Well, my main thought is that Matt Baume has sold out. The call out to the extra content in his Patreon, the gratuitous plug for his book... and this video itself? I wonder how much he was paid to...
Well, my main thought is that Matt Baume has sold out. The call out to the extra content in his Patreon, the gratuitous plug for his book... and this video itself? I wonder how much he was paid to make a video which just happens to promote a brand-new streaming show. Normally, Baume talks about shows that went off the air decades ago. But now he's promoting a brand-new show just as it's being released, and he even had access to scenes from this brand-new unseen show. hmm...
That said, it was an interesting video. I thought I knew all the background of 'Interview with the Vampire', but Baume found stuff I'd never heard of, like how Rice couldn't find a publisher for her book, how she was going to adapt the movie to replace Louis with a woman to get it made, and how Oprah hated the movie.
It was interesting to see that I'm not the only person who thinks Rice's books get worse over time. I agree with the reviewer that Baume quoted, who said that 'Tale of the Body Thief' indicated the Vampire Chronicles were "careening down a steep, sad slope". I've read that everyone has one great story in them to tell. Maybe 'Interview' was Rice's one great story, and everything after that was just cashing in on its success.
* I just checked dates, and that was exactly 20 years ago this month! This also inspired me to write my own play, which I produced and co-directed about 6 months later.
Cynical much? I don't consider including a bit of self promotion about his book as selling out, nor is releasing related Patreon exclusive content, which is something he has done for ages and...
Cynical much? I don't consider including a bit of self promotion about his book as selling out, nor is releasing related Patreon exclusive content, which is something he has done for ages and mentions in almost every video. And I highly doubt he is secretly receiving money for this video from the show producers either... he's just friends with Christopher Rice (Anne's son), and has even had him on his podcast a few times. Which is very likely who he got the exclusive footage of the show from, and also how he got the inside scoop on Anne's early career struggles as well.
Also worth noting is that it would have been Anne's 81st birthday on the 4th too, which Chris celebrated on his own podcast, and which likely explains the timing of this video too.
You know me so well! :) I don't follow Matt Baume. I just watch occasional videos of his as they pop up in my internet travels. So, I wouldn't notice trends in his videos, like adding Patreon as...
Cynical much?
You know me so well! :)
I don't follow Matt Baume. I just watch occasional videos of his as they pop up in my internet travels. So, I wouldn't notice trends in his videos, like adding Patreon as an ongoing feature. This is the first video of his I've seen which mentions his Patreon's exclusive content and his book... and it just seemed like a lot of self-promotion.
And, you're probably right about his inside connection with Christopher Rice.
cc: @Algernon_Asimov, since I suspect you will also find this interesting. BTW, I am still in the middle of Queen of the Damned. The reason it's taken me so long is due to the first half really...
cc: @Algernon_Asimov, since I suspect you will also find this interesting. BTW, I am still in the middle of Queen of the Damned. The reason it's taken me so long is due to the first half really dragging on by focusing so much on Jessica and Daniel, who I couldn't care less about. I struggled to keep reading, but really wanted to know how it ended so kept plodding away, albeit at a rather slow pace. However, now that all the characters have finally made it to Maharet's, and Akasha has finally revealed her plan to Lestat, things are finally getting interesting again so my pace will probably quicken quite a bit.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention! Yeah, the first half 'Queen' brings in a whole lot of new characters, one after another. It does get a bit tedious - especially because some of them...
Thanks for bringing this to my attention!
Yeah, the first half 'Queen' brings in a whole lot of new characters, one after another. It does get a bit tedious - especially because some of them aren't even necessary. The second half is better.
Just finished QotD... and boy, was that ever disappointing. Rice spending so much time introducing all these new characters who seem like they might be important, only for them to turn out to be...
Just finished QotD... and boy, was that ever disappointing. Rice spending so much time introducing all these new characters who seem like they might be important, only for them to turn out to be utterly irrelevant, was really annoying to discover at the very end. And all this buildup about the final confrontation, and then just having the conflict resolved immediately after the twin sister finally shows up and effortlessly beheads her... Talk about anticlimactic!
I have to say, other than Vampire Lestat, I can't really say I enjoyed the series all that much. I'm still glad I finally read it, but it wasn't what I was expecting, especially given all the praise it has received. I almost feel like I must have missed something important while reading the books, since I didn't seem to enjoy them as much as I thought I would, or others seem to have.
That's interesting. I agree about the surplus of irrelevant characters. However, I liked the build-up to the resolution, and I appreciated how the issue was resolved, with Akasha's powers being...
That's interesting.
I agree about the surplus of irrelevant characters. However, I liked the build-up to the resolution, and I appreciated how the issue was resolved, with Akasha's powers being subsumed by the Twins.
Oh well. Different strokes for different folks, as they say!
I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it. I feel bad, having been one of the people who recommended it to you. :(
I enjoyed the resolution after Akasha was beheaded too, as the twins consuming her organs and inheriting the spirit within her had a nice symmetry to it. But the confrontation itself (and the...
I enjoyed the resolution after Akasha was beheaded too, as the twins consuming her organs and inheriting the spirit within her had a nice symmetry to it. But the confrontation itself (and the conversations between them all right before that) was pretty underwhelming.
I also expected Jesse to play a much larger part at the end, since she seemed to be the fruition of Maharet's efforts monitoring and subtly manipulating her family for all those millennia. I had originally assumed that the goal of that was to finally create a vampire that could still speak to spirits, and that's how things would be resolved with Akasha and the spirit residing in her. But that turned out not to be the case, and Jesse unfortunately did nothing of note after finally being turned.
Which begs the question, why was she even introduced as a character in the first place? So many chapters were totally dedicated to her, and at the end she didn't actually do anything, and barely even spoke. I don't even think she was mentioned in the epilogue, that's how unimportant she turned out to be. So her character and all that time spent with her felt like a complete waste of time. And it also felt like a massive wasted opportunity not involving her and her considerable psychic powers at the end, which would have been way more interesting and compelling than a split second beheading.
But no worries, don't beat yourself up over recommending the series to me. As I said, I am still glad I finally read it, and I likely would have read it eventually even without your recommendation. And while Interview was a bit of a slog at various points, there were still plenty of enjoyable parts (and characters) in it too. And without reading it first, Lestat wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable, since the contrast between the two different perspectives was a highlight of it for me. And I don't think I could have resisted reading QotD afterwards in any case, since without a resolution (even a disappointing one) the series would have felt totally incomplete. Lestat was definitely my favorite of the bunch though, and probably the only one I would happily reread again in the future.
Well, my main thought is that Matt Baume has sold out. The call out to the extra content in his Patreon, the gratuitous plug for his book... and this video itself? I wonder how much he was paid to make a video which just happens to promote a brand-new streaming show. Normally, Baume talks about shows that went off the air decades ago. But now he's promoting a brand-new show just as it's being released, and he even had access to scenes from this brand-new unseen show. hmm...
That said, it was an interesting video. I thought I knew all the background of 'Interview with the Vampire', but Baume found stuff I'd never heard of, like how Rice couldn't find a publisher for her book, how she was going to adapt the movie to replace Louis with a woman to get it made, and how Oprah hated the movie.
I'm always pleased whenever 'Carmilla' gets a mention. A couple of decades ago*, a friend of mine (who I knew through theatre) wrote a stageplay based on the novella, her fiancé directed it, they self-produced it, and they asked me to play Laura's father on stage. It was a fun experience and holds a special place in my heart.
It was interesting to see that I'm not the only person who thinks Rice's books get worse over time. I agree with the reviewer that Baume quoted, who said that 'Tale of the Body Thief' indicated the Vampire Chronicles were "careening down a steep, sad slope". I've read that everyone has one great story in them to tell. Maybe 'Interview' was Rice's one great story, and everything after that was just cashing in on its success.
* I just checked dates, and that was exactly 20 years ago this month! This also inspired me to write my own play, which I produced and co-directed about 6 months later.
Cynical much? I don't consider including a bit of self promotion about his book as selling out, nor is releasing related Patreon exclusive content, which is something he has done for ages and mentions in almost every video. And I highly doubt he is secretly receiving money for this video from the show producers either... he's just friends with Christopher Rice (Anne's son), and has even had him on his podcast a few times. Which is very likely who he got the exclusive footage of the show from, and also how he got the inside scoop on Anne's early career struggles as well.
Also worth noting is that it would have been Anne's 81st birthday on the 4th too, which Chris celebrated on his own podcast, and which likely explains the timing of this video too.
You know me so well! :)
I don't follow Matt Baume. I just watch occasional videos of his as they pop up in my internet travels. So, I wouldn't notice trends in his videos, like adding Patreon as an ongoing feature. This is the first video of his I've seen which mentions his Patreon's exclusive content and his book... and it just seemed like a lot of self-promotion.
And, you're probably right about his inside connection with Christopher Rice.
;)
cc: @Algernon_Asimov, since I suspect you will also find this interesting. BTW, I am still in the middle of Queen of the Damned. The reason it's taken me so long is due to the first half really dragging on by focusing so much on Jessica and Daniel, who I couldn't care less about. I struggled to keep reading, but really wanted to know how it ended so kept plodding away, albeit at a rather slow pace. However, now that all the characters have finally made it to Maharet's, and Akasha has finally revealed her plan to Lestat, things are finally getting interesting again so my pace will probably quicken quite a bit.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention!
Yeah, the first half 'Queen' brings in a whole lot of new characters, one after another. It does get a bit tedious - especially because some of them aren't even necessary. The second half is better.
Just finished QotD... and boy, was that ever disappointing. Rice spending so much time introducing all these new characters who seem like they might be important, only for them to turn out to be utterly irrelevant, was really annoying to discover at the very end. And all this buildup about the final confrontation, and then just having the conflict resolved immediately after the twin sister finally shows up and effortlessly beheads her... Talk about anticlimactic!
I have to say, other than Vampire Lestat, I can't really say I enjoyed the series all that much. I'm still glad I finally read it, but it wasn't what I was expecting, especially given all the praise it has received. I almost feel like I must have missed something important while reading the books, since I didn't seem to enjoy them as much as I thought I would, or others seem to have.
That's interesting.
I agree about the surplus of irrelevant characters. However, I liked the build-up to the resolution, and I appreciated how the issue was resolved, with Akasha's powers being subsumed by the Twins.
Oh well. Different strokes for different folks, as they say!
I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it. I feel bad, having been one of the people who recommended it to you. :(
I enjoyed the resolution after Akasha was beheaded too, as the twins consuming her organs and inheriting the spirit within her had a nice symmetry to it. But the confrontation itself (and the conversations between them all right before that) was pretty underwhelming.
I also expected Jesse to play a much larger part at the end, since she seemed to be the fruition of Maharet's efforts monitoring and subtly manipulating her family for all those millennia. I had originally assumed that the goal of that was to finally create a vampire that could still speak to spirits, and that's how things would be resolved with Akasha and the spirit residing in her. But that turned out not to be the case, and Jesse unfortunately did nothing of note after finally being turned.
Which begs the question, why was she even introduced as a character in the first place? So many chapters were totally dedicated to her, and at the end she didn't actually do anything, and barely even spoke. I don't even think she was mentioned in the epilogue, that's how unimportant she turned out to be. So her character and all that time spent with her felt like a complete waste of time. And it also felt like a massive wasted opportunity not involving her and her considerable psychic powers at the end, which would have been way more interesting and compelling than a split second beheading.
But no worries, don't beat yourself up over recommending the series to me. As I said, I am still glad I finally read it, and I likely would have read it eventually even without your recommendation. And while Interview was a bit of a slog at various points, there were still plenty of enjoyable parts (and characters) in it too. And without reading it first, Lestat wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable, since the contrast between the two different perspectives was a highlight of it for me. And I don't think I could have resisted reading QotD afterwards in any case, since without a resolution (even a disappointing one) the series would have felt totally incomplete. Lestat was definitely my favorite of the bunch though, and probably the only one I would happily reread again in the future.