Anne Rice & Queen of the Damned Rant
I was watching the extras and deleted scenes from "Queen of the Damned" yesterday and it left me with this lingering question: why the hell does Anne Rice get so bent out of shape over fanfiction when she let filmmakers butcher the living crap out of her characters and storyline?
Seriously.
There was this one deleted scene where Marius calls out Armand and the guy who jumps out looks a transvestite gay he/she in the middle of a sex-change; in other words, he looks NOTHING like Armand. Needless to say, my mother, sister, and I, who've actually read Anne Rice, laughed so hard we nearly wet ourselves at this. Then, to make things even better, just before we'd recovered from just how ridiculous that lame-ass excuse for Armand was, Marius calls out the other "Children of the Millennia".
At first, it was shock. Like a trainwreck. Alicia was like, "Who are all the ugly people? Eou, who's Grandpa?" Then it finally set in, and she and Mom laughed almost to the point of tears.
Now, to be fair, I've never actually read "Queen of the Damned". I read "Interview With the Vampire", "The Vampire Lestat", and "The Vampire Armand" before deciding that Anne Rice was too long-winded for my tastes and did too many annoying things with her storylines and characters.
My mother and sister, however, have read the book, and they say it bears little resemblance to film with the same name in terms of both story and characters. And after hearing my sister describe the four ancient vampires I never read about in the other books - the twins, Pandora, and Khymen ( sp? ) - I have to agree full-heartedly.
In the books, Marius is a middle-aged but beautified man with long hair that is so light blonde as to appear almost white who loves to wear cultured, Victorian-style red robes/clothes. In other words, he looks a hell of a lot like Lucius Malfoy of Harry Potter fame.
Armand has the appearance of a youth of barely 17 with ringlets of somewhat curly, auburn hair and a slightly feminized boyish face. He is described as being irresistibly beautiful, and since practically every character in the whole damned book series either has jumped or wants to jump him at some point, I can only conclude that he must be drop-dead-Gary-Stu gorgeous. Or else the characters all just have exactly the same tastes in men.
Louis is more masculine in build with soulful green eyes and sort of longish, black hair.
Khymen was of Egyptian lineage and had long, black hair. From the way Alicia describes him I always pictured him as sort of resembling the vampire Yaksha from Christopher Pike's book series.
The twins and Pandora I know less about, except that they were all young and pretty looking, and the twins had red hair.
In the movie "Queen of the Damned" Marius looks like Grandpa Munster, Armand like a rather unattractive he/she transvestite who hasn't been taking the hormone pills, Khymen like an older Arab man you'd more expect to see in a live-action "Aladdin", and the twins and Pandora all as ancient as if being made into vampires didn't save their beauty and youth. And Louis...don't even go there. As I type, I can't remember exactly what that guy looked like, except that he didn't look like Louis at all.
Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against the actors personally and don't doubt that they are very talented, nice people. But they should never have been cast into those roles. No effort was made to make them even the least bit convincing as these characters, and had they not been addressed by name I would have never guessed in a million years who they were supposed to be.
To the casting crew's credit, Akasha looked pretty much how I pictured her ( albeit darker-skinned, as in the Anne Rice mythos vampires turn ivory-white with age ), and the guy they got to play Lestat was nearly perfect in every way save his lack of blonde hair and a convincing French accent.
The movie "Interview With the Vampire" was much, much better and more closely stuck to the book. Tom Cruise is, in my opinion, the absolute perfect Lestat. He had it all: looks, charisma, personality, and a convincing enough ( to me anyway ) French accent. Their Louis was better too. Aside from having dark brown hair instead of black, he looked just as the books depicted him, and I didn't mind that slight discrepancy. And even though he didn't look a thing like he did in the books, I could live with this film's interpretation of Armand. At least he didn't look like the side-act of a freakshow.
Anyway, getting back to my big question, why does Anne Rice dislike fanfiction of her works, considering what she has already allowed filmmakers to do? Is she just weird? Illogical? Or afraid that perhaps some of her fans could write something better than her? I've noticed that her disapproval hasn't stopped some die-hards from writing whatever they want using her characters anyway. I know that I'd be flattered if someone ever wanted to write fanfiction based on my stories. Especially if I were that famous. It's not like anyone would ever doubt the source.
On a completely unrelated note, I would be happy with either democratic choice for president. As long as whoever gets in office gets off his or her ass and does something about ridiculous prices and this screwed-up-as-all-hell health-care system.
~Shady
Seriously.
There was this one deleted scene where Marius calls out Armand and the guy who jumps out looks a transvestite gay he/she in the middle of a sex-change; in other words, he looks NOTHING like Armand. Needless to say, my mother, sister, and I, who've actually read Anne Rice, laughed so hard we nearly wet ourselves at this. Then, to make things even better, just before we'd recovered from just how ridiculous that lame-ass excuse for Armand was, Marius calls out the other "Children of the Millennia".
At first, it was shock. Like a trainwreck. Alicia was like, "Who are all the ugly people? Eou, who's Grandpa?" Then it finally set in, and she and Mom laughed almost to the point of tears.
Now, to be fair, I've never actually read "Queen of the Damned". I read "Interview With the Vampire", "The Vampire Lestat", and "The Vampire Armand" before deciding that Anne Rice was too long-winded for my tastes and did too many annoying things with her storylines and characters.
My mother and sister, however, have read the book, and they say it bears little resemblance to film with the same name in terms of both story and characters. And after hearing my sister describe the four ancient vampires I never read about in the other books - the twins, Pandora, and Khymen ( sp? ) - I have to agree full-heartedly.
In the books, Marius is a middle-aged but beautified man with long hair that is so light blonde as to appear almost white who loves to wear cultured, Victorian-style red robes/clothes. In other words, he looks a hell of a lot like Lucius Malfoy of Harry Potter fame.
Armand has the appearance of a youth of barely 17 with ringlets of somewhat curly, auburn hair and a slightly feminized boyish face. He is described as being irresistibly beautiful, and since practically every character in the whole damned book series either has jumped or wants to jump him at some point, I can only conclude that he must be drop-dead-Gary-Stu gorgeous. Or else the characters all just have exactly the same tastes in men.
Louis is more masculine in build with soulful green eyes and sort of longish, black hair.
Khymen was of Egyptian lineage and had long, black hair. From the way Alicia describes him I always pictured him as sort of resembling the vampire Yaksha from Christopher Pike's book series.
The twins and Pandora I know less about, except that they were all young and pretty looking, and the twins had red hair.
In the movie "Queen of the Damned" Marius looks like Grandpa Munster, Armand like a rather unattractive he/she transvestite who hasn't been taking the hormone pills, Khymen like an older Arab man you'd more expect to see in a live-action "Aladdin", and the twins and Pandora all as ancient as if being made into vampires didn't save their beauty and youth. And Louis...don't even go there. As I type, I can't remember exactly what that guy looked like, except that he didn't look like Louis at all.
Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against the actors personally and don't doubt that they are very talented, nice people. But they should never have been cast into those roles. No effort was made to make them even the least bit convincing as these characters, and had they not been addressed by name I would have never guessed in a million years who they were supposed to be.
To the casting crew's credit, Akasha looked pretty much how I pictured her ( albeit darker-skinned, as in the Anne Rice mythos vampires turn ivory-white with age ), and the guy they got to play Lestat was nearly perfect in every way save his lack of blonde hair and a convincing French accent.
The movie "Interview With the Vampire" was much, much better and more closely stuck to the book. Tom Cruise is, in my opinion, the absolute perfect Lestat. He had it all: looks, charisma, personality, and a convincing enough ( to me anyway ) French accent. Their Louis was better too. Aside from having dark brown hair instead of black, he looked just as the books depicted him, and I didn't mind that slight discrepancy. And even though he didn't look a thing like he did in the books, I could live with this film's interpretation of Armand. At least he didn't look like the side-act of a freakshow.
Anyway, getting back to my big question, why does Anne Rice dislike fanfiction of her works, considering what she has already allowed filmmakers to do? Is she just weird? Illogical? Or afraid that perhaps some of her fans could write something better than her? I've noticed that her disapproval hasn't stopped some die-hards from writing whatever they want using her characters anyway. I know that I'd be flattered if someone ever wanted to write fanfiction based on my stories. Especially if I were that famous. It's not like anyone would ever doubt the source.
On a completely unrelated note, I would be happy with either democratic choice for president. As long as whoever gets in office gets off his or her ass and does something about ridiculous prices and this screwed-up-as-all-hell health-care system.
~Shady