Pop Culture

Angels and Vampires

The Australian 15 March 2002

A common grievance among film directors is that, after making one Australian feature, it is difficult to get support for a second one. Take the past 10 years: of the directors who won Australian Film Institute Awards, half of them were first-timers. Of these, Baz Luhrmann ("Strictly Ballroom") and Gregor Jordan ("Two Hands") went straight to Hollywood, while Andrew Dominik ("Chopper") is poised to follow them. Rowan Woods ("The Boys") remains in Sydney, directing episodes of the popular television series "Farscape".
What of Michael Rymer? In his own country at least, he is one of the most obscure directors ever to win an AFI Award. Yet six years ago, in an otherwise quiet year for Australian film, his unusual debut film "Angel Baby" scooped the pool, winning seven awards including best film, director, original screenplay (also Rymer), actor and actress. The media even crowned its leading lady, Jacqueline McKenzie, "the new queen of Australian cinema" (an honour that she held, like anyone else, for about five months). Rymer was also announced as a talent to watch.

So what happened? For all the excitement, nobody saw it. The storyline - two schizophrenics meet and fall in love, until one of them dies - wasn't exactly box-office gold. Though it was sexy and funny as well as poignant, it vanished after a few weeks - and so, it seemed, did Rymer.

In truth, the film was noticed by some powerful figures. Rymer was even named best director at the Gijon International Film Festival in Spain. Like Luhrmann or Jordan, he was called to Hollywood, where he has since directed unexceptional films like "In Too Deep" (1999) and "Perfume" (2001).

Just over a year ago, he returned to his home town of Melbourne, to film his first feature in Australia since "Angel Baby". This was Warner Bros' "Queen of the Damned", based (like the 1994 hit "Interview with a Vampire") on Anne Rice's vampire novels. Originally scheduled for release last year, it has been delayed until February 22 (March 21 in Australia) - sparking rumours that Warners, after creative differences with Rice, was planning for a tax write-off. It finally opened in the US last moneth and, although critically panned, went straight to No 1 at the box office (although it stayed there for only a week).

In many respects, it sounds like a poor man's "Interview". Rymer hasn't yet directed a major hit, and Warners asked him to keep the budget down. The original had Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. "Queen" has Irish actor Stuart Townshend (most recently seen in "About Adam") replacing Cruise as the charismatic vampire Lestat.

That suits Rymer just fine. "The fact that they were gutsy enough to cast relatively unknown leads took pressure off on a lot of levels," he says. "I'm a big Tom Cruise fan, but I think that Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt were not very comfortable in the roles, and that discomfort was very evident in the result. Whereas you take Stuart and Vincent Perez [who plays Lestat's mentor, Marius]. Because they're both European, they're much less the all-American boys, so it's not hard for them to deal with the flowery dialogue or the complex sexuality. It's not even an issue."

Perhaps the most famous actor in this movie was 22-year-old pop singer Aaliyah, who played the title role of an evil vampire queen. Aaliyah was scheduled to dub her final vocals last year when she died in a light air crash, aged 22. (Her brother, Rashad Houghton, has since stepped in to re-record some of her dialogue.)

Though Aaliyah was not widely known as an actor, Rymer felt that she made a perfect vampire. "There's a general principle in this movie that vampires are not so much frightening as fabulous-looking," he said during a break in filming. "They are the beautiful immortals, who have given up their souls to live forever. If you're going to live forever, you want to look good. On those stakes, Aaliyah is just so sensual and sexy and beautiful.

"It's really her actions that tell you how frightening she is. Let the make-up and the teeth and the costumes take care of the vampire bit. You play a character. That's worked pretty well, particularly for her. But even when she's not being evil, she's got this menace about her. It's come together as this wonderful villain that's fascinating, compelling and you're drawn towards her, but at the same time it's just frightening."

Filming in Melbourne was also a budgetary move, allowing the crew to build "enormous, elaborate sets that you can't build in the States." It is also, as Rymer notes, a Mecca for Goth culture. He recalls immersing himself in this culture during the eighties, watching Gothic icon Nick Cave performing with his band, The Birthday Party. This time around, he advertised in newspapers for hundreds of extras in the Goth community, saving the costume and make-up budget with their ghostly complexions and their vampiric dress sense.

Rymer is a "huge horror nut". Perhaps this would come as no surprise to those who recall "Angel Baby", but despite the more horrific scenes in that film (such as McKenzie sitting in a pool of her own blood), he is more interested in old-style horror classics ("Freaks", "The Bride of Frankenstein", "King Kong", "Rosemary's Baby") than in splatter movies. "When it got into the teen slasher movies like 'Halloween', I lost interest," he recalls. "I was more interested in the fantasy, the otherworldly qualities."

So "Queen of the Damned" was a dream project. "People would say, 'If you could do anything in the world, what would you do?' I'd say, 'I'd do the next book in the Anne Rice vampire chronicles.' I finally said it in the right meeting, and the creative exec at Warner Bros said, 'No one's doing it. If you want it...' That was it. It was that weird."

At the same time, he had no intention of copying "Interview with a Vampire". "The first movie was very much a 'classic'," he explains. "It looked at vampires as Merchant-Ivory, whereas 'Queen of the Damned' is vampires as 'Trainspotting'. Much more irreverent and energetic."