In 1994, mogul David Geffen hired director Neil Jordan, hot off the success of The Crying Game, to pull off what many tried and failed to do — bring Anne Rice’s novel Interview with the Vampire to the big screen. The film became a huge success, the biggest vampire film at the box office until Twilight. Its success proved Rice’s characters are adept for live-action, as the continued success of the AMC television series has proven. And after much anticipation, Warner Bros. has finally released Jordan’s film, showcasing a truly stacked cast including Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, and an 11-year-old Kirsten Dunst, on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. Nerdist had the privilege of chatting with Neil Jordan, who reflected on three decades of his sumptuous undead epic.
NERDIST: Interview with the Vampire went through a torturous 18-year process to get to the big screen, and many previous versions were very scared of the subtext. Louis was almost a woman played by Cher, wild as that sounds. Do you feel the ‘90s were just the right moment in history to make an accurate version of the story?
Neil Jordan: It probably was. It’s hard to say. I was not around for the prolonged development of it all. David Geffen had numerous conversations about it with lots of people. I mean, I wouldn’t have liked to see Cher in that role, would you? (laughs). However great she is. I mean, somebody told me that Anne Rice had a meeting with Tom Hanks about playing Lestat or something. So there’s kind of an absurd history to it. But I suppose any, any property that has gone through all these different kinds of attempts to realize it, the same thing might apply.
How many people have tried to make a movie about A Confederacy of Dunces, you know? And I’m sure many people have been trying to make a movie of The Secret History, haven’t they? The book by Donna Tartt. But when I read Anne’s script, I asked Geffen if I could go back to the original novel, which I did. I read the novel, and I said, “Will you let me do my own pass on this book?” Because there’s so much that she’d left out in her script. And I put back in as much as I could, really. And I loved doing it. It was thrilling.
You once said that vampires were like movie stars, they had made some kind of contract with unknown powers to be eternally young. So you had to cast stars in the roles. But were there any movie stars you had in your back pocket in case Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt hadn’t worked out?
Jordan: No, none really. When I was offered the script, I think Brad Pitt was already attached. I had several meetings with him. River Phoenix was going to play the interviewer (Daniel Molloy). Of course, River had this tragic death, and that was a terrible thing. And there was all this conversation about who should play Lestat. Anne Rice had very decided ideas about who should play Lestat. And it seemed the entirety of the United States had very decided ideas about who should play Lestat! I met Tom, and I just thought he was correct. I thought he would be great in the role, and so I cast him. And, you know, then everyone started giving out to me. So that was my experience of it all.
The deleted scenes on the new disc were fascinating to watch, because fans have been wondering about them for years. Did you ever consider finishing some of them and putting them back into the movie?
Jordan: Ok, so the deleted scenes are there because I tried to track down my original cut of the movie. And I was going to deliver what they would call a director’s cut, but I could not find it in the vaults of Warner Bros. And I hadn’t kept a version of it myself. I don’t know why. But what we did turn up was these deleted scenes. So I just thought I should include them, really. You know, they’re the best of the deleted scenes. I mean, a lot of what was gone was not even worth looking at. But what is included is the stuff that kind of is of the most interest, let’s put it that way.
Speaking of deleted scenes, for years I’ve seen a still image of Tom Cruise as Lestat in the Paris scenes, in kind of half-burnt makeup, presumably from the final act. Were those scenes never found?
Jordan: They weren’t there; they weren’t found. I couldn’t find them, actually. But you’re right. There was some stuff of Tom when he came to Paris, but it wasn’t successful. That aspect of the character was not successful. So you’ve seen pictures of him in those scenes out there, yeah, have you?
Oh yeah, they’re on the internet if you know where to look.
Jordan: Yeah, I couldn’t find those scenes, actually. But I know we did shoot it. It was the less successful aspect of the Theater of Vampires portion, let’s put it that way. The most successful part was the stuff on stage, with Louis chopping up the bodies of those vampires with the scythe and all that sort of stuff. But I mean, I don’t know what Lestat was doing in Paris, actually.
So in the book, he goes looking for Louis and Claudia, trying to get them to go back home with him. And at the Theater, he’s the coven’s kind of star witness, proof that Louis and Claudia had attempted to kill their maker. It’s a tiny bit of a redemption for Lestat, because he’s kind of telling Louis that Armand’s coven is what he was trying to protect them from, and why he didn’t want them to go to Paris in the first place.
Jordan: But in the, in the story, in the novel basically, doesn’t Santiago accuse them of having killed the one who made them?
Yes, but then Lestat appears in Paris, and he tells Armand’s coven, “Yeah, they did try to kill me, but let them come home with me instead, and don’t kill them.” And then once they don’t need him as their star witness, they tell him to leave Paris.
Jordan: Oh, ok. I know why it’s not the finished film then.
The making of this film was the subject of so much press and scrutiny and drama, but you persevered and made your movie with the studio’s support. But in the social media age, where the voices of the fans are amplified through a megaphone, do you think the same would apply today?
Jordan: I mean, it was bad then, but it would be hell now, wouldn’t it? I mean, if you bothered to read it, if one were to read them. And you know, at the time it was Entertainment Weekly, it was all these magazines and stuff. And Anne Rice was very adept at talking to and dealing with the press. She liked her press life, she liked her public life. And she’d been trying to make the movie for a very long time, and she had her own opinions. But look, it was cool. She liked what we did in the end, so it was good.
When you were younger, you were a documentarian on the set of John Boorman’s Excalibur, which is another favorite movie of mine. That’s a film that takes something fantastical and mythological and kind of grounds it in a sort of realism. Did you learn key lessons on Excalibur that you applied to Interview?
Jordan: I just learned from watching John Boorman, a very great director, making this Arthurian fantasy in the Wicklow Hills, close to where I was in Dublin. I learned that if you have the resources, and you’re decided enough in your vision, you can do anything you want with film. You can achieve anything. And that was a great lesson to learn. John Boorman was basically my film school, you know, because there was no film school in Ireland when I grew up. And I couldn’t afford to go to one in London.
I know that after the success of Interview, you wrote a script for The Vampire Lestat, but Tom Cruise decided to pass on reprising the role. As far as I can tell, that script has never leaked online or anywhere. Can you tell us anything about it? Did it cover the whole book? Was Lestat a rock star? Anything you can tell us?
Jordan: OK, so I had a version of it on Final Draft that I can’t activate again. I was never in love with the idea of Lestat as a kind of David Lee Roth figure. So, no rock star persona, I was never in love with the image of him as a rock star. But when they asked me to write a script for The Vampire Lestat, I did go back. I really got fascinated with the whole thing, with Anne’s epic about how Lestat was turned into a vampire when working at the Commedia dell’arte in Paris, then taken by this strange man, and running from wolves. The script was mainly about Lestat’s 18th-century France experience. With some flash-forwards to Daniel Malloy being driven from New Orleans down to Los Angeles and stuff like that. As far as I remember. If you can find it online, let me know!
I don’t think the late, great Stan Winston gets enough credit for this movie. You hear about his work on Terminator and Jurassic Park a lot, but the practical effects are incredible in this movie, but they’re subtle and not very showy. Can you talk about working with Stan Winston on this a little?
Jordan: Yeah, Stan was desperate to get involved in this film. And he really wanted to realize what a vampire would look like. And it was great, really, because the work one normally does on one’s own film as a director- the imaginative part of the work, you do not do on your own. I was able to do all that with Stan Winston, who is one of the greatest effects people to ever have lived. The basic issue we explored was how to make these vampires real.
At the time, my son had just been born, and I became fascinated by the way the tiny veins showed on his forehead and face. So we decided to explore that aspect of things. So Stan would hang the cast upside down, and trace little blue lines along their veins, and that became the way we defined the makeup for our vampires, for Brad and for Tom and for Kirsten, and everybody really. It’s a terribly tiresome thing for an actor to have to do, but it was cool. Sam came into his own in the scene where Tom had his throat cut by little Kirsten. He built a whole set of different models for that, and it was really painstaking and very beautiful what he did.
It seems wild today that Kirsten Dunst was never nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Although she did get a Golden Globe nod. Of course, her career went great anyway, but do you think the critical and awards season bias against fantasy or horror has become better or worse since Interview came out?
Jordan: That is shocking, yeah, but maybe she was so young, I don’t know. I mean, since Interview came out, it seems there’s nothing but fantasy and horror now really. You know, it’s very difficult to find a realistic movie in the cinemas these days, isn’t it?
True, but when it comes to awards time, they almost entirely overlook performances in genre films. Even when that is what is successful at the box office.
Jordan: Oh, I know. To get an Oscar, you have to be playing “Dame Edna So and So” in Dying Days, coughing in an old folks’ home and shit, don’t you? (laughs).
Now that’s been out for a few years, I have to ask what you think of the Interview with the Vampire television series.
Jordan: I’ve seen two episodes of the TV series, but I haven’t seen much more than that, you know. But, you know, they’re free to take this story and spin it whichever way they want, aren’t they? I mean, it’s a great book, a great set of books. And you know, it can endure a lot of spinning, right?
Did you know that on the TV series, Louis has an assumed business name for mortal affairs, and it’s “Thomas Pitt?” It’s their fun little nod to the film version.
Jordan: Oh, I didn’t know that. (laughs). I didn’t know that.
The production design, the sets, the costumes- everything is impeccable in this movie, like, in a way you almost don’t see anymore.
Jordan: CGI was in its infancy, so everything that we shot, we had to build. Every effect you see had to happen in front of the camera, even Stan’s work with the crew with Tom Cruise (when he’s almost killed by Kirsten Dunst). But Tom becoming this shriveled-up thing had to happen in front of the camera. You know what I mean? I mean, with CGI the way it’s gone rampant now, that doesn’t happen anymore. So you’re in a world of weird geometry, and the eye is telling you that these things don’t exist because you know they can’t exist. It’s that kind of thing. But in the case of this film, we had to make it all real, you know?
What do you think the ultimate legacy of Interview with the Vampire is, not just on vampire films, but big-budget dark fantasy overall? What films that came out after do you see its fingerprints on?
Oh, I don’t know. When did Tim Burton make Sleepy Hollow? 1999? So, that arrived after Interview. Maybe. It was all a unique opportunity, let’s put it this way. You know, it was a very popular book. It was a total rethinking of what it meant to be a vampire. It was a historical epic that went from Louisiana in the 18th century to San Francisco in the late 20th century, to New Orleans, and back to Paris. So it was a unique opportunity to provide all the opulence and all the kind of splendor that one gets in a great period movie, but in a vampire film. That’s what I did with (cinematographer) Philippe Rousselot and with (production designer) Dante Ferritti, yeah. And ultimately, that’s what we did.
Interview with the Vampire arrives on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on September 22.