[X] Interview with the Vampire concept art by Mark “Crash” McCreery
(Warner Bros., 1994) Haunting head & shoulders portrait of Tom Cruise as the vampire “Lestat” struggling on the ground while blood is gushing from his slit throat. Accomplished in pencil on a leaf of 14 ¾ in. x 8 in. artist’s illustration paper. Fine.
In movie!IWTV, Armand’s origins aren’t explicitly stated, just that he’s an Old World vampire. He could very well be Spanish, that’s Banderas’ actual ethnicity. So we don’t know. Just bc Louis and Claudia meet him in Paris doesn’t mean he’s French; he tells them he’s 400 yrs old, he’s probably lived elsewhere.
On my recent post about Antonio!Armand, @slow-read shared this opinion: “I would like to add that Antonio’s accent also gives one a sense of age, otherness and it sounds (or sounded) exotic to the audience? It was perfect for Armand-the-oldest-living-vampire-in-the-world. *-*” The
ppl behind movie!IWTV might have chosen Banderas and made the character this way rather than a more canon-compliant actor bc they wanted him to be more convincing as
Armand-the-oldest-living-vampire-in-the-world to audiences who had not read the books. Filmmakers then (and now) want a movie to appeal to wide audiences. I was a kid then, but it seems to me that fandom (and specifically, trying to please the fanbase as a primary objective) wasn’t as much of a consideration at that time.
In the books, Armand comes from a place called Kiev, which according to AR is in Russia and according to the google is in the Ukraine, but idk. Then he spent years in Italy which is where he got most of his mortal education, so he may have picked up some of that accent from his teachers and friends… and then he lived in Paris for many years so he might have consciously tried to pick up some of that accent in order to blend in.
Anyone is welcome to answer this with what you think Armand’s accent is like!
Well, anon, lemme just take a look in my coat here…
- The museum
podLestat pissily refers to Armand building for Louis in PL (while OBVIOUSLY not getting him, unlike Podstat, who bought Louis what he definitely loves: clothes) was a really last ditch effort, maybe just before going to America. It contains every piece of art Louis expressed even the vaguest interest in during their decades together, whether bought, bargained, or stolen (there are some very convincing fakes out there now)- Louis’ initial feelings for Armand were entirely real – Armand only mentally interfered when trying to keep Louis from doing something that could then be rationalized as “for his own good.” Even still, Louis has kept Armand locked out of his head since the day he learned how
- When Armand realized he couldn’t rouse joy in Louis, he settled for pain, emotional and physical. The physical was technically consented to but Louis was so nigh-catatonic it didn’t count for much. Playing the Lestat card was partly because they came to a line even Armand didn’t consider himself monstrous enough to cross
- They’ve never talked about Armand’s feelings for Lestat, nor Daniel’s feelings for Louis. They really, really should
- Benji was the only reason Louis initially agreed to stay at Trinity Gate, seeing him as an opportunity to atone for his treatment of Claudia
- Armand sees himself in Sybelle’s “madness” (read: she seems to be autistic and predominantly nonverbal, ANNE YOU’RE WRITING IN A WORLD THAT IN-UNIVERSE NOW HAS A MORE NUANCED UNDERSTANDING OF MENTAL ILLNESS NOW, COME ON) He’s never actually sought modern diagnoses for himself, and fuck knows her parents never did that for her, but like recognizes like
- Louis’ never really forgiven Armand for what he did, and Armand doesn’t expect him to. Rather, the fondness just trumps the resentment after a full century
- They fell into “parenting” very easily, and didn’t think about their feelings beyond their roles for the first few years
- Louis actually made the first move. Armand was doing his best to give Louis space after all those years of doing the opposite. The French Library was Armand’s gift, so Louis would have a place to be alone, and he never goes there
- Armand still feels very lost in the wake of everything (his attempted suicide and the revelation that the being who drove him to it was just an elaborate con), but buckles down talking about it because ROLES. ROLES ARE HOW YOU SURVIVE AND KEEP GOING. But…Louis actually asked about it
- They repaint the ceilings in the mansion together every few months based on skies around the world
♛Not that I need the money, mon cher... but yes, I’m sure I could earn plenty, and I wouldn’t limit myself to just girls, you know. Louis should take me out on a date that night, why do I always have to be the chivalrous one? It’s his turn.
“Petit Lion”? I’m a big one, darling *fangy grin* Happy Valentine’s day to you.
(@luthi69 beat me to the punch on that one!)
[WWDITS/IWTV mashup by @luthi69 please reblog from the link or the source]
I admit that I have a lot of nostalgia for Antonio!Armand, so it doesn’t seem as weird to me… I hope the new adaptation(s) have a more canon-compliant Armand bc I think it can be handled in a way that wasn’t possible in the early 90′s, the pedophilia inherent in an adult-looking vampire being in a relationship (of some kind) with a teenage-looking vampire, even though they are ~90 and ~400 years old, respectively.
There were a lot of good reasons for casting a non-compliant Armand, and I talk about it in my #Defending Antonio tag, @vraik captured the taboo aspect of it very well [X]:
HEY. HEY. YOU KNOW WHO I LOVE?
Antonio Banderas Armand.
I ranted about this at length once, and realized it might be worth excising that particular section from my recaps and letting it stand on its own. SO LET ME TELL YOU A THING.
“Not only does Banderas give one hell of a performance, clearly entranced by Louis and convinced his ruthlessness is an acceptable means to an end (and then Louis dumps him immediately and Banderas’ crushed look that WHOOPS OVERESTIMATED just destroyed me). It’s really genuine, maybe the movie’s best after Cruise and Dunst, and at least half his dialogue is lifted without change from the books. But all that gets overlooked, because he doesn’t look like a teenager. And there’s a certain fairness to that – Armand’s body adds a dimension to his interactions with others as much as Claudia’s does. But now let me give you a hot dose of context.
In 1994, it was still a pretty common argument to conflate homosexuality with pedophilia, particularly with gay men. THINK OF THE CHILDREN, Y’ALL. The movie already had to deal with the Claudia/Louis relationship, which only tenuously steps the worst landmines of creepiness, as we discussed, by avoiding physicality and giving mentally grown Claudia all the power. So, the filmmakers maybe didn’t want to stack, on top of that stack of gunpowder, a relationship with yet another underage character, particularly one that so played into existing stereotypes.
Then there’s the fact that, by virtue of the script, Louis’ feelings for Armand are a lot more explicitly tender and obvious than his relationship with Lestat. Back then, it was a big deal if you asked an actor to, gasp, play gay. Heavens forfend. But Banderas, in addition to being a handsome fellow and a marketable star, had also appeared in Philadelphia in 1993 (aka the movie where the Noble Gay dying nobly from AIDS is nice enough to teach A Straight to be a better person before he croaks). While their scenes were scrubbed of basically any intimacy, he was playing Tom Hanks’ lover, and apparently that was proximal enough to The Gay that he was an okay dude to ask. And then he fucking killed it with the material he was given it, in spite of the fact that the majority of his scenes were opposite the totally catatonic Pitt (who has made no bones about how much he haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated being in this movie). He’s a champ, and a treasure, come at me.”
Please help me find this its for science
SIGNAL BOOST? I’ve never seen Shrek but I want to help you.
@vampiricmusicaltheatre I’m not seeing this in the Shrek imdb page–could you screenshot what you found so we have a better idea of what to look for? (I know if it’s true, I’d like to find it!)
(Idk about the Shrek reference, either, has anyone out there heard of it?)
I HAD NOT SEEN IT THANK U!
It’s so fun to see at least this shot from the other side of the door, lol…
I’ll transcribe it somewhat for y’all:
The narrator is all about the *~secrecy~* like of course Tom Cruise wanted to keep the secrecy of his costumes and makeup and whatever, so as not to spoil the surprise! We have closed sets all the time these days and back then. I don’t think that was just Tom, I think everyone involved in making the movie wanted that secrecy.
^X Bruh.
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
Narrator:
“But some insiders say this behavior is just another example of Tom Cruise’s well-known perfectionism, a perfectionism that proved wrong those critics who thought he was too light-weight to star in Born on the Fourth of July. He ended up getting an Oscar nomination for it.”
Well, not “sex” in the way we usually think of it. Armand did bite Lestat and drink from him in The Vampire Armand, when Lestat was in a coma in the chapel of a former convent (St. Elizabeth’s) in NOLA (even in that unconscious state, he had been defending himself, but allowed Armand that brief intimacy).
According to AR, blood sharing is the Ricean vampiry equivalent of sex:
It’s described as being more intimate than human sex, feeding and being fed from is not just about the physical liquid, it’s an all-consuming experience.
When things seem to be accepted as canon/fanon, we get a little playful with word usage… if blood sharing = sex, then we sometimes just use the word “sex” when it doesn’t mean the penetrative sex we usually associate with the word for humans. Keep in mind that there are humans in relationships who are unable (or do not want) to experience genitally-penetrative sex, and they can still be sexually intimate with each other in other ways. So it’s partly in how you define sex and intimacy.
For more on Ricean vampire sex talk, I have these tags: #asexuality, #asexual, #sex, #sexuality, #lets talk about sex.
I-want-my-IWTV 