Primavera by Botticelli, painted ca. 1482, vs. the first US cover of The Vampire Armand, published 1998.
WHILE WE’RE ON THIS BOTTICELLI TOPIC. I was thinking about the cover for TVA, and a quick google turned out that was ALSO a Botticelli youth! I don’t know how much input, if any, AR had in this cover design. But it’s a Botticelli so we have to assume whoever pulled the trigger on it knew smtg about AR’s affection for Botticelli, especially as applied to describing Armand.
I tried to put it back into the painting, it had to be flipped twice and rotated a bit…
^IDK about the colors, it does look like the TVA cover made his skin a little rosier, but I’m not sure that Wiki had the right colors for their version. The Wiki article says this person is Mercury.
What does it mean that it was flipped upside down and backwards from its original context? What does the cropping off of the helmet mean? Any other thoughts?
Baristas Daniel and Louis w/ their picky customer Lestat from our coffee shop AU!<3 @wicked-felina commissioned @sheepskeleton to make this for me as an early birthday gift, so sweet! I love it *u*
Lestat making hearteyes at Louis,
…who is like, SUPER trying to ignore the hearteyes….
but he got the name right on the cup!
The little details!
Dan is actually making the cappuccino with the proper technique!
Dan is in on this, he definitely texted Lestat that Louis was back from his break so he couldn’t very well disappear
I am so touched. gawd, Lestat even has a teensy lil dimple!
Relatively quick piece of Lestat and Louis I did after learning that Anne Rice and her son are currently writing a screenplay for a miniseries adaptation of The Vampire Lestat. I remember when I first read Interview With A Vampire, Louis’ constant complaining drove me nuts.
And then I realized that Lestat just generally elicits complaints because he continually–inadvertently–ends up almost destroying Christendom. So really, I can’t blame Louis and his grandpa sweaters because he puts up with a lot.
I don’t think AR has said anything about casting Claudia specifically.* It’s another tough role to cast age-wise, bc she’s supposed to be just barely 5 years old, and 5 year olds definitely age.
^X@claudia-lilvampire found this pic of Christopher Mason and his daughter Basie (she looks closer to 4 here?), very Lestat and Claudia ❤
Casting Claudia will probably not be an issue if they start with TVL, bc Claudia’s only in IWTV, and just mentioned in later books. But… let’s cast an actress as Lestat’s little sister for TVL, the 8th de Lioncourt child, and then have her play Claudia, too! The resemblance would be so heartbreaking! ;A; Mireille de Lioncourt, so named by@viaticumforthemarquise.
For funsies tho, I must inform you… awhile back, @hyperbeeb suggested Mia Talerico [X], who just turned 9 on 9/17/16, and I have to agree!
Mia’s had a long career already (IMDB says she was eleven months old when she started filming Good Luck Charlie, so that’s 7 yrs of acting, being directed, being comfortable in front of the cameras, etc.). I did a whole post about her here. She’s pretty much my headcanon when I write Claudia.
Anne said age wouldn’t be as much as an issue for Claudia since they won’t be spending as much time with her as they are with Armand. She basically said any talented little girl will do.
But I want Miaaaaa.… *w*
Thanks @firelight-fading, I don’t follow AR’s FB or the OVCFB religously enough to have answered as definitively as you did, I’m glad that she is still planning on telling that story, as well.
That sounds like a great idea to me! I bet AR would be down, too, as much as she loves Shakespeare, the way his plays do that. As you say, it’s been done for a long time. Or a transman. I wouldn’t require the actor to be cismale.
^In Shakespeare in Love (1998), Gwyneth Paltrow played Viola De Lesseps, passing as male actor Thomas Kent. In this screencap, I think “Thomas” is about to kiss a male actor who is playing a female role, another thing Shakespeare would do.
^She still looked like a woman to me, but it didn’t matter, bc the other characters saw her as male, they believed it, so I could suspend disbelief. That was probably part of the cheeky quality of that film, that we as viewers still saw her as female, but everyone else seemed so easily fooled, like Clark Kent w/ glasses is so obviously NOT Superman! Pfffft.
But yeah, the idea of casting a woman or another gender to play a youthful male character like Armand? VERY COOL SIGN ME TF UP.*
*I mean, not suggesting casting me specifically bc I don’t think there’s enough movie magic to transform me into a male character, but conceptually, I support this 😉
Since the @vcsecretgifts Holiday ‘16 exchange was so fruitful, I thought I’d ask if there was any interest in a Spring ‘17 exchange… you want in?
We would likely have the due date be between late-April to mid-May, and the theme would be Spring or “Maker’s Day” (a sort of vampiry mother/father’s day, hmm?).
Times like these call for more fanworks ❤ I consider it a brief bit of relief for those who go out and fight the good fights, whether that’s in your own lives, or for society as a whole, and everything else!
(*There is only one Holiday ‘16 gift outstanding, substitute gift is in the works… but next time around we will allow more time to make the gifts and we will have substitute gifters lined up earlier, too.)
A little breakdown of this scene, re: why I loved Tom’s Lestat so much in this scene, since we’re talking about it.
^Claudia leads him in, and he’s so trusting. When he sees the boys there, he is not immediately very pleased. He actually looks a little disappointed. The house rule is not to bring victims into the house, and she brought them in, is he going to have to lay down the law again? Bad timing for it, since he’s trying to make peace with her.
She glances up at him to gauge his reaction but looks away before he can meet her gaze. She’s thrilled with what she’s about to do and doesn’t want him derailing her from her mission.
^I use this gif a lot for “such feels,” but there’s really more going on here, and not necessarily happiness. She’s told him that the boys are the gift to him. He starts w/ a facepalm, bc, hey, Lestat would actually rather not kill children.* He tries to go for adult evildoers. It’s clearer in TVL than in movie!IWTV, but he does tell Louis in an earlier scene, “Evildoers are easier, and they taste better.”**
Lestat is also very guarded in his body language here, all closed off w/ his arms across his chest (we don’t usually see him this closed off in the movie). When he shows his face, he’s not smiling at first, bc, this wasn’t really the kind of truce he would have wanted. But then he rallies, shakes his head a little bit, and tries to smile, probably tells himself inwardly, “She did this for me, she has good intentions…”
^”Well, you certainly have… outdone yourself,” he says. He’s struggling to compliment her, that hesitation could have led to a criticism. Trying to convince himself that this is a peace offering and to reign in his usual edgy sense of humor. The main rule in their home was always “Never [kill] in the house” and she wants him to share this kill. In. The. House. A rule she’s broken countless times. He’s still guarded, still has his arms up protectively.
The smile fails as he looks over the boys like he’s looking at something unappetizing at a buffet. For me, that would be the wilted salad area.
^There’s a full second pause as he looks at her bc he’s still struggling to believe it was all this easy. Then he asks: “We forgive each other, then?” This is Lestat without any of his bravado, no games, not asking as her maker, just as someone who loves her and wants her love, too. This is the Lestat who spent most of his childhood unloved or beaten down for trying to find a place where ppl would love him ;A;
^There’s almost a full second pause as she looks at him – bc she doesn’t really forgive him – and then says: “Yes” She’s lying right to his face, so evil! If you cover her mouth, her eyebrows don’t change at all with that smile. But there is still a chance to abandon her plan if she wants to.
^Having secured the peace, putting his trust in her about this gift being OK to consume, he has this little sigh of relief; his usual confidence comes back in, you can see a hint of a smile as he turns away.
(This victim is one of the moments in the film that really pushed the envelope for its time, when Lestat bites into the child. It’s actually a lot less homoerotic/pedophilic than in the book, where he gets his hands wrapped up in the kid’s shirt. Unlike when he bites adults and we see his face, here, we see him from behind. It makes it less sexual, he didn’t choose this victim, it’s seems like it’s more about the consumption.)
^Anyway… he thinks she spiked their blood with absinthe bc he immediately feels drugged/drunk from it.
She tells him it’s laudanum, and he repeats that word, has he heard of it before? Probably not, bc she tells him what it does.
So right up until the moment she explicitly lays it out for him, he still believes they’ve reconciled, and even that she flavored the blood for him as an extra consideration! It’s a very painful betrayal, specifically bc he wanted to believe her SO BADLY that he ignored all the red flags ;A;
You could say he deserved this betrayal, but I think this scene is part of what makes Tom’s Lestat so very good. Even as he’s led into getting his punishment, you still feel sorry for him, it’s hard to hate a monster when he’s being this trusting and gentle and really wanting to well… not be a monster.
I recognize that this is a social media site so you are welcome to reblog and comment and engage on this, but please do so respectfully, and keep in mind that #your headcanon may vary, and we are all entitled to our own interpretations/opinions about canon, and about movie!IWTV.
(Asterisked notes under the cut.)
* It’s implied that Lestat and Claudia finished off whole families together in an earlier scene in the film, including children, but we’ve only seen him kill adults on screen up to this point. In the book, it’s Claudia who insists on killing families (her own, IIRC), and she kills a mother and daughter who worked domestically in the flat for Louis and Lestat. Lestat rarely kills children in the books, typically it’s only in moments of extreme emotional weakness.Tom would have known this, bc he read books 1-4.
**
“Evildoers are easier, and they taste better.” – This is what Lestat tells Louis to try to get him to acclimate to the idea that killing is okay, and in fact, some ppl need to be killed anyway, to protect the general population (like Lestat killing the wolves to save the villagers back in the Auvergne). But in the books it’s implied that innocent blood tastes better, which makes it harder to resist. “…these victims had been taken in the perfect semblance of love. The very blood seemed warmer with their innocence, richer with their goodness.” (TVL)
I might do more of these if you’re interested, but they do take a long time to put together. We’ll see…
I-want-my-IWTV 