I’m ignoring movie!QOTD bc of reasons We can’t have a real sequel bc movie!IWTV ended w/ Lestat *riding off into the sunrise* w/ Daniel and that’s very not canon. It would be hard to wrangle the story back to canon, or harder to alter canon to allow for that ship (Lestat says he’s gonna give Daniel the Choice, pretty obviously setting it up that Lestat will turn him, and then where would that leave Armand in QOTD? Fledglingless!).
Plus, all the original actors are too old for their original roles, sadly. At one time, Tom Cruise was trying to get the rights (or had them?) for TOBT which I assume he planned to star in. All the gay backlash at the time probably helped kill that project ;A;
((BTW I wouldn’t mind casting them in other roles if they wanted it… Tom could play the Marquis de Lioncourt now…))
It’s crazy but I would love an animated feature… and then we could have the original voices back…
We could restart in IWTV:
Or we could start it in TVL and go in chronological order:
^Both by @garama . (This scene with Lestat and Armand (or is that Nicki?) didn’t happen in canon but I feel like we could scoot some silliness in there) These looks like stills from an animated feature, don’t they??! As for the original voices: Tom definitely. In fact why hasn’t he done animated voicework? It’s a crime that he hasn’t. Brad, well, I didn’t love him in his animated features (Sinbad, Megamind), so I won’t argue recasting Louis.
Someone asked me for my ultimate casting choices for a live-action VC movie awhile back and I haven’t gotten a chance to answer properly. In the meantime, you might have fun browsing my #vc casting tag ;]
Tom’s hair was fabulous like c’mon. I mean, maybe not the EXACT “glorious mane of pampered yellow hair” as described in book!IWTV, but I think his performance really made up for any of his physical shortcomings (pun intended, lol), like not being blond enough.
So yeah it was indeed a wig, but you know, there are a lot of reasons that the costume ppl put a wig on someone instead of dyeing the actor’s hair, and it’s not just because the actor doesn’t want to dye it. I bet Tom would have been willing to dye it if they’d asked him. He’s grown it out pretty long (the Last Samurai) and shaved his head bald (Minority Report) for roles.
For one thing, Lestat’s hairstyle and color had to be very consistent. It took 2 weeks to shoot the scene where Lestat kills the 2 women in front of Louis. Having a pre-styled wig is much faster to get on the actor than having to style their hair freshly every single time. Where Brad’s hair only had to be long and silky, that’s just an easy blow-dry; Tom’s had to have a fairly consistent shape.
Christopher Reeve wore a wig as Superman for similar reasons.
… and in Lestat’s case, it would have been inefficient to have to repeatedly dye Tom’s roots for however long his time was during the shoot lasted (I think it was several months). The vampire makeup effects took hours to apply, tracing the veins alone took 30 min EVERY DAY NIGHT:
… so saving time on Lestat’s hair styling and coloring was probably a huge help!
All that said, yes, Brad Pitt had magnificent hair during that time in his life.
He did a number of movies around that time with his own hair worn long, to the point where men were making fun of him for basically being TOO feminine (pretty eyes + big pouty lips + long silky mane = girl).
You’re going to be disappointed in Lestat. He does some terrible, awful, things in TOBT. He’s done some terrible, awful things before it, and will do terrible, awful things after.
He’s not a #perfect cinnamon roll too good for this world. FAR FROM IT. He’s a little shit a lot of the time. There’s no way I can wave a magic wand and raise anyone’s opinion of him.
Pretty sure that ALL the VC characters are problematic in some regard. In fact, message me the characters with a list of their offensiveness. I would really like to compile a list.
What I CAN give you: If you’re disappointed in a character, does that mean it’s because you had a higher opinion of him before? Did you care about him before? Wanted to read his story? See more of him in canon?
Is it because you can see that he’s an evolving character, and though he has done bad things, he is capable of change? We don’t change overnight. People can continue to do bad things on their journey, failing bc of weakness or in an attempt to do the right thing.
With Lestat, you can rest assured that he wants to be good, but like an alcoholic, he falls off the “good” wagon. Repeatedly. It’s in his persistence in climbing back on again and again that should be considered when you’re formulating your opinion of him. If you can’t handle the failures, close the book. Unfollow his story. No one is forcing you to take the ride with him.
I think a crucial part of doing the right thing is having a better understanding of the wrong thing, a lot of Lestat’s failure comes from his inner turmoil. Even before he was turned into a monster, we can all agree that he had issues, to put it lightly.
“… Fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters. To lock violent fiction away, or to close our eyes to it, is to give our monsters and our fears undeserved power and richer hunting grounds.“
(a bit more under the cut)
“I don’t understand.” How many times have you read that in conjunction with a violent act?
“I don’tunderstand why he did it.” Or “I don’t understand why this happened.” Sammy Yatim, shot dead and then tasered by police on a Toronto streetcar, and even the chair of the Police Services Board asks, “How could this happen?”
….Here in Britain, our weakling government is attempting to launch a web filter that would somehow erase “violent material” from Internet provision — placing it, by association, in the same category as child pornography. Every week seems to bring a new attempt to ban something or other because it’s uncomfortably or scary or perhaps even indefensibly disgusting.
….we generally demonize violent acts and violent work. We make them Other, and we just distance ourselves. They are Other, and they didn’t come from us, and we’re just going to stand over there and shake our heads sadly. And, moreover, anyone who gets closer to it in order to experience or understand it must be a freak.
…The function of fiction is being lost in the conversation on violence. My book editor, Sean McDonald, thinks of it as “radical empathy.” Fiction, like any other form of art, is there to consider aspects of the real world in the ways that simple objective views can’t — from the inside. We cannot Other characters when we are seeing the world from the inside of their skulls. This is the great success of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter, both in print and as so richly embodied by Mads Mikkelsen in the Hannibal television series: For every three scary, strange things we discover about him, there is one thing that we can relate to. The Other is revealed as a damaged or alienated human, and we learn something about the roots of violence and the traps of horror.
… Fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters. To lock violent fiction away, or to close our eyes to it, is to give our monsters and our fears undeserved power and richer hunting grounds.”
They have a bizarre kind of chemistry, don’t they?! If they weren’t both so obsessed with being alpha, they could really enjoy each other.
This is one of the only fanarts I’ve seen of them in any kind of shippiness, and even then, I think it’s the scene in TVL where Lestat is succumbing to Armand’s illusions.
“You know it was the damnedest luck!” I whispered suddenly. “I am an unwilling devil. I cry like some vagrant child. I want to go home.”
[Source unknown, even reverse-image searched. Tell me the source if you know it!]
Anyhow they have referred to eachother in canon as being brothers of a sort, so I tag them #murder brothers, if you want more Lestat/Armand action.
Well, I have never come across an interview with AR or director Neil Jordan about why Antonio was cast for Armand. I should have an FAQ and when I do, this will be right up at the top of that list!
I should probably watch IWTV with the director commentary again; he might have mentioned smtg about it and I’ve just forgotten, so I will do that.
ANYWAY, there are a bunch of theories as to why Armand is portrayed the way he is in the movie and my fave explanation, currently, is that movie!Armand is actually a blend of Armand and Santino.
Why do that?:
If they had cast a cherubic teenage redhead (or older creepy cherub dude trying to look 17 *cough cough* movie!QotD *cough*) it might have made Louis look like a pedophile, dumping his 11 yr old “beloved” (as he calls her) for someone only 6 yrs older (in appearance, anyway).
For people who hadn’t read the book, someone cuter than Louis might have taken the sympathy away from him (who was supposed to remain the focus, it’s HIS story, after all). That would have been compromised by omg cute little redhead bby we want to snuggles you!
Armand was supposed to replace Lestat in the sense of being a better mentor/teacher/father figure to Louis, and so that someone had to be more paternal-looking. Someone who would look older.
The actor had to be a bigger star than Brad Pitt (or at least older than BP)
And he had to have some European or other ethnicity, because these Parisian vampires were supposed to be darker, scarier, more like Real Vampires of the Old Ways than the softer Americanized Vampires. Their vampire makeup (aside from their TdV costuming) shows them to almost be a different, more vicious species from Louis (who has to still maintain his “most human”-looking vampire status).
In all this, Santino really fits the bill better, and my guess is that AR suggested it, she was the screenwriter, after all.
I-want-my-IWTV 