04/22/1997

"Newsletter to My Readers"

TO MY BELOVED READERS:

This is a brief news update. I have not produced an issue of Commotion Strange since No. 5, which was published July 5, 1996, but I will, in the next month, get out a full dress edition of my personal newsletter. I have a lot of thoughts I want to share with you about films and about current events, and I like very much writing Commotion Strange, as you know. But right now, I want to do an internet newsletter to you, just to let you know about certain projects that are happening.

First of all, we were successful this Spring in selling to CBS a supernatural television series that will be called Rag and Bone. It concerns two cops-- a mortal cop and a ghost cop who joins with him. It's going to be shot in New Orleans, and they are already working on it-- there's already a pilot script. I will be the creative executive of it, and it is a labor of love, and really a great joy, I think, to be able to do this. I think it's very exciting that we're setting it in New Orleans' Irish Channel, and in the Garden District...in the neighborhoods that I know and grew up in, and have used in the novels, and we are going to avoid the French Quarter cliches that appear in so many other television shows about New Orleans. We really hope to get it right. The producers have been down here, the director has been here, the writer is someone I like very much. I've never seen a script based on my work that I like so much by someone else, as the script that's done for the pilot of Rag and Bone by Jim Parriott.

The second thing I want to tell you is that we have made a sale to Showtime, the pay channel, of two properties which will be mini-series. The first is SERVANT OF THE BONES, which, as you know, is last year's book that is not even out yet in paperback, and the second is FEAST OF ALL SAINTS, a novel I wrote in 1980, which has never seen the screen. We're very excited that Showtime is going to do a mini-series of these two books.

We had promised you that we would do SERVANT OF THE BONES as a radio show from New Orleans, but what we realized when we got back to New Orleans was that we don't know how to do a radio show, and we haven't been able to find out how to do it. In the meantime, Showtime was ready to take on the material which other studios and networks found too transgressive, or too strange for them to handle.

They are also willing to do FEAST OF ALL SAINTS, which, of course, is our historical novel about the free people of color in New Orleans. I am very impressed with the people at Showtime. They are a very special breed of Hollywood creative genius. Jerry Offsay is the man I've been dealing with there, and he seems to be the Dostoevsky of Hollywood. I really think they will not be constrained as the networks have been constrained in doing these mini-series. They want to do a very, very good job. Anyway, they have a year option on both properties, and they are already working on scripts. We may see these on the air-- it would be very, very exciting to me, personally, to see both of them. I can't wait to see Azriel in the procession, covered with gold. And I really just can't wait to see FEAST OF ALL SAINTS finally presented in a film, because I think it's so important a part of black history, that the free people of color had such a big community in New Orleans. I know a lot of you haven't read FEAST OF ALL SAINTS, it's a lesser known novel of mine. I'm not trying to push it, but I just want to share with you this enthusiasm.

Now, the fan club. The fan club will very soon be sending you out their newsletter, in which they will tell you what time, what day, what month, and so forth they will have this year's Ball. And probably we will have the only signing that we are going to do for our Fall publication on the same weekend as the fan club's Ball. But we don't have the date. We're waiting on the publisher, really, to give us the pub date for the book, so we can schedule it. But it will be sometime around Halloween, but we don't know for sure if it will be that weekend. The book, of course, is VIOLIN. I wrote a lot about VIOLIN in the last issue of Commotion Strange, and VIOLIN is now completely ready for publication, and is going into galleys. I'm very passionate about this novel. It's a ghost story, really, and the ghost in it, Stefan, is a very compelling character to me. And the battle-- the duel that takes place between him and Triana, the heroine-- is a very critical battle. I think Triana is one of the strongest female characters I've ever created, and I think Stefan is one of the most alluring. I liked very much working with the idea of this woman refusing to be haunted by Stefan, and resisting him, and their battle is the substance of the book. As I told you in the last issue of Commotion Strange, VIOLIN really sprang into my mind right after I saw Gary Oldman in IMMORTAL BELOVED. I still highly recommend that movie, IMMORTAL BELOVED. If you haven't seen it, beg, borrow or steal to get a copy. Gary Oldman is just marvelous in it. And in the novel VIOLIN, I had the heroine mention Gary Oldman, which is, to me, the highest tribute I can pay another artist. She talks about Gary Oldman in this movie, and the impression the movie made. As you know, I've done this sort of thing before in THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED, for example, I had Armand watching the movie BLADE RUNNER , and he remarks that the actor, Rutger Hauer, really resembled Lestat, which, in fact, he does.

Now, that brings me to another subject. (We'll give you more information, by the way, on the up and coming signing.) But that brings me to another subject, and that's our merchandising. We are very, very involved in the merchandising, because we find it very creative-- it's not really a purely commercial endeavor. For a writer in my position, the commercially shrewd thing to do is simply write books, but I want very much to do this merchandising, and part of the merchandising is a whole line of T-shirts that are being deeloped-- T-shirts that include drawings by a local artist, Patricia Hardin. I know this is mentioned elsewhere on the homepage, but I want to emphasize that we are really moving along with it. Patricia Hardin has completed the first of the vampire characters. She has done the first T-shirt-- that is of Claudia-- and it's a sepia portrait, but she really did it at my direction, so I call it "my Claudia, by Patricia Hardin". We do have that for sale already. We'll be opening a shop in New Orleans in The Rink shopping center on the corner of Prytania and Washington Avenue, and that will be within a few weeks. But we do have a merchandising number already, if you have any interest in finding out about these shirts. The number is in New Orleans, it's (504) 891-9483. Now, we aren't totally set up to sell all that we've developed--we've developed about 14 shirts. Patricia Hardin has done beautiful drawings of our houses and we've also done a great number of Stan's paintings. My husband is a very, very talented painter, and he's allowed me to do a number of the paintings on T- shirts as well. We are just moving into the characters. By the time this is posted--maybe by the time you've been able to digest it--we will have the T-shirt of Lestat, we hope, ready. Patricia is working on it right now. I gave her all the pictures, and described Lestat in detail, and she's drawing from my imagination, which is a very exciting and interesting thing to do. But, before the end of the year, we hope we'll have a T-shirt of Armand, and we'll have a T-shirt of Gabrielle, and a T-shirt, of course, of Louis. Louis will be out third, actually. I tend to forget Louis, because Louis is really me, in my melancholy, passive phase, and I tend to shy away from Louis. But Louis will be the third T-shirt. As I said, the Claudia T-shirt is complete now, if you want to call this number about ordering it. Again, this merchandising is a creative enhancement of what we do--it's not purely commercial. We hope it will support itself, and of course, we have the healthy American need for it to support itself, to support the people who answer the phone and take the orders, and do the drawings. But, it's just something that we've wanted to do for a long time. We feel like our novels constitute a whole world, and we're eager to illustrate that world in our own way.

This brings me to another subject. We are trying to enter into a new contract for graphic novels, or comic books. The companies, INNOVATION and MILLENNIUM, that had done the last comic books, are no longer in business, and any comic books versions or books, are no longer in business, and any comic book versions or graphic novel versions that are out there are now collector's items, really. I don't think anything is for sale up front in print. So, if you have copies of THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, these are collectors' items. When we want them, we have to go pay collectors' price to get issues of them, and we don't always have issues.

I also want to tell you just something that happened here in New Orleans. I was able to purchase, recently, an old theater called THE HAPPY HOUR. It's on Magazine Street, at St. Andrew. Now this theater is actually mentioned in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT. I don't know if you remember, but Lestat talks about going into THE HAPPY HOUR theater and seeing the film in the 1920's, a silent film in which he could see the sun in black and white, and he was so frightened by this experience, that he retreated to his house where he went underground. THE HAPPY HOUR is a real place. It was built in 1904, and it's a theater that my mother used to go to when she was a little girl. My grandparents all went to THE HAPPY HOUR. In fact, probably everybody in my family went to THE HAPPY HOUR. Over the years, the theater has sort of fallen into ruin, but it still has fine brick walls, and it's a great big, magnificent shell with a stage. We were able to buy it from the original family that owned THE HAPPY HOUR-- the people that have owned it since 1904-- and we are hoping to develop this into the CAFE LESTAT before the end of the year. We are taking our time with all of these projects, we have to gather bits and pieces, we have to fund all of this in various ways, which is why we hope we can sell a T-shirt here and there so that we can fund a wax statue for the cafe! But, in any event, our aim is to open a really glorious CAFE LESTAT that will have wax figures of our characters, and a great deal of memorabilia, and possibly some of the art that has been given to us by the readers throughout the United States on our tours. It's something that just thrills us. Also, the neighborhood where THE HAPPY HOUR is is the historic part of Magazine Street, and the merchants there run antique shops and art galleries, and they are very happy to have us. We've gotten a very warm reception from them. They want the CAFE LESTAT, and they are very, very pleased that we've bought THE HAPPY HOUR. THE HAPPY HOUR is, as I said, a shell-- the theater seats are long gone-- but it has fine, fine brick walls and a strong roof, and it's going to make a marvelous place once we get to decorating it. It's just going to take us some time.

The next thing I want to mention to you is something that I mentioned on my readers' line that people call, and that is that I want to do a series of small novels. I want to do novels that focus on the minor characters of the Vampire Chronicles and the Witching Hour Chronicles--characters like Pandora, Mael, Khayman, Mona, Mary Jane Mayfair, Julien Mayfair--characters that I think are entitled to have their own novella, but will never really have their own full-blown novel. I want to do these in addition to my regular novel each year. The regular novel each year always appears in late Summer or Fall, as you know, and is often a monster of a novel, running 900 pages or more--I think THE WITCHING HOUR is heavier than most phone books! This smaller novel is something that I'd like to publish every Summer, and I'd like to have the opportunity to do really, in the short form, also stories from the Talamasca, from the files of the Talamasca, so these are all the things that are in the works right now, and I will get out a full- blown newsletter sometime at the end of May that will be mailed out to all of the people out there who do not access the internet, and cannot access the internet. So, if you have friends, or you have anyone who has any interest in this, who's ever gotten Commotion Strange, do tell them that it's not over--I just take a very long time between issues.

Next, I want to mention that I highly recommend the movie EVITA. I loved it so much that I ran a full page ad in Variety, on the day of the Academy Awards, praising Antonio Banderas and Madonna, and everybody connected with the film for their tremendous creativity. I thought it was just marvelous, and though I admire the Coen brothers, and thought that their movie FARGO was very, very good, I didn't feel that it attempted or achieved what was achieved and attempted by EVITA. Sometimes--you know how concerned I am about movies, movies feed my creative life, I live watching discs and absorbing images from movies, and dreaming of my own works in movies--and I just want to put in that plug for EVITA. I have not seen the new HAMLET yet with Kenneth Brannagh, but I am very eager to see it. Once it comes out on disc, I'll see it. It only played in New Orleans for a few days, and I missed it. But, Kenneth Brannagh, as you know, is one of my favorites, and again, let me recommend to you everything that Kenneth Brannagh has done with Shakespeare. I'm still reading Shakespeare a great deal. I started reading Shakespeare and was deeply involved in him while I was writing VIOLIN, and I found it very nourishing spiritually.

Now, let me tell you lastly about the next novel in the Chronicles that will appear. The Chronicles have not ended with MEMNOCH as I thought they would. I am going to shift, and the next book is going to be entitled ARMAND. I am not talking now about a short novel, I'm talking about a full-blown novel that will be published in the Fall of 1998. It will be from Armand's point of view, and it will pick up where MEMNOCH THE DEVIL left off. I'm already deep into this novel, deep into it and deep into a kind of voice for Armand that is a new discovery to me, that is truly marvelous.

Well, that's all of my news for now. That's my update. I want to recommend, as always, so many talented young actors that we have, so many brilliant romantic movies. If you haven't seen the AE mini-series of IVANHOE, I recommend it. I'm watching it now. By the time you get this, it'll probably be over. I think the last episode is tonight, but it's very exciting and thrilling, and I'm very excited, as I've said before, with the entire shift back to romanticism in art, really quality romanticism. I felt BRAVEHEART was the greatest triumph in that regard, and also the success of the movie INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE.

Now, let me answer a question which you are bound to be asking-- where is THE VAMPIRE LESTAT in Hollywood, where is THE WITCHING HOUR. The answer to that question is they are nowhere. I went to Hollywood myself, I went with my assistant, Susie Q, and Rosario Tafaro. We went to visit the Warner Bros. Studio, and we talked to Billy Gerber, who is the head of the studio, about THE VAMPIRE LESTAT and THE WITCHING HOUR, which are both properties that he controls and he owns, and he was very gracious to us, and very nice, but there are no real plans to make these movies right now. They are still in the embryonic stage of development. I doubt that the group who made INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE will ever come together again for a sequel to THE VAMPIRE LESTAT. I mean, I can't see this. Everyone has gone off in a different direction. So far as I know, there simply is no sequel planned. It's something of a puzzle, because INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE was immensely successful. I think it's coming out on network TV this month, and will probably have a resurgence of popularity, yet somehow or other, Warner Bros. just does not seem to be able to develop the Witching Hour Chronicles or the Vampire Chronicles. I can't fault them for this, I can just say it's frustrating to me, because I love movies so much. It's frustrating that I've written 17 books, and that only one of them, really, has been made into a film. Anyway, I send you my love, that's the latest news, and I really do want to do a physical, mailable, "crumpable uppable" issue of Commotion Strange very soon. My love to everybody out there-- keep the faith.

ANNE RICE