Let's talk about Claudia because Claudia is the real horror. She's a child vampire trapped forever in a body that won't grow, but a mind that absolutely will. If somebody told you that right now, this is who you are forever, and I mean forever, because she's immortal, that would be terrifying. I can't wrap my mind around that because this is like version eight of Just Blane. Yeah, true.

I think they've been stuck in version one. Parallel Frequencies with Just Blane and Coco. What's up over there, Coco? What do you got going on today? Nothing much, just got a workout in this morning.

So instead of my coffee, I'm doing my protein shake. I saw something, you posted a sweaty selfie or something this morning. Sweaty selfie, that's how you get motivated. You're like, guys, look, it's cool to be sweaty. Is that a thing?

Is hashtag sweaty selfie, is that a real thing? If not, it could be. Could be. We could do that. Yeah.

I bet it is. I bet it is, because when I've been in part of workout groups and stuff before, they're like, post your sweaty selfie today, like motivate each other, like show them, did your workout for the day. I've been trying. You see, I wouldn't know that. I'm not like a good person, so this is my effort.

I wouldn't know that because I don't go to the gym. I don't do that. So I wouldn't know that sweaty selfie is a thing out there. I'm doing it. I'm getting there.

I'm doing the things. It's a bootcamp, not really a gym. It's not quite like a normal gym. They have bootcamps. So you go like a class and do what they tell you to do with a personal trainer for an hour or 45 minutes.

Well, that's incredible. It's my kind of jam. It's a little bit more high-fiving than I'm comfortable with. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm still not used to that culture. So when they say, all right, you did it. Just turn to somebody next to you and high-five them. I'm like, oh, do we have to? Yeah.

You're like, can I just do it to myself here? I'm like, yeah. Yeah, so what's going on today? You seemed a little more energetic over there. That's why I was checking on you.

Well, last night, but I'd like to think that the gym is helping give you some energy. Yeah. I'm gonna tell you, I'm a little bit energetic today as well. And that's because today, Freqs, we're stepping into the velvet candlelight and existential dread with perfect cheekbones. Because did not every actor in this movie have perfect cheekbones and become a icon, a sex symbol?

And I hate to say that, but Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Christian Slater, Antonio Banderas. I mean, goodness. You took the words right out of my mouth. That was the first thing I thought of when I thought we were gonna talk about this movie. I'm like, this was like, what's a quat of a trifecta?

It's like quatra-f-ta. There you go, yeah. Of all the hotties from the 90s, I mean, this is a little bit more my mom's generation of who was on her list, if you will. But I remember being a kid and thinking, oh my gosh, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, so cute. Let's be honest here.

These men are still highly attractive today. This is wild. They all ended up in this movie. And there's even other names that were just as big that were tossed in and talked about as playing somebody's character. Johnny Depp was even involved in a role.

And I don't think it didn't come to, but he was mentioned for a role. I think they would have made this better. You think so, huh? My Johnny Depp. I will forever be Team Johnny Depp.

That's my guy right there. 1994 Johnny Depp. But this is back when vampires didn't sparkle. They brooded. They judged your morality while wearing lace cuffs.

And let me just say this up top. This movie is messy, but in the most operatic way possible. It's a gothic soap opera meets theology class meets. Why are these two men arguing like they're in a couples therapy for 200 years? Cause that's what it looks like.

What if immortality is less about power and more about depression with better lighting? That's what this movie was to me. The aesthetic of this movie is unreal too. It's weird to say, but this movie, you can look at it and it smells. It's got a smell to it.

Old books or some spilled wine and regret. There's something there. There's even the scene where I believe it, this is what always kind of comes to my mind is like a feeling. Cause so much of the movie is so beautiful. Like you said, I mean, lighting vibe, all that velvet and silk, it's beautiful.

But there is a scene I believe where they come into the room and they're like, it smells in here. And I get that sort of like corpse smell in my mind of what it would be like to walk into a room and smell death. Yeah. Young Claudia. Kirsten Dunst, which is crazy because she's a young Kirsten Dunst here.

She's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And you could see it. You could see, oh, well, this is why she's had such a glow up over the years if you want to call it that. And been successful because she was already good then.

She was so good. Kristen Slater, a baby faced Kristen Slater interviewing vampires like he wandered into Hot Topic before Hot Topic existed. That was crazy to me too. They also, they doubted Tom Cruise and didn't think that he would be able to do Lestat. He crushed it.

Yeah. He even got a, I believe, was it Anne Rice herself for somebody that gave a video review and it's in the DVD. Remember when DVDs had special features and menus? This was one that had one. And it was a two minute apology to him basically saying, hey, I'm sorry, you were incredible in this.

And that's saying a lot because everybody in this movie stood out. And I think a little bit of Tom Cruise's quirky weirdness that he has as an actual, Tom Cruise as an actual person. I think that played well with him for him here because Lestat is a little bit out there. And you're like, it's a little scary, a little gives you the, whoa, coming on a little strong kind of vibes. And it's a little bit.

Let me break it back for you. Yeah, Lestat's the friend who ruins your life but throws in the incredible parties. He's seductive, theatrical, unhinged, but he's deeply lonely. And we've probably all known people like this but that's what makes him dangerous. He doesn't want companion.

He wants an audience at all times. And that's where the movie really gets spicy because Lewis wants meaning. Lestat, he wants the sensation. And when those two frequencies collide, you get immortality as a domestic argument. And that's where, like I said, this thing gets real conflicting.

But what are you seeing in that? Yeah, it was like long before Bella's Edward was a sort of tortured soul who wondered if his existence was monstrous or he was damned to hell. If there was a hell, is he already there? That kind of existential question about being a vampire, being an immortal who has to murder people for sustenance, so has to live, survive that way. You see that in Louis, right?

And Louis, this tortured soul, he can't enjoy it the way Lestat does. He feels himself damned. And there's that whole queen of the damned spin-off and tortured kind of gothic question about that and that with... And I'm not sure Brad Pitt totally nailed that. Some say he's a little deadpan or he was phoning it in.

But I think that you could argue that that's absolutely in line with what the character needed too. I mean, Louis was the sad boy prototype. He was the original, I didn't ask for this protagonist, becomes a vampire and immediately goes, oh, but what about my conscience? But I loved it. What have I done?

Yeah, this whole film though is through Louis because it's not about all the blood and all that like the other vampire movies. This one's about guilt and that's what he feels. All of us, Freqs out there, you've outgrown a version of yourself at some point. You've looked back and thought, I don't even recognize that person. That's Louis for two centuries straight.

And that's hard. That's hard. It begs a question, have you ever made a choice in desperation feeling like this was the only choice you had at the time, but it puts you into position where you feel a lot of guilt and regret about where you're at. Or for Louis, I think it was kind of like, well, we can understand why in the moment he would have said yes to Lestat. He would have said yes to an immortal life or to what he was, when he was dying.

But then later go, what have I got myself into? Or do I really wanna be here? Is this really me? Does this really align with my identity? So I would love to hear those kinds of stories too.

I would love to hear the stories where I thought this was the only option I had was to do this, but I sold my soul for it and it wasn't worth it. Well, let's talk about Claudia because Claudia is the real horror. She's a child vampire trapped forever in a body that won't grow, but a mind that absolutely will. So is that where this whole thing is the scariest part of the movie because she's being told who she is forever. That's gotta be scary.

If somebody told you that right now this is who you are forever, and I mean forever because she's immortal in this and that, that would be terrifying. That would be, yeah, I can't even understand. I can't get that. I can't wrap my mind around that because this is like version eight of Just Blane. You know, so I don't think I've been stuck in version one.

Do we grow? So, you know, we don't know how it actually works if the brain continues to develop into a mature brain or how Claudia, but it's something that you don't think about and I love that Anne Ryerson writing this story and how this character unfolds and where it's represented in this movie is that I remember the first time I saw it thinking, oh, it'd be great to be a kid forever or to have a certain age where physically that's your physical peak or according to society, that's your physical peak. For us women, it's like 18, 19, all of those romantic novels stop us aging there because I guess that's when we peak. I'm not sure that's true, but let's say you could stop at 19 and then you could still have all the wisdom and experience of aging, living immortally, but you could be young forever. And then Claudia's experiences that you see where that tortures her, where she's never going to get to see herself as a grown woman and she's never going to, hence the keeping the corpse in her bed with her and hiding it under stuffies is a little nerve-racking.

But yeah, she's kind of obsessing over grown women's bodies because she's so infatuated with the idea that I'm never gonna have that. I never get to reach that level. And that's, I mean, then you see her just like throwing the biggest rage tantrum. Yeah, belligerent. You've ever seen, rightly so.

She has a right to be mad. She's like, I didn't ask for this either. This is not what I saw for myself. But that's what the question that the movie keeps whispering to you about is immortality a curse? If you lived forever, would you still care?

If nothing is, does anything matter? I think this is one of those movies too that hits you different in different times of your own life watching it. When you watch it and you're younger, you think this movie's sexy. Like it is. It's, when you've lived a little, you realize it's more about grief.

Louis is grieving his humanity. Lestat's grieving his loneliness. And Claudia is grieving a future she never got to have. You know, that's, a lot of that's scary and deep. Forever child and never getting quite the privilege of adulthood.

Never getting to be in a space where you get to make your own choices about yourself. She's always at the mercy of an adult. Always needing to walk out in society and have to have the cover of, oh, this is my adult. This is the guardian who takes, who makes the choices for me at all times. It just has to at least present that image to people for her to be accepted walking around being a forever child.

A forever child. That's why Kirsten Dent's performance, I thought back when I first saw it and I was probably about her age, that she is in this movie when I first saw it. And watching it now as an adult, I just am blown away at the ability for this child who is a child actor. She is not a 35 year old playing a child so that she can show that wisdom and show that experience. She is a child who has to act like an old soul and she nailed it.

I mean, I just really cannot say enough amazing things about her performance here. She. Do that. It was, I mean, honestly, she out acted grown people who had hundreds of years of experience between them. And that's an incredible thing, an incredible feat and played it perfectly.

The whole thing though was total 90s energy because we were obsessed with beautiful sadness and that's what this whole movie is. Her eternal child, like I said, Louie, was that it was big emotions, slow burns, huge monologues, great monologues, no jump scares. And it was just this dread kind of marinating the entire time. And it does feel like a movie plucked right out of the 90s and that's why it really became a, I hate to say cult classic, but because this was huge when it came out too, but it really has become a part of culture at this point. Yes.

And I wanna get into a little bit the new series, Interview with the Vampire, which I think we should throw out to maybe a Tube Tuesday deep dive into the TV series as a comparison. When I mentioned to my mom, who I know loves Interview with the Vampire, she wanted to name our dog, our family dog, she wanted to name him Lestat when we first got him, but she went with Louie. So we had Louie the dog as our childhood dog all the way growing up, favorite dog and family dog. But Louie was named after Brad Pitt's character in this movie. I know how much she loved the story, the books.

We loved the movie when it came out, but when I mentioned it to her just a few days ago, I'm like, oh, we're gonna be covering Interview with the Vampire. She said, oh no, no, no, don't do the movie. Don't do the movie. She's like the TV series, the new TV series, AMC+, so much better. And I've caught a little bit of it so far.

And the undertones of the LBGQT community of being, what is the attraction between Louie and Lestat? There's so much more going on there. And I think that Anne Rice alludes to it more in the book, but coming out in 1994, I'm sure they were like, we really can't do anything with that at this moment in time. We have to keep that totally ambiguous. Like we can't show that part.

I mean, that subtext was in the movie. It definitely was in the movie. And it's probably one of the reasons that this film really did become a cult cornerstone. It wasn't just gothic flair. It was teased.

It was emotional honesty, hiding under velvet capes. Cause that's what it was. But yeah, that's a great point. And it would have been a tough time in 1994 for that. Yeah.

Now we know with this hockey show that's come out and women are just falling all over themselves about it. We know that it would have been pretty, it might've been received really well, at least in quiet circles. Yeah. We haven't been out loud admitting it at that time in 94, but it would have raised some eyebrows for sure. Yeah.

The other cultural impact of this movie is it paved the way for vampire movies, really. And I know there was other ones beforehand, yes. But this is one that made it okay. It was proving that horror movies could be philosophical or the monsters could be tragic. The villains could be heartbreakingly human.

And that's what happened here. And everything after this 1994 vampire movie, we saw a whole lot more of them. We didn't see so many that were like this before that. And I think that's something that we gotta really just commemorate. Give it the credit that it's due.

Give it its flowers. Anne Rice was writing this book in 76, I believe. So she was coming in hot with the vampire fad way before Twilight and other things started coming out with the whole vampire and human kind of tentilating romance, forbidden love of an immortal, perhaps monstrous character and a human. But I can't help but think that it was definitely influenced. I mean, you can't watch Interview with the Vampire with Brad Pitt and not go, sign me up.

Yeah. If he was my vampire boyfriend, I'd be right there with it. I'd be all right with me. Absolutely. Final thoughts on Interview with the Vampire?

There's just so much, so much great stuff that in the making of this, the production of it, the thought that always comes to my mind is that good, deliciously thick, dramatic feeling of a New Orleans cemetery. The weeping statue, the catacombs, the that whole vibe and it's at the beginning of this movie. It's in a lot of Anne Rice productions. We talked a lot about Stephen King on this show a lot. So it's good to give Anne Rice some credit where she deserves it for all of her beautiful, the only difference I would say in writing style is Anne Rice could go real in detail in her writing.

So we get that in the movie. We can see that in the cinematography and the set design and how that came about. Even in costumes, it's just very drippy and I love that. My final thoughts are it's incredible. And that's all I gotta say, because it is an incredible movie.

I will say this. We love it. It is probably one of the most mispronounced movies ever because it's not Interview with a Vampire. It's Interview with the Vampire. But I think a lot of people do say Interview with a Vampire.

We all know what movie we're talking about. I can tell you this too. If in real life, a pale aristocrat offers you eternal life, maybe ask about the emotional terms and conditions first. Parallel Frequencies with Just Plane and Coco. We love the Freqs.

We'll see you on the other side.