These F*cking Hacks
On a pure audience level (not knowing any of this is real, watching for entertainment) the play is so bad and I wondered who actually wrote it.
The regulars of the theater love gore and salaciousness. They sell raincoats and the stage gets messy.
Rocky Horror Picture Show vibes but more blood
There's no gore, very little salaciousness, plot, and the animations on the screen behind the players are caca.
The other ones were visually arresting like this one:
But the story animations behind the judges look like they were done by a third grader with colored pencils and a Quicktime player.
They gave Lestat the worst hair. This isn't even period typical in any sense.
"But they had their Technicolor film. Tuan Pham's wizardry with it." You're joking Armand. Technicolor animation films were expensive as fuck [In 1933 an 8 minute film cost Disney $22,000 to make and Fantasia cost $8 million; and they stole film from the Port D'Oriente film set which used Gevacolor, not Technicolor. Gevacolor is a highly unstable film and cheaper btw.]
Was Pham just hand-drawing each of the cells or did he automate part of it? Did the entire gap between Madeleine's turning and letting the coven 'capture' them only exist because Pham needed to color eleventy billion animation frames? On one very expensive color stock or more cruddy stock, both of which are highly flammable for what? -- one performance only!? You could repurpose the lens but why?
Why is Santiago is dressed like a middle aged man hoping to get lucky on Halloween (amateur roleplay night) with his see through shirt and blue eyeliner and wig playing Advocat (Spirit Halloweeen). And not a single bucket of water or blood in sight.
I guess this is what you get if the elf from under the bridge makes your costumes.
And none of these other stage vampires have any lines either! Except for Celeste? What?
"I'd be more excited about this play if I had more lines" -- say the female members of this cast about the fake play to Roget. Maybe they're also talking about the real play they're putting on?
Voila: screenshot!
If you tell me the Vampire Lestat writes his own book in this universe, I will refuse to believe it. This is shite. Also Armand actually has a neat looking non decayed copy of a play from 1949-1950 whenever? How? Why?
author credits: The Vampire Santiago and The Vampire Sam Barclay with additions made by the Vampire Lestat De Lioncourt
They wrote this fuckass play by committee. By committee!
They wrote a play out of her diaries and she doesn't even get a writer's credit or an "adapted from" line.
They don't have a fucking play without her diaries! It's garbage! They need it it up on a library display case for some inexplicable reason! (I'm sorry, I'm not sure they could just have Lestat monologuing for an hour based on unwillingness sickness incoherencytheir egos. They're not sure. They keep feeding him lines. )
Another screenshot:
SANTIAGO TAKES A MOMENT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE LOVE AND AFFECTION FROM THE AUDIENCE (SAM'S WORDS)
Oh come on!
The dude can't even read a line from her diary properly:
Santiago can't even do proper accent work in his mockery.
They have a dumb play that they fake rehearse as cover in the last episode called Enduring for Guido but... now I wonder if this is actually typical of Sam Barclay's work. Or if Sam Barclay is the front man for who really wrote the play -- anyways.
Because Sam supposedly wrote Baby Lulu -- which she says Pham could play! She made it a success, she has groupies,
she actually does more promotion (albeit wearing that dress as punishment and walking around) than anyone else (We don't see Celeste or Estelle or anybody in charge of sales doing promotion):
They have her doing everything. Performance, cleanup, promotion..
This is an usher. GTFO.
Before that, Louis says the theater was half empty, falls asleep during Santiago's monologues, and says they were "weird" and "full of barely motivated violence."
And Armand says most of the plays were updated from older ones...
which (in the books, The Vampire Lestat) were written by Nicolas de Lenfent:
who is the creative genius behind the theater, per Eleni:
Forced to write plays while tied down to a chair, 500 performances, see a pattern? They probably made him make the costumes too, his family owned a draper business which at the time was a cross between a JoAnn Fabrics and an actual tailor's shop because clothing was expensive.
who is not credited with the theater idea or the plays in Armand's version of the story in "No Pain" or ever:
Not said: funded by a grant in perpetuity by the Lestat de Lioncourt Foundation for the Theatrical and Dramatic Arts, the Family DeLaCroix, Coco Chanel, and by audience members like you, a recurring gift of 100 francs gets you a signed program and a special collector's edition theatergoer set.
who probably composed a lot of the theater's music judging by the repetition of the theme music, not any of the musician vampires who have no lines or credit, (who claims the music box one for Nicolas, because I don't think Lestat left all his sheet music with the theater before taking a 100 year old dirt nap but took the actual music box with him to New Orleans)
Nicolas: I work at my craft and actually practice and I have to watch all of Lestat's fuckery at my work
Yeah, she sings the song the Baby Lulu song for more than one reason (besides Armand making shit up).
ETA: Depending on what timeline you favor, they spent all that time (months? over a year, b/c everything after early 1948 doesn't make any sense, imho) and effort and energy for a one time play that's actually shite, non repeatable and huh?
