Ann Rice should have “WHORE” tattooed to her forehead for allowing this move. Not because she is the first author to sell out, but because she made such a huge deal when “Interview” was proposed about script integrity and how she would never allow this storyline to get ruined by Hollywood.
I was planning on re-ordering the entire series from
amazon next month. No longer. She has enough of my money. I feel like a complete dorkus for ever even liking her crap now.
ARGGGGGGG!!!
I don’t know if this would raise your opinion of her any, but she actually offered to write the script for “Damned” – really cheaply, too, I believe – and was denied.
But I do think she should be docked karma points for clinging to that “No, really – Tom Cruise was GREAT as Lestat” nonsense. Who in the universe doesn’t think Julian Sands was born to play that part?
I didn’t have a problem with cruise other than his height and that only bothered me a little. Alyiah’s, or however you spell her name, accent sent shivers up my spine. Playing a Babylonian Queen as an Eastern European was a horrible descision second only to the amount of carry-on luggage she insisted on after filming.
Nope, that would be Starship Troopers, sorry.
Lets shorten it a bit.
How about Queen of the Damned, worst movie ever.
KKBattousai-I haven’t read Starship Troopers, but I thought the movie was mildly entertaining, at least more so than Queen of the Damned.
Clearly the worst screen adaptation of existing literary material is The Lawnmower Man and any opinion to the contrary labors under ignorance.
What? It’s not a book? (looks at thread title again) Uh, okay.
re Starship Troopers
They went so far as to reverse the basic premise of the book for the movie. Can’t get much less faithful than that.
Given what I’ve seen on Anne Rice’s stuff, I can’t see how “Queen of the Damned” could be any worse than the source material.
Here’s another vote for “Starship Troopers” being the worst adaptation of all time. Just a dreadful film, despite the common apology of “yeah, but it’s satire!” Satire isn’t supposed to make such loud sucking sounds.
sorry my vote goes to “Bonfire of the Vanities” - great book (Tom Wolf) lousy movie - although it too starred Tom Hanks -could this mean something???
My vote goes to the mockery of A Prayer for Owen Meany that was the movie Simon Birch.
Another stunningly bad and atrocious adaptation was the Chevy Chase/Daryl Hannah/Sam Neill vehicle called Memoirs of an Invisible Man. The book by H.F. Saint was excellent; the movie was such a travesty that it was one of the very few times that I left the movie theater genuinely angry.
Not long ago, I re-read Queen of the Damned, probably when I heard they were making a movie. I hadn’t remembered a lot of the details; I’d read it when it was published, sometime in the late '80s. Anyway, I couldn’t believe anyone tried to make a movie out of it to begin with. I thought it was simply too graphic. Those books belong in the imagination, not on the big screen.
Mmm Julian Sand as Lestat would be delish, however. Does anyone remember the movie Warlock? I think we were supposed to hate him, but I spent the entire movie a-drool.
I TOTALLY agree with this. For people unfamilar with the book (short story), let’s just say that it involves a goat-like thing mowing a lawn.
Umm…Battlefield Earth, anyone?
I thought Queen of the Damned was pretty good when I read it in my youth many moons ago, but I smelled the suck from the movie version at 30 paces. Just tell me this–does she get naked?
Sorry, Battlefield Earth was a bad book to begin with. True, the movie was worse, but only by a matter of degree.
Queen of the Damned was a pretty bad book to begin with, too… the weakest of the Vampire Chronicles (out of the ones I’ve read, anyway). Anne Rice is (or perhaps was) a good writer in some respects, but a story from multiple viewpoints is something she can’t seem to handle effectively. Queen was a muddle of a book.
Cervaise and Meatros, I also agree about Lawnmower Man. Talk about a total hijack of the story! I think about five minutes off the movie (maybe less) bore some resemblance to the story, the rest was completely unrelated. As I recall, King made legal efforts to have his name officially removed from that piece of trash, and for once, I fully support that effort. The movie had nearly nothing to do with King’s story, and attaching his name to it was a travesty.
Snooooopy, Julian Sands would have made a great Lestat, I agree. Didn’t Rice have Sting in mind when she originally wrote the character, though? I thought I read that, at one point. Based on his parts in Brimstone and Treacle and even Gentlemen Don’t Eat Poets, I think Sting would have been the ideal Lestat.
There is not one frame of film in “The Lawnmower Man” that has anything to do with the short story.
Consequently, it really isn’t an adaptation of the short story, and so doesn’t qualify as a “Bad adaptation.” The use of the same title as a Stephen King work was entirely to draw attention to it; it’s not an "adaptation.’
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the Ralph Bakshi demi-version of “Lord of the Rings.” I’ll be darned if I understand how Bakshi developed a reputation as a genius; this is the same guy who did “Cool World.”
Of course he’s a genius, just ask him.
Well, I seem to remember a bit where a lawnmower chases a hapless victim through a house, eventually chopping him/her to bits. That was in the story. Sort of. 
Well, considering that Rice DID write the screenplay for “Interview” and IMHO totally ruined the story less than five pages in, I can’t say I blame whoever told her she couldn’t do this one. As for the Cruise bit, Rice cooked up a nice bit of interest in the film by going ON and ON and ON about how much she hated the idea of Cruise, then did a complete turnaround just before the release ( “My god, he IS Lestat!” she said :rolleyes: ) Nice timing. (BTW, I believe she had originally envisioned Rutger Hauer in the role, not Sting, but by the time the movie was made Hauer was too old for the part.)
I haven’t seen “QOTD” - I wasn’t aware it had been done already. Since it’s the third book in the series, did I also miss the movie version of The Vampire Lestat?