April 25, 2025 • 63 mins
What happens when a studio frantically jams two complex novels into a single movie, ignores the author's offer to help for free, and relies on a killer soundtrack to mask storytelling failures? Queen of the Damned (2002) happens.
This vampire rock odyssey follows Lestat (Stuart Townsend), an ancient vampire who awakens from centuries of slumber, drawn by the siren call of modern rock music. He promptly forms a band, reveals vampire secrets through his lyrics, and incurs the wrath of the vampire community—all while catching the attention of Akasha (Aaliyah), the mother of all vampires.
The film stands as a fascinating study in wasted potential. While the source material—Anne Rice's rich, philosophical exploration of immortality—offered boundless storytelling opportunities, the production opted for style over substance at every turn. The rushed adaptation combines two distinct novels (The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned), resulting in hollow characterizations and abandoned plot threads that leave viewers disconnected from the narrative.
Yet amid the storytelling chaos shines an undeniable gem—the soundtrack. Produced by Korn's Jonathan Davis with Richard Gibbs, the music features contributions from nu-metal royalty including Chester Bennington, David Draiman, and Wayne Static. This collection of dark, driving tracks perfectly captures the early 2000s alternative scene and remains beloved by fans decades later, even as the film itself has faded into cult status.
Perhaps most tragic is how Aaliyah's final role became a footnote in her own film—the titular Queen appears for roughly 15 minutes despite dominating marketing materials. Her character, a feminist force in Rice's novel, is reduced to a jealous, petty villain with limited screen time and an anticlimactic defeat.
Listen as we dissect this movie's musical triumphs, narrative failures, and the complex legacy of a film that could have been so much more. Got a terrible movie you want us to eviscerate next? Reach out at contact@movie-rx.com or call 402-519-5790 to share your cinematic trauma.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hello and welcome to MovieRx Bad Medicine, where good
people talk about bad moviesand ugly movie culture.
I am your host, Dr Benjamin,and today co-hosting is one who
knows music and goth culture,Derek.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome, Derek.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hello, it's good to have you back on, and it's
always good to have you on for abad medicine.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, yeah, everybody loves you know.
Yeah, let's bring on the crankyfucker.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Let's bring on that cranky Irish guy.
Yeah, we already have a crankyfucker on the podcast, my
producer pointed out.
But what better than two ofthem to complain about Queen of
the Damned?
Today we're talking about Queenof the Damned, released in 2002
(01:08):
, rated R, I guess.
Rated R.
Parents, don't let your kidswatch this movie, not because
it's rated R, but just becauseit's a bad movie Directed by
Michael Reimer, very looselywritten by Anne Rice and a
couple other people that nobodycares about Stars Stuart
(01:31):
Townsend, marguerite Moreau andAaliyah.
So that's kind of what we gotfor our movie today.
Queen of the Damned.
I guess really the if I were togive a synopsis for this movie
a vampire is asleep for a longtime and he wakes up because of
rock music and then he wants tobe a rock star and then he
(01:56):
pisses off all the othervampires because he sings about
being a vampire and he starts afight with other vampires.
I guess I mean really it'srelatively valid yeah, I mean
it's.
So I guess, jumping right intothis, the there there are a lot
of things that this movie had somuch potential for.
(02:17):
Um, yeah, but the the problemwith this movie is that the
reason why it couldn't live upto its potential, I think,
really starts with the fact thatthis is not one book.
Uh, this is based off of two ofAnne Rice's books, just kind of
jammed together.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, it just very poorly slammed together into a
90 minute of Anne Rice'sbeautiful books.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Hate fucked and made this asshole of a movie and it
was.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
It could have been so much more, yeah, so so the
first this is a perfect exampleof like, when, when, movie, when
movie studios, movie companies,when they just when, they just
shit all over a particularproduct, where they bought the
rights to Anne Rice's books backin the 80s, and they did a good
(03:17):
thing with Interview.
Interview with a Vampire was anexcellent movie, it was a
classic, it was a great fuckingmovie in spite of time.
Tom cruise, it was a greatmovie and they, they wanted to
come out with a uh, with asequel.
I mean, really, it was going tobe the trilogy, right, it was
going to be, you know, interview, and then you were going to
have the vampire list at andthen it was going to be queen of
(03:39):
the damned.
Um, they dicked around too longwith, for whatever reason, they
dicked around too long and theywere coming up to where there
was a clause.
They bought the rights and thenthere was a clause in like the
year 2000,.
If I remember correctly, all ofthe rights were going to revert
back to Anne Rice, to where shewas going to own the stories
(04:00):
again, or the rights again,again, or the rights again.
And so they went oh shit, we'reout of time.
And so they just fucking, justhand, jammed those two together
and said, fuck it, we're gonnado both of these and, and you
know, put them all out andhammer it out yeah
Speaker 2 (04:13):
yeah yeah, and I mean and that's that's a key thing
for for our listeners that maybedon't read uh, to remember is
that this this is in referenceto the first three books, uh,
written by, by ann rice in inthis context and that's uh,
(04:35):
interview with the vampire wasthe first one, uh, then, after
that one, the vampire list at,and then came the book called
queen of the damned, um, and ifyou've watched interview with a
vampire, it's uh, uh, oh, Idon't remember what year that
came out 94.
Um, yes, 94.
(04:57):
Um, it came out and it, it.
It was a good movie, um, and,and I mean it, it was a good
movie, um, and and I mean it wasloosely based off of the book
and but but it still, it stillstayed true enough that it made
a good movie, um, so I recommendwatching interview with a
vampire and then after thatshould have been the vampire
(05:21):
Lestat, and this movie opens upvery much like like the book
would have um, because thevampire Lestat focuses on on
Lestat waking up and startinghis band and becoming a rock
star and and and doing that,that whole.
You know that context of the ofthe story.
(05:43):
But they, but they mixedeverything, uh, they.
They took a third book uh, thatshould have been its own
standalone movie uh, a huge book, uh, and and just crammed it
all into into a very smalltimeframe.
Uh, I don't remember how longthis movie was, but it.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
It's about 101 minutes, if I remember correctly
.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Somewhere around there.
Yeah, about an hour and a half.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I made a bitchy reference about how long the
movie was.
Yeah, 101 total run time.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, and it's like really Like you can't Look at
all of those other things thatthey made, that they made out of
books, like the differentmovies and things that they made
out of books.
There are some movies that theymade, three movies to cover one
book.
You know it can go that way,but it doesn't.
(06:42):
It doesn't go the other wayaround.
You can't, you can't cover twobooks in in one movie, um, and
and this one is a perfectexample of not doing that very
well um, so yeah, it's looselybased off of the Anne Rice novel
.
I like how you have the looselyin all caps on there.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Cause I mean, and it's the, you know, it's the age
old thing of, like any moviethat's based off of a book,
right, you're gonna bitch.
Almost you know like inevitably, everybody's going to wind up
bitching because it didn't, itdidn't stick to it.
Right, you know it, it didn'tstick to the book in the novel.
(07:26):
That aren't going to translateto the screen and, ok, sure,
that's fine.
This was not one of thosesituations, though.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I mean, they essentially gutted the, the, you
know, they essentially guttedthe vampire Lestat and they,
they really like cliff notes outthe, the, uh, the queen of the
damned right, well, and, and Imean that's, see, and I don't
know, I think, I think it'sreally unfair to say that that,
(07:53):
like it's that you'reautomatically going to have this
hatred for, for books or formovies based on books, like, I
mean, there are some that thatdon't follow anywhere close to,
uh, the original, like um, uh,the first one that comes to mind
is I am legend.
Have you ever read the book?
Yep, I am legend.
Yep, it's more like vampiresthan zombies, you know, uh, and
(08:18):
they're sentient, they talk tohim and things like that.
I mean's just all.
It's a completely differentstory.
I still, I still like themindependently.
Like I Am Legend as a movie iscompletely different, right, but
this is not one of those cases,because Anne Rice I mean she's
(08:39):
kind of the queen of vampirewriting yes, I mean she's the
Bram Stoker of her time and totake her works and to part them
out so much and try to make acomprehensive story out of them,
(08:59):
it just seems like a damn shame.
But I mean we can hammer onthat all fucking night and just
say it in 5,000 different waysUm, the, the.
As far as some of the, some ofthe stuff that goes with this
movie, uh, the budget, uh,you've got on here 35 million.
(09:20):
Box office was 45.4 million, sothey made their money back.
The thing that kind ofsurprised me about this movie
was the amount of people thatwent to see it.
That were not the people ofthis culture.
Well, yeah yeah, the amount ofjocks and rich kids that I saw
(09:42):
going to this movie surprisedthe hell out of me.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Part of it was they were.
I mean, they were cashing in ona particular subculture.
A lot of the marketing, eventhough she's only in the movie
for like 15 minutes, all of themarketing is around Aaliyah.
All of it was around Aaliyahbeing in the movie.
Now, granted, she also, shedied just before the movie came
(10:05):
out.
You know, there, like, therewas, all of the marketing was
based around her.
So you had a lot of mainstreampeople that are like, oh, yeah,
yeah, I'm going to go to thismovie because of this chick, or
the fact that Jonathan Davis ofK was uh, heavily involved with
the, uh, the soundtrack.
So, corn, in that time period,they were just starting to, you
(10:29):
know, they were starting to hittheir mainstream run as well,
and so, uh, you had a lot oflike the, you know the, the guys
that would listen to, you knowcorn, in the weight room, uh,
you know to to get their, gettheir jock up if you will.
Uh, you know they, uh, theywould be.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Oh yeah, no man, you know the the to to get their,
get their jock up, if you will.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Uh, you know they, uh , they would.
Oh, yeah, no man, you know the,the, the screamy guy is all
over this fucking thing.
And then they've got the, uh,they've.
They've got the hot Aaliyahchick, that's all over the place
.
Yeah, I'm totally going to seethis.
You know the vampire movie?
Yeah, man, I'm, I'm with it,I'm with you're not shut up.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Right, right, and, and it was.
It was really weird for me toto see that in in the theater.
Um, cause, this was, this wasone of the few that I got to go
see, uh, around this timeframe.
I, I, uh, didn't get to go tothe movie theater a whole lot in
2002.
Um just just broke, so I didn'thave money to go to theaters,
(11:24):
but uh, but this was one of thefew that I made sure to go see
in the theater.
Um, and I was just surroundedby unfamiliar people, uh, which
weirded me out.
But, um, but what I did?
Like, uh, like, and part of thereason why it surprised me, the
people were there.
Um, um, before this movie cameout, I owned the soundtrack.
(11:46):
Oh my god, what a soundtrack oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
No, the soundtrack's fucking great man, like it is.
Uh, for anybody that was a fanof, uh, late 90s, early 2000s,
uh, new metal and alternative,uh, you know like heavy, angry
but dark, weird kind of yeah, itwas all over the place.
I mean you had, you had deathtones, you had like a heart, you
had death tones.
Yeah, I mean everybody Chester.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Bennington screaming for for it in place of Jonathan
Davis.
Oh, my God, you know the uh andand the band itself sounded
like corn.
So you had, you know, so youhad the Korn sound, with all of
the David Draymond singing overthat.
Oh, it was like a hybrid of allof the best parts of this angry
(12:36):
white boy music from the early2000s just thrown onto one CD.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
And it was perfection for for that new metal.
Jonathan davis and richardgibbs I mean they, they really
knocked it out of the park witha great fucking soundtrack.
I mean they're like you had alot of things where this should
have been good, but you know,the the soundtrack is like the
only good thing of the uh ofmovie.
And I mean when, if you've gota movie where the guy wakes up
from you know 100 years of sleepto you know decide he's going
(13:14):
to join a new metal band, thefucking music better be top
notch, like well and it betterbe made by somebody of the
caliber of Jonathan Davis or,you know, any one of the rest of
the people on the soundtrack.
Whatever genre you're decidingthat you're going to cash in on,
yeah, you better have somebodythat's like top of the food
chain, that's that's creatingthe music for that.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Right and and they had.
They had that.
They had the cooperation fromall of the right people.
They had that.
They had the cooperation fromall of the right people.
Um, now the here's.
Here's where I feel like it's agoddamn shame they had all of
these people collaborate in thestudio for making all this music
.
Why the fuck did none of themhave any sort of a cameo in the
(14:01):
movie?
There's one, yeah, there's onereally important one, that made
a, that made a small bit part inthe movie.
But like, why wasn't mansonjust somewhere like doing doing
a fucking interview about youknow this, this guy that he
knows you know, list at.
You know, yeah, you know, Ireally have a lot of respect for
(14:23):
what he's doing for the, forthe you know genre or whatever.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Like, I mean just any number of these people.
We need an emaciated, creepy,pale fucker to hang out in the
background.
Hey manson, what are you doingright.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
It's not like he had anything better going on in 2002
.
You know, fucking jesterbennington, david draymond, uh,
wayne static like any of thoseguys could have been in that
movie in any capacity and itwould have just been amazing
Shit.
Put a guitar in Wayne Static'shand and make him a part of the
band.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
You know, like I mean , you know, like, like Wayne,
could have had his hair down andyou wouldn't have recognized
him.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Right or anything but , but they didn't do any of that
and it feels like it was wastedopportunity.
Yeah a lot of wastedopportunity, a lot of great
people to be able to make anappearance in a way that could
have been, if not enlighteningfor them, it could have changed
(15:20):
their career, I mean I don'tknow how much.
Okay, so when, when I went togo watch this movie again, I
noticed that I didn't own it andI'm not gonna lie, I bought it.
I didn't just rent it, I boughtit I was.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
I was tempted to, I was tempted to submit you a bill
for my three dollars back.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I can totally.
I can totally reimburse you the, but the, I mean the.
The whole thing with it isthat's like there, there are
parts of this movie that that,even though the movie is so
goddamn bad, there are parts ofit that I can't let go.
The fact that this movieimmortalized Aaliyah was
(16:05):
important to me.
The only thing that could havemade this movie better is to
immortalize Chester Bennington,so that now, in 2005, I could go
back and I could see himperforming or even just talking
somewhere performing or you know, even just talking somewhere.
(16:28):
You know in at any at any givenpoint that I just want to
recall it and have it up on myTV and that I can see that
person again.
Um, and that's that's kind ofthe reason why I bought it was
because there there are.
There are, in some ways, thingsthat this movie can do for me
that some other things can't,but that doesn't mean that I
(16:49):
didn't have at least a littlebit of buyer's remorse after I
hit the purchase button.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Because god damn this movie.
And again it's almost like theuh, the alien resurrection thing
all over again.
Michael Reimer Michael Reimeris great.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well, yeah, yeah, I mean he's, yeah, he, he did a
lot of really, you know, he'sdone a lot of really good things
.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, babylon five.
Man, like I mean, just ask mydad about how much you know
Michael Reimer has to do withBabylon five.
He fucking much.
You know michael reimer has todo with babylon 5, he fucking
loves it, you know?
Uh, the, what else you got onhere?
You got the american horrorstory asylum, jessica jones, I
mean shit.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, michael reimer was a hell of a you know,
jessica jones was fucking great,like he was, you know, as a tv
director.
He was really really good, um,but his movies weren't really
much to write home about, and Imean this one was definitely
schlock.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
But I think there were just so many problems even
before he got into it that therewas only so much he was going
to be able to polish the turd.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Right, and I mean, I don't know whose job it is to
decide that.
If it's, if it's the directoror the producer or who, well,
you know, if you start off, witha, with a shit screenplay, then
you've only, you've only got somuch you can build off of from
(18:19):
there.
But at what level do do theystart?
At what level and where doessomebody take the blame for not
even consulting Anne Rice?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
That's the movie studio.
Yeah, that's the you know thatwas the studio themselves where
they're like.
Nope.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Like I mean, wherever they got the script from, you
know, the people who wrote thescript themselves should have
been in contact with Anne Rice,the studio who brings it up, you
know, and says you know, we'regoing to make the movie, the
script themselves should havebeen in contact with Anne Rice.
Uh, the, the studio who bringsit up you know, and says you
know we're going to make themovie, should have consulted in
rice the producer.
Any of them should haveconsulted with Anne Rice.
(18:57):
The fucking director shouldhave had Anne Rice on speed dial
.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Um, she even offered to like work for free.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
She offered to work for free and they, they were
just like no, we don't wantanything to do with her.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
She didn't have any rights to it and she was willing
to do it for nothing, like, andand let's just say how awesome
that is for like and kind ofrefreshing for an author to be
that way.
Imagine that from JK Rowling.
I'm just saying, like it's nothappening.
This, this woman was willing todo it for nothing and and
(19:37):
nobody talked to her first, andI think that's a.
I think that's probably thebiggest reason why why this
thing was so bad.
Because I think that's probablythe biggest reason why this
thing was so bad, because Ithink that if anybody could have
abbreviated the vampire Lestatenough to make way for Queen of
(19:58):
the Damned to be enough of therest of the story, I think it
would have been Anne Rice.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean she knew enough of the you
know she, she knew enough of thebackstory.
I mean she, obviously that shecould have maybe had been able
to find enough Shortcuts, right,because the main thing of the
vampire Lestat is like, yeah,you've got, he wakes up and then
he, he decides like he's goingto join a band and shit, right,
(20:27):
but then it's really him writinghis autobiography and it's
talking about Lestat's story andhow he, how he came up and how
he got turned, and you know his,his entire background, before
interview four, uh, interview,Right, and then it even goes
into interview from, like, hisperspective uh, you know, of how
(20:48):
Louis was kind of being a,being a cunt, or you know how,
uh, how Claudia was a pain inthe ass, or, uh, you know, hey,
maybe they shouldn't have lit meon fire, uh, you know, kind of
a thing like that, that kind ofstuff.
Like, uh, you know from hisperspective, um, you know that
all of that is in the vampirelist.
(21:10):
That and I can understand someof that is not going to fit for
what you're trying to tell with,uh, with the story of this
movie, but she would have beenable to find a more intelligent
way to condense that down, um,instead of just completely
gutting it, because they theycovered nothing of the stats
background, uh, where he camefrom, uh, his upbringing, uh how
(21:31):
he, how he had, uh attracted,uh, the, the vampire, uh magnus,
not marius, uh how he attractedmagnus, that uh, they turned
him um, any of that shit.
They they covered none of it.
Uh, it was just he woke up andhe's with marius and marius is
the one that turned him and uh,like everything else was just so
(21:54):
surface level that the littlebits and pieces in the movie
that they did show you oflistat's background, you didn't
give a shit, because you, you,you didn't identify with the
actor or the character at all.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
You didn't give a fuck right, and and that, in
essence, is the root of why, ofwhy that it's so difficult to
really get into this movie isyou don't care about anybody.
Uh, you don't.
You don't care about marius.
You don't know where mariuscame from.
Um, you know the, the, theoriginal character, you know, I
(22:25):
mean you, you start to knowthings like.
You know that they were, um, uh, a roman senator, and, and you
know all this other stuff, the,the way back before story, uh,
and, and all of that.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
You don't, you don't get any of that in any part of
this movie now, and what'swhat's disappointing is like
yeah, using marius as an example, I mean that, that's vincent
perez, that guy's a hell of anactor man.
I mean that that guy, I mean hewas the uh, he was the crow in
city of angels.
Uh, you know, like that guy's,that guy's an awesome fucking
actor and was just seriouslyunderutilized.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, and I mean, and well, I mean you, and that's
that's another thing that reallysucks about hating this movie.
So much is that there are.
There are good performances,decent performances from good
actors that were just poorlydirected.
Um, and I mean, well, aaliyah,like she could have, she could
(23:28):
have been so much more than shewas in this movie.
Um, stuart Townsend, I mean, hewas, he was probably about, he
was probably about the mostspectacular of the regular faces
on screen.
Um, even though, even though hewas directed to be, the only
way that I can describe it isthat he's more, he's more cliche
(23:53):
than cliche, like it's almostlike he's overly vampireized, uh
, in in a way that that it, Iit's, I don't, I don't know how
to explain it.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
No, they, you know like yeah, uh, you know, uh,
listat's character, um alia'scharacter and uh, marius, like
those.
Those three definitely werelike like cosplay vampire you
know, kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Really like like schlock, uh, you know where they
were, just really like goingfor it and then some, or it was
almost like a caricature.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah, Like I mean, cause, in essence, a vampire is
going to be somewhat cliche, nomatter what.
Like I mean, it's a vampire, sothere's automatically going to
be an air of of arrogance andand that that you know, dramatic
pause and those weird stancesand and all that.
(24:49):
That's, that's a part of beinga vampire.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Right and to a certain degree it was just more
so.
Right, more so, right, uh, to acertain degree you could argue
it.
Uh, if you remember, from likeinterview uh with uh armand,
where he says that, uh, you area representative of your era,
right, you know the the each ofthese uh each of these vampires
that wind up living forever.
Uh, you're, you're essentially,you know, you are the snapshot
(25:15):
of your particular time that youcame from.
So if you look at, like youknow, marius, where he would
have come from, like old, oldworld, then yeah, okay, he's
probably going to look a littleweird when you drop him into
1999, death Valley, right, orLestat, where you know he was
very much from like like hewasn't French aristocracy.
(25:38):
Obviously you know he's brokeass, but he came from like that,
like he wasn't frencharistocracy.
Obviously you know he's brokeass, but he came from like that
particular time period.
So he's going to have, you know, kind of like the, the ruffled
you know ruffled collars, kindof an attitude, uh, to how he
does things, like, okay, fine,you could maybe excuse that a
little bit if you're tryingreally, really hard right to try
to excuse some of this shit,but no, most of it's just, it's
(26:00):
schlock as uh, you know as, asyour producer put in the chat,
here is telenovela telenovelayeah, it's, it's just, I mean it
.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, overly done, overly done, cliches that that
made it almost uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable, um, and andtotally unbelievable tired
tropes yeah um, but the uh, butprobably one of the uh, one of
the most astute things that I'veread.
(26:29):
Read about this movie that Ireally, really liked you put on
here.
Um, you put the whole movie islike one long music video.
That forgot it was a musicvideo.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, yep, explain that Again, they well, so they,
they had the bad-ass soundtrack,right, you know they, they had
the, the bad-ass soundtrack forthe whole thing.
And then they it was like, allright, cool, We've got five
great fucking songs, we need tobuild a movie around this.
And it was almost like, youknow, like the Michael Jackson
(27:01):
videos back in the eightieswhere you'd have like a 25
minute long like mini movie kindof a thing.
That was, you know, just likemaybe three or four of his music
videos that were tied togetherand there might be some sort of
a shitty plot line that would gothrough.
Uh, that would go along with it.
That's what this feels like,except it's 101 minutes of
shitty storyline to go alongwith the music video.
(27:23):
Um, because anytime they wouldhave something where, like,
there was no dialogue, they madesure that they had something
from the soundtrack that youknow that was covering, uh, the,
the exposition, or that wascovering the lack of dialogue or
the movement around the city orwhatever, which is typical in a
movie.
But when you have somethinglike this, it was more like fuck
(27:48):
, we don't have anythingintelligent to put here.
Play the John Davis thing.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Play the John Davis thing.
We're out of ideas.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
We're out of ideas.
We're out of ideas.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Play you put john davis on there, you know, and
then as soon as he starts doingthe uh, the twist rap, he's like
oh, no shit, no, never mind, no, we can't use that yeah, no,
that's good, um the well, and Idon't know, I think I think that
uh, uh, a big part of it for me.
(28:21):
Um, they, they played all ofthe all of the movie from the
soundtrack, in the backgroundthroughout the movie and, and
with it were there, were, itfelt like they just in a lot of
places.
They just left the camerasomewhere rolling and they were
(28:42):
like, oh hey, forget, you know,go turn off that camera.
Oh shit, well, we might, as weuse the film, so we might as
well use it in the movie.
You know, like I mean, therewere just so many shots that
just didn't make sense, so manythings that just weren't
compelling to look at visually.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
It was very much, I mean so like this, this movie,
you know, like the, the booksobviously are big things that
would be referenced in gothculture, right, right.
And in the late 90s, early2000s, goth culture was becoming
more of like a mainstream thing.
You had stuff like the craftcharmed uh blade underworld was
(29:22):
going to come out in anotheryear or two, uh, like that.
Like it was really kind ofgetting bigger in the, the
mainstream, and so like somebodywanted to capitalize on that,
right into a cash grab on it.
And this is very much like likesomebody was trying to write a
goth movie that had no fuckingidea what goth culture was
actually like and they were justusing all of the different
(29:45):
stereotypes that they could grabonto and try to make some sort
of a cohesive movie out of it.
And of course it's not going tofucking work.
And I'm not saying anythingagainst Charmed, like I see it,
all capital letters here.
I love Charmed, charm.
Like.
I'm not saying anything againstit don't get me wrong.
I I'm not.
(30:06):
I'm not saying anything against.
Uh, you know, some of those, uh, some of those vehicles.
I was a, I was a big fan of someof that stuff.
Like I liked blade.
I own all of the fuckingunderworld movies.
I thought it was great, youknow.
I thought it was good.
It's not a bad thing when yourculture becomes mainstream.
It becomes bad, though, whenyour culture becomes mainstream
and then the mainstream shits onit.
Uh, like when they when theywater it down and they turn it
(30:29):
into something that can beconsumed by people that don't
give a shit about your culture.
That's that.
You know that.
That's the problem that I havefor that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Well, and I feel like that was such a such a thing in
the late late nineties, earlytwo, thousands was um, a lot of
people struggling to try tounderstand the goth culture
without being a part of it?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, any sort of like uh alternative culture.
If you're not, if you're not ofit, and if you're not going to,
uh, listen to like accurateadvisors of that particular
culture, you're going to makesome particular assumptions that
are going to make you seem likean asshole.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Right, um, it kind of reminds me of um, something
else that, like this, is almostlike a late nineties, early two
thousands version of what.
What ended up happening in thelate 2000s with, uh, 50 shades
of gray.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, that that book came out and then suddenly
everybody was an snm freak andit's like right, and the snm
culture was like, and everybodywas like what the fuck you know?
Speaker 2 (31:35):
like yeah, it's kind of like an early version of that
and a little more innocent, andI don't know, could you really
say that this movie is as bad asFifty Shades of Grey?
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I don't know, I never watched it.
I don't have a clue.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Ok, yeah, ok, I've had nothing to do with that,
anything that you could imaginethat Fifty Shades of Grey would
have turned into.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
I read the books.
Right, I read the 50 shades ofgray books because I didn't feel
like I could.
I could argue about how muchthey suck, unless I did Nah I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I'm pretty sure I could still come up with an
argument without having tofucking read it.
Oh no, no, Like once you'veread it, then you.
Then you have every argumentthat you need.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Uh, I don't need to put myself through that.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
It's pretty bad.
If you ever need any talkingpoints I don't know that it's
relevant anymore I can give youa few Now.
Let's see here.
Oh, I like some of your otherstuff here, but I want to wait
on those because that's allabout the concert.
Tell me, want to wait on those,because that's all about the
concert.
Um, tell me, is there are thereany scenes in this movie that
(32:44):
you could say that you enjoyed?
Speaker 1 (32:45):
not many to be not many honest oh no, um, I, a lot
of it was really bad, a lot ofit was just really kind of tired
trope that they were going offof.
It was bad stereotypes, tiredass.
You know, like I said, tiredass tropes that that have been
(33:07):
done a number of times.
No, you know, they're really.
If I, if I'm thinkingcritically on it, no, I don't
really think that there'sactually anything that, uh, you
know, any like actual scene thatI legitimately enjoyed I
thought it was funny that uhjohn davis was selling scalp
(33:30):
tickets.
That was funny john davis as thescalper was.
Um, that was mildly amusing, Iwill give you that.
Uh, you know, mildly amusingthe the thing.
Give you that, you know, mildlyamusing.
The thing of that was it wascompletely improvised, he had no
lines or anything in that, sohe just went for it and nobody
knew what he was going to say orwhat he was going to actually
do or anything like that.
(33:50):
So like that was kind of funny,where you're just like all
right, here's John Davis, butthey don't even show his face.
All you see is just like theback of his head, and then you
like you hear his voice.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, Yep, and uh uh.
Well, you see the back of hishead in the hair, which tells
you everything you need to know.
Um the uh, yeah, I, I don'tknow.
I I really struggled with witha lot of it.
Um the uh, I I did there were.
(34:24):
There were a couple of scenesthat I did enjoy uh, both of
which involved music, when, whenhe was playing for the statues,
that was some cool violin, Iloved it.
Uh.
The other one was the scenejust after he drank the
violinist's blood and he tookhis.
(34:45):
He took his skill with a violinand then he went over to the
fire, to the campfire with the,with the girl with the viola and
the and the dude with the luteand, and he started playing
violin with them, just afterbeing told that he can't.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
That music, that music I jam every time, Like
when I'm watching that movie I'mjust like that is fucking cool,
Like I want to hear a fulllength production of that.
Uh, but other than that, likeseriously, I I normally I can
pick out a few things that I'mlike that's cool, that's cool,
you know, or whatever, but withthis one it really is just it's
(35:23):
all music, which I think reallyI think we established right
from the beginning.
The only thing this movie gotright was the music.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Because that was the only you know.
Again, like I said, if you'regoing to make any sort of a, any
sort of a movie that's basedoff of a subculture Again, like
I said, if you're going to makeany sort of a, any sort of a
movie that's based off of asubculture, and if you don't
bother to bring in any sort ofintelligent like advisors of
that particular subculture, thenyou're going to be screwed.
And that was the only one.
They did right was bringing inJohn Davis and the particular
musicians.
(35:53):
They did that actuallyunderstood.
Ok, we've got a guy that'sjoining Well.
Ok, the book was written in the80s, so he was going to join
like a hair metal band.
Well, we can't fucking do thatbecause it's not the 80s anymore
.
We'll have him join a new metalband because new metal people
are dark and scary like vampires.
So sure, we'll do that.
And so they bring in a newmetal guy to write the fucking
(36:15):
soundtrack.
That was the smartest thingthat they did.
That was the only smart thingthey did.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
So, on your notes, here, I want you, I want you to
lead us through this part ofyour notes the concert Ah, yeah,
Okay so so you, you go througha whole lot of nerd, uh, nerdy
music, snob shit here, uh, Iwill let you go.
I might interject every now andagain.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Right, right, uh, so you know just like a little bit
of you know like background onthat.
So I'm, I'm a musician, uh, youknow, and uh, I've, I've, I've
played guitar for like 25 yearsand uh, I've, I've been in bands
, I've been in metal bands, I'mcurrently in bands, uh, you know
, it's, it's, it's a big part of, like, my, my background and
what I do.
(37:02):
So I am going to be thatasshole that if I'm watching a
movie and there's somebodyplaying on the screen, I am that
guy where I'm looking at theguitar and I'm going he's not
playing that.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Or he's not actually singing that that's.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
That's lip syncing, or those amps aren't actually
being utilized correctly.
Because that's just how myfucking brain works.
I'm that kind of a prick.
That's why Ben has me on thisshow Truth.
Yeah, so going through theconcert, okay.
So the big thing right off thebat that stuck out in my brain
(37:40):
is product placement.
So you've got product placementfor Marshall, yamaha and Ibanez
.
That makes sense to a certaindegree.
Where Yamaha, of course, ifyou're having keyboards,
synthesizers, things like that,yamaha is probably who you're
going to wind up going to for alot of that shit, because they
were very popular at the time.
They're still very popular forthat kind of stuff.
(38:01):
Ibanez same thing.
A lot of the guitars that wereused by people in new metal
bands.
They were going to be usingIbanez both for their guitars
and also for the bass guitar.
That kind of falls in line.
Marshall on the other hand, uhso, mar, like, so Marshall amps
(38:24):
are huge.
Okay, uh, you know Marshallamps are, you know they are a uh
like you don't fuck with them.
They're like one of the mainnames when it comes to it.
You see, uh, you know you seesomebody with a Marshall amp,
even if you're not a musician.
You're like fuck yeah, Uhyou're like fuck yeah, because
it's what you're going torecognize.
They're an institution as faras music equipment is concerned,
(38:47):
Right up there with somebodythat's rocking a Gibson Les Paul
.
It's just immediatelyidentifiable, even if you don't
know how to play the instrument.
However, in late 90s, early2000s, marshall was having
issues with being able to keepup with the trends and being
able to keep up with the Utes.
The new kids that wanted thesuper low, super chunky kind of
(39:11):
sounds.
A lot of that shit was going toMesa Boogie.
It was another amp company.
A lot of that shit was going tothem.
Not a whole lot of people wereusing Marshalls.
I remember specifically aninterview with a guitarist where
he was like I had a Marshall inthe early 2000s and in that
(39:31):
time period you couldn't givethem away cheap.
Uh, you know he, he had a jcm800, which is what they were
using in the movie, and theywere dirt cheap.
He's like dude, if you youcould have it like in the front
seat of your car and left yourdoor unlocked and you'd come
back and like no, somebodywouldn't have stolen your
marshall, you'd have anothermarshall in your car, like you
(39:54):
couldn't give them away.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
You know like they were.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
They were just all over the place because you
couldn't fucking get.
You know you couldn't get ridof them.
Um, but nobody, you know peopledidn't like using them for that
style of music.
So seeing, like big-assmarshall stacks on there and, uh
, for a new metal band,immediately I'm like, nah,
bullshit.
Um, you know that's, that'sjust product placement, where
marshall was like, okay, we needmoney and this movie is
(40:17):
supposed to have a shitload ofmarketing behind it.
Fuck it Please, for the love ofChrist, let us be in your movie
and, you know, have us do theproduct placement, because then
stupid people will buy our ampsbecause we need the money, yeah,
so you know, yeah, you've gotthe stacks of Marshalls that
definitely weren't good for thegenre.
Yamaha fit, that was fine.
(40:38):
They did not need two differentkeyboard players, though.
That was a little fuckingridiculous.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
But whatever, well, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
There was quite a bit of synthesized shit in that
music.
Shit is the right word.
Anyway, ibanez being used forthe guitars that, like I
mentioned, like I mentionedearlier that tracks uh, that
that actually goes in line.
One of the guys in there was uhwas actually playing, like I
could.
You know, I could identify itfrom uh, from where it was on
the screen.
He was playing uh in Ibanezuniverse, which was a seven
(41:10):
string guitar that was designedby Steve by and the those were.
Those were the guitars that wereactually used by Head Monkey
when they started Korn, whenthey were first looking for
7-strings because nobody elseused them.
Like you know, steve Vai, youknow, designed the 7-string
guitars and the Ibanez Universeguitars and he was the only
(41:32):
fucking guy that used them.
And then, when Head Monkeywanted to, you know, do like a
low sound and they were lookingaround, they saw the 7 strings
and they were dirt cheap.
That's why they bought them,because they were cheap as shit,
because nobody fucking usedthem.
Everybody was like why are yougoing to use a 7 string?
That's stupid, you don't needthose.
Learn how to play 6 stringsfirst.
(41:53):
That's going to be a wholeother tangent.
You've got the Saint Angersnare, the snare drum that they
had in there, where it's justgot that annoying fucking ting.
It's like no, that's not what asnare is supposed to sound like
.
Stop that.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
It almost sounds like a marching snare.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Right, yes, but more annoying.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
I would say like a marching snare fucked like yeah,
oh yes, but more annoying, uh,you know.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
I would say like like a marching snare fucked.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
A trash can I was gonna say, with a little more
trash can in it.
Yeah, oh, that's funny.
Yeah, like a marching snarefucked a trash can lid.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Uh, it was just awful .
Um, the, uh, the the bass stack, you know.
Yeah, the the bass amps lookedlike they were using Marshall in
there as well, which, you know,it's pretty rare that you'll be
able to find like a Marshallbass amp, but they do exist.
Lemmy from Motorhead was theonly one cool enough, though, to
have pulled that off.
Everybody else, if you're usinga Marshall bass head, fuck you.
(42:53):
Yeah, I mean that's yeah,that's the, the biggie there.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
On all of the, the, the music side of the other, the
concert, and then the rest ofit is all like, factored in with
the, the actual performancesthemselves well, you've kind of,
you've kind of helped validateme as a, as a bass, as a bassist
, though I don't have a marshallamp, uh, uh, I think what do I
have?
I think it's a, I think I havea PV, but I have three of my
(43:26):
four bases are Ibanez.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
There's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, like Ibanez makes goodbases.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
They do make good bases.
My jazz bass though, of course,is Squire.
So yeah, like now, I noticedthat right here underneath your,
underneath your stuff.
First off, the Mario's fuckinggolf.
Clap that shit.
Oh my God, dude.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, I died on that when he's just you know he's
awkward as shit and you know thecrowd's cheering as they've
killed the vampires that went toattack Lestat and he's like oh
yeah, yeah, yay, yay, Littlepolite little golf clap.
He's like oh yeah, yeah, yay,yay.
Little polite little golf clap.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
It's like goddammit, you deserve so much better.
Yeah, now you have in here theMatrix vampire fights.
Now you were being way nicerwith that than I was.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
As far as the vampire fights go, I mostly meant in
the sense of like, really,really bad, um, like super fast
effects.
You know where they had likethe, uh, like the bad it's
almost like bad vhs tracking.
You know where, like you see,like the motion that's going
along with them and that'ssupposed to designate, like
(44:41):
we're moving super fast and it'sfaster than the eye can
perceive.
Hence the, the, the fuckingmillion dollar man graphics that
we've got to use where it'salmost like you can hear the
like moving supposedly fast yeahsee, for me it was like I.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
I looked at it and I said you know, that's, that's
dated technology from buffy thevampire slayer, and, charmed
like it's, just that is.
That is overutilized intelevision and should never have
been done in a production movie.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Uh, no, because a production movie should actually
have a fucking budget yeah,slow motion movement.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Adding, adding a bunch of like, a bunch of
tracers to slow motion does notmake it fast, like, and and
that's exactly what this was.
It was just a bunch of, youknow, a bunch of tracers behind
slow motion movement and itsucked and it wasn't, it wasn't
appealing to watch, it wasn'texciting, it, I mean, and they
(45:44):
knew it.
You mean, and they knew it.
You know, they knew it, becausethen they started putting the
frames into unnecessary placesso that you couldn't see what
was going on and and all thefights just ended up being
confusing, because you're like,well, what was that like I mean,
um, about, about the only worstframing that they had in all of
(46:04):
the movie than the fights werewhen they put, you know, the
scaffolding that that marius andand fucking listat were sitting
on right on top of listat'sdick.
Uh, I mean, they were, theywere proverbial fucking, you
know pubic hairs for him on thatbillboard I have a feeling that
was kind of done on purpose,like they were trying to
(46:25):
illustrate something.
There was some sort of like youknow, like sub, something that
they were trying to illustratein there and that is the most
emotion that they put into thisfucking movie, the most
intentional thing that theydidat on his own dick.
(46:47):
Yeah, it was bad, but yeah, sowe go a little bit further.
Down here We've got a movie iscalled Queen of the Damned, but
they really just gloss overAkasha and all the backstory
between her and the rest of thevampires.
Uh, and all the backstorybetween her and the rest of the
(47:10):
vampires.
So, um, yeah, they're the, theancients, as they call them in
the movie.
You don't know anything aboutany of them.
Actually, I don't even like Idon't even know where they get
their names yeah, they don't.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
They don't go into the ancients.
They don't talk about thetelemasca.
They, they don't.
They don't talk about, uh,akasha's backstory.
You know, really like none ofit.
They just kind of like glossover.
It's almost like they don'ttalk about the telemaska.
They don't talk about Akasha'sbackstory, you know, really like
none of it.
They just kind of like glossover.
It's almost like a burden ofknowledge where they're just
(47:40):
like you know, yeah, we expectall of you people already know
this shit, so we're not going tobother trying to tell any of
you any of this.
It's like it's actually almostinsulting.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
You know, as the viewer, it's actually almost
insulting you know as the, youknow as the viewer, and I think
what it ended up doing was itjust ended up making a whole
bunch of people out there thatwere like pretending like they
knew what they were talkingabout and just didn't.
Yeah, with this movie.
That was another thing aboutthis movie at the time.
You could tell the people whoknew the story, you could tell
(48:06):
the people who'd read the booksand the people who talked about
the movie as though the moviewere the way that the books went
.
Like because they were so, theywere so starkly different.
Um, and it was always fun.
It was always like when you,when you'd come across somebody
who would argue, who would arguethe point of the movie being
(48:28):
right, you just stop arguingbecause you're like I'm not
going to fucking win this, likeI'm not going to win with this
person.
Um, yeah, I got, I hated thatshit.
Uh, let's see here after theafter party with all the bodies,
worse than frigging Jonestown.
Um, yeah, um, yeah, uh, oh,yeah.
(48:49):
You're a really good point inhere.
Character reference here.
Uh, when Akasha asks Lestat tokill Jesse.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
I'm just now reading the reading the chat.
The oh the side chat.
Yeah, yeah.
Why is she?
Why is she jealous of a mortal?
Speaker 1 (49:13):
right, you know.
Yeah, exactly like you've got.
You know you've got akashawhere, like she's, she's
supposed to be the badass queen,right?
And in the uh um, in the bookshe's a feminist, right, you
know like you know, she's likewe're we're killing, we're
killing all the dudes and we'rewe're creating a new eden.
That's uh, that's that's goingto be full of our own eves,
(49:33):
right, and it's all going to beabout, you know, like the, the
women and you know, girl powerand all that shit, right?
Uh, you know like she was a,she was a feminist in the book,
in this.
It's like no man, she's this,this petty, catty bitch.
That's just like you know.
Ok, well, this, that, thatchick over there, I would like
for you to kill her.
It's like well, but, but shemeans nothing to me and she's
(49:57):
like she's just a mortal, she'sjust a nobody.
I'd still like you to kill her,like, go ahead and do it.
I'd still like you to kill her,like, go ahead and do it Either
way.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
Yeah, yeah, that's I mean.
Well, and it was.
That's exactly the argument whyshe doesn't mean anything, just
cause, like I mean Okay, Iguess we accept that as the as
the viewer is A good enoughreason, I guess, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Like you get, you know what she's doing.
It's a, you know, obviouslyit's a loyalty test you know of.
Like, you say that you're withme, you say that you're on my
side.
I know that you've got a.
You know some sort ofparticular something or other
with that chick over there.
Go ahead and kill that chick.
Prove that you're loyal to meby killing her, right, uh, and
(50:51):
it's like, okay, I get it.
This is still fucking stupid.
Like why, why are you doingthis?
Speaker 2 (50:53):
you have bigger things that, uh, that you're
trying to get accomplished right, um, so yeah, this from from
your perspective is is thereanything that could have saved
this movie?
Speaker 1 (51:06):
uh to not to not make it like I mean we, we, you know
the, the, uh.
You know, in a differentepisode that we did, we talked
about you know a movie that was,you know movies that were
canceled or you know, uh, notnot put out because of, like,
what happened with col right, Imean we could have had some sort
(51:27):
of massive disaster orsomething that would have
happened that maybe stopped thismovie from getting made.
Something that would havestopped this movie from being
put out.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
That would have made it better to have not existed In
2002, what could have happenedin 2001?
That would have stopped.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
I don't know, there was kind of a big to-do in like
september of that year yeah, whydidn't that stop it?
Damn it because the vampiresdidn't use planes anyway uh,
well, actually they had to.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
That was another thing that I had a question
about.
Fucking the band was in, was inla, or some shit, while the
stat was at the admiral's armsin in fucking britain.
Do you remember that part?
Speaker 1 (52:11):
I mean yeah so like.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
So jesse goes to the admiral admiral's arms and
pretends that she was turned bymarius or whatever and and gets
list at's attention.
That's in England, right.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Well, the very next scene is the band doing an
interview in LA, Like why is theband in LA while he's in
England?
Speaker 1 (52:38):
Because there was the band and then there was Lestat,
but he's the band.
No, no, no, like you had twovery different things there, you
also had the press conferencewhere the band was in person
doing the press conference,whereas Lestat was doing it from
the screen throughteleconference.
(52:59):
Lestat wasn't there.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Sorry I'm late.
I had to try to catch mybreakfast Right.
Exactly Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah, exactly Um you know, like that, that kind of
nonsense.
But it was the.
You know that that separationbetween the uh, the band and the
artist, uh, you know kind ofkind of shit that we've seen so
many times.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Right, um, yeah, I don't't.
I don't know, as, as far as I'mconcerned, I think something
that could have saved this movieis to split it.
If they, if they would have, ifthey would have separated this
movie into two separate movies.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Um, just given ann rice a call, but yeah, obviously
, if they would have done itcorrectly, then, yes, you could
have had.
Uh, you know you could have hadthe other.
You know the movies get saved.
They opted to not do that, so Imean, then there is no saving
it.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
So there's really no yeah, there's really no going
back.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
I mean one of the things that maybe they could
have done intelligently was.
I mean, the movie is Queen ofthe Damned.
You've got alia all over yourfucking marketing.
Uh, you've got all of this,this build-up about how akasha
is this like badass queen of thevampires?
Right, they killed her in twominutes, like all they.
(54:20):
All they did was like some ofthe you know was like what?
Like four of the ancients bumrushed this chick and they were
able to take her down.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
Yeah, they all jumped on her and started sucking
Right, and then she, you know,took about 15 seconds between
them to throw them off, one at atime to start them on fire.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Right, yeah, you know , and she only killed one or two
of them.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
Yeah, I think she got two she only killed one of like
one or two of them.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Uh, and then like the third one.
The third one almost died andthen he came back because she
was weaker and he was able tolike jump back in and continue
to like bite the shit out of herright yeah, but like in all of
five minutes, like the battle.
The quote-unquote battle wasdone in like less than five
minutes and they've spent thiswhole fucking movie talking
about how akasha is this likethis dangerous chick that can
(55:05):
fuck up all of humanity, andyada, yada, but yet like five
minutes done.
Fuck you, like there's.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
It's so anti-climactic well, and and I
mean it's she, I.
I think that that's somethingelse that could have improved
the movie.
Speaker 1 (55:23):
Maybe um the fact that it's called queen of the
damned yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah, it's called queen of the damned, and the
queen of the damned is in themovie for like 12 minutes,
something like that, and forlike four of those minutes she's
not doing anything exceptwalking and dancing.
Yeah, like, come on, like justlook and have.
Yeah, like, come on, like justlook and have some dialogue, uh
(55:49):
with.
Well, seriously, though, like Imean she could have, she could
have had something more to dowith the movie than just being
on the screen.
Um, but, but that's all theydid, that's all they use, they.
They took a Leah and turned herinto just something to put into
a movie without any purpose.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
Yeah and uh, you know , and like, and she, she
actually wasn't a bad actress.
Uh, you know, they the.
The other movie that she'd beenin was um, romeo must die, if I
remember correctly.
Uh and she was actually reallygood in that movie, like that's,
that's actually not a shittymovie.
Um, and it's her, and like jetlee, if I remember right.
Um, and yeah, it was actually apretty good movie.
(56:33):
She did uh, you know she didgreat, you know in in that, so
like she knew how to be able toact.
So fucking use her, you checkher act, yes, and the fact that
she is the headlining, like her,her character is the name of
the movie right, yes, and I Iget it that, like a lot of you
(56:53):
know, like, yes, she got topbilling and, um, you know a lot
of the, the marketing behind herand everything.
It was because because theplane crash right, it was
because she died just after shegot done filming her parts, and
I get that and you know it is agood way to be able to, uh,
create a tribute for her andeverything along those lines and
it was the right thing to do onthat.
(57:15):
But they also just like barelyutilized her at all, like she
would have been a footnote asfar as this movie was concerned,
even though it's called Queenof the fucking damned.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
Right, right and and yeah, and then again, you know,
spending the whole movie talkingabout how she, how she single
handedly, could have laid wasteto the entire human race.
And yeah, I mean it's.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
It's like you know, and I've, I've used this, uh,
I've used this bitch for, like,other movies that have done this
same fucking thing, but theyspent, you know.
So, you know, movie is 101minutes, right, they have a
particular demographic thatthey're going after, which would
have been, you know, if you'rethinking, add generation, they
were going after, you know,teenagers, early 20s.
(58:07):
You know, those kind of peopleis, uh, is who they were going
after.
Their specific demographicwasn't the subculture that they
were trying to.
You know that they werestealing shit from.
They were trying to go likemainstream success and going off
of, uh, you know, like, as youmentioned earlier, the, the
jocks and the other people thatwent to this movie, that's who
they were trying to appeal to.
Their attention span is goingto be roughly 90 minutes.
(58:31):
So it's like they did all ofthis fucking buildup.
They hit way too close to that90 minute mark and they went oh
shit, we've got to blow our loadnow, like we've done all of
this fucking buildup to it.
We've got to be our load now,like we've.
We've done all of this fuckingbuildup to it.
We've got to be done now,otherwise we're going to lose
our target audience.
They're going to start to getbored and they're going to
fucking leave because they Godforbid they just they sit still
(58:54):
for 90 fucking minutes and Iknow that makes me sound very
get off my lawn ish, especiallyin the the, especially in this
day and age when we're dealingwith the TikTok generation,
where they can't even watch avideo for 60 seconds, let alone
sit and watch a movie for 90minutes.
It's a different medium.
I'm not going to get on thatbitch Anyway.
But it's like they got to thispoint where they realized shit,
(59:18):
we're about to lose our targetaudience and they just bam.
They ended it immediately atthat point because they knew
that they were out of time iskind of how it was, or at least
that's how it feels.
Speaker 2 (59:31):
No, I'm sure that that's what it was.
I mean, how many times have weseen that in other movies, where
, where it's like they just puttoo much in for too much of it
and then like, oh shit, we gotta, we gotta end it.
Now it's, it's a damn shame.
It's a damn shame.
(59:52):
I guess it's a shit.
Can we?
Can we just, can we just leavequeen of the damned at.
It's a queen of the damn shamed, it's a queen of the damn shame
.
We into the damn shame, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Yeah, queen of the damn shame.
Queen of the damn shame, yeah,yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Dad joke.
Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
My, my producer's making fun of me for being old.
Now I mean, yeah, that's okay.
Well, yeah, I I.
I mean again, like I said, I Ihate this movie and there are
(01:00:28):
parts of, there are parts aboutthis movie being made and
existing that I do love, but goddamn, this movie, it's, it's
total shit, absolute shit, andthe one thing is still good.
I have, I have on my iphone, Ihave the, the fucking soundtrack
you know, downloaded and savedas its own playlist and thank
God for that.
But Jesus, the rest of thismovie.
Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
There are plenty of shitty movies out there that had
good soundtracks.
This is one of them.
Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
And there's yeah, maybe we'll have to do a special
edition of MovieRx episodewhere we just talk about movies
with good soundtracks there yougo, yeah yeah, we'll do one of
those episodes good movies withgood soundtracks or shitty
movies with good soundtracks wecan just compare and contrast
(01:01:15):
okay, all right, there you goyou know, um, yeah, because I
mean that's that we've had two,two movies now that we've talked
about that had, uh, that hadreally amazing soundtracks, this
one in Hackers, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Yep, yeah Hackers was really good.
Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
Yeah, it was a good soundtrack, anyway, uh.
So yeah, I'm uh, I'm going togo ahead and and step off on
this one.
I'm going to let you, let yourap about some of what you got
going on.
Tell me, tell me about yourstuff.
Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Yeah, all right, so let's see here.
Yeah, so I mentioned Imentioned earlier, you know
music, kind of part of a bigpart of my background, so you
know, if you're interested inhearing you know any of the loud
angry sounds.
You know.
So, first off, you know any ofthe loud angry sounds um you
know.
So first off, you know the.
The main band is uh sisterscarlet.
Um you can find, uh, you knowfind us on uh sister scarlet
(01:02:13):
musiccom.
Otherwise um other musicprojects would be, uh, one of
them, the mortal desire umd-e-z-i-R-E, that's more of the
more angry metal.
You know kind of kind of stuffon that stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
As far as my stuff goes, if, if you have a movie
that you want to bitch about, goahead and give me a, send me a
message.
You can email me at contact atmovie dash R-X dot com.
You can also send me a text orleave me a voicemail at uh
402-519-5790.
Uh, if, uh, if you don't wantto be on the show but you still
(01:02:51):
want to get your two cents putin, you can always just uh, you
know, write me a couple ofparagraphs about something that
you want to bitch about, andmaybe it's me and somebody else
can talk about it and I can justread your, read your thoughts
on air.
Other than that, go watch somemore movies.
Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
Hopefully they're not bad ones and we'll see you at
the next appointment.
See you, outro Music.
Hello and welcome to MovieRx Bad Medicine, where good
people talk about bad moviesand ugly movie culture.
I am your host, Dr Benjamin,and today co-hosting is one who
knows music and goth culture,Derek.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome, Derek.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hello, it's good to have you back on, and it's
always good to have you on for abad medicine.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, yeah, everybody loves you know.
Yeah, let's bring on the crankyfucker.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Let's bring on that cranky Irish guy.
Yeah, we already have a crankyfucker on the podcast, my
producer pointed out.
But what better than two ofthem to complain about Queen of
the Damned?
Today we're talking about Queenof the Damned, released in 2002
(01:08):
, rated R, I guess.
Rated R.
Parents, don't let your kidswatch this movie, not because
it's rated R, but just becauseit's a bad movie Directed by
Michael Reimer, very looselywritten by Anne Rice and a
couple other people that nobodycares about Stars Stuart
(01:31):
Townsend, marguerite Moreau andAaliyah.
So that's kind of what we gotfor our movie today.
Queen of the Damned.
I guess really the if I were togive a synopsis for this movie
a vampire is asleep for a longtime and he wakes up because of
rock music and then he wants tobe a rock star and then he
(01:56):
pisses off all the othervampires because he sings about
being a vampire and he starts afight with other vampires.
I guess I mean really it'srelatively valid yeah, I mean
it's.
So I guess, jumping right intothis, the there there are a lot
of things that this movie had somuch potential for.
(02:17):
Um, yeah, but the the problemwith this movie is that the
reason why it couldn't live upto its potential, I think,
really starts with the fact thatthis is not one book.
Uh, this is based off of two ofAnne Rice's books, just kind of
jammed together.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, it just very poorly slammed together into a
90 minute of Anne Rice'sbeautiful books.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Hate fucked and made this asshole of a movie and it
was.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
It could have been so much more, yeah, so so the
first this is a perfect exampleof like, when, when, movie, when
movie studios, movie companies,when they just when, they just
shit all over a particularproduct, where they bought the
rights to Anne Rice's books backin the 80s, and they did a good
(03:17):
thing with Interview.
Interview with a Vampire was anexcellent movie, it was a
classic, it was a great fuckingmovie in spite of time.
Tom cruise, it was a greatmovie and they, they wanted to
come out with a uh, with asequel.
I mean, really, it was going tobe the trilogy, right, it was
going to be, you know, interview, and then you were going to
have the vampire list at andthen it was going to be queen of
(03:39):
the damned.
Um, they dicked around too longwith, for whatever reason, they
dicked around too long and theywere coming up to where there
was a clause.
They bought the rights and thenthere was a clause in like the
year 2000,.
If I remember correctly, all ofthe rights were going to revert
back to Anne Rice, to where shewas going to own the stories
(04:00):
again, or the rights again,again, or the rights again.
And so they went oh shit, we'reout of time.
And so they just fucking, justhand, jammed those two together
and said, fuck it, we're gonnado both of these and, and you
know, put them all out andhammer it out yeah
Speaker 2 (04:13):
yeah yeah, and I mean and that's that's a key thing
for for our listeners that maybedon't read uh, to remember is
that this this is in referenceto the first three books, uh,
written by, by ann rice in inthis context and that's uh,
(04:35):
interview with the vampire wasthe first one, uh, then, after
that one, the vampire list at,and then came the book called
queen of the damned, um, and ifyou've watched interview with a
vampire, it's uh, uh, oh, Idon't remember what year that
came out 94.
Um, yes, 94.
(04:57):
Um, it came out and it, it.
It was a good movie, um, and,and I mean it, it was a good
movie, um, and and I mean it wasloosely based off of the book
and but but it still, it stillstayed true enough that it made
a good movie, um, so I recommendwatching interview with a
vampire and then after thatshould have been the vampire
(05:21):
Lestat, and this movie opens upvery much like like the book
would have um, because thevampire Lestat focuses on on
Lestat waking up and startinghis band and becoming a rock
star and and and doing that,that whole.
You know that context of the ofthe story.
(05:43):
But they, but they mixedeverything, uh, they.
They took a third book uh, thatshould have been its own
standalone movie uh, a huge book, uh, and and just crammed it
all into into a very smalltimeframe.
Uh, I don't remember how longthis movie was, but it.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
It's about 101 minutes, if I remember correctly
.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Somewhere around there.
Yeah, about an hour and a half.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I made a bitchy reference about how long the
movie was.
Yeah, 101 total run time.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, and it's like really Like you can't Look at
all of those other things thatthey made, that they made out of
books, like the differentmovies and things that they made
out of books.
There are some movies that theymade, three movies to cover one
book.
You know it can go that way,but it doesn't.
(06:42):
It doesn't go the other wayaround.
You can't, you can't cover twobooks in in one movie, um, and
and this one is a perfectexample of not doing that very
well um, so yeah, it's looselybased off of the Anne Rice novel
.
I like how you have the looselyin all caps on there.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Cause I mean, and it's the, you know, it's the age
old thing of, like any moviethat's based off of a book,
right, you're gonna bitch.
Almost you know like inevitably, everybody's going to wind up
bitching because it didn't, itdidn't stick to it.
Right, you know it, it didn'tstick to the book in the novel.
(07:26):
That aren't going to translateto the screen and, ok, sure,
that's fine.
This was not one of thosesituations, though.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I mean, they essentially gutted the, the, you
know, they essentially guttedthe vampire Lestat and they,
they really like cliff notes outthe, the, uh, the queen of the
damned right, well, and, and Imean that's, see, and I don't
know, I think, I think it'sreally unfair to say that that,
(07:53):
like it's that you'reautomatically going to have this
hatred for, for books or formovies based on books, like, I
mean, there are some that thatdon't follow anywhere close to,
uh, the original, like um, uh,the first one that comes to mind
is I am legend.
Have you ever read the book?
Yep, I am legend.
Yep, it's more like vampiresthan zombies, you know, uh, and
(08:18):
they're sentient, they talk tohim and things like that.
I mean's just all.
It's a completely differentstory.
I still, I still like themindependently.
Like I Am Legend as a movie iscompletely different, right, but
this is not one of those cases,because Anne Rice I mean she's
(08:39):
kind of the queen of vampirewriting yes, I mean she's the
Bram Stoker of her time and totake her works and to part them
out so much and try to make acomprehensive story out of them,
(08:59):
it just seems like a damn shame.
But I mean we can hammer onthat all fucking night and just
say it in 5,000 different waysUm, the, the.
As far as some of the, some ofthe stuff that goes with this
movie, uh, the budget, uh,you've got on here 35 million.
(09:20):
Box office was 45.4 million, sothey made their money back.
The thing that kind ofsurprised me about this movie
was the amount of people thatwent to see it.
That were not the people ofthis culture.
Well, yeah yeah, the amount ofjocks and rich kids that I saw
(09:42):
going to this movie surprisedthe hell out of me.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Part of it was they were.
I mean, they were cashing in ona particular subculture.
A lot of the marketing, eventhough she's only in the movie
for like 15 minutes, all of themarketing is around Aaliyah.
All of it was around Aaliyahbeing in the movie.
Now, granted, she also, shedied just before the movie came
(10:05):
out.
You know, there, like, therewas, all of the marketing was
based around her.
So you had a lot of mainstreampeople that are like, oh, yeah,
yeah, I'm going to go to thismovie because of this chick, or
the fact that Jonathan Davis ofK was uh, heavily involved with
the, uh, the soundtrack.
So, corn, in that time period,they were just starting to, you
(10:29):
know, they were starting to hittheir mainstream run as well,
and so, uh, you had a lot oflike the, you know the, the guys
that would listen to, you knowcorn, in the weight room, uh,
you know to to get their, gettheir jock up if you will.
Uh, you know they, uh, theywould be.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Oh yeah, no man, you know the the to to get their,
get their jock up, if you will.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Uh, you know they, uh , they would.
Oh, yeah, no man, you know the,the, the screamy guy is all
over this fucking thing.
And then they've got the, uh,they've.
They've got the hot Aaliyahchick, that's all over the place
.
Yeah, I'm totally going to seethis.
You know the vampire movie?
Yeah, man, I'm, I'm with it,I'm with you're not shut up.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Right, right, and, and it was.
It was really weird for me toto see that in in the theater.
Um, cause, this was, this wasone of the few that I got to go
see, uh, around this timeframe.
I, I, uh, didn't get to go tothe movie theater a whole lot in
2002.
Um just just broke, so I didn'thave money to go to theaters,
(11:24):
but uh, but this was one of thefew that I made sure to go see
in the theater.
Um, and I was just surroundedby unfamiliar people, uh, which
weirded me out.
But, um, but what I did?
Like, uh, like, and part of thereason why it surprised me, the
people were there.
Um, um, before this movie cameout, I owned the soundtrack.
(11:46):
Oh my god, what a soundtrack oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
No, the soundtrack's fucking great man, like it is.
Uh, for anybody that was a fanof, uh, late 90s, early 2000s,
uh, new metal and alternative,uh, you know like heavy, angry
but dark, weird kind of yeah, itwas all over the place.
I mean you had, you had deathtones, you had like a heart, you
had death tones.
Yeah, I mean everybody Chester.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Bennington screaming for for it in place of Jonathan
Davis.
Oh, my God, you know the uh andand the band itself sounded
like corn.
So you had, you know, so youhad the Korn sound, with all of
the David Draymond singing overthat.
Oh, it was like a hybrid of allof the best parts of this angry
(12:36):
white boy music from the early2000s just thrown onto one CD.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
And it was perfection for for that new metal.
Jonathan davis and richardgibbs I mean they, they really
knocked it out of the park witha great fucking soundtrack.
I mean they're like you had alot of things where this should
have been good, but you know,the the soundtrack is like the
only good thing of the uh ofmovie.
And I mean when, if you've gota movie where the guy wakes up
from you know 100 years of sleepto you know decide he's going
(13:14):
to join a new metal band, thefucking music better be top
notch, like well and it betterbe made by somebody of the
caliber of Jonathan Davis or,you know, any one of the rest of
the people on the soundtrack.
Whatever genre you're decidingthat you're going to cash in on,
yeah, you better have somebodythat's like top of the food
chain, that's that's creatingthe music for that.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Right and and they had.
They had that.
They had the cooperation fromall of the right people.
They had that.
They had the cooperation fromall of the right people.
Um, now the here's.
Here's where I feel like it's agoddamn shame they had all of
these people collaborate in thestudio for making all this music
.
Why the fuck did none of themhave any sort of a cameo in the
(14:01):
movie?
There's one, yeah, there's onereally important one, that made
a, that made a small bit part inthe movie.
But like, why wasn't mansonjust somewhere like doing doing
a fucking interview about youknow this, this guy that he
knows you know, list at.
You know, yeah, you know, Ireally have a lot of respect for
(14:23):
what he's doing for the, forthe you know genre or whatever.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Like, I mean just any number of these people.
We need an emaciated, creepy,pale fucker to hang out in the
background.
Hey manson, what are you doingright.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
It's not like he had anything better going on in 2002
.
You know, fucking jesterbennington, david draymond, uh,
wayne static like any of thoseguys could have been in that
movie in any capacity and itwould have just been amazing
Shit.
Put a guitar in Wayne Static'shand and make him a part of the
band.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
You know, like I mean , you know, like, like Wayne,
could have had his hair down andyou wouldn't have recognized
him.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Right or anything but , but they didn't do any of that
and it feels like it was wastedopportunity.
Yeah a lot of wastedopportunity, a lot of great
people to be able to make anappearance in a way that could
have been, if not enlighteningfor them, it could have changed
(15:20):
their career, I mean I don'tknow how much.
Okay, so when, when I went togo watch this movie again, I
noticed that I didn't own it andI'm not gonna lie, I bought it.
I didn't just rent it, I boughtit I was.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
I was tempted to, I was tempted to submit you a bill
for my three dollars back.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I can totally.
I can totally reimburse you the, but the, I mean the.
The whole thing with it isthat's like there, there are
parts of this movie that that,even though the movie is so
goddamn bad, there are parts ofit that I can't let go.
The fact that this movieimmortalized Aaliyah was
(16:05):
important to me.
The only thing that could havemade this movie better is to
immortalize Chester Bennington,so that now, in 2005, I could go
back and I could see himperforming or even just talking
somewhere performing or you know, even just talking somewhere.
(16:28):
You know in at any at any givenpoint that I just want to
recall it and have it up on myTV and that I can see that
person again.
Um, and that's that's kind ofthe reason why I bought it was
because there there are.
There are, in some ways, thingsthat this movie can do for me
that some other things can't,but that doesn't mean that I
(16:49):
didn't have at least a littlebit of buyer's remorse after I
hit the purchase button.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Because god damn this movie.
And again it's almost like theuh, the alien resurrection thing
all over again.
Michael Reimer Michael Reimeris great.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well, yeah, yeah, I mean he's, yeah, he, he did a
lot of really, you know, he'sdone a lot of really good things
.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, babylon five.
Man, like I mean, just ask mydad about how much you know
Michael Reimer has to do withBabylon five.
He fucking much.
You know michael reimer has todo with babylon 5, he fucking
loves it, you know?
Uh, the, what else you got onhere?
You got the american horrorstory asylum, jessica jones, I
mean shit.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, michael reimer was a hell of a you know,
jessica jones was fucking great,like he was, you know, as a tv
director.
He was really really good, um,but his movies weren't really
much to write home about, and Imean this one was definitely
schlock.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
But I think there were just so many problems even
before he got into it that therewas only so much he was going
to be able to polish the turd.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Right, and I mean, I don't know whose job it is to
decide that.
If it's, if it's the directoror the producer or who, well,
you know, if you start off, witha, with a shit screenplay, then
you've only, you've only got somuch you can build off of from
(18:19):
there.
But at what level do do theystart?
At what level and where doessomebody take the blame for not
even consulting Anne Rice?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
That's the movie studio.
Yeah, that's the you know thatwas the studio themselves where
they're like.
Nope.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Like I mean, wherever they got the script from, you
know, the people who wrote thescript themselves should have
been in contact with Anne Rice,the studio who brings it up, you
know, and says you know, we'regoing to make the movie, the
script themselves should havebeen in contact with Anne Rice.
Uh, the, the studio who bringsit up you know, and says you
know we're going to make themovie, should have consulted in
rice the producer.
Any of them should haveconsulted with Anne Rice.
(18:57):
The fucking director shouldhave had Anne Rice on speed dial
.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Um, she even offered to like work for free.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
She offered to work for free and they, they were
just like no, we don't wantanything to do with her.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
She didn't have any rights to it and she was willing
to do it for nothing, like, andand let's just say how awesome
that is for like and kind ofrefreshing for an author to be
that way.
Imagine that from JK Rowling.
I'm just saying, like it's nothappening.
This, this woman was willing todo it for nothing and and
(19:37):
nobody talked to her first, andI think that's a.
I think that's probably thebiggest reason why why this
thing was so bad.
Because I think that's probablythe biggest reason why this
thing was so bad, because Ithink that if anybody could have
abbreviated the vampire Lestatenough to make way for Queen of
(19:58):
the Damned to be enough of therest of the story, I think it
would have been Anne Rice.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean she knew enough of the you
know she, she knew enough of thebackstory.
I mean she, obviously that shecould have maybe had been able
to find enough Shortcuts, right,because the main thing of the
vampire Lestat is like, yeah,you've got, he wakes up and then
he, he decides like he's goingto join a band and shit, right,
(20:27):
but then it's really him writinghis autobiography and it's
talking about Lestat's story andhow he, how he came up and how
he got turned, and you know his,his entire background, before
interview four, uh, interview,Right, and then it even goes
into interview from, like, hisperspective uh, you know, of how
(20:48):
Louis was kind of being a,being a cunt, or you know how,
uh, how Claudia was a pain inthe ass, or, uh, you know, hey,
maybe they shouldn't have lit meon fire, uh, you know, kind of
a thing like that, that kind ofstuff.
Like, uh, you know from hisperspective, um, you know that
all of that is in the vampirelist.
(21:10):
That and I can understand someof that is not going to fit for
what you're trying to tell with,uh, with the story of this
movie, but she would have beenable to find a more intelligent
way to condense that down, um,instead of just completely
gutting it, because they theycovered nothing of the stats
background, uh, where he camefrom, uh, his upbringing, uh how
(21:31):
he, how he had, uh attracted,uh, the, the vampire, uh magnus,
not marius, uh how he attractedmagnus, that uh, they turned
him um, any of that shit.
They they covered none of it.
Uh, it was just he woke up andhe's with marius and marius is
the one that turned him and uh,like everything else was just so
(21:54):
surface level that the littlebits and pieces in the movie
that they did show you oflistat's background, you didn't
give a shit, because you, you,you didn't identify with the
actor or the character at all.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
You didn't give a fuck right, and and that, in
essence, is the root of why, ofwhy that it's so difficult to
really get into this movie isyou don't care about anybody.
Uh, you don't.
You don't care about marius.
You don't know where mariuscame from.
Um, you know the, the, theoriginal character, you know, I
(22:25):
mean you, you start to knowthings like.
You know that they were, um, uh, a roman senator, and, and you
know all this other stuff, the,the way back before story, uh,
and, and all of that.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
You don't, you don't get any of that in any part of
this movie now, and what'swhat's disappointing is like
yeah, using marius as an example, I mean that, that's vincent
perez, that guy's a hell of anactor man.
I mean that that guy, I mean hewas the uh, he was the crow in
city of angels.
Uh, you know, like that guy's,that guy's an awesome fucking
actor and was just seriouslyunderutilized.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, and I mean, and well, I mean you, and that's
that's another thing that reallysucks about hating this movie.
So much is that there are.
There are good performances,decent performances from good
actors that were just poorlydirected.
Um, and I mean, well, aaliyah,like she could have, she could
(23:28):
have been so much more than shewas in this movie.
Um, stuart Townsend, I mean, hewas, he was probably about, he
was probably about the mostspectacular of the regular faces
on screen.
Um, even though, even though hewas directed to be, the only
way that I can describe it isthat he's more, he's more cliche
(23:53):
than cliche, like it's almostlike he's overly vampireized, uh
, in in a way that that it, Iit's, I don't, I don't know how
to explain it.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
No, they, you know like yeah, uh, you know, uh,
listat's character, um alia'scharacter and uh, marius, like
those.
Those three definitely werelike like cosplay vampire you
know, kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Really like like schlock, uh, you know where they
were, just really like goingfor it and then some, or it was
almost like a caricature.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah, Like I mean, cause, in essence, a vampire is
going to be somewhat cliche, nomatter what.
Like I mean, it's a vampire, sothere's automatically going to
be an air of of arrogance andand that that you know, dramatic
pause and those weird stancesand and all that.
(24:49):
That's, that's a part of beinga vampire.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Right and to a certain degree it was just more
so.
Right, more so, right, uh, to acertain degree you could argue
it.
Uh, if you remember, from likeinterview uh with uh armand,
where he says that, uh, you area representative of your era,
right, you know the the each ofthese uh each of these vampires
that wind up living forever.
Uh, you're, you're essentially,you know, you are the snapshot
(25:15):
of your particular time that youcame from.
So if you look at, like youknow, marius, where he would
have come from, like old, oldworld, then yeah, okay, he's
probably going to look a littleweird when you drop him into
1999, death Valley, right, orLestat, where you know he was
very much from like like hewasn't French aristocracy.
(25:38):
Obviously you know he's brokeass, but he came from like that,
like he wasn't frencharistocracy.
Obviously you know he's brokeass, but he came from like that
particular time period.
So he's going to have, you know, kind of like the, the ruffled
you know ruffled collars, kindof an attitude, uh, to how he
does things, like, okay, fine,you could maybe excuse that a
little bit if you're tryingreally, really hard right to try
to excuse some of this shit,but no, most of it's just, it's
(26:00):
schlock as uh, you know as, asyour producer put in the chat,
here is telenovela telenovelayeah, it's, it's just, I mean it
.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, overly done, overly done, cliches that that
made it almost uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable, um, and andtotally unbelievable tired
tropes yeah um, but the uh, butprobably one of the uh, one of
the most astute things that I'veread.
(26:29):
Read about this movie that Ireally, really liked you put on
here.
Um, you put the whole movie islike one long music video.
That forgot it was a musicvideo.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, yep, explain that Again, they well, so they,
they had the bad-ass soundtrack,right, you know they, they had
the, the bad-ass soundtrack forthe whole thing.
And then they it was like, allright, cool, We've got five
great fucking songs, we need tobuild a movie around this.
And it was almost like, youknow, like the Michael Jackson
(27:01):
videos back in the eightieswhere you'd have like a 25
minute long like mini movie kindof a thing.
That was, you know, just likemaybe three or four of his music
videos that were tied togetherand there might be some sort of
a shitty plot line that would gothrough.
Uh, that would go along with it.
That's what this feels like,except it's 101 minutes of
shitty storyline to go alongwith the music video.
(27:23):
Um, because anytime they wouldhave something where, like,
there was no dialogue, they madesure that they had something
from the soundtrack that youknow that was covering, uh, the,
the exposition, or that wascovering the lack of dialogue or
the movement around the city orwhatever, which is typical in a
movie.
But when you have somethinglike this, it was more like fuck
(27:48):
, we don't have anythingintelligent to put here.
Play the John Davis thing.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Play the John Davis thing.
We're out of ideas.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
We're out of ideas.
We're out of ideas.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Play you put john davis on there, you know, and
then as soon as he starts doingthe uh, the twist rap, he's like
oh, no shit, no, never mind, no, we can't use that yeah, no,
that's good, um the well, and Idon't know, I think I think that
uh, uh, a big part of it for me.
(28:21):
Um, they, they played all ofthe all of the movie from the
soundtrack, in the backgroundthroughout the movie and, and
with it were there, were, itfelt like they just in a lot of
places.
They just left the camerasomewhere rolling and they were
(28:42):
like, oh hey, forget, you know,go turn off that camera.
Oh shit, well, we might, as weuse the film, so we might as
well use it in the movie.
You know, like I mean, therewere just so many shots that
just didn't make sense, so manythings that just weren't
compelling to look at visually.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
It was very much, I mean so like this, this movie,
you know, like the, the booksobviously are big things that
would be referenced in gothculture, right, right.
And in the late 90s, early2000s, goth culture was becoming
more of like a mainstream thing.
You had stuff like the craftcharmed uh blade underworld was
(29:22):
going to come out in anotheryear or two, uh, like that.
Like it was really kind ofgetting bigger in the, the
mainstream, and so like somebodywanted to capitalize on that,
right into a cash grab on it.
And this is very much like likesomebody was trying to write a
goth movie that had no fuckingidea what goth culture was
actually like and they were justusing all of the different
(29:45):
stereotypes that they could grabonto and try to make some sort
of a cohesive movie out of it.
And of course it's not going tofucking work.
And I'm not saying anythingagainst Charmed, like I see it,
all capital letters here.
I love Charmed, charm.
Like.
I'm not saying anything againstit don't get me wrong.
I I'm not.
(30:06):
I'm not saying anything against.
Uh, you know, some of those, uh, some of those vehicles.
I was a, I was a big fan of someof that stuff.
Like I liked blade.
I own all of the fuckingunderworld movies.
I thought it was great, youknow.
I thought it was good.
It's not a bad thing when yourculture becomes mainstream.
It becomes bad, though, whenyour culture becomes mainstream
and then the mainstream shits onit.
Uh, like when they when theywater it down and they turn it
(30:29):
into something that can beconsumed by people that don't
give a shit about your culture.
That's that.
You know that.
That's the problem that I havefor that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Well, and I feel like that was such a such a thing in
the late late nineties, earlytwo, thousands was um, a lot of
people struggling to try tounderstand the goth culture
without being a part of it?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, any sort of like uh alternative culture.
If you're not, if you're not ofit, and if you're not going to,
uh, listen to like accurateadvisors of that particular
culture, you're going to makesome particular assumptions that
are going to make you seem likean asshole.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Right, um, it kind of reminds me of um, something
else that, like this, is almostlike a late nineties, early two
thousands version of what.
What ended up happening in thelate 2000s with, uh, 50 shades
of gray.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, that that book came out and then suddenly
everybody was an snm freak andit's like right, and the snm
culture was like, and everybodywas like what the fuck you know?
Speaker 2 (31:35):
like yeah, it's kind of like an early version of that
and a little more innocent, andI don't know, could you really
say that this movie is as bad asFifty Shades of Grey?
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I don't know, I never watched it.
I don't have a clue.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Ok, yeah, ok, I've had nothing to do with that,
anything that you could imaginethat Fifty Shades of Grey would
have turned into.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
I read the books.
Right, I read the 50 shades ofgray books because I didn't feel
like I could.
I could argue about how muchthey suck, unless I did Nah I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I'm pretty sure I could still come up with an
argument without having tofucking read it.
Oh no, no, Like once you'veread it, then you.
Then you have every argumentthat you need.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Uh, I don't need to put myself through that.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
It's pretty bad.
If you ever need any talkingpoints I don't know that it's
relevant anymore I can give youa few Now.
Let's see here.
Oh, I like some of your otherstuff here, but I want to wait
on those because that's allabout the concert.
Tell me, want to wait on those,because that's all about the
concert.
Um, tell me, is there are thereany scenes in this movie that
(32:44):
you could say that you enjoyed?
Speaker 1 (32:45):
not many to be not many honest oh no, um, I, a lot
of it was really bad, a lot ofit was just really kind of tired
trope that they were going offof.
It was bad stereotypes, tiredass.
You know, like I said, tiredass tropes that that have been
(33:07):
done a number of times.
No, you know, they're really.
If I, if I'm thinkingcritically on it, no, I don't
really think that there'sactually anything that, uh, you
know, any like actual scene thatI legitimately enjoyed I
thought it was funny that uhjohn davis was selling scalp
(33:30):
tickets.
That was funny john davis as thescalper was.
Um, that was mildly amusing, Iwill give you that.
Uh, you know, mildly amusingthe the thing.
Give you that, you know, mildlyamusing.
The thing of that was it wascompletely improvised, he had no
lines or anything in that, sohe just went for it and nobody
knew what he was going to say orwhat he was going to actually
do or anything like that.
(33:50):
So like that was kind of funny,where you're just like all
right, here's John Davis, butthey don't even show his face.
All you see is just like theback of his head, and then you
like you hear his voice.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, Yep, and uh uh.
Well, you see the back of hishead in the hair, which tells
you everything you need to know.
Um the uh, yeah, I, I don'tknow.
I I really struggled with witha lot of it.
Um the uh, I I did there were.
(34:24):
There were a couple of scenesthat I did enjoy uh, both of
which involved music, when, whenhe was playing for the statues,
that was some cool violin, Iloved it.
Uh.
The other one was the scenejust after he drank the
violinist's blood and he tookhis.
(34:45):
He took his skill with a violinand then he went over to the
fire, to the campfire with the,with the girl with the viola and
the and the dude with the luteand, and he started playing
violin with them, just afterbeing told that he can't.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
That music, that music I jam every time, Like
when I'm watching that movie I'mjust like that is fucking cool,
Like I want to hear a fulllength production of that.
Uh, but other than that, likeseriously, I I normally I can
pick out a few things that I'mlike that's cool, that's cool,
you know, or whatever, but withthis one it really is just it's
(35:23):
all music, which I think reallyI think we established right
from the beginning.
The only thing this movie gotright was the music.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Because that was the only you know.
Again, like I said, if you'regoing to make any sort of a, any
sort of a movie that's basedoff of a subculture Again, like
I said, if you're going to makeany sort of a, any sort of a
movie that's based off of asubculture, and if you don't
bother to bring in any sort ofintelligent like advisors of
that particular subculture, thenyou're going to be screwed.
And that was the only one.
They did right was bringing inJohn Davis and the particular
musicians.
(35:53):
They did that actuallyunderstood.
Ok, we've got a guy that'sjoining Well.
Ok, the book was written in the80s, so he was going to join
like a hair metal band.
Well, we can't fucking do thatbecause it's not the 80s anymore
.
We'll have him join a new metalband because new metal people
are dark and scary like vampires.
So sure, we'll do that.
And so they bring in a newmetal guy to write the fucking
(36:15):
soundtrack.
That was the smartest thingthat they did.
That was the only smart thingthey did.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
So, on your notes, here, I want you, I want you to
lead us through this part ofyour notes the concert Ah, yeah,
Okay so so you, you go througha whole lot of nerd, uh, nerdy
music, snob shit here, uh, Iwill let you go.
I might interject every now andagain.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Right, right, uh, so you know just like a little bit
of you know like background onthat.
So I'm, I'm a musician, uh, youknow, and uh, I've, I've, I've
played guitar for like 25 yearsand uh, I've, I've been in bands
, I've been in metal bands, I'mcurrently in bands, uh, you know
, it's, it's, it's a big part of, like, my, my background and
what I do.
(37:02):
So I am going to be thatasshole that if I'm watching a
movie and there's somebodyplaying on the screen, I am that
guy where I'm looking at theguitar and I'm going he's not
playing that.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Or he's not actually singing that that's.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
That's lip syncing, or those amps aren't actually
being utilized correctly.
Because that's just how myfucking brain works.
I'm that kind of a prick.
That's why Ben has me on thisshow Truth.
Yeah, so going through theconcert, okay.
So the big thing right off thebat that stuck out in my brain
(37:40):
is product placement.
So you've got product placementfor Marshall, yamaha and Ibanez
.
That makes sense to a certaindegree.
Where Yamaha, of course, ifyou're having keyboards,
synthesizers, things like that,yamaha is probably who you're
going to wind up going to for alot of that shit, because they
were very popular at the time.
They're still very popular forthat kind of stuff.
(38:01):
Ibanez same thing.
A lot of the guitars that wereused by people in new metal
bands.
They were going to be usingIbanez both for their guitars
and also for the bass guitar.
That kind of falls in line.
Marshall on the other hand, uhso, mar, like, so Marshall amps
(38:24):
are huge.
Okay, uh, you know Marshallamps are, you know they are a uh
like you don't fuck with them.
They're like one of the mainnames when it comes to it.
You see, uh, you know you seesomebody with a Marshall amp,
even if you're not a musician.
You're like fuck yeah, Uhyou're like fuck yeah, because
it's what you're going torecognize.
They're an institution as faras music equipment is concerned,
(38:47):
Right up there with somebodythat's rocking a Gibson Les Paul
.
It's just immediatelyidentifiable, even if you don't
know how to play the instrument.
However, in late 90s, early2000s, marshall was having
issues with being able to keepup with the trends and being
able to keep up with the Utes.
The new kids that wanted thesuper low, super chunky kind of
(39:11):
sounds.
A lot of that shit was going toMesa Boogie.
It was another amp company.
A lot of that shit was going tothem.
Not a whole lot of people wereusing Marshalls.
I remember specifically aninterview with a guitarist where
he was like I had a Marshall inthe early 2000s and in that
(39:31):
time period you couldn't givethem away cheap.
Uh, you know he, he had a jcm800, which is what they were
using in the movie, and theywere dirt cheap.
He's like dude, if you youcould have it like in the front
seat of your car and left yourdoor unlocked and you'd come
back and like no, somebodywouldn't have stolen your
marshall, you'd have anothermarshall in your car, like you
(39:54):
couldn't give them away.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
You know like they were.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
They were just all over the place because you
couldn't fucking get.
You know you couldn't get ridof them.
Um, but nobody, you know peopledidn't like using them for that
style of music.
So seeing, like big-assmarshall stacks on there and, uh
, for a new metal band,immediately I'm like, nah,
bullshit.
Um, you know that's, that'sjust product placement, where
marshall was like, okay, we needmoney and this movie is
(40:17):
supposed to have a shitload ofmarketing behind it.
Fuck it Please, for the love ofChrist, let us be in your movie
and, you know, have us do theproduct placement, because then
stupid people will buy our ampsbecause we need the money, yeah,
so you know, yeah, you've gotthe stacks of Marshalls that
definitely weren't good for thegenre.
Yamaha fit, that was fine.
(40:38):
They did not need two differentkeyboard players, though.
That was a little fuckingridiculous.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
But whatever, well, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
There was quite a bit of synthesized shit in that
music.
Shit is the right word.
Anyway, ibanez being used forthe guitars that, like I
mentioned, like I mentionedearlier that tracks uh, that
that actually goes in line.
One of the guys in there was uhwas actually playing, like I
could.
You know, I could identify itfrom uh, from where it was on
the screen.
He was playing uh in Ibanezuniverse, which was a seven
(41:10):
string guitar that was designedby Steve by and the those were.
Those were the guitars that wereactually used by Head Monkey
when they started Korn, whenthey were first looking for
7-strings because nobody elseused them.
Like you know, steve Vai, youknow, designed the 7-string
guitars and the Ibanez Universeguitars and he was the only
(41:32):
fucking guy that used them.
And then, when Head Monkeywanted to, you know, do like a
low sound and they were lookingaround, they saw the 7 strings
and they were dirt cheap.
That's why they bought them,because they were cheap as shit,
because nobody fucking usedthem.
Everybody was like why are yougoing to use a 7 string?
That's stupid, you don't needthose.
Learn how to play 6 stringsfirst.
(41:53):
That's going to be a wholeother tangent.
You've got the Saint Angersnare, the snare drum that they
had in there, where it's justgot that annoying fucking ting.
It's like no, that's not what asnare is supposed to sound like
.
Stop that.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
It almost sounds like a marching snare.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Right, yes, but more annoying.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
I would say like a marching snare fucked like yeah,
oh yes, but more annoying, uh,you know.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
I would say like like a marching snare fucked.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
A trash can I was gonna say, with a little more
trash can in it.
Yeah, oh, that's funny.
Yeah, like a marching snarefucked a trash can lid.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Uh, it was just awful .
Um, the, uh, the the bass stack, you know.
Yeah, the the bass amps lookedlike they were using Marshall in
there as well, which, you know,it's pretty rare that you'll be
able to find like a Marshallbass amp, but they do exist.
Lemmy from Motorhead was theonly one cool enough, though, to
have pulled that off.
Everybody else, if you're usinga Marshall bass head, fuck you.
(42:53):
Yeah, I mean that's yeah,that's the, the biggie there.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
On all of the, the, the music side of the other, the
concert, and then the rest ofit is all like, factored in with
the, the actual performancesthemselves well, you've kind of,
you've kind of helped validateme as a, as a bass, as a bassist
, though I don't have a marshallamp, uh, uh, I think what do I
have?
I think it's a, I think I havea PV, but I have three of my
(43:26):
four bases are Ibanez.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
There's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, like Ibanez makes goodbases.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
They do make good bases.
My jazz bass though, of course,is Squire.
So yeah, like now, I noticedthat right here underneath your,
underneath your stuff.
First off, the Mario's fuckinggolf.
Clap that shit.
Oh my God, dude.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, I died on that when he's just you know he's
awkward as shit and you know thecrowd's cheering as they've
killed the vampires that went toattack Lestat and he's like oh
yeah, yeah, yay, yay, Littlepolite little golf clap.
He's like oh yeah, yeah, yay,yay.
Little polite little golf clap.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
It's like goddammit, you deserve so much better.
Yeah, now you have in here theMatrix vampire fights.
Now you were being way nicerwith that than I was.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
As far as the vampire fights go, I mostly meant in
the sense of like, really,really bad, um, like super fast
effects.
You know where they had likethe, uh, like the bad it's
almost like bad vhs tracking.
You know where, like you see,like the motion that's going
along with them and that'ssupposed to designate, like
(44:41):
we're moving super fast and it'sfaster than the eye can
perceive.
Hence the, the, the fuckingmillion dollar man graphics that
we've got to use where it'salmost like you can hear the
like moving supposedly fast yeahsee, for me it was like I.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
I looked at it and I said you know, that's, that's
dated technology from buffy thevampire slayer, and, charmed
like it's, just that is.
That is overutilized intelevision and should never have
been done in a production movie.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Uh, no, because a production movie should actually
have a fucking budget yeah,slow motion movement.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Adding, adding a bunch of like, a bunch of
tracers to slow motion does notmake it fast, like, and and
that's exactly what this was.
It was just a bunch of, youknow, a bunch of tracers behind
slow motion movement and itsucked and it wasn't, it wasn't
appealing to watch, it wasn'texciting, it, I mean, and they
(45:44):
knew it.
You mean, and they knew it.
You know, they knew it, becausethen they started putting the
frames into unnecessary placesso that you couldn't see what
was going on and and all thefights just ended up being
confusing, because you're like,well, what was that like I mean,
um, about, about the only worstframing that they had in all of
(46:04):
the movie than the fights werewhen they put, you know, the
scaffolding that that marius andand fucking listat were sitting
on right on top of listat'sdick.
Uh, I mean, they were, theywere proverbial fucking, you
know pubic hairs for him on thatbillboard I have a feeling that
was kind of done on purpose,like they were trying to
(46:25):
illustrate something.
There was some sort of like youknow, like sub, something that
they were trying to illustratein there and that is the most
emotion that they put into thisfucking movie, the most
intentional thing that theydidat on his own dick.
(46:47):
Yeah, it was bad, but yeah, sowe go a little bit further.
Down here We've got a movie iscalled Queen of the Damned, but
they really just gloss overAkasha and all the backstory
between her and the rest of thevampires.
Uh, and all the backstorybetween her and the rest of the
(47:10):
vampires.
So, um, yeah, they're the, theancients, as they call them in
the movie.
You don't know anything aboutany of them.
Actually, I don't even like Idon't even know where they get
their names yeah, they don't.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
They don't go into the ancients.
They don't talk about thetelemasca.
They, they don't.
They don't talk about, uh,akasha's backstory.
You know, really like none ofit.
They just kind of like glossover.
It's almost like they don'ttalk about the telemaska.
They don't talk about Akasha'sbackstory, you know, really like
none of it.
They just kind of like glossover.
It's almost like a burden ofknowledge where they're just
(47:40):
like you know, yeah, we expectall of you people already know
this shit, so we're not going tobother trying to tell any of
you any of this.
It's like it's actually almostinsulting.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
You know, as the viewer, it's actually almost
insulting you know as the, youknow as the viewer, and I think
what it ended up doing was itjust ended up making a whole
bunch of people out there thatwere like pretending like they
knew what they were talkingabout and just didn't.
Yeah, with this movie.
That was another thing aboutthis movie at the time.
You could tell the people whoknew the story, you could tell
(48:06):
the people who'd read the booksand the people who talked about
the movie as though the moviewere the way that the books went
.
Like because they were so, theywere so starkly different.
Um, and it was always fun.
It was always like when you,when you'd come across somebody
who would argue, who would arguethe point of the movie being
(48:28):
right, you just stop arguingbecause you're like I'm not
going to fucking win this, likeI'm not going to win with this
person.
Um, yeah, I got, I hated thatshit.
Uh, let's see here after theafter party with all the bodies,
worse than frigging Jonestown.
Um, yeah, um, yeah, uh, oh,yeah.
(48:49):
You're a really good point inhere.
Character reference here.
Uh, when Akasha asks Lestat tokill Jesse.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
I'm just now reading the reading the chat.
The oh the side chat.
Yeah, yeah.
Why is she?
Why is she jealous of a mortal?
Speaker 1 (49:13):
right, you know.
Yeah, exactly like you've got.
You know you've got akashawhere, like she's, she's
supposed to be the badass queen,right?
And in the uh um, in the bookshe's a feminist, right, you
know like you know, she's likewe're we're killing, we're
killing all the dudes and we'rewe're creating a new eden.
That's uh, that's that's goingto be full of our own eves,
(49:33):
right, and it's all going to beabout, you know, like the, the
women and you know, girl powerand all that shit, right?
Uh, you know like she was a,she was a feminist in the book,
in this.
It's like no man, she's this,this petty, catty bitch.
That's just like you know.
Ok, well, this, that, thatchick over there, I would like
for you to kill her.
It's like well, but, but shemeans nothing to me and she's
(49:57):
like she's just a mortal, she'sjust a nobody.
I'd still like you to kill her,like, go ahead and do it.
I'd still like you to kill her,like, go ahead and do it Either
way.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
Yeah, yeah, that's I mean.
Well, and it was.
That's exactly the argument whyshe doesn't mean anything, just
cause, like I mean Okay, Iguess we accept that as the as
the viewer is A good enoughreason, I guess, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Like you get, you know what she's doing.
It's a, you know, obviouslyit's a loyalty test you know of.
Like, you say that you're withme, you say that you're on my
side.
I know that you've got a.
You know some sort ofparticular something or other
with that chick over there.
Go ahead and kill that chick.
Prove that you're loyal to meby killing her, right, uh, and
(50:51):
it's like, okay, I get it.
This is still fucking stupid.
Like why, why are you doingthis?
Speaker 2 (50:53):
you have bigger things that, uh, that you're
trying to get accomplished right, um, so yeah, this from from
your perspective is is thereanything that could have saved
this movie?
Speaker 1 (51:06):
uh to not to not make it like I mean we, we, you know
the, the, uh.
You know, in a differentepisode that we did, we talked
about you know a movie that was,you know movies that were
canceled or you know, uh, notnot put out because of, like,
what happened with col right, Imean we could have had some sort
(51:27):
of massive disaster orsomething that would have
happened that maybe stopped thismovie from getting made.
Something that would havestopped this movie from being
put out.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
That would have made it better to have not existed In
2002, what could have happenedin 2001?
That would have stopped.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
I don't know, there was kind of a big to-do in like
september of that year yeah, whydidn't that stop it?
Damn it because the vampiresdidn't use planes anyway uh,
well, actually they had to.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
That was another thing that I had a question
about.
Fucking the band was in, was inla, or some shit, while the
stat was at the admiral's armsin in fucking britain.
Do you remember that part?
Speaker 1 (52:11):
I mean yeah so like.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
So jesse goes to the admiral admiral's arms and
pretends that she was turned bymarius or whatever and and gets
list at's attention.
That's in England, right.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Well, the very next scene is the band doing an
interview in LA, Like why is theband in LA while he's in
England?
Speaker 1 (52:38):
Because there was the band and then there was Lestat,
but he's the band.
No, no, no, like you had twovery different things there, you
also had the press conferencewhere the band was in person
doing the press conference,whereas Lestat was doing it from
the screen throughteleconference.
(52:59):
Lestat wasn't there.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Sorry I'm late.
I had to try to catch mybreakfast Right.
Exactly Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah, exactly Um you know, like that, that kind of
nonsense.
But it was the.
You know that that separationbetween the uh, the band and the
artist, uh, you know kind ofkind of shit that we've seen so
many times.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Right, um, yeah, I don't't.
I don't know, as, as far as I'mconcerned, I think something
that could have saved this movieis to split it.
If they, if they would have, ifthey would have separated this
movie into two separate movies.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Um, just given ann rice a call, but yeah, obviously
, if they would have done itcorrectly, then, yes, you could
have had.
Uh, you know you could have hadthe other.
You know the movies get saved.
They opted to not do that, so Imean, then there is no saving
it.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
So there's really no yeah, there's really no going
back.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
I mean one of the things that maybe they could
have done intelligently was.
I mean, the movie is Queen ofthe Damned.
You've got alia all over yourfucking marketing.
Uh, you've got all of this,this build-up about how akasha
is this like badass queen of thevampires?
Right, they killed her in twominutes, like all they.
(54:20):
All they did was like some ofthe you know was like what?
Like four of the ancients bumrushed this chick and they were
able to take her down.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
Yeah, they all jumped on her and started sucking
Right, and then she, you know,took about 15 seconds between
them to throw them off, one at atime to start them on fire.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Right, yeah, you know , and she only killed one or two
of them.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
Yeah, I think she got two she only killed one of like
one or two of them.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Uh, and then like the third one.
The third one almost died andthen he came back because she
was weaker and he was able tolike jump back in and continue
to like bite the shit out of herright yeah, but like in all of
five minutes, like the battle.
The quote-unquote battle wasdone in like less than five
minutes and they've spent thiswhole fucking movie talking
about how akasha is this likethis dangerous chick that can
(55:05):
fuck up all of humanity, andyada, yada, but yet like five
minutes done.
Fuck you, like there's.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
It's so anti-climactic well, and and I
mean it's she, I.
I think that that's somethingelse that could have improved
the movie.
Speaker 1 (55:23):
Maybe um the fact that it's called queen of the
damned yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah, it's called queen of the damned, and the
queen of the damned is in themovie for like 12 minutes,
something like that, and forlike four of those minutes she's
not doing anything exceptwalking and dancing.
Yeah, like, come on, like justlook and have.
Yeah, like, come on, like justlook and have some dialogue, uh
(55:49):
with.
Well, seriously, though, like Imean she could have, she could
have had something more to dowith the movie than just being
on the screen.
Um, but, but that's all theydid, that's all they use, they.
They took a Leah and turned herinto just something to put into
a movie without any purpose.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
Yeah and uh, you know , and like, and she, she
actually wasn't a bad actress.
Uh, you know, they the.
The other movie that she'd beenin was um, romeo must die, if I
remember correctly.
Uh and she was actually reallygood in that movie, like that's,
that's actually not a shittymovie.
Um, and it's her, and like jetlee, if I remember right.
Um, and yeah, it was actually apretty good movie.
(56:33):
She did uh, you know she didgreat, you know in in that, so
like she knew how to be able toact.
So fucking use her, you checkher act, yes, and the fact that
she is the headlining, like her,her character is the name of
the movie right, yes, and I Iget it that, like a lot of you
(56:53):
know, like, yes, she got topbilling and, um, you know a lot
of the, the marketing behind herand everything.
It was because because theplane crash right, it was
because she died just after shegot done filming her parts, and
I get that and you know it is agood way to be able to, uh,
create a tribute for her andeverything along those lines and
it was the right thing to do onthat.
(57:15):
But they also just like barelyutilized her at all, like she
would have been a footnote asfar as this movie was concerned,
even though it's called Queenof the fucking damned.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
Right, right and and yeah, and then again, you know,
spending the whole movie talkingabout how she, how she single
handedly, could have laid wasteto the entire human race.
And yeah, I mean it's.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
It's like you know, and I've, I've used this, uh,
I've used this bitch for, like,other movies that have done this
same fucking thing, but theyspent, you know.
So, you know, movie is 101minutes, right, they have a
particular demographic thatthey're going after, which would
have been, you know, if you'rethinking, add generation, they
were going after, you know,teenagers, early 20s.
(58:07):
You know, those kind of peopleis, uh, is who they were going
after.
Their specific demographicwasn't the subculture that they
were trying to.
You know that they werestealing shit from.
They were trying to go likemainstream success and going off
of, uh, you know, like, as youmentioned earlier, the, the
jocks and the other people thatwent to this movie, that's who
they were trying to appeal to.
Their attention span is goingto be roughly 90 minutes.
(58:31):
So it's like they did all ofthis fucking buildup.
They hit way too close to that90 minute mark and they went oh
shit, we've got to blow our loadnow, like we've done all of
this fucking buildup to it.
We've got to be our load now,like we've.
We've done all of this fuckingbuildup to it.
We've got to be done now,otherwise we're going to lose
our target audience.
They're going to start to getbored and they're going to
fucking leave because they Godforbid they just they sit still
(58:54):
for 90 fucking minutes and Iknow that makes me sound very
get off my lawn ish, especiallyin the the, especially in this
day and age when we're dealingwith the TikTok generation,
where they can't even watch avideo for 60 seconds, let alone
sit and watch a movie for 90minutes.
It's a different medium.
I'm not going to get on thatbitch Anyway.
But it's like they got to thispoint where they realized shit,
(59:18):
we're about to lose our targetaudience and they just bam.
They ended it immediately atthat point because they knew
that they were out of time iskind of how it was, or at least
that's how it feels.
Speaker 2 (59:31):
No, I'm sure that that's what it was.
I mean, how many times have weseen that in other movies, where
, where it's like they just puttoo much in for too much of it
and then like, oh shit, we gotta, we gotta end it.
Now it's, it's a damn shame.
It's a damn shame.
(59:52):
I guess it's a shit.
Can we?
Can we just, can we just leavequeen of the damned at.
It's a queen of the damn shamed, it's a queen of the damn shame
.
We into the damn shame, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Yeah, queen of the damn shame.
Queen of the damn shame, yeah,yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Dad joke.
Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
My, my producer's making fun of me for being old.
Now I mean, yeah, that's okay.
Well, yeah, I I.
I mean again, like I said, I Ihate this movie and there are
(01:00:28):
parts of, there are parts aboutthis movie being made and
existing that I do love, but goddamn, this movie, it's, it's
total shit, absolute shit, andthe one thing is still good.
I have, I have on my iphone, Ihave the, the fucking soundtrack
you know, downloaded and savedas its own playlist and thank
God for that.
But Jesus, the rest of thismovie.
Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
There are plenty of shitty movies out there that had
good soundtracks.
This is one of them.
Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
And there's yeah, maybe we'll have to do a special
edition of MovieRx episodewhere we just talk about movies
with good soundtracks there yougo, yeah yeah, we'll do one of
those episodes good movies withgood soundtracks or shitty
movies with good soundtracks wecan just compare and contrast
(01:01:15):
okay, all right, there you goyou know, um, yeah, because I
mean that's that we've had two,two movies now that we've talked
about that had, uh, that hadreally amazing soundtracks, this
one in Hackers, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Yep, yeah Hackers was really good.
Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
Yeah, it was a good soundtrack, anyway, uh.
So yeah, I'm uh, I'm going togo ahead and and step off on
this one.
I'm going to let you, let yourap about some of what you got
going on.
Tell me, tell me about yourstuff.
Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Yeah, all right, so let's see here.
Yeah, so I mentioned Imentioned earlier, you know
music, kind of part of a bigpart of my background, so you
know, if you're interested inhearing you know any of the loud
angry sounds.
You know.
So, first off, you know any ofthe loud angry sounds um you
know.
So first off, you know the.
The main band is uh sisterscarlet.
Um you can find, uh, you knowfind us on uh sister scarlet
(01:02:13):
musiccom.
Otherwise um other musicprojects would be, uh, one of
them, the mortal desire umd-e-z-i-R-E, that's more of the
more angry metal.
You know kind of kind of stuffon that stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
As far as my stuff goes, if, if you have a movie
that you want to bitch about, goahead and give me a, send me a
message.
You can email me at contact atmovie dash R-X dot com.
You can also send me a text orleave me a voicemail at uh
402-519-5790.
Uh, if, uh, if you don't wantto be on the show but you still
(01:02:51):
want to get your two cents putin, you can always just uh, you
know, write me a couple ofparagraphs about something that
you want to bitch about, andmaybe it's me and somebody else
can talk about it and I can justread your, read your thoughts
on air.
Other than that, go watch somemore movies.
Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
Hopefully they're not bad ones and we'll see you at
the next appointment.
See you, outro Music.
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