wicked-felina:

i-want-my-iwtv:

I don’t know the real reason, I don’t know anyone who does. I don’t know if it was Anne Rice’s choice, or Neil Jordan’s. 

I think there were a lot of factors that went into that decision, and it stirs up alot of issues and questions, alot has been written about it and alot more can be written about it!

TL;DR: 1) I think it was done to cut time, Louis being distraught about losing a wife and child is immediately understandable to anyone who hasn’t read the books. It starts off the film with Louis questioning the reasons of a God that could punish him for seemingly no reason at all.* 

2) The other main issue is whether Louis is/was straight or if he actually was bisexual/homosexual/etc. as a mortal and Lestat entering the picture and pulling Louis into vampiring made it possible for Louis to let go of his preconceived ideas and social/religious/etc. repression and accept himself for what he really was. Neil Jordan probably wanted that left open-ended and unanswered. 

(*It could have set up the whole Louis-frustrated-about-how-religion-plays-into-vampiring, but that was cut from the film, too.)

1) One of the audiobook recordings for IWTV has a runtime of 14 hours and 28 minutes [X] and that’s ALOT OF STORY to condense down into a movie that can’t be that long. Scenes have to be cut. 

• The movie we got is 2 hours long, and in 1994, I seem to remember movies being more in the 1.5 hour range. Titanic, clocking in at a little over 3 hours long, was kind of ridiculed by the critics for that lengthy runtime. These days, a 2-3 hour movie is not really as big a deal.
• Building in the right amount of time/scenes to show the circumstances of Paul’s death and why Louis felt so responsible for it, that would have increased the runtime and delayed the amount of time we get to the actual vampiring. I can’t check the film right now but I think Lestat appears within the first 15 minutes of the movie, for good reason. To get the vampiring STARTED.

2)

In 1994, same-sex marriage was legal in zero states. Now it is the law of the land. Movie!IWTV was already pushing the envelope to suggest that Louis/Lestat were in a romantic relationship together. So, if Louis starts his story as having been married to a woman, it would appear that he’s established as being straight. On the surface. 

• HOWEVER! this is a Neil Jordan movie, and one of his previous movies, the Crying Game, Jordan had gender issues and sexual orientations as main concerns, so perhaps starting Louis off as SEEMING TO BE STRAIGHT and then having Lestat swoop in and now Louis is “with” Lestat somehow, experiences that moment of intense intimacy when he is given the Dark Gift… so Jordan seems to be asking the audience if Louis was actually bisexual or homosexual as a mortal and suppressed it? Since we never see Louis and Lestat actually make love on screen (aside from the Dark Gift happening), does it still count as a homosexual relationship?
• ^I think Neil Jordan wanted these questions left open-ended, and for that to be part of the exquisite torture that is the Louis/Lestat ship. Is it platonic or romantic? Jordan isn’t telling, and neither is Louis. 

There is, as I said, a lot more to it than that, but these are the main issues that come to mind for me, and I’m also trying to be concise. Anyone can reblog/comment with more ideas.

Anne Rice herself changed it because she claims she wanted people to see Louis could be bisexual, but also because she doesn’t understand her own goddamn character and the importance of his motivation and what Paul’s faith and loss represented anymore.

She has expressed surprise before that people called it out and weren’t happy with it, which really says more about her and the lack of thought that went into this change than anything else.

Neil Jordan didn’t change it, and would have handled it well, I’m certain.

Oh Anne.