What do you say we get started?
S0, what do you do?
L'm a vampire.
I think one of the genius qualities to the film...
...is that Neil Jordan was so bold in pursuing that theme...
...that they are really evil. They do take life...
...and they do drink blood in order to survive...
...and they're kind of stuck with it.
Once all of the characters become vampires--
Once Louis and Lestat establish their relationship, become vampires...
...they're kind of left squabbling through eternity in a way.
You really believe this, don't you, that you're a vampire?
We can't begin this way.
Let me turn on the light.
- I thought vampires didn't like light. -We love it.
I only wanted to prepare you.
- Christ! -Don't be frightened.
I was sitting one night in my office at home in Berkeley.
I was completely unpublished and unknown.
And it occurred to me: what if you could interview a vampire?
What if you could get that vampire to sit down and tell you...
...what being a vampire was like. What if he would tell you everything--
What it was like to drink blood...
...whether or not he suffered a swoon when he drank blood...
...what it was like to be immortal.
ljust decided it would be fun to do it.
S0 I wrote a short story called “Interview with the Vampire"...
...and I kept it for about two years.
And then I pulled it out while I was working 0n a collection of short stories...
...and I started to work on it...
...and it just took off.
How can I put you at ease?
Shall we begin like David Copperfield?
“I am born. I grew up."
Or shall we begin when I was born to darkness, as I call it.
That's really where we should start, don't you think?
L'm flesh and blood, but not human.
I haven't been human for 200 years.
I was sent a copy of the book by David Geffen--
Just after I'd done The Crying Game.
--And of the script, Anne Rice's script.
And I was flying to Paris...
...and he asked me to read it on the way, which I did.
And I was instantly intrigued...
...you know, totally-- I'd heard about the project for years...
...because it had such a reputation. They'd been trying to make it for 20 years.
And I'd spoken to various directors at different times who were talking about it.
But I'd never read the book. But when I read the book...
...there was such atmosphere in it, you know, you could cut it with a knife.
And I was about to do various other projects...
...and I kind of put them all on hold to do it.
David Geffen really wanted to make it. That was the main thing.
And David Geffen, as far as I know, became the real hero of Interview with the Vampire.
He decided that he was gonna get this made...
...and he was gonna draw all the elements together.
And I remember when he called me...
...and asked me if I wanted to write the script, I was kind of...
.-.frightened. It had been over 15 years since I'd written the book...
...and I didn't know whether I could re-enter this material.
But then I thought, “Well, this is a big opportunity.
Go ahead, Anne. D0 this."
I used the books as a reference for me...
...and you have to read them-- Especially Interview with the Vampire...
...because it's from Louis' point of view. --very carefully to find the clues...
...to who Lestat is and, you know, his loneliness...
...and his personal struggle.
He recognizes that Louis' a unique being...
...and if he wanted-- You know, it's that whole thing...
...and Lestat gives him the choice, very clearly. Even in the book...
...Lestat gives Louis the choice.
That's something I felt very strongly about. And when Lestat asks Louis:
D0 you still want death?
Or have you tasted it enough?
He's really asking Louis, “Do you still wanna die?
I mean, now you know you've come close to death.
Is this what you want?“
Tom is a really great actor, you know. He really is.
And he's been growing in stature through the movies he's making, you know?
Just look at his work in Born on the Fourth of July...
...and you kind of know that.
And he's got this unique thing, like he can hold the absolute center...
...of the screen and 0f your attention, you know, without- Just effortlessly.
That's what being a star is, but when you've got a star, actually...
.-.who has got this energy in their talent, it is kind of mesmeric, you know.
Whining coward of a vampire...
...who prowls killing rats and poodles! You could've finished us both.
You've condemned me to hell!
I don't know any hell.
L'd never met Tom. I went out to his house to see him, and I was instantly, kind of...
...you know, “this guy is really good" feeling- You know that feeling you get...
...every now and then in your life? And we discussed it, and we discussed it.
And we played around with it for a little bit. Then, I went back and met him again...
...and we just suddenly clinched it then and there.
You know, I could see the power-- He's got extraordinary power.
--That could go into that, and I could see, kind of...
...how he could approach that icy place with tremendous authority.
S0 I cast Tom, and all hell broke loose then, you know?
Perfect! Perfect!
Just burn the place! Burn everything we own!
Have us living in a field, like cattle!
You thought you could have it all.
Shut up, Louis!
As an actor, ifs very challenging, because you have to...
...really root this character in an emotional reality...
...so that you're not caught playing attitudes, you know.
That ifs real, and that it comes from real emotion...
...and a strong foundation of who this guy is.
My philosopher. My martyr.
“Never take a human life."
Oh, yes. This calls for a celebration.
I always thought it'd be wonderful to have, you know...
To show Lestat's sense of humor. Because he is such a bright character.
I mean, you live that long, you've read every book, you know...
...you can play any instrument you wish to play.
My feeling, having cast both Brad and Tom, was...
"basically, that, in a strange way, the world of a vampire...
...is not that different from the world of a massive Hollywood star, yeah?
You know what I mean? You're kept from the...
You're kind of kept from the daylight, you know, from the harsh daylight.
You live in a strange kind of seclusion, you know?
Every time you emerge, a tremendous...
...kind of ripple runs through people, you know?
And the effects these characters had, the way Anne described them in the book...
...was like that. Lestat would enter a room, and kind of...
...an invisible-stone-had-dropped-into-a-pool kind of thing, you know?
To me it was like... It was kind of an interesting metaphor, you know?
The kind of stars-vampire, vampire-star, you know? And as well as that, they are...
...eternally youthful. Or they're condemned to be eternally youthful, in a way.
It was...
There was some-- There was a kind of...
...a little dance going on in my mind in that regard, you know?
As I was making the movie as well.
I thought that Tom captured Lestat perfectly.
He got the incredible strength of Lestat. He got the sense of humor of Lestat.
He got the boldness of Lestat. I'm overusing the word "boldness"...
...but, I mean, it's-- I mean, Lestat really is just a strident...
...powerful personality.
Not quite furioso.
Moderate...
...cantabile, perhaps.
How could it be?
Ask the alligator.
His blood helped.
Then, 0n a diet of the blood of snakes...
"loads...
...and all the putrid life of the Mississippi...
...slowly...
...Lestat became something like himself again.
Claudia...
...you've been...
...a very...
...very...
.-.naughty little girl.
I consider myself one of the most fortunate authors in the world...
...because I don't know many other authors who can say that about a movie based on...
...their book. I mean, authors generally are very unhappy. I was extremely happy.
Thought Brad PMs face...
...beautifully mirrored the sorrow that he felt throughout the film...
...as he watches Lestat do cruel things to people.
He watches Claudia grow to be cruel. He watches Armand turn out to be cruel.
And yet-- And he keeps having to mirror this sorrow...
...this horror, you know? That's a difficult thing for an actor...
...and Brad Pitt does a fabulous job of it.
You have a guy who has...
He's supposed to do this and he's supposed to do that, and it doesn't feel right for him.
But yet...
...that's-- Those are his instincts now. And so therein lies the whole dilemma.
The world...
...changes.
We do not.
Therein lies the irony that finally kills us.
I need you to make contact with this age.
Me?
Don't you see?
L'm not the spirit of any age.
L'm at odds with everything.
I always have been.
And then, of course, you get to Armand.
You get to Antonio Banderas, who walks into the movie...
...and he's, you know--
Suddenly, you know, he just takes over the stage.
S0 I thought they were all wonderful.
We were talking, pretty much, about...
...what is the life of a guy who may be able to live that amount of time.
And if you start thinking about it, you have to re-create...
...a whole, entire world around you.
And it was very, very difficult. We went for a specific--
But I remember talking to Neil Jordan, talking to Brad Pitt, about Hollywood...
...as a perfect place for vampires, because a vampire is buying immortality.
Hollywood is a perfect place where people wants to buy immortality...
...where everybody has so much to lose that they would like to live forever...
...and they would love to live forever young.
Then Antonio came on board. Then I was discussing Santiago...
...and he had to have this malevolence that belonged...
...to a sense of Parisian theater, you know? And I discussed it with Stephen...
...and he discussed it-- He kind of talked about the comédie-frangaise...
...and he talked about a way it kind 0f--
He'd almost be like Joel Grey in Cabaret...
...you know, this kind of master of ceremonies in this decadent...
...Parisian theater, and we just-- And it just seemed right, you know?
My way of approaching Santiago was not so much as a vampire but as an actor.
He's an actor, Santiago, and l...
And he's an actor in Paris. S0 I got myself some tapes of...
...the comédie-frangaise and listened to their delivery...
...which is quite unlike a naturalistic delivery.
It's a very heightened, theatrical delivery.
I listened to that and worked on that for a while so that I could...
"become like a French-- A period French actor.
But, hark.
Methinks a mortal doth approach.
What have we here?
What beauty by my side?
A rose in bloom, a shrinking violet?
Perhaps she has a mind to be my bride.
Perhaps my lesson has not ended yet.
Then you get to Kirsten Dunst...
...and she does this incredible transformation from a child...
...before your eyes. A child suffering, turning into a vampire...
...and then turning into a woman in a child's body.
And she goes through all of that, and she does a masterly job.
I want some more.
Since I was so young, I could never really understand...
...the pain Claudia was going through.
S0 I had to do different things that would make it look like...
...l knew what I was-- I mean, I knew what I was saying...
...to a certain extent, but I could never imagine, you know...
...what she was really going through, at that age.
Which one of you did it?
Which one of you made me the way I am?
What you are'?
A vampire gone insane, that pollutes its own bed.
And if I cut my hair again?
It will grow back again.
But it wasn't always so.
I had a mother once. And Louis, he had a wife.
He was mortal, same as she.
- And so was I! -Claudia!
You made us what we are, didn't you?
- Stop her, Louis. -Did you do it to me?
Well, actually, I really did not want to have a child...
...that had never acted having to do things that were need--
You know, that this part needed, having to go through those emotions.
I really wanted somebody who knew what acting was, you know?
S0 I didn't want to see unknowns. I didn't want to see--
I didn't want to just go on a grand discovery.
I wanted to see people who were actors.
And we found Kirsten one day...
...and she was extraordinary. She was brilliant.
The only thing I can say about this movie is that it amazes me...
...that people still come up to me and compliment the movie...
...and compliment my performance. And it was such a pivotal role for my career.
I mean, ifs helped me to get where I am today, and $0...
It was the most prominent role of my career so far, $0...
Nothing has topped the experience, either. Working with the actors I worked with...
...and working with Neil, and...
It was just-- It was one of the best times in my life, I think.
It was like a fantasy, almost.
One lesson you taught me...
...never drink from the dead.
Louis! Put me in my coffin.
Put me in my coffin.
I'll put you in your coffin!
Through conversations with Neil...
...and part of the conversations we had when I was in Dublin...
...and going through, you know, how the sequence could work...
...was the concept 0f...
That, literally, all of his life would drain away...
...that he would shrivel and come down to that--
The look of a-- Almost a corpse, almost of a--
An Auschwitz victim, someone dying, possibly, of AIDS...
...where their life has been drained away from them.
Key to this working as an effect...
...would be the performance of Lestat dying.
And key to this effect working was...
...that although-- And what people don't realize...
...is that when-- Once Lestat is on the ground...
...and his throat is cut...
...and he is literally dying, and that camera is pushing in...
...there's no longer a Tom Cruise in this movie.
At that point, it's a robot.
And that was gonna be the big shot, you know?
But it ended up being fairly seamless, and no one really noticed it all that much...
...like we had hoped they would, and-- Because it was just too subtle...
...which is the way we liked it. Neil and I sort of developed this thing of...
...that any effect that would actually be in there should not really be noticed...
...outwardly. It might be a subliminal thing. You might catch it, you might not.
And we started to attack all the other scenes that way...
...that everything that you saw there was actually very, very simple-looking...
...even though it might be very complex to do.
He loved the ideas we were dealing with.
He loved the fact that we'd be dealing with effects that would be almost invisible.
And it, oddly enough, kind of...
...guaranteed he wouldn't be nominated, because people wouldn't notice them.
They wouldn't know what was effects or what was design.
But he loved the subtlety of what we were doing.
Neil's request...
...for what they would look like in his mind, was--
You know, that feeling of a burned log...
...that is turned to ash. That ifs holding itself together.
That still has its shape, but if you were to touch it, it would crumble.
--Was the feeling that he wanted from these two ash bodies.
And so the first step was to create that visual element.
What do these two characters look like burned up...
...all in one shape, before they've fallen apart?
And that became a sculpture.
It became this incredibly amazing ashen sculpture.
That's the first step, always the first step. The art is the first step.
The art always wins.
We never go to the technology before we take care of the art.
We took Stan's design...
...and then we cut it apart in a bunch of different pieces...
...wired it all together, under it, with motion control...
...and just, basically, start pulling the wires so that the arm would fall off...
...and the hand would fall off. And this would go in a very specific pattern.
Added a bunch of-- You know, 50 elements of dust...
...and things breaking apart. And when you look at it...
...it looks kind of like what you'd imagine if you touch something...
...that was all, basically, burned to a crisp, like an ash on a cigarette. It would just...
...you know, fall apart that way. And we spent--
You know, we spent a long, long time, like a month or two months...
...working solid on this shot to try to make it look...
...like you didn't do anything, just built it. Like Stan built it.
Basically, Neil wanted something for the Santiago character to do.
And we were in a tunnel in Paris...
...and he said, "I want him to dance on the ceiling of the tunnel."
And it's like, well, there's only really one way of doing it.
There's a couple little tricks you can do now that wasn't done in the '40s.
The Fred Astaire trick is you'd build a steel cage with a set built inside of it...
...and the camera and the steel cage revolve...
...and it's a, basically, giant, revolving rotisserie, essentially...
...and then you film inside it. And the real trick is...
...the actor or the dancers-- I think why Fred Astaire did it so well is...
...that he could dance and hide the feeling that the gravity is now shifting seamlessly...
...so you couldn't tell when it actually turned.
And that's what Stephen Rea had to do, who's not necessarily a dancer.
And we had a choreographer do it.
And it was one of the last things we shot, I think, on the movie...
...is Brad Pitt coming over--
And we made the shot look like you were shooting over his shoulder.
--Who's standing upright, while he's dancing on the ceiling background.
S0 we had to shoot them separately.
And that was the last bit, and Neil saw the take he liked...
...which was take 23, if I remember correctly.
And that was the end of it. It was like one day, you know...
...do the Fred Astaire gag, and, you know, do it, hopefully...
...as seamlessly as that was done.
In my death scene, I mean, where I have my torso cut...
...and Brad Pitt cuts me from here...to here.
S0 this little bit of me is lying on the floor...
...sort of grunting.
And I had to stick my head and part of my arm...
...through this hole in the floor.
And Stan Winston said, “Don't worry. You won't be there for very long.
It'll be uncomfortable, but it won't be very long.“
And I said, “How long?" He said, "Oh, an hour."
I thought, “An hour?" That's really a long time to be uncomfortable, you know.
And ifs-- But it's worth it for the...
Just for that moment in the film. And it's only a moment.
- You said you found nothing? -Peasant rumors...
...superstitions about garlic...
. - .crosses. . .
...the old stake in the heart.
But one of our kind?
Not a whisper.
There are no vampires in Transylvania? No Count Dracula?
Fictions, my friend.
The vulgar fictions of a demented Irishman.
S0 when we get to Interview with the Vampire...
I think that we're really facing a kind of intraview...
...because we do get an inside view of the vampire...
...as he is split within himself, divided from himself...
...different from himself, and in conflict.
There are a lot of-- There are a number of professors today...
...who are teaching classes on vampire fiction...
...and I think it's marvelous. I think everybody has come to realize...
...that the vampire is an incredible metaphor for the outsider in all of us...
...and the outcast in all of us.
I guess one could speak today of the vampire having a fan club...
...precisely to the extent that we're living in a situation--
We're in a mass-media culture that is oversaturated now...
...or super-saturated, with our ability to identify with the vampire...
...with all the occult loner figures.
There's no room for the loneliness of the vampire or the werewolf any longer...
...except to the extent that it is the loneliness of every adolescent.
I mean, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is basically group therapy for teenagers at this point.
People don't do things to be evil.
They don't, you know...
They do things because they think they're right.
And they think what they're doing is right.
And it just so happens that it can be evil to others.
S0 it was really important to understand that and have...
Understand Lestat's loneliness, and...
You know, because he really does love Louis. He really does love Claudia.
And he does feel that what he's giving them is this wonderful gift of eternal life...
...and to join him in what he perceives to be the greatest adventure ever.
But perhaps...
...this...
...is the only real evil left.
Then God does not exist?
I know nothing of God.
Or the devil.
I have never seen a vision, nor learned a secret...
...that would damn or save my soul.
As far as I know...
...after 400 years...
...l am the oldest living vampire...
...in the world.
I would say that immortality is, actually...
...something that we do experience, all the time...
...within our short attention spans.
In every moment, we have access to the experience of immortality.
It just doesn't come to us pure and unmixed.
It's always shadowed at the same time by the loss of the other.
L've searched the world for an immortal and this is what I find.
Bring the petite beauty with you.
N0 one will harm you. I won't allow it.
Apparently there were theaters in Paris in the late 1800s...
...that did have horror shows for mass audiences, or big audiences...
...but I didn't know that when I wrote, in the book...
...that there was a Theater of the Vampires. The idea just popped into my head.
It was one of those things. I was sitting there, just writing away...
...and I thought, "Okay, Louis is in Paris. He's looking for the vampires.
What if there's a whole theater of them, you know, the Theater of the Vampires?
And they're pretending to be human beings pretending to be vampires on the stage.
How clever!" ljust wrote it.
But there was a Theater of Grand Guignol in Paris...
...that opened in the late 19th century.
It really was the first horror establishment.
It sort of was the rehearsal of horror movies in many ways.
And it continued all the way up to World War ll, I believe.
Grand Guignol was to do with blood, cruelty and the enaction...
...of horrific events on-stage, like people having their eyes taken out...
...and disemboweled, and all this stuff, you know?
It's like spectacle of kind of pain and misery.
What was so distinctive about the Grand Guignol horror sketches...
...was that they served at the same time-- And I think this is interesting.
--As introductions to the latest in media technologies...
...and also medical technologies.
S0 the horror skit would involve, say, surgery on-stage.
The most effective playlet, in terms of people passing out in the audience...
...ever performed was a realistic blood transfusion on-stage.
And another thing, to give an example of media technology...
...is there was something called, in fact, “The Telephone," where a man on-stage...
...simply listened on the phone to his wife and kids...
...being murdered at the other end of the line.
I never like to say that I don't believe in something.
You know? I really...
...wouldn't feel right saying I didn't believe in them.
And I also don't want to say, “They exist. Of course, they do.“
But I think...
...l believe in something.
I think ifs just part of the popular imagination, basically.
I believe there are people, probably, that have a tendency to...
...cross the line, probably a line that is at the end of sex.
Could be at the end of a mental illness too.
And there are some people who cross that line...
...and may live like vampires, may imitate them...
...but, for sure, I can tell you that they cannot buy time.
I don't think nobody can live more than they were supposed to live...
...you know, as a normal person. S0 I don't believe in vampires at all.
Well, I believe in vampires because the weekend this movie opened...
.-.there was about 4O people across the United States...
...who cut somebody else and drank their blood, you know?
S0 they seem to believe in them.
Do I believe in vampires? No, I think vampires are metaphors...
...for all the uneasiness we have about everything.
I myself have not met any real vampires.
But, you know, we have a great big vampire ball...
...every year here, in New Orleans. It's-- Lestat has a fan club. He--
I don't. But he has a fan club that's existed for about 1O years, and they have a ball.
And the ball is huge. One year I gave the ball...
...and we had 8000 people.
But many, many people come to that ball whom you would swear are real vampires.
They have contact lenses that make, like, cat eyes for their eyes.
They have bonded fangs on their teeth. They have long fingernails.
And the ball is a wonderful place to be the Saturday before or after Halloween...
...just to see these kids. Because it's really quite incredible.
But, to my knowledge, no real vampires have ever showed up at that ball.
Whatever happened to Lestat, I do not know.
I go on night after night.
I feed on those who cross my path.
My nails were this big. They were big.
And I am alone in this hotel, you know, this huge hotel in London.
L'm alone in the sauna with my long nails, naked, you know...
...and suddenly, four Japanese guys got in the sauna.
And they sit in front of me.
And they do, immediately...to the fingers, you know...
...looking at the nails.
The four of them looking at each other, looking at the nails.
And I said, “I'm doing a vampire movie."
And they looked at each other.
“Ah, yeah, vampire, vampire. Yeah, vampire. Vampire? All right.“
And they stood up and left.