Hey, do you remember interview with the vampire?

Hello and welcome to Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up.

I'm Chris.

I'm Donna.

And I'm Carlos.

And today we're revisiting Interview with the Vampire.

Thank you. And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting interview with the vampire. A lot of authors are understandably critical when their work is adapted for other mediums.

Stephen King famously hated Kubrick's version of The Shining.

P.L. Travers thought Disney's take on Mary Poppins was such a travesty that she refused to sign over the rights to the rest of the series.

And in our Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory episode, we documented Raldahl's

numerous frustrations with that film. But all of these examples pale in comparison to the

fervor Anne Rice exploded with when she learned that Tom Cruise had been cast as Lestat,

an interview with the vampire. She had written the novel of the same name back in 1976,

and the manuscript had become a hot commodity in Hollywood long before it hit stands.

Paramount was the first studio to snatch up the rights. They planned to make the film with John Travolta in the lead role,

before a glut of other vampire movies in the late 70s and early 80s tempered their enthusiasm for the project.

After that, it would languish in development hell

for another 15 years, and that left a lot of time to explore some rather unusual concepts,

such as approaching Cher to play a gender-swapped version of Louis, a decision Rice made because

of her concerns that Hollywood's homophobia was one of the big obstacles in getting this movie made.

She thought having a heterosexual relationship at the center of this would attract more interest.

This notion actually gained enough traction that Cher was inspired to write a tie-in pop song for the film called Lovers Forever.

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