What made Tom Cruise such a great Vampire.

The '90s as it pertains to film was a very interesting time for me. By this time a teenager, my taste in film overall was beginning to grow as I started to find the ocean wherein the small rivers and brooks of my taste flowed from. Independent cinema invited me to start listening to the sounds of a conversation that was much deeper, larger, and much more vast than the types of movies I talked with up and unto that point. My tastes for acting were developing as well and beginning to crystallize and harden. A lot of my admittedly bro heavy favorite films, actors, and performances were somewhat born in this era. Goodfellas, Heat, Pam Grier in Jackie Brown, Don Cheadle in Devil in a Blue Dress, Morgan Freeman in Seven, Tupac Shakur in Juice, Gary Oldman (and just about everyone else) in Bram Stoker's Dracula and Kristen Dunst and our man of the hour; Tom Cruise in Interview with a Vampire.

I'm old enough to not just know of, but remember exactly what it felt like when Tom Cruise was cast as Lestat, to remember that sort of silent but emotionally audible collective ”Huh?”. Not having read the book (at that point) I could not take the position from a knowledgeable place of text in the source material. Mines came from the level of emotional repellence I felt the moment I heard Tom Cruise was playing a vampire of any sort. At the time of the release of Interview with a vampire I hadn't yet truly made peace with just how much I enjoyed Tom Cruise and I damn sure didnt really regard him as any type of great actor. Having been raised on a pretty steady diet of performances from actors like Sidney Poitier, James Earl Jones, Lawrence Olivier, and Denzel Washington, (you know.. theater) Tom Cruise was more like his movies, an escape artist, a novelty act to me. Interview with a Vampire was the birthplace of my own conversion to Tom Cruise fandom as an actor. The movie was the first seed of what has become a fully grown philosophy about Cruise’s defining quality as…The Fanatic, as The Believer.

Tom Cruise is a fanatic, he is an obsessive believer. It's his defining trait. It fuels his willingness to put himself and his body on the line for the medium. It's why he aligns himself so purely with a religion so built on the fringe, and why he works in so many of his roles where he sits there wide eyed eating up every word, or preaching the gospel of can do with a frost like rigid insistence on the purity of righteousness in every vowel that emerges from his mouth. Its also why conversely hes so effective as a purveyor of utter nonsense (TJ Mackey in PTA’s Magnolia). His is a work so steely and surgical, so concise, so precise that it rarely truly feels as if it penetrates which makes him available enough to be received by so many, distant enough to project onto, and also leaves him open to the dubious belief that he's not giving the work. That he's actually not already in your head. He can be your best defendant (A Few Good Men) , your most loyal soldier (Minority Report) your most ardent disciple. and when he does it its always with that uncanny laser eyed- focus, or the unjaded innocence of the person who doesn't know enough yet not to know.

Look at Tom Cruise's eyes in that scene. They dote on Tom Berengers every word. They find him wherever he goes, and yet they barely go anywhere. They sit there underneath his arrow brows like hung men. The decision has been made and they are dead set. That intensity, that focus, that delicate balance of child like naivety and curiosity, these are the traits of the believer. Believable as the person looking to follow, or the person you want to follow, opposite sides of the same spectrum of faith- and that's what Cruise brings to just about each and every one of his roles. In “The Outsiders” he works as a believer in the cult of brotherhood. “Risky Business” and Born on the Fourth of July” as a believer in the cult of America via capitalism or the military industrial complex . “A Few Good Men” and “The Firm”- of the law. Search through his filmography you can find this almost throughout with very few detours. It’s what makes the detours (Eyes Wide Shut, The second half of Born on the Fourth of July, War of the Worlds) so interesting; that they explore what Tom Cruise is like when he isn't unflappable, when he doesn't know where he stands, when he is unsure of his belief system and his fleet footing. When it doesn't work or what level it works to - has to do with whether or not Cruise conquers the other aspects of the role, accent, (The Outsiders) physical attributes (Jack Reacher). What Cruise brings to the role of Lestat is something in between both and that's what makes the role far more effective and brilliant than detractors have ever been willing to give it credit. There's two ways to look at the character Lestat, two approaches to be reckoned with; one is the Lestat Louie sees, (Interview) the other is how Lestat sees himself ( The Vampire Lestat). Lestat through all the other books (and certain narrative tells in Interview) makes it clear Louie is not a completely reliable narrator himself . The recent AMC show starring Sam Reid is in my opinion is more like the latter, Neil Jordan’s 1994 film the former, but Cruise's performance is both. To be even more specific 1994s seems to honor most what would later become part of Lestat’s lore which is the idea that he is a bit of a rock star, a bit of a movie star, by honoring the quality, and the way most the way people saw Lestat including Anne Rice. The film loses a lot of the richness of the character Lestat. It loses some of those beautiful intricacies that the TV show so wonderfully picks up and adds to its text, which then adds to Sam Reid's wonderfully empathetic performance that is in turn more sympathetic to Lestat. The 94 film comes down firmly on Brad Pitt's “Louie’s” side, now whatever you may think of that decision that decision in and of itself is not Tom Cruise's . That was Neil Jordan's and it becomes Tom Cruise's job to act in the character of the person that Neil Jordan and the writers envision, and to whatever extent what he can grab from the source material. Our job begins then to ascertain how well Cruise brings this vision across and the answer is exceptionally. Lestat in Louie's eyes is superficial, vicious, certain, arrogant, and passionate and ultimately while he knows there's much more to him, Lestat in many ways is a disappointment to Louie. Tom Cruise plays the vision, his limits are the limits of Louie's insight and of his own inner turmoil as refracted through the lens of his own desire to pretend it doesn't exist. In a promo interview for the film Anne Rice states that she saw Lestat as a very “strident”character. The word stuck with me because it is so accurate and it's precisely what Crusie seems to have zeroed in on. Watching AMC's version; as complex and nuanced as the notes of Reid's performance is I really don't see much of that particular quality and what is is done again in a very nuanced way but there's nothing really nuanced or subtle about being strident. It is what it is, you steamroll, you bowl forward over people's feelings, it's very on the nose, very right there for anyone to see usually because you're so convinced of the nature of your own righteousness. This is where Tom Cruise lives. He's got that “It's true because I said so” thing down pat. Think about the way he delivers the line “Any attempt to prove otherwise is futile 'cause it just ain't true.” in A Few Good Men. He's also got that sense of faux everything, a faux existence. There's a feeling watching Cruise (especially off screen) of an alien figuring out the traits of humanity, an endless curiosity with everything around him, a search for experiences, and a clear objective that makes him seem android like. These traits breathe in service of this role to brilliant, fun, and flat out hilarious results. Wouldn’t an immortal seem alien and android like? What happens when you've tried everything, seen everything, or at least you feel like you have? What would a person originally in search of answers much like Louie look like when they discovered it's all a cruel cosmic joke and yet they live? When your desire to live, to survive, to exist surpasses your actual love for it? Unwilling to die, you might find yourself performing as if you're still alive when in reality and in the case of vampires , both in the physical and the metaphysical sense you are dead. Its a fascinating approach that Cruise conveys intelligently. There's no sense of that quality yet in the performance given by Sam Reid (and that is in no way to say that it is a lacking but to state the difference) whether the idea is that being young there was still a certain verve and a certain lust for life in him even as he struggles with some of his own philosophical questions, or just something entirely different- there's no deadness in him, he's too an emotive actor for that, so he plays something more suited to what he brings. When Reid utters the line “You are a killer Louie” it is a deeply impassioned plea to understand him from a teacher who wants his prized pupil to embrace themselves, when Cruise says “you are a killer Louie” it's a callous dead but forceful command half meant to convince himself and re-cert his own faith in his lack of religion as well as to convince Louie to embrace his own new existence. it means “get over the bullshit because I'm not about to step back into doubting my existence for you”. Cruise imbues Lestat with the same qualities that he imbued his character in the Fourth of July, with the same quality that he imbued his character in “A few Good Men”, with the same quality he imbues his character in “Top Gun”, and in “The Firm”; the quality of the unwavering, unmovable, person who has found a quality of life in giving themselves over to a larger idea, concept, institution. Believers believe because they need something to believe in. For Lestat it's in vampirism, in order to continue going one has to convince himself of the need to exist as he exists. So his rationalization of killing follows. Cruise's delivery of it is that of a person who's rehearsed it for years, centuries maybe, in order to believe it and now that belief is as sturdy as time. It is said matter of factly with no determinable emotion behind it as alot of lines by Cruise are in this film. The great tragedy of the story is that Lestat cannot convince the man he loves of the value of the gift or even if it being a gift the way he has convinced himself and yet Louie's melancholy rejection barely grazes him overall even while the rejection istelf deeply affects Lestat. Cruise's feels alot more low decadent a performance than Reid's high version. It's alot more ornate, the flourishes in comedic tone far surpass anything done on the latest iteration, it's much more fun an interpretation than is the more sober version we get now where Lestat feels nearly as melancholy as Louie. You don't see their complete opposite nature as much because they feel alot more connected to their passions to their ambitions or their lack of and for the show it seems far more interested in the deeper text and world around it as well as the romantic dynamics between the two the writing and the performances …well the cup overfloweth.

But when it comes to honoring Lestats overbearing grandiosity. His ornate arrogance, and amusing cruelty, that's all Cruise's version. It could be argued that as good as he is at being strident and cruel, the best parts of Cruise's performance are the moments of humor, especially when he's being mean spirited. A recent video comparison of Cruise's performance to Reid's has garnered plenty of discourse regarding how much better Reid performs the scene where Lestat admonishes Louie for not accepting who he is. Criminally, no one brings up that the context actually changes not only (as I stated earlier) in what the actors are going for but also in what the scene itself is saying and also some of the things that lead up to Lestat admonishing Louie are different. Criminally, no one notices that the way that the video is edited takes out the power or undercuts Cruises performance by cutting the before and after of it, and maybe most criminal, is that in losing both of these things they missed the best part of Cruises performance in that scene and it's not the “You are a killer” it's the whole “why yes it is a coffin” bit that leads up to it and punctuated it after.

It's the brush across the actresses face in tenderness as he says “You're tired” that transitions so smoothly to viciousness as he says “You want to SLEEP” while he violently kicks the coffin top off. Reid's flourish is the way he holds his hand before the line delivery, Cruise's is in the amusing way in which he flips the coffin top (watch his hands ) and the sacrastic bemusement at the fact that he put her in the coffin. The Woman: “ITS A COFFIN!” …Lestat: ”Well so it is, you must be dead!”. Cruise absolutely nails this. It adds layers to the ways in which Lestat has calcified himself against the pain of this world. The dance with Claudias dead mother is another example of this whimsical cruelty Cruise gets so right, but in general when Claudia enters the picture Cruise finds some of his most profound moments in the performance. The dynamic between Claudia and Lestat is the place where the original mined most of it's power. Lestats deep desire for love and acceptance is revealed here in a collection of smart choices from Cruise that allow us to see the petit flaws and cracks in Lestats armor. He paints Lestat as a man who wants so badly to be accepted on the terms he has accepted himself. He does so through dozens of tiny moments and larger ones where he plays and performs cruelty to stave off deep attachment. It's in the way he admonishes her at the piano. It's his response to her rejection of his doll, and in how he responds to her mea culpa both in the beginning of the scene and to his very “end” when Claudia murders him. It's not in the video below but the last turn to Claudia before he bites into those boys to ask if they are on good terms is extremely revealing as to a part of Lestat he likes to pretend doesn't exist….

In the 1994 version there was not anywhere near as much of an interest in that surrounding world of New Orleans. It's politics, it's culture, nor the queer Dynamics between the two characters. As such that film spends a lot more time on the angle of the master and apprentice, the acolyte and the deacon. Cruise's Lestat is giving the same kind of performance a preacher might to convince his audience of the reality of hell to convince his audience of the reality of there being nothing else and no answers, so that this is as good as it gets - and in that role Cruise is as convincing as it gets because Cruise is always as convincing as it gets when it comes to conviction. In the beginning of the film Louie remarks to a man who threatens him with death and then reneges- “You lack the courage of your convictions”. It's very fitting to have an actor as visibly committed and convicted to whatever ideological beliefs he holds to be in a role opposite this character who is in search of someone or something that seems to understand this world. The pull of Interview lies in this minor faustian tragedy, that Louie so hungry for some rhyme or reason to life gives himself over to something he couldn't possibly fathom to find a man who seems as though he has them because he's so sure of himself and everything it seems, because he doesn't lack for conviction and still ends up finding nothing. Cruises performance in it's moments of fiery assuredness and fragile unsureity provides much of the tragedy and the melancholy even while being its relief as well. It is Cruise’s fanaticism; that vehement belief in whatever he is doing that sells Lestats self satisfaction, his self indulgence, his indirect self destruction. It sees Lestat as he is to Louie but also how Lestat sees himself, A shrewd manipulator, a philosopher, a man of refinement and luxury, and yes quite matter-of-factly a killer. Much of the criticque of Cruise’s performance is really not about whether or not he effectively got Jordans vision across but whether or not he got their vision of Lestat right and this is a common mistake amongst criticism of acting, because many times the two are in alignment and because others its rendered moot by an objective truth (biopics) but it is in the very nature of our jobs as actors that we give ourselves over in service to the script and in service to the directors vision; the director's vision, not our own and if we don't align with that director's vision then we should rightfully be called out for it, but for Neil Jordan’s vision of Lestat in “Interview with a Vampire” Tom Cruise executed it and did it with a certain panache so far missing from any other version of Lestat. Maybe not in complete keeping with what is in the book, or the source material, maybe not in keeping with what others see or found in that material as it pertains to Lestat, but it is clearly in alignment with what Jordan wanted and within the context of what is being asked you can doubt anything and everything else but do not doubt that Cruise was a killer, giving a gleefully killer performance. What Cruise brought was a wild ostentatious sense of grandeur to Lestat, rather than a grounded sense of self that emanates from the latest iteration. He felt like someone who wants to and does stand out in the crowd, someone distanced from humanity, but also still amused by it. Like someone who understand the power of the shadow, but cant help but to seek out the lights, like a larger than life avatar of other peoples dreams which serves the script well when Christian Slater after hearing all this asks for it anyway, the lure is not vampirism , but Lestat. In short what Tom Cruise brought to Lestat was movie stardom and we haven’t seen the like yet and aren’t likely to.