened in the dark. You just have to believe Christian Slater.

Matt (01:18:23):

So this story begins, and in the novel I told you about the weird way the story is told in the novel where it’s in third person, but most of the book is Louis is literally just dialogue between these two. So it’s Louis just telling his story out loud to the reporter

Laci (01:18:41):

Leaving it to us, the reader, to just picture it. All

Matt (01:18:44):

Right.

Laci (01:18:44):

So he’s not describing anything that tells us what people look like. Claudia’s hair.

Matt (01:18:50):

I mean, if he chooses, sometimes he will, but it’s not as if the book will then switch to a third person or a first person perspective. It is always, you are always just listening to their conversation. And the book always refers to him as the vampire and the Christian later character as the boy isn’t interesting the boy. Yeah. Isn’t it interesting that it’s interview with the vampire and not a vampire?

Laci (01:19:16):

It does make it seem like he’s the last one.

Matt (01:19:18):

Yeah.

Laci (01:19:18):

Interview with the,

Matt (01:19:21):

Which I always thought it was interview with a vampire

Laci (01:19:23):

Place. Oh yeah. Until you just said that. I did not know.

Matt (01:19:26):

Oh, okay. Being

Laci (01:19:26):

With the vampire. Yeah, the vampire. Well, maybe it’s the only one he ever met, but that’s not true. Well, it’s the only one he ever met and could write it down. He died right after the other one. Yeah. I think this is maybe the first time I felt so acutely that this is a plantation owner. And watching Django Unchained two days before this really made for a weird juxtaposition of who the fuck am I rooting for? I mean, I think I’m always rooting for the slaves, but the way, so I am just aggravated. I’m aggravated jingo and chain. I’m aggravated in this when the white man heroically announces you’re all free, according to you just announced it. We don’t have any paperwork. I’m as low as I can be on the fucking Mississippi coast of Louisiana. You know how far I need to go for some like-minded individuals. And even then, how am I proving we can’t all be Morgan Freeman? We can’t all change our last names. How am I proving this?

Matt (01:20:27):

Especially the way it happens here where the building is burning down you free. You’re all free. You could have just lived in this

Laci (01:20:32):

Fucking building. Although then they’d be accused of killing their master, although they would be anyway. You can’t find them anymore.

Matt (01:20:39):

There’s a way you free slaves. George Washington. I was thinking Louis’s kind of a George Washington.

Laci (01:20:48):

I don’t feel like being the president, but I guess I’m the president. Well, yeah, kind of. So I just did Christian Slater for I guess George

Matt (01:20:58):

Own slaves. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Now you may be like, well, they didn’t know any better. Oh no. They wrote extensively about how they knew it was wrong. It was a moral abomination. But they feel, what’s the key word here? Guilty, conflicted. Guilty. Oh, I feel so bad for them. I don’t know.

Laci (01:21:15):

If I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t have the power I had in which to tell people how bad slavery is without all my helpers here. I would be doing all the labor and wouldn’t have any time to tell everyone how bad all the labor helpers have it.

Matt (01:21:29):

And so George Washington literally freed his slaves when he died in his will. When I can get not a second more use out of

Laci (01:21:37):

You than your free, but at least there’s fucking paperwork. I just feel like you should have to announce it on TV and there was no TV then. So that is a problem. You need to know. They need to have first and last names. They need at least some sort of number that is official. God forbid it’s a social security number, wherever that happens.

Matt (01:21:53):

Well, there actually are legal instruments you could draw up to do this. It is interesting. A bill of sale. Yes, it’s ghoulish to say, but they were legally property.

Laci (01:22:03):

That is what they used in Django and chain and that they literally had freedom papers. Now who can you get to respect these papers? It’s the fricking men that are out there transporting people back and forth who can’t read that. I’m going to hand these papers to No, I trust a white man. Now, let me show you my papers, God, that we still do shit like this today,

Matt (01:22:25):

This movie’s attitude. I think Anne Rice, her art was in the right place. She’s a woman who grew up in New Orleans and new slavery was wrong, but also is like, yeah, but his slaves like him. They’re nice. They worry about him. They say

Laci (01:22:39):

The indoor girl does, I guess. But

Matt (01:22:43):

She talks about how they’re worried the other slaves are worried about you. They’re worried they need their master. And I know that the household like servant is going, slave is going to be different in attitude. But I think that this attitude is kind of like, well, he was one of the good ones. He was one of the good slave owners.

Laci (01:23:00):

But then that goes to say, if you were going to be bought by someone and then have work someone’s property in the Louisiana Heat, and at least this guy’s not mean to you. And he does not encourage people who are in charge of watching to kill, and he’s not aat. He’s not like, ah, do something weird to that one. Now I’m going to rape this one. He does seem to have sex with the one that’s inside. But my point is, I could see you as a slave who feeling like that’s all that’s going to happen with your life, hoping that this situation stays just like this. And when the wife and the child dies and it’s just this depressed guy, I can see you feeling like, okay, I guess I’m going to have to fucking get used to a whole other living condition, split up with my friends and family. Yeah, I’d say the slaves are invested in their owner not going fucking insane if they’re not going to be freed, and then it’s taken to safety. And what does safety even look like? They don’t have money. Oh, this makes me crazy

Matt (01:24:05):

Setting it here. In 1791, he says, I was the master of a large plantation just south of New Orleans. He always says New Orleans, which some people from New Orleans, some older people call it that New Orleans.

Laci (01:24:17):

It didn’t bother me. It didn’t stand out.

Matt (01:24:19):

The exterior of the plantation was filmed at Oak Alley Plantation and vri. The interior is Destrehan Plantation where I went on several field

Laci (01:24:25):

Trips, and that’s the one I went to a wedding to.

Matt (01:24:27):

Yeah, I mean, that’s the big one. But 1791, this is kind of before the era in the book he says he’s talking to Christian Slater and he’s like, now these weren’t the slaves from movies. They were literally from Africa. The transatlantic slave trade closed in 1798, I believe from then on all slaves were born in America, and this was before the takeoff of the giant cotton plantations. So even though he has a large plantation, you can think of him as kind of like a small businessman.

Laci (01:25:04):

Yeah, a freehold. There’s not a crop. There’s just a land to work.

Matt (01:25:08):

And I think that that also contrasts him with Lesat who’s supposed to be an old European aristocrat,

Laci (01:25:16):

Even

Matt (01:25:16):

Though Tom Cruise doesn’t really play him that way. But I think that their kind of different outlooks on life come from their class positions where Brad Pitt actually thinks he’s doing good in the world, and Tom Cruise is jaded enough to realize, no, we’re not.

Laci (01:25:31):

Wait, would you call this early slavery then? Or mid or late?

Matt (01:25:34):

Yeah. This is just before the

Laci (01:25:38):

Super cruel, almost industrialization,

Matt (01:25:41):

Industrial scale slavery of cotton, which is very, very dangerous, dangerous crop to

Laci (01:25:49):

Work.

Matt (01:25:50):

This also is very cruel and horrible too. But I think that it’s deliberate setting it here, not setting it in Virginia or Mississippi and setting it in the 1790s rather than the 1840s is a deliberate choice, I think to mark him as before they truly became the historical all time monstrosity that it would become,

Laci (01:26:09):

Again,

Matt (01:26:10):

Not saying it isn’t monstrous and immoral here too,

Laci (01:26:12):

But they’re trying to save him a little bit of face here. We can’t start off with Louis’s a monster.

Matt (01:26:18):

Yeah. He can’t literally be like an old southern colonel like sitting on a cotton plantation. But still, I brought up George Washington to illustrate people at the time knew it was wrong. Slave owners themselves would say, oh, this is very wrong what I am doing, but I’ll continue to do it. And this moral man never says, maybe I should not be doing this

Laci (01:26:36):

Anymore. Right? At least fucking address it. It is strange. I don’t know in the book if it’s ever addressed.

Matt (01:26:43):

Nope. So he has lost his wife and child while she gave birth. That’s a big change from the book. In the book. He didn’t have a wife. He had a brother who died. So this is supposed to be a bigger loss, and he just wanted to lose it all his wealth, his estate, his sanity. But we see him deliberately cheat at cards and then tells the guy he cheats. Like, come on, shoot me in the chest. And the guy won’t.

Laci (01:27:08):

Right? They’re trying to give a couple just of examples of him being reckless. And I’m like, Bella could do better. She at least gets on the back of a motorcycle. She goes, cliff diving, you’re just taking your shirt off in a bar where everyone thinks you’re hot. Not impressed, Brad

Matt (01:27:25):

Bella, put your seatbelt on. And then we see Tom Cruise as T taking in the scene. Like that guy, something about that guy.

Laci (01:27:34):

He seems just desperate enough. And I love his mansion.

Matt (01:27:38):

And he goes and intervenes, picks him up, chomps him on his neck, levitates up as this angelic music plays, and then

Laci (01:27:47):

The sexiest fucking thing ever,

Matt (01:27:50):

The biting,

Laci (01:27:51):

The tussling, the hair, the groaning, the shit between them. I mean, it’s just immediately like this is gay sex. We’re having gay sex.

Matt (01:28:00):

And Tom Cruise says, do you want me to continue?

Laci (01:28:03):

Basically? Yes.

Matt (01:28:05):

Yes.

Laci (01:28:05):

Hurt

Matt (01:28:06):

And Brad Pit in

Laci (01:28:07):

A good way.

Matt (01:28:07):

And Brad Pitt’s like, well, he says, do you still want death or have you tasted it enough? And Brad Pitt says, enough. So Tom Cruise drops him into the Mississippi River and it’s the next day. And the way you turn into a vampire in this movie is you get bitten. And then while you’re like the life force is draining out of you, then a vampire has to feed you his own blood.

Laci (01:28:27):

But oddly, they just assert that Claudia can’t do it. He’s like, no, you don’t have a dick, Claudia. You can’t have gay sex. That’s why you can’t turn out a vampire. Why can both boys do it?

Matt (01:28:43):

She says, I’m not strong enough, but I didn’t understand why.

Laci (01:28:47):

But if this is all a metaphor for male gay sex, then okay, I get it. I don’t know that Ann Rice meant to make this all seem just fit so perfectly. But it’s easy to connect these dots.

Matt (01:29:00):

We don’t believe in authorial intent on this program. We say you interpret and get the meaning derived from your own brain hole, as Laci likes to say. And as long as you can support it with stuff that happens in the movie or the book, then it’s valid.

Laci (01:29:13):

Well, unfortunately, they never show a woman turning another woman. So I have no proof the women can do anything in this world except for have heaving bosoms or adorable coiled

Matt (01:29:22):

Hair. They can make toys and dresses.

Laci (01:29:26):

It’s their favorite.

Matt (01:29:28):

So Louie wakes up in his bedroom and t’s there, and he is like, Hey, what’s going on,

Laci (01:29:33):

Man? Right in the bedroom. What? I get undressed

Matt (01:29:37):

And lestat says, I’ve come to answer your prayers. Life has no meaning anymore. The wine has no taste. The food sickens you. There seems no reason for any of it does there? But what if I could give it back to you? He’s like, but it doesn’t.

Laci (01:29:48):

They don’t eat a drink. You don’t give it back. They not. They don’t eat. They have to fake eating and drinking’s True. All they can to do is drink blood and they want it all the time. So what if I can make you a raging alcoholic who could only immorally, get the alcohol. It’s prohibition every day, Sunday,

Matt (01:30:07):

It is metaphorical food and drink the things you used to enjoy. You don’t enjoy. Enjoy. Yeah. I can give you your lust for life back. In fact, it’ll be even more intense. You’ll feel sensations you never before thought possible.

Laci (01:30:20):

I’ll bet you one vampire dick that he wasn’t even happy when he did have a wife and a daughter. I believe he was a goddamn bummer

Matt (01:30:26):

Then. Of course he was.

Laci (01:30:26):

Yes. Oh, the plantation. It was passed on to me by my dad. I don’t want to also own people. Oh, can’t even find my daughter in this big house. Oh wait, she was never born. She’s in my wife. Oh, she comes

Matt (01:30:39):

Out. Okay. Where’s my daughter? Oh, we are Flo, sir. So he’s droopy dog.

Speaker 3 (01:30:45):

I know.

Matt (01:30:45):

So he isn’t a vampire yet. He is. Cruise says, I’m going to give you the choice that I never had. Something he returns to a bunch of times, but it’s not actually a choice. It’s like you’re going to die or become a vampire. Which one do you want? Pitt’s like vampire. I want vampire. Okay. So he goes and looks at his last sunrise, and then Tom Cruise just jumps onto him and turns into a vampire for real. And then Brad Pitt gets up and starts sucking the blood out of Tom Cruise. It’s his first sexual encounter, first real sexual encounter with a man. But then once it’s done, he violently jerks away. What if I done? What did you make me do? Oh my God, you’re gay. And then he starts going violent, convulsions and lestat like your body’s dying. Pay no attention happens to us

Laci (01:31:30):

All. Okay, this drives me crazy. They go on for just a little bit too long than they should if they can’t have receipts for this with how you really can’t explain it to a human. It’s just different

Speaker 3 (01:31:45):

Things

Laci (01:31:45):

After. It’s like, how do you remember Lesat? You’ve been alive for hundreds of years this way. What do you even fucking remember? You’re still looking at statues and going, Ooh, no, you’re looking at statues and going, their eyes move because that’s the only fucking difference you showed us. You really can’t put into human words except for, we’ll give you this one example. You see that statue? Its eyes moved.

Matt (01:32:05):

I think that the eyes moving on the statue is wonderful. It’s so cool. Yes. So do more

Laci (01:32:08):

Stuff.

Matt (01:32:09):

Yeah,

Laci (01:32:10):

Do three more rule of three. Don’t give me one example. If everything just looks a little bit more interesting, everything’s me curious is I think how he puts it or everything as intrigue. Then why doesn’t this man go discovering more stuff? Go get interested in bugs. I don’t know.

Matt (01:32:27):

When the movies come around, you go see that train coming at the screen, the train actually comes out of the screen and runs you over. Whoa.

Laci (01:32:34):

Whoa. Right? It’s just 3D it. So whenever 3D starts existing in theaters, he’s like, why is everybody acting like a vampire in here?

Matt (01:32:42):

It’s

Laci (01:32:43):

Crazy.

Matt (01:32:43):

I just love the statue thing. It’s so strange. It’s so magical. The way that you

Laci (01:32:50):

Are out of your mind. It’s

Matt (01:32:52):

A visual signifier of

Laci (01:32:54):

How different things are. It looks like they had no idea what the fucking do and they were.

Matt (01:32:58):

It’s so deliberate. It’s so wonderful. You are a

Laci (01:33:00):

Fool.

Matt (01:33:03):

I as a newborn vampire weeping at the beauty of the night, but they have to sleep in a coffin every night and lestat steals him in. So he’s like, I have to give so much control over to Lesat already.

Laci (01:33:15):

But I love that he says, you’re about to have the most restful sleep of your night. Give it to me.

Matt (01:33:18):

Hell yeah.

Laci (01:33:19):

I want to have that please.

Matt (01:33:21):

It’s the Michael Jackson put me under on amne anesthesia

Laci (01:33:23):

Every night. Oh my God. Can you imagine? Always. Now count backwards from 10. Hi. That’s my favorite part of the day. I wasn’t even doing Michael Jackson. That’s just my excited voice. That’s a favorite party.

Matt (01:33:32):

So they go to a soiree. Brad Pitt is having a hunger he’s never experienced before.

Laci (01:33:37):

He dresses like Guan.

Matt (01:33:38):

He is. He’s Guan. And Tom Cruise is like a

Laci (01:33:41):

Pep le.

Matt (01:33:42):

It’s very easy for him to seduce these women, get some blood, and then hands the woman over to Louis’s. Like you take some now too.

Laci (01:33:50):

Show me a Steve Bini vampire though. How much pussy is he getting? I mean, a Danny DeVito vampire up

Matt (01:33:57):

Now. There’s a movie. There is

Laci (01:33:58):

A movie. Give it up. What do you do with the ugly vampires? That’s the biggest trope. That is the same through every movie I can remember, except for a nasal or Dracula. Even Dracula’s Charming, right? Oh

Matt (01:34:10):

No. Dracula’s a fucking snack.

Laci (01:34:12):

Oh, I’m thinking of the Count.

Matt (01:34:14):

The count

Laci (01:34:14):

One. Fuck.

Matt (01:34:16):

That’s okay. He’s not hot. No, he is not though. In twins gang DeVito In the movie twins, the joke of that movie is that he’s like a lady man. But he shows you can be a hot person even if you’re not conventionally attractive. You just carry yourself like you are and people will buy it,

Laci (01:34:35):

Right? It’s all about complex.

Matt (01:34:36):

Danny Vito Vampire absolutely could exist. So here’s the first indication of what a fucking annoying little piece of shit louisie is. Tom Cruise hands the woman over to Louis and he starts sucking. He’s like, oh, fucking love drinking this woman’s blood. And then after a while he spits her out and he’s like, I will notch. It’s like, okay, my God. Okay, so later they’re having dinner and the stat’s like, you’re going to get used to killing enough. Soon enough. This is how it happens. At first, you’re a little squeamish, but you’re going to get used to it also. We’re very lucky. We are very lucky to have such a big home. We’re very lucky to live on a plantation. I love that. A large part of this movie is just vampire mooch. It’s just something. Yes. That’s what I vampire is mooching off of

Laci (01:35:18):

You. You’ve got to run out of money sometime. They don’t even explain how he’s making money. How could you hold down a job with these hours? Was he going to be a nurse? Just access to blood. But yeah, the financials of it, it seems like, oh, God had endless time to make money and money. I don’t know. I have no proof of this. I’ve been

Matt (01:35:39):

Around. If he’s an aristocrat, if t’s an aristocrat, then he is from the kind of old money that just comes from I own things.

Laci (01:35:47):

But he says he was living in a field like cattle before he was with Louis.

Matt (01:35:51):

But he must have gone on for so long that he just exhausted everything he ever had.

Laci (01:35:56):

Yes.

Matt (01:35:57):

And now it’s on to Louis.

Laci (01:35:58):

That is why I was like, why aren’t there tons of little stats running around? It’s like he wasn’t just bored. He was bored. And living in a field with cattle. You know how hard it is to really get the ladies when you smell like cow shit.

Matt (01:36:11):

So I love Vampire Frank. I want that movie

Laci (01:36:14):

Too. Yes. Yeah. He mentions the house immediately and only gets mad about the house stuff. I can’t even understand. It’s a Bella Edwards situation all the way through. I have no idea what these fuckers are talking about. Louis seems so damn boring. And Lestat doesn’t seem to want to talk about any of his stories. Give it

Matt (01:36:31):

Up, is what we say about Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. He’s only comfortable if he can surround himself with people he feels superior to. He needs a dum idiot who looks good like Louie.

Laci (01:36:44):

It’s a real risk though.

Matt (01:36:46):

You

Laci (01:36:46):

Don’t know what power he’s going to get. He could get super strength. He could grow a 20 inch dick. That doesn’t seem useful. But I mean, you don’t know. You’re just going to turn him and see what happens. I don’t think There’s no way of betting you’re biting the right horse.

Matt (01:37:02):

No, he’s such a good predator that he could tell even before he bit him, that guy’s never going to be able to turn on me that pussy. No way.

Laci (01:37:11):

So he’s about to nibble on the old woman, and he is, it’s interesting. They don’t address it, but they’re able to make their actual piner of bites feel like hot, sexy sex stuff to these women. And they all seem to be enjoying it until they see the blood. It’s like they don’t feel it. They can only see that something bad has happened and hear and rightly so. All of a sudden her two poodles start barking and that upsets Louis. So he just kind of yanks one and eats it in front of her. Louie,

Matt (01:37:44):

What’s happening here though, I think is this is like, I can still do it. My penis can become erected for a woman.

Speaker 3 (01:37:51):

Okay,

Matt (01:37:52):

I’m working really hard, concentrating. I can do it. I’m make it happen. Then the fucking dog starts barking. Like, goddammit, I was so close.

Laci (01:37:59):

I got it. But then what’s the eating? The dog

Matt (01:38:01):

Just unleashes his fury at not being able to perform sexually with a woman.

Laci (01:38:07):

You are a dog with a bone with this. Okay, got it.

Matt (01:38:10):

But okay. It is a marked contrast. Come Cruise is with the young Foppish man, and he is going in for a kiss. And then Brad Pitt has the old woman before this. That’s when Tom Cruise explains, okay, technically we don’t have to eat people. You can eat animals, you can eat rats and stuff, but why would you want to? And I kind of love this whole thing is like Tom Cruise’s attitude is just you get sick of these. Who would want to do that?

Laci (01:38:36):

We’re a top predator. What are we supposed to do? Not pray.

Matt (01:38:38):

It would just get so boring. So he assumes Brad Pitt will also be like this. Maybe you’ll

Laci (01:38:44):

Make

Matt (01:38:44):

A big show about eating animals for a while, but then you’ll get sick of it. But let’s That’s right, because Brad Pitt does eventually move on to eating people

Laci (01:38:51):

With the right controller. When he’s pretending. It’s because he’s caregiving. I’m the dad. I’ve got to do it for her. Yeah. I can own slaves for my other wife and daughter. I can do this for How’s the kid going to eat? She’s got such an insatiable appetite.

Matt (01:39:12):

So the slaves of his plantation, they now suspect they’re vampires. And again, because they’re from Africa, they’ve got their African religions and they’re dancing around. And so the movie is, yeah, this is a little rough with like, well, because they’re from Africa, they know these things. They know about the magic spirits of the world.

Laci (01:39:31):

Fucking yeah.

Matt (01:39:33):

And so they’re doing their fire dances outside and inside the stats, like lemme tell you, and he’s probably told Louis 50 times this already. Boy, I’m glad I’m in America. It’s much easier to be a vampire here than over in Paris. That’s where I came from. Paris much easier over here. Although actually Brad Pitt’s, like you came from Paris. He’s like, yeah, me And the guy who turned me into a vampire, he’s John Wayne, me and the guy who turned me into a vampire. And he’s like, well, he must have taught you so much about being vampire and stuff must learned. I learned absolutely nothing. But you must know something about the meaning of it all. And then Tom Cruise goes nuts on him for one of many times. Like, shut the fuck up, stop saying that. Stop asking me questions. You’re always asking me questions. You’re annoying. I’m annoyed with this noise. I’m out of here. He leaves and turn

Laci (01:40:22):

The wrong vampire

Matt (01:40:22):

Gay. And then Tandy a Newton in her early role for her plays the slave who is in the house with him.

Laci (01:40:32):

That’s Tandy. She looks so familiar, but she’s still got a round face.

Matt (01:40:38):

Yes. She’s worried about him. She asks, are you even still our master? The slaves all hate lesat. They want you to send him away. They’re all frightened

Laci (01:40:46):

With him. He’s jumping over our bonfires with his horse.

Matt (01:40:51):

So Brad Pitt starts kissing her and then he gets tempted and then bites her. And he’s like, oh no, I’m a monster. And he

Laci (01:40:59):

Unclear if she’s dead though, when he delivers her to the other slaves.

Matt (01:41:04):

Yes. So he goes outside, they all have torches. And he’s like, hear me now. This place is cursed and your master’s the devil run away. Now you’re all free.

Laci (01:41:12):

Right? Don’t worry. I set all of it on fire. There’s nothing even for you to sell or eat. I had an entire feast that this lovely lady cooked for me. You guys look hungry. I burn it to the ground. Bye. I’ll take the only horse. Thank you.

Matt (01:41:27):

Executed. Bill of sales are all up in my desk.

Laci (01:41:31):

Oh fuck. I didn’t think that one through. Someone needs their coffee. Tandy.

Matt (01:41:39):

This is the first of three times he will start a literal fire to burn down his life.

Laci (01:41:42):

He is a fire starter. Yes. And notice that right away.

Matt (01:41:48):

But he starts like an idiot. He starts the fire with himself inside. He is like, oh shit, I can’t get out my house.

Laci (01:41:53):

He does the first floor before the second. No, no, no. That’s going to rise. Get out of there. But

Matt (01:41:59):

This is a time where it’s very easy to burn things down. Just little bit of,

Laci (01:42:02):

Oh, well. And I was like, oh no. Something like that could lead to one of the fires that literally, I mean, new Orleans burned down to the ground twice in its history. And I was like, okay, it can’t be this though. This is in the Bywater or something. This is far enough away. And then he burns down his fucking French Quarter Chateau and yeah, the entire town. That’s so funny. Built into, they built real history into, oh, that’s how it started.

Matt (01:42:31):

And not just New Orleans. Every fire that’s ever happened, the Chicago fire, it wasn’t that cow. It was Louis.

Laci (01:42:35):

Louis.

Matt (01:42:36):

Louis did it.

Laci (01:42:36):

Louis just, he’s sick of this couch. His couch is dumb. Set fire.

Matt (01:42:40):

So he’s inside the house. He’s like, oh, stupid. Fire started on, and then Lesat jumps back in. He’s like, that’s great. Just great Louis. God

Laci (01:42:49):

Jam it. Not only you’re boring and sad, but now we got to go live in a different mansion. They do not explain where the money is coming from. He certainly didn’t sell the plantation.

Matt (01:42:59):

He owns stuff.

Laci (01:43:01):

Who?

Matt (01:43:02):

Brad Pitt. He owns lots of holdings. They says in the narration at some point. Just too boring to notice. He’s like, I sold some of my stuff. So more,

Laci (01:43:14):

I was an early investor in

Matt (01:43:16):

Google. I mean, yeah, don’t even worry about it. I did it.

Laci (01:43:20):

I believed in the railroad.

Matt (01:43:22):

So Louis wakes up in a tomb and t’s there and he’s like, Hey, what’s going on? And Louis’s like, we belong in hell. And then in the narration, Brad Pitt’s like, but there was No. Hell and no matter where we moved to, no wait, but there was a hell and no matter where we moved to, I was in it. I was in an abusive relationship and wasn’t aware of it.

Laci (01:43:43):

He’s in hell even without him.

Matt (01:43:45):

That’s true. But he’s literally talking about Lestat everywhere I go. Les stat’s

Laci (01:43:48):

There. Yeah, because he’s blaming his, this is situational depression. If I were just away from this, man,

Matt (01:43:55):

If I just got to Paris, things would be different. Maybe I should go back to school.

Laci (01:43:59):

Maybe I should just switch to a different apartment.

Matt (01:44:02):

So they do switch now they moved to the French court.

Laci (01:44:04):

He’s my mom. Maybe let’s not even finish this lease. Get your things

Matt (01:44:09):

Or go into Pier one, one.

Laci (01:44:10):

No, I fucking wish. No, you and your brother are going to share a bedroom this time. That’ll really spice things up. I like the townhouse. Mommy. The one where we all have a bedroom.

Matt (01:44:23):

I think Pier one’s closed now, but it’s think one of my favorite things you ever said to me was like, pier one’s whole business model is for manic moms who just got a divorce

Laci (01:44:32):

And

Matt (01:44:33):

Boy go deep into debt to buy a whole new life. They

Laci (01:44:35):

Will give you financing.

Matt (01:44:37):

Yeah. So, alright. They have, they’re partying. Partying with these two ladies in a French Quarter flat.

Laci (01:44:45):

I have no proof that Louis ever takes part in these parties.

Matt (01:44:49):

No, he just stands

Laci (01:44:50):

On the, he’s just on the balcony. But Lesat always brings him a to-go box. I brought you one.

Matt (01:44:55):

Yes. This one’s mine. He

Laci (01:44:56):

Is, yes. I brought you one.

Matt (01:44:58):

And then he’s mad. Just fucking drink the blood. God damnit. You

Laci (01:45:01):

Know I’m on a diet. Quit. Bring me your doggy bags. I’m sick of that dust smell.

Matt (01:45:06):

You told me if I ordered onion rings, you’d have some. Now I just look like a pig.

Laci (01:45:12):

I’m on Louis’s side. He’s trying to diet. He’s trying to watch his

Matt (01:45:17):

Murder. The way that this scene plays out, Tom Cruise is just going down basically on a woman. It is framed with him. So he goes and sucks on her boob, but the shot composition makes it look like he’s performing oral sex on her.

Speaker 3 (01:45:31):

Your favorite.

Matt (01:45:32):

Then he gets up and he gets up and she is looking like she’s masturbating as blood pours out of her. It’s a great image. It’s really cool. It’s so

Laci (01:45:40):

Great.

Matt (01:45:41):

It’ss very effective. Then she looks down, like you said, and realizes what’s happening to

Laci (01:45:45):

Her.

Matt (01:45:46):

These are the sorts of things that make this movie. So

Laci (01:45:48):

It does. So they don’t say it, but there is a euphoria. That’s the way they get away with it, because they also don’t completely kill the person because in the lore of this world of vampires drinking the blood of a dead person, it can start to negatively affect a vampire. So you have to have enough control to just get them just to almost death. So since you can’t just kill a person and drink them, which would be the quiet way to do it. It must be that the piercing sends them with a euphoric feeling for a long enough time for you to drink,

Matt (01:46:24):

Drink. And he drains some of her blood into a goblet and hands it over to Louie. Just fucking just drink it. And Louis’s like, I can’t. I’ll go to hell. And so Tom Cruise in, I think my favorite moment of him in the movie, he just starts lashing out. This is the angry husband who won’t physically abuse his wife, will punch a wall through the wall and the way they have a coffin that they’re using as their coffee table. It’s

Laci (01:46:53):

Wonderful. Well, you got to put ’em somewhere and it’s somewhere that’s not suspicious. You’re going to use it tonight or today.

Matt (01:46:59):

So he’s going to open it up and put the woman in. And I just grabbed this clip because I just wanted to call attention to how wonderful of a physical actor Tom Cruise is. How committed he is, the way he kicks the thing open, but still the grace with which he moves. Just every little thing he does.

Laci (01:47:16):

He’s sprightly.

Matt (01:47:18):

So she’s dying. She’s dying in Brad Pitt’s like, come on, she’s suffering poor over misery. Dude, don’t And Les stat’s like, no, you do it. Killer. Her killer. Her killer her. Come on. Killer her. Killer her. I won’t do what? I

Laci (01:47:31):

Won’t. Yeah, no, I’m facing you with a moral conundrum. It would be in her best interest if you were to kill her. But you say killing is immoral. So which is it?

Matt (01:47:41):

And t’s getting more frustrated with Louis. You won’t just do it. Fine. So he has to do it.

Laci (01:47:46):

He doesn’t even have the courage of his own convictions. If what we’re going for is moral here and she’s suffering, the only way to make her not suffer anymore is to kill her. Why aren’t you killing her, Louis?

Matt (01:47:54):

Because then he will be doing this all the time. But yeah, I love Thatta. After he eats the woman, he just kind of collapses onto a chair and he looks at Louis and he’s like, he collapses onto the chair. Louis looks at him, he’s like to think you are all I have to learn from. And Lestat says, and to think I gave you the gift of all the people I could have fucking turned. I turned you.

Laci (01:48:21):

Yeah. But I mean, I don’t know how much time has gone by. I’m sure it’ll only take a month or two before I’m going to bring a fucking snack bag up to Louie just to see what he does. Just I’m bored as shit. And because women tend to travel in pairs for safety, it’s convenient. But if I’m Louie and I’m like, please fucking stop. Of course I want that blood, but I’ve already had all these rats just quit bringing it up here. I’m trying not to do this. It smells amazing. You’re being an asshole.

Matt (01:48:53):

Yeah, he’s approaching it the wrong way. You got to do the soft cell. You got to not press so hard. I

Laci (01:48:58):

Mean, you’ve had hundreds of years to work on your chat, your influence here. Just figure him out and fucking manipulate him. Man.

Matt (01:49:10):

He’s a blunt instrument. He doesn’t know how any other way than to be the way he is.

Laci (01:49:14):

Sta

Matt (01:49:14):

Yeah. Yeah. He wouldn’t, I

Laci (01:49:16):

Don’t find him blunt Lund.

Matt (01:49:18):

If he were the kind of person who could be like, I’ll do this. I’ll work on him. Play the long

Laci (01:49:22):

Game. I think there was some long game in him choosing Brad Pitt. I mean, shoot, I have no evidence to back up what I’m saying.

Matt (01:49:32):

Brad Pitt goes out into the rain to be a sad boy and he wanders around and there’s a man’s like, don’t go that way, Mista. There’s the plague. So he goes, oh, the plague sounds fitting for my soul. And he goes that way. And he sees Kirsten Dun. Oh hey. And she hugging her dead mother who’s, seems like she’s been dead for days.

Laci (01:49:51):

Oh, at least.

Matt (01:49:52):

Yeah, please wake mama, miss you.

Laci (01:49:54):

There’s life in the old girl yet. Sorry, I know I’m skipping scenes, but please miss you,

Matt (01:50:00):

Mama. And Louie hugs her and then just jumps into her. Dammit, I did it. Fuck.

Laci (01:50:06):

I guess love makes me chomp.

Matt (01:50:08):

And as he’s chomping, then endless dad comes in, he’s like, Hey buddy, I knew you could do it.

Laci (01:50:14):

Do you think I’d do anything but follow you and then find ladies later? No, I was doing the thing where I followed you.

Matt (01:50:20):

And then he dances with the dead mother.

Laci (01:50:25):

Life in the soul already said up.

Matt (01:50:27):

And yeah, can’t just be like, Louis, I know that was rough on you, Louie, but you did it. Okay. Yeah. Hell you pussy. You went ahead and did. You popped

Laci (01:50:38):

Your chair, you motherfucker. I did it down a little curl that’s even more fucked up than what I was doing.

Matt (01:50:44):

So Louie runs out to cry and he’s like the sewers where I belong. And then Lesat follows him again

Laci (01:50:51):

After turning her right or no, he just puts her in the bed,

Matt (01:50:55):

Right? Lesat follows her. And he’s like, you are in pain. We are vampires. We are in pain. We feel everything way more intensely than mortal people. The only way to stop feeling that pain is to kill an eight people. So you just got to do it. Alright. I know you chomped that girl. It’s not your fault. You didn’t make a moral, it’s not a moral failing. You’re just doing what your program to do. Evil is a point of view. He says, God kills indiscriminately and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are. None. So like him as ourselves,

Laci (01:51:27):

Right? I mean, as a lion immoral,

Matt (01:51:30):

Right? No, I mean, isn’t it cool to think that God’s a vampire?

Laci (01:51:34):

A world is a vampire.

Matt (01:51:36):

So he’s like, come back. I’ve got a gift for you. And he’s like, okay, okay. We have presents. What’s sitting there? If it’s another girl, I swear to God, well, it’s a girl, but it’s

Laci (01:51:47):

A smaller one. Okay?

Matt (01:51:50):

You need Luke Company. Louis more congenial than mine, and it’s Kirsten and Dunt. Brad Pitt didn’t kill her after all, but Tom Cruise is like, we got to turn her into a vampire. She’s going to die. So Brad Pitt lets it happen. Luta turns her into a vampire and she starts sucking on T’s arm and then gets way too intense about it, and he has to kick her off. I’m like,

Laci (01:52:11):

Ah,

Matt (01:52:12):

Okay. So right away, we’re already seeing, she’s a little blood thirsty. This one, she’s a firecracker. And then she sits up. She is transformed into a vampire. Her hair becomes magically curly and pristine. And she just goes, I want some more. I

Laci (01:52:26):

Want some more.

Matt (01:52:27):

So they summon a servant lady and Claudia Chomps on her and t’s like, oh, gentle mache.

Laci (01:52:33):

Stop.

Matt (01:52:36):

You have to stop before the heart stops. That’s crucial. And then he sits down and Kristen Dun is amazing in this movie. Tom Cruise is so good with her, so good. He is sitting in the bed and twirling his finger around her hair and just looking at Louisie, and he’s just being the most manipulative piece of shit in the universe. And he’s like, this is our daughter that’s over there. That’s your daddy. He was going to leave you. Can you believe that he’s not going to leave USO anymore? Is him. So with their one happy family. And now we have the montage of the happiness where they’re both lavishing her with gifts. And in fact, Lizette does love her in his own way and cherishes her and wants to spoil her. And lots of funny like, oh, Claudia, you killed another seamstress. I told you who’s going to finish her dress? She would sleep in my coffin. At first, Louis says, till the ding came when she wanted one of her own, but still whenever she awoke, she would crawl into mine.

Laci (01:53:33):

Me and the kid both were like, oh,

Matt (01:53:35):

I know. To me she was a child. But till the stat, she was a pupil with a lust for killing to match his own together. They killed off whole families and this.

Laci (01:53:45):

And then they show a scene of a really big family with a baby, a toddler

Matt (01:53:52):

With lestat, just an ecstatic joy in their house and cursing. Dun is playing the piano and then cut. It’s now several coffins, including a little tiny coffin are being hauled out. Just so brutal. Oh, I love it.

Laci (01:54:06):

They must be in with the wood industry, the wood. They’re causing these coffins.

Matt (01:54:12):

Beautiful time is marching on immigrants. Yankees are arriving on the Natches steamship, but Lesat misses the old New Orleans. He likes Creole people better than Americans.

Laci (01:54:27):

I didn’t realize they’d literally joined the Americas. When he is saying this. I thought he just meant that more people were coming to live there.

Matt (01:54:35):

And Brad Pitt says, we were all Americans now because of the Louisiana purchase. So they are walking around New Orleans and Claudia sees a woman just bathing naked in a window. And Tom Cruise Lestat says, don’t you want her? And she says, I want to be her. And he says, Bo melancholy nonsense. I swear you remind me more of Louis each day. The whole thing with Claudia is decades are passing, but she’s growing in the mind, but not the body. But she’s still being treated like a child by the world.

Laci (01:55:13):

And Louisie doesn’t know it’s taboo to turn a child. I’m sure he doesn’t feel right about it. And he’s not seen anyone else turned except for himself. But he doesn’t know the stat. Sure the hell should know that. That’s not what you do. They don’t really explain why. But you watch her. She’s not being forever young in your beginning place, being forever underestimated, and you’re a female too. You’re never going to get respect and get ahead. This is wasted immortality because no one respects this.

Matt (01:55:51):

And simple things like I will never have sex. I will never have sexual desires. I will never have just the trappings of being an adult, of having an adult body. That is a curse to constantly be aware of. And then even the vampires who know you’re not actually a little girl, still treat you like you are. Still say, you’re our daughter and we’re going to buy you baby dolls and stuff.

Laci (01:56:12):

But it is confusing, right? Because then when she goes and she wants the mom to be with her forever, she doesn’t want another small girl turned. Although that would not help. She does go back to, you’re my mommy. You’re my daddy. I need a mommy. Yeah, that’s interesting.

Matt (01:56:30):

And that woman had lost a daughter of her own. So it was like we fit together. I guess if this is the role I have to play in the world, then that’s why pretend I’m not. Yeah, 30 years have passed. Her body remains an eternal child. Lestat comes into her room, he’s like, guess what? I have a surprise for you. And she’s like, I’m fucking 41. Is it cigarettes? And he’s like, no, it’s a baby doll. I’m sick of fucking baby dolls. And he’s like, well, then throw away your goddamn baby dolls. And she’s like, maybe I’ll, and she pulls all the baby dolls off of her shelf. And then, oh, it’s that naked woman from the

Laci (01:57:02):

That’s been rotting.

Matt (01:57:03):

She’s just keeping a naked corpse in her room.

Laci (01:57:06):

She wants her and she wants to be her. Right. And enlisted is so grossed out because she’s def defaulted her bed.

Matt (01:57:12):

Yes,

Laci (01:57:13):

She doesn’t sleep in it

Matt (01:57:14):

Well still,

Laci (01:57:16):

But he wants to keep the house. He likes this house. He likes what he’s exactly. It all just goes back to you are fucking up appearances. Just stop blowing up our spot.

Matt (01:57:24):

And he’s yelling at her and Louis’s like, go, Claudia, be reasonable. You can’t have a corpse in your bedroom. And then she starts, she chops off her hair and then it grows back right away and then starts demanding. Which one of you did it? Who turned me into a vampire? I’m like, who do you think? Well, lesat refuses to tell her. And he’s like, why won’t you tell me? And he says, because it’s in my power. I don’t have to tell you. And so she realizes like, well, I wrote down him saying that to her. It’s in my power to just withhold this information from you. Something seems to click with her where it never clicked with Louis that he actually doesn’t have any power over us at all. That’s like if he’s clinging to stuff like that, he really has nothing. But Louie has always treated him like a literal master.

Laci (01:58:16):

There’s a reason why Lesat follows you around, literally follows you when you leave his side. He’s bored without you too. He could go fuck off and do a whole other little family if he wanted to, but this is where he stays.

Matt (01:58:29):

So she starts asking lots of questions about vampire vampire lore, but it’s different from Brad Pitts. It’s way more practical. She wants to learn about vampire lore. Vampire fiction. Is there any truth to any of this? Why was I turned into a vampire? How can you make another vampire? But it’s not these meandering philosophical things Brad Pitt’s asking.

Speaker 3 (01:58:50):

She

Matt (01:58:50):

Needs to know the actual answers to these things. There’s a part of the book where Louis says that withholding information over from him about what it’s like to be a vampire can be dangerous for practical reasons too. They don’t really hammer it home in the movie, but it could be like you can’t go out in the rain or else you’ll melt. That’s what happens to vampires. It could be something like that. I’ll never know what actual dangers are out there.

Laci (01:59:20):

I knew what it was to be a human. And then you’ve turned me into something different. And now you won’t tell me any of the rules except for the ones you want to tell me. It’s again, an example of him holding and using the very little power that he does have. That’s it. The only reason to draw you to me is that I’m the only other vampire, and I’m the one that knows that there’s others. And I haven’t told you that. And you don’t know the rules. And if it’s a real emergency, I’ll probably tell you the rules. And the only reason that’s really, I mean, except for that he seems mildly amused by Louis is that Louis has the money. That’s it. It’s just that I need you and you need me. And this is all that there is to it.

Matt (01:59:56):

That’s all there is in the world is just people’s

Laci (01:59:59):

Claudia, when she realizes she can’t grow and she can’t change nothing, I think in all at once, in that moment, she realizes I might be smarter than both of them. I’m going to be more capable than both of them. More curious. I could really get ahead in this world, but without the beard, without I keep using that analogy without someone to look like they are my caregiver. I will not get to get into any doors. I won’t even be able to get a hotel room. I just look like a little girl.

Matt (02:00:28):

So she’s got to do something about

Laci (02:00:28):

It. That’s a fucked up thing to do. Somebody

Matt (02:00:31):

So Louis’s walking her around and he’s like, I shall show you. I shall show you your old house where I found you. And she says, you fed on me. And he says, yes, I fed on you. And then he found me with you, and he cut his wrist and he fed you from him and turned you into a vampire. And she says, so you both did it? And he says, Louis says, I took your life. He gave you another one. And Claudia says,

Laci (02:00:57):

So you both did

Matt (02:00:57):

It. Here it is. Here’s my life and I hate you both. And then she runs away. And this is the child of abuse who hates the mother more than the father. The mother who stands or doesn’t stop the abusive father. She realizes you also fucking suck Louie.

Laci (02:01:16):

Yep. Just like someone who’s still a child in abusive relationship with no other options. I still love you.

Matt (02:01:23):

Because then she comes back later that night and says, I can’t hate you, Louie. I still love you. After all,

Laci (02:01:29):

What are your options, Claudia? This isn’t really flattering. Okay, because you have nothing else,

Matt (02:01:33):

But we got to do something about that. And Brad Pitt’s like, no, he will never let us go. She says, oh, really?

Laci (02:01:41):

And now is the cutest little back and forth I think between her and tta. And I’m just thinking, oh, Conia, don’t kill him. You guys are really onto something here. He’s the only one that can give you any guff. He’s the only one that can keep up is this tta? Even though he is being a pisser, but he is being a real dick and doesn’t want her pestering him while he is playing the piano for the eighth time that day. And she’s just trying to butter him up and like, I got you a G. Let’s not fight. I really want you to see these two little Dutch boys. They’re on a paint, can come eat them.

Matt (02:02:11):

I love that. He’s playing piano and she walks in and he just looks up and he says, you irritate me. Your presence irritates me. Fuck off. And he says, you know what your problem is? You’re an only child. You’re spoiled. You need a brother. So it’s like he’s still, the only way he can view the world is like, well, we’re a family here and I can expand my control by expanding this family. That’s how I

Laci (02:02:33):

Right. And I need to make Claudia responsible for another person because she’ll know that I created this little boy who is doomed the same fate as her because she needed it. That’ll really trap her. How do you trap a kid with a kid? How do you trap an adult with a kid?

Matt (02:02:49):

I have a gift for you. She tells Lestat, he says, I hope it’s a beautiful woman with endowments you’ll never possess.

Laci (02:02:55):

Rude.

Matt (02:02:55):

The look on Kirsten D’s face is great. And she says, why do you say such things? And Tom Cruise actually feels legitimately

Laci (02:03:02):

Bad,

Matt (02:03:04):

Touches her hand. And then he’s like, come on, show me that goof. And you’re like, oh, he’s all right. Don’t do what

Laci (02:03:11):

Have to do. Yes. That’s what I’m like, look, you guys got something cooking over here?

Matt (02:03:14):

Yeah, you got a breakthrough. So she has these plump little Dutch boys. She’s like, they’re drunk on Brandywine. I gave ’em a thimble full each and list. Dad is both excited as hell. And he’s also like, oh, what a beautiful daughter. What a moment. We’re having much. You knew

Laci (02:03:29):

I’d like the curly head little boys who match.

Matt (02:03:31):

Yeah, munch, munch. Can’t wait to eat. These guys started eating them, but something’s wrong. And he drops to the ground. He’s like, absent. And you’ve given them absent. And Claudia says, no, laden them. It killed him, but it keeps the blood warm. You let me drink dead blood.

Laci (02:03:47):

So his first guess of absent is like, okay, so dead blood makes you trip balls because why? I’ll say absent. His first guess is like, this tastes wrong and I feel bad instantly. And it’s just like when you need zombie flesh in Minecraft, it will nourish you, but it also poisons you.

Matt (02:04:08):

Does absence warm the blood?

Laci (02:04:10):

No, but he thinks they’re alive. He doesn’t know they’re dead. He thinks they’re alive with absent.

Matt (02:04:15):

Oh, it tastes funny.

Laci (02:04:16):

Yeah.

Matt (02:04:16):

Gotcha.

Laci (02:04:16):

Okay. I mean, because absence is an alcohol that makes you hallucinate, right? So it’s like you were lying. It’s not brandy. They have some sort of poison in their alive blood that’s making me feel weird. It’s surely not that they’re dead.

Matt (02:04:29):

She’s like, actually, no, it’s way worse than that. So yeah, you let me drink blood, dead blood. And he’s getting woozy starts collapsing. He’s like, Louis, give me my coffin. Larry put me in my coffin. But Claudia just slices his fucking throat open and just a billion gallons of blood gush everywhere. The Stan Winston makeup is incredible as he transforms into a Google. And then Louis comes in and he’s like, Claudia, what did you do? Oh no, this isn’t who we are. Claudia, when he goes low, we go high

Laci (02:04:59):

And to show her dominance. Pick me up, Louis. I don’t want to get my blood on my set and shoes,

Matt (02:05:04):

All my little booties. And so yeah, he’s like, oh, just feel real bad about this Claudia. And she’s like, we got to do something with the body. I’m thinking swamp. So they go out to the swamp and feed ’em to an alligator, and you

Laci (02:05:17):

See blood rise in the water and you’re like, well, that did it. But what you don’t know is it That was the alligator bleeding. Not Louie, I mean, not Lestat.

Matt (02:05:26):

They sit there and watch the alligator chomping on the vampire, and

Laci (02:05:29):

They don’t stay long enough.

Matt (02:05:30):

Well, they’re observing it for a little while. And Claudia’s like, he deserved to die, Louie. And Louie’s like, no dear, but maybe we deserve to die too. She’s already like, ah, I killed the wrong parent. Fuck. So they’re going to go to Europe because there everything will be good, but the boat’s not coming for a while, so they got to kill some time. So Claudia starts doing a lot of research about vampires. Maybe once we get to Europe, that’s where the vampires will be. That’s where we’ll meet our kind. And then Lestat returns looking all alligator fired, just some of my favorite makeup ever.

Laci (02:06:05):

And he’s creepily playing the piano and scaring the shit out of them. Like, ah, we were almost gone. We were almost out of here. How would you have found us? And don’t worry, breaches back into his one bag of tricks and lights the fucker on fire. That’s it sets the whole entirety of New Orleans ablaze.

Matt (02:06:23):

Well, Laci, you’re missing the iconic line.

Laci (02:06:26):

What is it,

Matt (02:06:26):

Claudia? You’ve been a very,

Laci (02:06:31):

I don’t find that iconic.

Matt (02:06:34):

Now I’m here to fucking kill you. Although he’s not here to kill them. He’s like,

Laci (02:06:38):

Guys, I

Matt (02:06:38):

Forgive you. I forgive you. I’m

Laci (02:06:40):

Going to get down.

Matt (02:06:40):

That’s how gracious I am. We’ll, forget all

Laci (02:06:43):

Has no choices. Now he looks like that. Can’t get any pussy and can’t get any money. He’s not luring anybody with those looks. That’s why he goes and lives in a hut, whatever the fuck.

Matt (02:06:51):

And all Brad Pitt has to do is throw a candle at him and he lights on fire and then the whole place burns down. They’re like, oh, that was kind of easy actually. And they get on the boat and float away.

Laci (02:06:59):

Everything that happened before is what made the fire so effective.

Matt (02:07:05):

Yeah,

Laci (02:07:05):

I guess. I don’t know. Kinley Dyer, can’t they? It’s hard to, let’s say that

Matt (02:07:10):

They pull away, the ship is leaving Port, they watch the city of New Orleans, that Louis’s burning to the ground, killing thousands. No

Laci (02:07:18):

Remorse, just

Matt (02:07:19):

Right. No, he does have remorse. Oh, lesat, I’ve wronged you. I’m so sorry. My beloved.

Laci (02:07:24):

All the mortars and all their possessions dead in their sleep, but poor fucking les dead.

Matt (02:07:29):

Just a fucking bitch. So sense at this sense at Tom Cruise is just out of the movie. I mean, he returns briefly two times later in the movie. But this is it. We’re halfway through the

Laci (02:07:40):

Movie and I accept it a lot easier than you do. I had zero memory of any of the Europe stuff. I’m like, how have I seen this movie multiple times and block out the fucking, I’m like, okay. It’s just some sort of campy play that we’re going to watch now. And then it gets to the part where the lady’s naked and she’s pleading for her life and I’m, yep. That’s why I disassociate from this. I’ll forget this in three days.

Matt (02:08:02):

Oh, it’s great.

Laci (02:08:03):

It’s not great. I hate it. I mean, I am sure you love it. You fucking pervert. But I don’t like watching the horror on the entire audience’s face is they realize it’s been a bait and switch, and they’re like, is she performing or isn’t she? I don’t like that.

Matt (02:08:18):

Why don’t you like

Laci (02:08:18):

That? It makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like it.

Matt (02:08:21):

I wouldn’t want to happen to me or to you to be clear.

Laci (02:08:24):

But it’s some sort of morality test that Armand gives to the vampires, I guess, to see if he’s going to let them in his club. The only other vampire watching, it’s like, Hey, come to our performance,

Matt (02:08:36):

Their

Laci (02:08:36):

Performance, if

Matt (02:08:37):

You like it, they go to Europe. We search village after Village County, country after country and found nothing. I began to believe we were the only vampires. Then we cut to the present. Christians later is like, you mean there’s no vampires in Sylvania? Dracula

Laci (02:08:53):

In Drac?

Matt (02:08:55):

No, just the thoughts of a demented Irishman.

Laci (02:08:59):

Not so demented. I mean, they just might not be there anymore, Brad.

Matt (02:09:04):

Right? We are in, but they’re in, they arrive in Paris. Oh, Paris gay Paris, 1870. Paris is the father of New Orleans. After all, me and my wife arrived at this swell hotel and just danced the night away. And then he is what wife? Child

Laci (02:09:22):

Bride.

Matt (02:09:23):

He is like a bride just walking down a cobblestone street by himself. And then as I finally stopped looking for other vampires, they found me. So it’s Steven Ray, and he’s doing a little Harpo Marx routine with Brad Pitt where he is doing a mirror image of everything Brad Pitt does. And Brad Pitt’s amused. But then he is like, you are a buffoon. And he gets mad.

Laci (02:09:45):

Well, right, because he starts to feel there’s malice in it. It’s not just someone having fun. It’s someone having fun with him.

Matt (02:09:52):

Okay. But still,

Laci (02:09:54):

This is the only other fucking, I’d be bummed too, if this is it. Just someone that likes to do jokes and fuck with me, go to hell.

Matt (02:10:04):

I’d assume it’s a cultural thing. It’s France. They like weird shit. They like clowns. They like Jerry Louis. We just don’t get each other’s sense of humor.

Laci (02:10:13):

Shoot me dead.

Matt (02:10:15):

As Steven Ray is doing this now, we meet Antonio Banderas and he’s like, Hey, Santiago, knock that shit off.

Laci (02:10:20):

Fucking clowning around.

Matt (02:10:22):

And Louie goes up to Armand and he’s like, I’ve searched the world for immortal, and this is what I find, this clown.

Laci (02:10:28):

Well, also the one you’re talking to, what the hell? I’m so sorry, Louie. You went to two fucking places.

Matt (02:10:34):

Yeah.

Laci (02:10:34):

Oh,

Matt (02:10:35):

I went to Paris. I went to niece,

Laci (02:10:38):

The streets of the other Paris.

Matt (02:10:41):

So Antonio, Bens hands in a card, and he’s like, listen, I run this little theater. Come by some fun.

Laci (02:10:47):

It’s real low key. It’s called Theater of Vampires.

Matt (02:10:50):

Yes, it is. So yeah, the stage show is they invite normal people and they kidnap a real woman. And everybody watching as this woman gets tripped naked and eaten by vampire, by real vampires, think this is all part of the stage show, or is it? And that’s the whole point. And Kirsten Dunn says, oh, avant God. But Brad Pitt up in the balcony. He’s like, oh, this is monstrous. This is not okay. They should not be doing this. But I really love this scene. I think it’s so captivating, so beautifully staged. It’s creepy as hell. Steven Ray is creepy as hell the way he talks. And then Antonio Bendera dressed as the devil coming on stage and just picking her up and then handing her over to his cove of feral vampires who just devour her live on stage. It’s awesome, awesome. He invites Brad. And

Laci (02:11:47):

Unfortunately, honey, we have backstage passes to the show. I don’t want to be rude. So

Matt (02:11:52):

We have to go take the tour.

Laci (02:11:53):

These are monsters. And I’m terrified, and I can’t believe we’re in a denin of sin, but we don’t want to be

Matt (02:11:59):

Rude. We paid for the upgrade. We’ve got these lanyards I’ve

Laci (02:12:03):

Got, right? I’ve got the princess package.

Matt (02:12:04):

So he’s giving them a tour and Brad Pitt again, he goes, monstrous. That’s just everything he sees. Monstrous. No, this painting is monstrous. And Armand is like, yes, but very beautiful. And so then he takes out the boy, the beautiful boy, and he’s like, here, suckle on my boy, please. And Brad Pitt’s like, yeah, okay, I’m cool, man. I’ll do it. And he reluctantly does. It starts asking, I want to know so much about vampires. What’s the deal with vampires?

Laci (02:12:29):

Is he trying to interview him? That’s not your thing, Louis.

Matt (02:12:34):

Well, we’ll find out. He’s not asking the right questions. What are we, what’s the deal with vampires? What’s the deal with vampires? It’s like, well, I don’t know, really. He’s like, well, fuck. Alright, this is useless. Just all kinds of circular like, well, if who made me and who made the vampire? If God doesn’t exist and what’s the point of everything? And arm mind’s like, look, I’m the oldest vampire in the world. I’ve been alive for 400 years, and here’s what I can tell you. Never seen a God, never seen a devil. This is all I know. What I know is you. You right now are very special. I’m totally not just grooming you to be my next abused target. You’re the most special boy I’ve ever seen in the entire universe. Brad Pitt’s like something about it made me feel very special. I don’t know.

Laci (02:13:22):

He just wants to get rid of my special girl. I

Matt (02:13:24):

Don’t understand. There is a really cool moment where in the narration, as Brad Pitt is leaving the theater, he says, and I thought once again that I had wronged my poor beloved.

Laci (02:13:33):

It is. I’m sorry. Pardon? It is kind of revealed that he’s lying the whole time. He says, and I fell for it, Matt, that it’s taboo to have a vampire so young. And then you see the little boy and you’re like, oh, well, he’s still alive. But then is Claudia in danger? Well, they just say, it’s not cool what you did. It’s not okay. That doesn’t make an excuse for why they would kill her. Kill him. Sure. Well, that’s not why they’re killing him, but she’s at risk because her age as a vampire is taboo. Okay, why? Because she’ll tell other the people, she’s fucking 80 years old. But then they find out that Rita’s thoughts that he killed one of his own kind. So the retribution for that is that they’re going to kill their own kind.

Matt (02:14:21):

She killed. That’s why they’re killing. He

Laci (02:14:25):

Killed lest

Matt (02:14:26):

That’s phenomenal reason is that Claudia kills the stat.

Laci (02:14:29):

She was in trouble because of her age and he was in trouble. He killed the stat. Claudia tried, and then the fire happened. That was the death nail. They thought,

Speaker 3 (02:14:42):

Oh yeah.

Laci (02:14:43):

Yeah. So it’s all very stupid. None of it makes sense. But then that’s why I think it’s so important that when he welcomes after all of it, he welcomes Louis onto his coach and who’s driving, but the little boy, and you can say, yeah, it’s probably his fucking blood bag or something. It just as easily, he gives a knowing look to the boy. It’s unsettling to him that he still has him. So he’s probably like, why is that little kid a vampire? If it’s not okay, maybe he turned

Matt (02:15:11):

Him. Yeah, do what I say, not as I do. I really wanted him

Laci (02:15:16):

Worse than that. I gave you a reason to think it was normal that your kid’s going to die. Just kidding.

Matt (02:15:24):

It is a big jumble of it’s jumbled reasons, and it all happens so fucking fast. And I’m sure if you’ve read the books, you can explain all of this away. But that really cool moment where the narration comes. I thought once again, my little baby boy, I had wronged him. And then Steven Ray, who can read thoughts says, why did you wrong? He’s like, oh fuck. You can hear what I think. Oh shit. I didn’t think that or that or that or that. So Claudia knows that Brad Pitt is now infatuated with Armand. I see where this is going. If he tells you to run away, abandon your daughter, you’ll do it. He’s like, no, I won’t. Yeah, I probably will. So she needs a companion of her own. And she’s targeted this Madeline, the doll maker, but needs Brad Pitt to turn her into a vampire because

Laci (02:16:19):

She doesn’t have the strength.

Matt (02:16:20):

Doesn’t have the strength,

Laci (02:16:21):

Or doesn’t think she does,

Matt (02:16:23):

Whatever that means. Yeah.

Laci (02:16:25):

Just some woman.

Matt (02:16:28):

So Armand lures Brad Pitt back to his clutches by I have answers for you. And he’s like, you told me that you didn’t have any answers. No, you just asked the wrong questions. So he just explains, here’s why you’re special. You have the stamina for immortality. So few vampires do have that stamina. The world changes. We do not. And then that is what kills us In the end. I need you to be like my liaison with the age that we’re in right now. You have the ability you can go,

Laci (02:17:00):

You’re my boy Dejure. They don’t really explain why isn’t Claudia have the, she doesn’t want to hang out. Y’all can go fuck. Why can’t she be part of this? I do. Don’t understand that.

Matt (02:17:13):

It’s selfish. Yeah. He does not want any distractions whatsoever.

Laci (02:17:18):

But you’re going to get sick of him. At least Claudia would add a little something.

Matt (02:17:22):

It’s not good long-term thinking.

Laci (02:17:23):

He’s not,

Matt (02:17:24):

I mean, you’re nimble enough to be able to go and liaise with the outside world. You know what you are. You’re a vampire with a human soul and immortal with immortals passion. And I really think that right there is why I have a problem with this Brad Pitt performance is there’s no passion in it whatsoever.

Laci (02:17:38):

There’s just compassion. And that’s not passion, right? There’s just like you can talk to humans because you actually sympathize with them. Where I come off as an arrogant asshole.

Matt (02:17:47):

Exactly. Yes.

Laci (02:17:48):

I mean, I guess that’s a skill.

Matt (02:17:49):

It’s a skill. But he’s saying passion. You have the lust for life that vampires lose. And no, he doesn’t.

Laci (02:17:56):

No, he absolutely doesn’t. He never gained it. He didn’t have it as a fucking

Matt (02:17:59):

Mortal. But if you understand that he’s just being a

Laci (02:18:04):

Yes. A love bomber. You’re right. A manipulative like, no, no, no. You’re so important to me right now. These buffoons, the decadent.

Matt (02:18:10):

Yeah, they’re decadent and useless.

Laci (02:18:12):

He’s reading the room. If Brad had been really into the play, he’d be like, you’d be a star. You’d be my number one boy. Exactly. Yes. Right? But because he’s like These clowns, no, forget about it. You’re Grote. You were disgusted. Were you? Let’s do something completely different. Let’s talk about art.

Matt (02:18:28):

He says, Louisie, you are beautiful. Lestat must have wept when he made you. Did it hurt when you fell from heaven, baby, he’s doing like Letta must’ve been so cruel. I’d never be cruel to you. And Brad Pitt walks away and in the narration, he’s like, I knew from then on things would be different. Armand would always treat me good. He would always give me the answers. I was right. I was looking for, yeah,

Laci (02:18:51):

I’m a special baby boy.

Matt (02:18:53):

So gets back home, turns the Madeline person into a vampire.

Laci (02:18:59):

This poor Madeline, she doesn’t get even a second of feeling cool as a vampire. She immediately gets taken.

Matt (02:19:05):

Yeah, exactly. And that’s another issue I have is this thing with Madeline feels really rushed. And this actress is doing a good job. But then when she dies with Claudia in the sunlight, you should feel more impactful if you got to spend a little bit more time with them and seeing what they mean to each

Speaker 3 (02:19:22):

Other.

Matt (02:19:23):

But Stephen Ray is leading the vampire mob to get Madeline and Claudia, to put them death and put Louie for an eternity in a coffin,

Laci (02:19:30):

Upside down, rude in a wall.

Matt (02:19:33):

And Armand is no, Armand isn’t anywhere to be found. Surely he didn’t have anything to do with this. But the sun comes out and burns, chars, sines, Madeline and Claudia to death. It’s very horrific, pretty cool. But they have just hidden under their enormous skirts.

Laci (02:19:52):

That’s why I kept thinking it’s like you could have saved the child, but I guess she was going to turn to ashes anyway than the child.

Matt (02:19:56):

At

Laci (02:19:57):

Least this way. They go together and she gets to live out a fantasy of hers, which was her dying with her daughter.

Matt (02:20:02):

Oh, you’re right. Yes. That’s nice. That’s nice for her.

Laci (02:20:05):

I think. So

Matt (02:20:06):

Armand bust Louis out and he’s like, Louis, I heard what they did to you. That is not okay, dude.

Laci (02:20:13):

Not cool, guys. I’m so sorry. I’m going to be in a lot of trouble for having to come. I mean, they just put up all this brick and mortar.

Matt (02:20:22):

What did I

Laci (02:20:22):

Tell you? I mean, I’m their leader, but I am kind of going against protocol. So it was kind of, I stuck my neck out for this. I can’t save your daughter too.

Matt (02:20:33):

Yeah, he says that I can only save you. I can’t save your daughter too.

Laci (02:20:36):

Look at him. They’re already looking at me. Weird.

Matt (02:20:38):

The daughter is already turned to Ash. And so Louis’s like, alright, Armand. Okay, now we begin our life together. But first I got to take out the trash. So he pours. So

Laci (02:20:52):

I mean, I know he needs to get retribution on these guys, but do you think he’s also doing it just in case any of Armand’s favorites are in there in case, yeah, I am just the boy you like. Now let me get rid of your other guy that seemed to be your second in command before, so I know you’re not just going to toy with me and then go right back to him.

Matt (02:21:11):

That’s too smart. He would never think that,

Laci (02:21:13):

Okay,

Matt (02:21:14):

He pours kerosene on everybody while they’re sleeping in their coffins and lights the whole place on fire. This is the only thing you notice how to do is burn things down.

Laci (02:21:20):

That’s all he is got.

Matt (02:21:21):

But as each vampire pops out of their coffin, he has a sife and just slices them. It’s pretty cool. And then he does a one-on-one battle with Steven Ray, but then he very easily slices him into,

Laci (02:21:30):

Because he knew he was going to pantomime him, so he just, you reverse mimes. And he is like, that guy didn’t see that coming.

Matt (02:21:36):

And then Armand pulls up in a carriage. He’s like, Hey, get in this carriage with me and my boy. And Brad Pitt hops in. He’s like, Armand, I killed all your family. I’m so sorry. And he’s like, rough

Speaker 3 (02:21:46):

Day.

Matt (02:21:47):

No, you made me see their failings. Louis, you really opened my eyes.

Laci (02:21:53):

Plus, did you see the review in the paper of our show dog? Shit.

Matt (02:21:58):

So yeah, I need you. You’ll be my link to the world. But Louis starts to see, finally is waking up a little bit. I think I’ve just found another version of Lestat, just another guy who will treat me, who will be mean to me and manipulate me and control me. And it’s just after my money. So he’s like, no, I’m going to go off on my own. By the way, I know what you did. I know that you killed Claudia. And he’s like, no, I totally didn’t kill Claudia. And he’s like, no, you did. And he leaves and Armand’s like, well, fuck,

Laci (02:22:28):

You killed all my, they all look dumb now I got

Matt (02:22:30):

Nobody. Now

Laci (02:22:31):

I got this little boy.

Matt (02:22:33):

He does have the little boy. But it is the whole thing, like vampires do need companionship. They’re still human in that we need, we’re social animals. We need somebody. We need a person to connect to. And Brad Pitt has just killed all his people. Out of curiosity, boredom, who knows what. I left the old world and came back to my America, and I finally got to see the sunrise again. It was 1927, a movie directed by FW Meow called Sunrise. Sunrise movie store. Magical. We get a magic of the movies montage we see Gone with Wind and Superman. I’m moved

Laci (02:23:08):

By it. I’ve moved by it. Because yes, that would bring just the same as it brought life and entertainment. Entertainment is, that’s why we all watch movies. We can’t just talk to each other all the fucking time

Matt (02:23:22):

And just wait. This thing called video games will be coming in one day. Dude, that’ll take care of

Laci (02:23:27):

You. Yeah. He only had Mario by the time we see him in the nineties or something. And then fucking AI and then virtual reality. And it’s like, you’re not even a vampire anymore.

Matt (02:23:38):

You won’t even know it.

Laci (02:23:38):

In fact, your hours are the same as all the gamers, so you’re fine. Right?

Matt (02:23:41):

Exactly. Then it’s 1988, and he’s leaving a theater. He’s back in New Orleans, and he’s like, smell something. Do I smell a stat?

Laci (02:23:50):

Old death, old money, death?

Matt (02:23:53):

I love that line. It’s old death. Two old for mortals to be able to smell it. And he goes into this abandoned house on Britannia Street,

Laci (02:24:01):

Which somehow there are searchlights. They passed by on helicopters for some reason. I

Matt (02:24:06):

Marked a big X in my notebook. New Orleans geography, fuck up. Goes into this old abandoned house with rats and bats goes upstairs, and then, oh my God, it’s Ed. He’s like, Louie buddy. How have you been?

Laci (02:24:19):

I’d hoped you’d come. I wish you didn’t walk in when I cut a big fart. You smelled it, didn’t you? My ghostly stink?

Matt (02:24:29):

Or like, oh, yeah, just had a rager last night, got a clean up, got a really active social calendar going on. But yeah, since Louis left him, he’s just been a hermit

Laci (02:24:43):

Because he fucking horribly disfigured him. So he can’t go get any poon tang, and he has no money. He fucked him.

Matt (02:24:51):

As we see with the, the very end of

Laci (02:24:53):

You burned down the whole fucking town when you left, there were no people. There’s no mettie. There’s no Kenner. There’s just New Orleans now. They’re all dead. And I’m just a vampire.

Matt (02:25:02):

He could go find another city

Laci (02:25:04):

Like

Matt (02:25:05):

Zach. He eats Christians later and turns beautiful again. It’s just that he needed, if he can’t abuse a man, then he loses the will to live. And he just retreats as he says to him, if you would just return to me, I could become the old Latta again. We could go have fun. We had good times. We were best friends. He’s like, I forgive you. You’re really great and stuff. Yeah. He’s like, oh, so you’ll stay with me? He’s like, no. And then a helicopter buzzes by and it freaks lesat out and Louie’s like, it’s false light. It can’t harm you.

Laci (02:25:40):

But that’s like the evidence of, see, I am the vampire that understands how to grow. I watch tv. I watch the movies. I enjoy when the movies progress. I’m enjoying all this culture, all this change. I have stamina where this one’s still in his little fucking ruffled shirt, still looking like when I left him and can’t even understand what the fuck lights are. He is not capable of eternity.

Matt (02:26:07):

Yeah. It’s like when your parents ask, are you going to watch that new CBS show? And you’re like, dad, come on, man. You think I’m going to be watching linear television

Laci (02:26:16):

9 1 1? Where the fuck the show’s called?

Matt (02:26:19):

Please Stay. No, I won’t stay. This all makes more sense when you realize Louis’s lying about all of this. He’s making this up to make himself look good.

Laci (02:26:25):

What is this shot? Okay, that doesn’t even look like. So Matt is showing side by side of the two in the car

Matt (02:26:35):

Of Tom Cruise and Christian Slater,

Laci (02:26:36):

Right. Both looking surprised to see each other.

Matt (02:26:40):

So now we return to the Christian Slate office and Brad Pitt’s like, and so, yeah, that’s my story. What’d you think,

Laci (02:26:48):

Sean? It’s awesome to be a focal F or turn me. Turn me now. Oh, daddy, do it. You kidding me?

Matt (02:26:53):

I got to have, once again, a person’s like, no, that can’t be all. There’s got to be more to it. There’s got to be answers.

Laci (02:27:00):

You’re doing it wrong. You’re doing it wrong. You have the best fucking lifestyle ever, and you don’t even enjoy it. Turn me,

Matt (02:27:06):

Make me a vampire. I got to know what it’s like. I’ll be your link to the outside

Laci (02:27:11):

World until you do one little thing to me that’s kind of vampire. And I’m like,

Matt (02:27:15):

No. And so Brad Pitt here turns angry and white and gets his fangs out. And he is like, I’ll kill you if I motherfucker and Christian Slater’s like, oh shit, I shouldn’t have done that. But then Brad Pitt vanishes and Christian Slater’s alone in the office, and he grabs his tape recorder, runs down to his car. He’s a public radio journalist in San Francisco who has this amazing convertible, and he’s on the Golden Gate Bridge listening to the audio tape of the interview with the Vampire. And he says to himself, he’s like, somebody changed my shorts. I just shot them. And so we hear Brad Pitt’s Boring Voices. My story began 1791

Laci (02:27:52):

Fucking store from the time when I was turned out.

Matt (02:27:56):

So Christian later who I think is really, really good. Right here. He’s lighting a cigarette and he’s like, holy shit, this is incredible. Oh fuck. Okay, wait a minute. And then fucking Tom Cruise is in the car with him. And

Speaker 3 (02:28:09):

Let’s, dad, I just heard

Matt (02:28:11):

All about you. I assume I need no introduction. Bites the shit out of his neck. Fucking

Laci (02:28:16):

Armando. I’m

Matt (02:28:17):

Not Armand. And very quickly in camera, his face changes and he becomes more Tom Cruise. And he says, I feel better already. And he takes control of the car. We see his hands on the steering wheel, and then we see Tom Cruise pulling the lace out from under his sleeves.

Laci (02:28:31):

Yes. Need to look. He’s wearing a jean jacket and lace. He’s like, I refuse.

Matt (02:28:37):

He needs a little bit of coaching, but he’s going to be all right. And he hears Louis talking on the tape, and he’s like, mother Louis still whining. I’ve had to listen to this bullshit for centuries. And he changed. What else is on? He changes it to the Rock and Roll Station.

Laci (02:28:54):

See who’s keeping up now? Bitches. You answered your question though of why it’s interview with the Vampire. It’s because it’s from the perspective of the interview. I interview her with the Cook interviewer with the band on the street interview. You know what I mean? It’s the story that he’s writing and it’s, oh, that was the teacher,

Matt (02:29:09):

The butcher, the baker, the crossing guard, the Vapi

Laci (02:29:11):

Not, he’s not interviewing a ton of vampires. He’s not a fucking researcher.

Matt (02:29:14):

No, you’re right.

Laci (02:29:15):

I know.

Matt (02:29:17):

It’s a sympathy for the devil. The Guns N Roses version. I guess they couldn’t afford the Rolling Stones version. That’s the only quibble I have with I love this ending. And I was convinced this had to have been done in Reshoots, because this is not how the book ends. The book ends with Christian Slater being like, I got to go find Lesat in New Orleans and goes

Laci (02:29:37):

Looking for him. I got to go smelling for the old fart death.

Matt (02:29:40):

But Lesat doesn’t reappear at the end of the story, but I mean, this scream to me like test screening said audiences need Tom Cruise to come back. But no, they wrote this ending and yeah, he just listens to Sympathy for the Devil. And

Laci (02:29:55):

When did that song come out? The remake?

Matt (02:29:58):

Oh, I don’t know, probably early nineties.

Laci (02:30:01):

It makes sense why that’s on the radio and not the older one.

Matt (02:30:04):

You could hear a Rolling Stone song on the radio,

Laci (02:30:07):

Matt. It’s all about going through the decades. He’s in a jean jacket.

Matt (02:30:13):

I get it. But this is a very specific song. And the thing about Sympathy for the Devil is it is a song that sounds like evil to me,

Laci (02:30:20):

But fun, evil. The thing about this movie is taking what you have and making it new again. So it makes perfect sense to do a remake of a song rather than the original song.

Matt (02:30:29):

All right. There you go. God, I have to

Laci (02:30:31):

Explain everything to this fucking ancient being.

Matt (02:30:34):

Do you like this ending?

Laci (02:30:35):

Yeah, I do. I want them to then I want him to turn him and him be like, you’re my fun dude. Yeah. Chalk a bra. Let’s go kill all the babes. That’s what I want.

Matt (02:30:48):

It’s like, it’s not like it’s literally saying change everything you think. It’s not like, Hey, nothing you watched up until now was fake. It’s not that. But it is like, I don’t know. It is all a matter of perspective.

Laci (02:31:03):

Well, because they go by and they’re flying around and they got one baby in each hand and one of those beer hats where you’re slurping the blood or whatever, and they’re partying. And then you see Louis like, guys, that’s what I wanted. That’s the ending I want. Or Louis’s just like, not God damnit, but

Matt (02:31:20):

He’s still in the fra instantly

Laci (02:31:21):

Turned one, right? Well, you got to have the fucking panty waist. The fucking, you got to have the one you don’t like.

Matt (02:31:27):

I’m trying to study. I’ve got trick. We’re out of tp.

Laci (02:31:53):

Look, the fucking poster is Tom Cruise looking amazing as shit. And Louis curled up like a little bitch on a bench.

Matt (02:32:01):

Yeah, they knew.

Laci (02:32:02):

They knew.

Matt (02:32:03):

Knew. Laci, what are your final thoughts on star rating for your load bearing Beam?

Laci (02:32:08):

This movie, this movie gets three stars for being weird as shit would recommend, but you might need to watch it a couple times and expect weird rather than good. There will be good. Like Daniel Day Lewis says, there will be good. That will be good. But mostly you’re going to be like, what’s going to Okay? But you’re still along for the ride.

Matt (02:32:36):

Interesting. Very rare is it when Laci has us watch a movie and I like it more than her. I go Four stars. There’s so much that I love about this movie. And if you just put someone else in the role of Brad Pitt, I think you’d have a five star classic. But I think Tom Cruise’s performance is truly special. I think Neil Jordan directs the shit out of this. Kirsten Dun is great, great production design, great San Winston makeup, but great music. I think that the score is very good. Love the New Orleans. Love how much they went all out. They shot in New Orleans, they shot on real plantations, they shot in,

Laci (02:33:07):

Felt dirty. It felt where they were.

Matt (02:33:10):

Yes, yes. So four out of five stars. But I am really, really enjoying. I’ve read a lot more of Interview with the Vampire. I’m really enjoying it. And I think I might actually keep going with this series. It’s like the first time I’ve ever gotten it with vampires.

Laci (02:33:25):

Wow. We’re going to have to read. Go back over Twilight then. Now that you’ve gotten it, now you got the Vampire Bug.

Matt (02:33:33):

I mean, I’ve read the Twilight

Laci (02:33:34):

Books. I need you to understand it better. Okay.

Matt (02:33:38):

Yeah. I think that the Twilight Books are fun, and I’ve read other vampire books, but this is the first one where I’ve thought like, oh, vampires are fucking cool and interesting. So that’s my review. They’re cool and interesting. Those are good things on the show. We have, what do we have saw? Saw Jigsaw. Do you want to play a game with us Saw?

Laci (02:34:06):

I want to play the Saw game,

Matt (02:34:09):

Going to be joined by some first time guests, some great friends of ours,

Laci (02:34:13):

Spooky T in HFK. I’m very excited about it. They were early friends of mine on TikTok, and then we joined a Discord server together. And we never looked back. We never looked back.

Matt (02:34:24):

What’s your relationship with the SAW movies?

Laci (02:34:26):

I remember really liking it in the theater because there was nothing I’d ever seen. It was a big surprise reveal the whole thing and just gruesome at a level that mainstreamness gruesome movies. But I hadn’t really seen them. And this one seemed to have a point. But I remember seeing the second one, I remember the head thing, but I think I kind of fell off after that. And then you and me tried to revisit Saw not terribly long ago, and I couldn’t get through it. And I am very curious to figure out what was not gelling for me this time. Well, I mean, my appreciation for movies changes constantly. I think it grows and appreciating things for just being weird happens to me. So I’ve noticed on these Rees, I’m liking things more just because they are such a vibe.

Matt (02:35:19):

I’d be interested to see what you think. Especially since last time you just thought, who would want to watch this? This isn’t fun. But I think that I don’t like the series really at all. It’s not my series, but I think that the first one’s

Laci (02:35:31):

Really good X or whatever. Oh, that

Matt (02:35:33):

One too. I

Laci (02:35:33):

Think that one was good.

Matt (02:35:34):

My take on this off franchise is if they’re made with craft, if it’s a good director, then the movie’s good. But most of them look like music videos.

Laci (02:35:41):

Okay, so it’s another franchise that gets passed around too much with different directors

Matt (02:35:46):

Or just untalented directors?

Laci (02:35:48):

No, but I mean different ones.

Matt (02:35:49):

No, I think there’s one guy who directs a lot of the sequels and he’s just not very good. But yeah, saw episode come in next week, check out the Patreon where we have an episode about Nickelodeon’s Doug and an episode about Mulholland Drive patreon.com/ load-bearing beams. Tell a friend about the show. Follow me and Laci on letterbox. Follow my band on Spotify. All that shit you can find in the descriptions.

Laci (02:36:12):

Okay. I love you. Goodbye. I So,

Speaker 3 (02:36:27):

Three, four, everybody. Spiderman. Good.