Spoilers Part 2 1995-2001

Part 2: 1995 - 2001

copyright 2012 Anne Billson

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Introduction

This is the second part of Spoilers, a selection of my film writing; most (but not all) of it was first published in the Sunday Telegraph, for which I was the film critic from 1992 to 2001.

Author's Note: I'm afraid I've had to remove all the accents from the following texts, as I'm told unusual key combinations can play havoc with e-publishing. So apologies to Gerard, Francoise and Andre, and apologies to readers befuddled by accent-free words such as passe, cliche and fiance.

Chapter 1: Interview with the Vampire

The film year has barely got into its stride, and yet there is already evidence of a recurring motif. In Shallow Grave, La Reine Margot and a host of other recent offerings, the predominant colour has been that of blood. And we're not talking tasteful crimson driblets here, but gore by the gallon, splurging all over the screen in ever-spreading pools. Blame it on these fang-de-siecle times, because there's plenty more blood on tap in Interview with the Vampire. I do not use the term 'on tap' lightly; more than once the stuff is decanted like alcohol. In one memorable instance, Tom Cruise rips a rat's throat out with his teeth and squeezes a glassful of what one might call Chateauneuf-du-Rat. This, I believe, is the point at which Oprah Winfrey walked out.

Anne Rice's screenplay adheres closely to her own novel, with its framing device set in present-day San Francisco. Two hundred-year-old Brad Pitt is telling reporter Christian Slater the story of his life, or - more accurately - death. He relates how he was initiated into vampirehood by an amoral hedonist called Lestat, how he embarked on a journey into everlasting night (sorry, but the film's cod romantic vocabulary is infectious) and meandered from New Orleans to Paris, where he encountered a troupe of Euro-vampires led by Spanish heart-throb Antonio Banderas.

The choice of squeaky-clean Cruise to play the wicked Lestat provoked an outcry from fans of the novel and from Rice herself, who said they might as well have cast Huckleberry Finn. After seeing the film, she recanted in spectacular fashion, praised Cruise's performance and took out a full-page ad in Variety urging her readers to 'see this film, guys'. I wondered for a long time about that 'guys'. Nowadays the word is sometimes used to address both sexes, but, for a screenplay penned by a woman, Interview with the Vampire is conspicuously lacking in strong female roles. The women are the sort of scantily clad, bosom-heaving victims one more readily associates with Hammer horror, and the only female vampire with more than just a walk-on role is trapped in the body of a pre-pubescent girl (a character reportedly inspired by the memory of Rice's own daughter, who died of leukaemia at the age of five). Eleven-year-old Kirsten Dunst does a suitably spooky turn as this Shirley Temple from Hell.

But it is for the 'guys' that Rice reserves all the glamour and romance. There is no overt sex, but the sight of Cruise hovering lasciviously over Pitt's neck is probably one of the more explicit images of homoeroticism ever served up by a major star. One wonders whether he would have dared had not fangs been involved.

Mainstream Hollywood this undoubtedly is - Interview has chalked up more than $100 million at the US box office - but it's a blockbuster with the sensibility of a European art movie. And like Wolf or Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it's more concerned with upmarket production values than with the nuts and bolts of being a horror story. There is far too much chit-chat and internecine bitching, and the pace is sometimes leisurely to the point of standstill. The bloodletting is langorous rather than violent, but the story is told from the point of view of the predators, and their victims are dispatched with a sadistic relish some viewers may find upsetting.

But the fear factor is missing. Before Rice's novel was published in 1976, vampires were straight-up bad guys. Now, all too often, they're romantic anti-heroes decked out in black velvet and turtle necks. Even worse, they've lost much of their bite; in Rice's Vampire Chronicles series (of which Interview is the first volume) they tend to sit around and witter endlessly, often sounding more like grannies in a knitting-circle than the evil dead.

But Cruise, camping it up like a psychopathic fop, is clearly having a whale of a time; here's a chance to witness megawatt star-power effortlessly wiping everyone else off the screen. Next to him, poor old Pitt looks like so much dead wood. It's not entirely Brad's fault - his character is such a whingeing bore who mopes round being sullen and self righteous that you wonder why Lestat bothered to bite him in the first place.

Only 24 hours after seeing this film, my lingering impression is of a vaguely remembered dream. The story may be short on narrative thrust, but it's dripping with dark and smoky atmosphere, and the attempt to create what is effecively a parallel universe populated by the walking undead is almost entirely successful, thanks to ultra-classy photography by Philippe Rousselot, costume and production design. One should also mention Stan Winston's unearthly but seductive vampire make-up: white skin shot through with a tracery of blue veins. Neil Jordan, faced with this embarrassment of visual riches, wisely opts to direct with minimal fuss, though he might have made more of an effort to reel his audience in.

You may be wondering how it has come to pass that the activities of such depraved creatures are being offered up as entertainment. But of course, the vampire is as much a symbol of our age as James Bond was an icon of the 1960s; a supernatural serial-killer is right at home in these decadent times. One suspects that many people, given the choice, would leap at the chance of becoming vampires, if only because it would save them a fortune in dental fees.

One of the most intriguing moments in Interview is when Pitt finds himself blending seamlessly into the 20th century, and discovers that the new-fangled invention of cinema has enabled that which he would never have thought possible - it allows him to watch the sun rise for the first time in 200 years. Cinema enables us to live, or die, vicariously; it also allows us to gawp at all that blood without getting our feet wet.

(First published in the Sunday Telegraph, 1995)

Chapter 2: Natural Born Killers + Quiz Show

Hollywood has spent the past few years recycling old TV shows as new movies, but how does it repay its debt to TV? It sinks its teeth into the hand that has been feeding it. For every jolly Flintstones or Maverick, there is a film-maker-cum-social-commentator who can't wait to remind us that television is the root of all evil. It's not films, you understand, that are turning society into mush. It's telly.

Both of this week's big releases are witnesses for the prosecution, but they couldn't be more different in approach and tone. First up on the stand, dragging the baggage of notoriety behind it, is Natural Born Killers, screened without fuss throughout the rest of the western world, but delayed in the UK for three months while our nannies confirmed that no, it hasn't inspired copycat killings after all.

Natural Born Killers - henceforth I shall be referring to it as NBK, not least because this sounds amusingly like an American TV network - was co-written and directed by Oliver 'Subtlety is my Middle Name' Stone from a story by Quentin Tarantino. Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis play white trash thrill-killers called Mickey and Mallory Knox. They're ruthless, amoral and not very bright, but Woody looks good in shades and Juliette looks even better in hotpants, and before you can say 'Charlie Manson', this latterday Bonnie and Clyde are being turned into pop icons by a barrage of media attention as they slice, dice and blast their way through America's redneck South.

Hot on their trail are Robert Downey Jr (with Rolf Harris accent) as the ruthless, amoral host of a tabloid TVshow called American Maniacs, and Tom Sizemore as a celebrity cop almost as ruthless and amoral as the killers themselves. Tommy Lee Jones delivers his most demented piece of overacting to date as the Flash Harry governor of the prison to which Mickey and Mallory are eventually consigned. And yes, he's ruthless and amoral too.

When I say Stone's middle name is 'Subtlety', I am, of course, trying to be ironic. His film-making has always been about as subtle as a Black & Decker to the brain, but with NBK it's as though he has launched everything in the toolshed at our heads. Kerrash! The picture flips from colour to black-and-white, video to Super-8, back projection to animation, wildlife footage, movie clips. It has more silly camera angles than Top of the Pops, looks as though it was edited with an Uzi, and leans heavily on what is undoubtedly one of the best rock 'n' roll soundtracks of all time. After five minutes of this, you're either slapping your thigh at the ludicrous overkill, or wishing someone would give the man a Valium. But it goes on and on. One hour later, when Mickey and Mallory are bitten by rattlesnakes and start to hallucinate, and then half an hour after that, when the prison erupts into a