WHAT WENT WRONG - Bram Stoker's Dracula

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

Rivers of blood, beds full of rats, and a questionable British accent! This week Lizzie & Chris pry open the coffin for a look at Francis Ford Coppola's gothic guignol. Learn how The Godfather: Part III may have made this adaptation possible and why, in this case, nepotism worked in Dracula's favor.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to my home. Don't leave for a month. Oh, and welcome back to what went wrong. Your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's a miracle that any of them turn out any good at all because they are nearly impossible to make. I am one of your hosts, Chris Winterbauer, joined almost as always by Lizzie Bassett, back from vacation. We're thrilled to have her.

David did a great job, but there's nothing like the original Lizzie. How was your vacation? It was pretty good. Lizzie dealt with bed bugs. We're not confirmed, but other than that, it was great. Like the women in this movie, she was bit in the middle of the night, and she doesn't know by who. That's true. Other than that, though, loved it.

And David did do a great job. I'm actually very glad that David was here for that episode because I famously was not allowed to play video games whilst growing up. so I don't understand a single thing about the Mario universe, and I would have hated it, so I'm glad that you all did that. No one understands the single thing about the Mario universe, as we learned with that episode. Lizzie, I am so excited about today's episode. Me too.

Unabashedly love this movie. I had not seen it in a long time. I was kind of neutral toward it when I first saw it. I think it was a little too young. I think it was probably 13 or 14. and I was riveted re-watching it. It's great. So let me kick it over to you.

What are we talking about today? Well, Chris, we are talking about Brom Stoker's Dracula. Dracula. Dracula. Brom Stokas, Mr. D. Yes, this movie is so good. I'm so excited to talk about it. Same thing as you.

I saw this when I was a lot younger. And I did, I liked it because I know my parents both love. this movie. Oh, interesting. And so I did watch it, but I didn't, this time, so I've watched it twice now for this episode and it just gets better every time. Like there's, it's so good. It's so good. And I do think. It is a triumph of art direction and production design and creature design and costume design. The costumes are amazing, maybe some of the best costumes ever put on film. Yes. Honestly, that's not hyperbole. This is top 10 that I could think of. It's great.

100%. It's really good. And by the way, the costume designer was not a costume designer, so we will get into that. Wow. It's pretty cool.

Wow. So, Brom Stoker's Dracula was released Friday, November 13th, 1992. Yes. Yes, I love it. It is, of course,

directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Yep. What Went Wrong Alam? What Went Wrong Alam? Yeah, top of his resume. Take out our episode on Apocalypse Now. So it is written by James V. Hart, based on the 1897 novel, Dracula, by Bram Stoker. In case you're wondering if you've not seen the movie, why Chris and I keep doing this voice,

it's because Gary Oldman's Dracula accent is my favorite thing in the entire world. It's so good. It's so good. So this movie stars Gary Oldman as, of course, the Count Dracula himself. Winona Ryder as Mina Murray, who eventually becomes Mina Harker, Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker, Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing also with a hilarious accent. Great accent. Great accent. Did you hurt it? No, I chopped a head off and I drove a steak through hot. So good. He's having so much fun in this movie. So much fun. And then Sadie Frost, Carrie Elwis,

Billy Campbell, Richard E. Grant, and Tom Waits, Rounding out. Tom Waits as Renfield, which I totally forgotten about. He's so good. Very fun. Also, I should mention Monica Balucci as a very horny, multiple-limbed vampire ladies. Yes, many legs. So it is produced by American Zoetrope, which is Coppola's production company, and then the studio behind this is Columbia Pictures.

The synopsis, according to IMDB, is, The centuries-old vampire Count Dracula comes to England to seduce his barrister Jonathan Harker's fiancé Mina Murray and inflict havoc in the foreign land. I would say he's not even that interested in havoc. No, he's not. I'm staunchly Team Vlad in this movie. Jonathan Harker, boring, boring, bore. There's no question.

I mean, you don't marry Jonathan Harker after Dracula has shown up in the streets. So how many times has Dracula been adapted, you might wonder to yourself? According to the Guinness World Records, Chris, Dracula is the most portrayed literary characters. in film, having appeared in over 538 movies and TV series as of 2015. I'm assuming that's just maybe vampires in general, or is that... Wow, that's Dracula specifically. Yes. And as recently as, of course, this year's Renfield.

Yes. Released by Universal, where Nick Cage plays Dracula. And then Universal is doing another movie called The Voyage of the Demeter. Mm, the ship that you see in this. Exactly. It's like, so that brief sequence in this film where Oldman's Dracula is being transported to England. Just that sequence is getting a feature film adaptation. There's already a trailer out. I actually think it looks really cool. That's a good idea. So the story of Bram Stoker's Dracula

begins as maybe all what went wrong episodes should with the godfather part three. Yes, of course. Everything can be traced back to the godfather part three. Everything that went wrong can be traced back. So between apocalypse now in 1979 and 1990, Coppola had had a run of box office flops, including the Cotton Club, which I'm sure we're going to cover at some point. One from the Heart, I think, was also a bit of a flop. Yes, one from the heart was a big one. And then, of course, the much hated third installment of the Godfather series, Godfather 3.

And I believe Cotton Club and One From the Heart, at least one of those, he financed himself. Yeah, we're going to get into that. He was in quite a bit of trouble as of the early 90s. And now, if you've never seen Godfather 3, it's not good. I think it's fine. It's just that in comparison to the first two Godfathers, it falls short. Yes, but one of the most reviled parts of the movie is, of course, poor Sophia Coppola's performance as Mary Corleone. Who would turn out to be a great director?

I love her. She's amazing. I'm sure we will do an episode on this at some point, so I'm not going to get too much into the detail. But Sophia was not supposed to play that part. Winona Ryder was. Oh. Yeah. So Winona had been on a tear of hits at this point, including Heather's, one of my all-time favorite movies. Beetlejuice, another one of my all-time favorites. It's great balls of fire and had just wrapped filming Mermaids. So that's quite a run. She's really young also.

She might have been like 19 at this point. She had like one day before she was supposed to start right back up filming Godfather three. But on that day that they were supposed to start filming her then fiancé, Johnny Depp, called them up and was like, she cannot come in. It turns out she had had a full nervous breakdown and had completely collapsed from exhaustion. They were like in Rome ready to go. As soon as she could get out of bed, Johnny Depp was like, no, dude, we're going back home.

And they took her back to California. So Coppola was stuck replacing her with absolutely zero prep time. And this is why poor Sophia Coppola gets slotted into the role. Right. It did not set her up for success. Like, A, she's not a trained actress. B, she had no time to prepare for this. And famously, Coppola would bring his family with him on his productions.

Like when he shot Apocalypse now, his wife and, I think he had at least one or two kids by that point, were there in the Philippines shooting in the jungle during an experience that he would later call like a literal recreation of Vietnam. So he's quick to like throw his family into the creative process with him. Yes, he is, which we'll get into this one as well. At this point in the early 90s, after his string of flops, Coppola was at risk of going broke. To Chris's point, he had financed a lot of this stuff himself.

In fact, he was actually afraid that they might lose his beloved family estate in Napa, and it was a very real possibility. Where Coppola wine is now made. Yeah, that's his vineyard. So, after God the Father Three came out to middling reviews and unfortunately very bad ones for Sophia, Winona Ryder figured Coppola probably hated her. Right. Because, like, this is a bunch of, you know, this is so much I are being directed at his

daughter of all people, not even just the actress that would replace her. So, Wynona had gotten a hold of Hook screenwriter, James V. Hart's script for Dracula. and it was currently set to be a TV movie. Oh, really? Yeah, it was supposed to be like basic cable. Wow. Very different version of this. He'd been trying to make it for over a decade

and just studio after studio had passed. Got it. And the only people he'd gotten to take interest in it was some basic cable company. Wow. She had developed an interest in it because she was looking for a more mature role that could kind of help her bridge the gap

from all these teen parts that she'd been taking into a role for a grown woman. Oh, that makes sense. Now, he had basically resigned himself to the movie being a basic cable, but he had been given a six-month window in which that company told him he could try to sell it to a studio. And this is the screenwriter, just to be clear. This is the screenwriter, yes.

I think there was a director attached, and I believe he ends up being an EP on this movie. I don't think there was any bad blood with Coppola taking this over. I think most people would be like, that's cool. Go for it. Yeah. You go ahead. So Coppola apparently kept hearing from a bunch of different sources that Winona thought he didn't like her. Right.

So being kind of the mensch that he is, he set up a meeting to dispel that and basically reassure her that they were good, that he did not have any hard feelings towards her. I wonder if he, too, is one of the few people that could really understand because he had so many times bled himself dry and gone insane on projects and needed to take a break afterward, like with Apocalypse Now, for example, that maybe there was some existing empathy there from him. I think so. Also, he seems like a decent person. Like I, yeah. And smart, knowing that it's a long game and she's a talented actress and he could have the opportunity to work with her again. Exactly. So at that meeting, not really thinking much of it as she's leaving, Winona Ryder

basically through the Dracula script in his lap as kind of an afterthought. She was like, she wanted to know if he thought that the role was something that she could pull off. That was it. Wow. Now, he had first read Dracula when he was a 17 year old camp counselor and he read it to a bunch of nine-year-olds who he was trying to get to pass out so he could sneak off to bang his camp girlfriend at a different camp. Oh, Francis. So basically, his eyes like light up as the Dracula script lands in his lap. Three days later, he calls Winona back and says he wants to do the movie and he wants to do it

with her. So just in time, before that six-month window had expired, Coppola picks it up and saves it from its basic cable future. Incredible. You might be wondering, hey, why isn't this thing just called Dracula? Why is it called Bram Stoker's Dracula? Oh, yeah, that's true. Oh, is it because of Universal?

Ding, ding, ding. Yes, it is. So we talked about this in the Mummy episode, but Dracula is, as Chris just said, a Universal Studios monster. They bought the name Dracula. Just Dracula. Just Dracula from Stoker's widow back in the 1930s. But the novel itself is public domain.

Oh. But you still have to differentiate it from Universal's Dracula. So that's why the title is. Francis Ford Coppola's Brad Stoker's Dracula. Yeah, exactly. The other reason for the name is that this was being marketed very intentionally as the most faithful adaptation to the actual novel. And I think, I mean, for the most part, it is. There are some pretty big changes, which we'll talk about a little bit.

But we may have Orson Wells to thank for this. he directed Dracula for his radio show back in 1938, and he commented that anyone who made a movie out of it should return to Bram Stoker's text and not the stage adaptation, which is what Universal had based all of its versions of Dracula on. So that's actually why some of the stuff in this movie, if you're not familiar with the book, may seem like not what you expect from vampires, kind of.

So the plot of the novel is relatively close to what you're seeing on screen, but there is one major difference, and that is the whole love story. So in the book, Dracula is truly just a monster, hell-bent on spreading his undead curse across the world. The movie, however, is become something very different and obviously much hotter. Yeah.

I did promise more hot, hot, hot vampire content. This is actually delivering. This movie is so much hotter than any twilight scene has ever been. Like, this is a truly erotic film. It's in a steward. The deemy 90s movie. It's great. It is great. I mean, the book, from what I understand, I've not read it, but there's a decent amount of eroticism to that as well in the sense that Bram Stoker was kind of fighting against the Victorian nature of the era. The book is told through multiple narrator's diary

entries, which you do see here as well. Right, with the voiceover. That's the captain's log. That's Mina. It's Jonathan. And Van Helsing. And a lot of that narration, by the way, is verbatim from the book. Oh, cool. So Coppola pretty much immediately. had a very strong vision for this movie. Bram Stoker's novel, as we said, had come out in 1897, and the concept of motion pictures had only really emerged just a little bit earlier that decade, all to say that by the turn of the century, film was becoming more and more prevalent. It was a novelty, but it was very much on the rise. So Coppola thought, what if we made this movie the same way they would have made it back in 1897 when the novel came out? So what does that mean? Well, part of it

means that they would shoot it almost 100% on sound stages. Yeah. Because as you may remember from a lot of the movies we've covered, like Gone with the Wind, they don't do on location shooting. He has said that the movie is 99.5% stagecraft. These sets look so good and they're so well lit. Awesome.

And they do have a theatrical feel to them, but the fidelity is so high and the tone of the movie matches that designs so well. Yes. It feels timeless when you watch it. Another element to this, though, that may have been part of the reason why he did not want to shoot on location is that he had a bad track record. Right, of shooting on location. Yeah, exactly. As Chris pointed out with Apocalypse Now, listen to our episode on that. Yeah, that shoot spanned like years in the end. Martin Sheen almost died. Yeah,

he said, quote, I knew at the time, especially after Apocalypse Now, that any studio would be terrified to send someone like me off to some faraway place where a movie could get out of control. And quite frankly, from my own standpoint, the idea of going to Romania was sort of terrifying. I said, there I'll be in goddamn Romania in some castle at two in the the morning trying to sleep and some looming shadow will come in. And then for sure, my boyhood fear of all those horror movie figures, it'll all come back to me. And with that, I decided to make it entirely on a soundstage. He used this as a selling point for the studio as well. He basically was like, you can watch me every day. Yeah, you have complete oversight for the whole thing.

Yeah, and they loved it. So he begins right away by having storyboard artists. I saw somewhere that at least one of these artists was actually Peter Ramsey, who would go on to direct I think Spider-Man into the Spider-verse. Is that right? Yes, that is right. Makes sense. I mean, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse is one of the most visually stunning movies of the last 10 years. And Dracula certainly was of, you know, the last 30 years.

So that makes sense. So they meticulously built out the whole movie, and then he had it roughly animated, including some voiceover, so that he could take it to his designers and show them exactly what he's looking for. And you can feel it. This movie, every shot feels very specific. specifically designed. Every frame really does feel like a painting in this movie. It's beautiful.

He told them that he wanted it to be, quote, weird. He said, give me something that either comes from the research or comes from your own nightmares. Great. Great direction, Francis. And you got the results. You got it. So with a budget of around 40 million, which he actually sticks to, Coppola goes headfirst into pre-production.

Now, there's another actor who was first. choice to play Dracula. It was not Gary Oldman. He's another early 90s hunk, but a very serious actor tends to be very method. Daniel Day Lewis? Yes, D.D.L. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Daniel Day Lewis has a sense of humor, but Gary Oldman, I think, has like a particularly good sense of humor for something like this. I love Daniel Day Lewis, obviously. But I think it is a blessing that he couldn't do this. He was already shooting Last of the Mohicans, so he was not available. Because, to your exact point. Gary Oldman is having so much fun and he is hamming it up in a way that works really well that I don't know if Daniel Day Lewis would have done. And I'm going to just jump in real quick

and get something out of the way my opinion on something that the internet might hate me. But you need Gary Oldman to offset Keanu Reeves in this movie. Oh, poor Keanu. We're going to get to it. I love Mr. Reeves. The Matrix is one of my favorite films. John Wick. Great series. Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. He is great, but he is an actor who is of his time. You can cast him now and you can cast him into the future. But when you cast him into a period piece into the past, he sticks out. I know. Again, that's not his fault. Ultimately, that's Francis Ford Coppola's fault or whoever cast him. But anyway, my point is he is saved from being too much of a distraction, in my opinion, because the performances. Because Gary Oldman, yes. Gary Oldman, but also the other performances

around him, aren't there kind of carrying the scenes. Anyway. It's justice for Keanu. It's not his fault. I'm not trying to blame him. I'm just saying like, I think that for these reasons, Gary Oldman is particularly... Yes, you needed him. Now, it seems like Gary Oldman was a pretty easy choice after Daniel Day Lewis passed. He had broken out a few years earlier with Sid and Nancy and had impressive turns in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead and JFK, but he had yet to really bag a Hollywood leading man role. Not that this is your traditional Hollywood leading.

Certainly not. A lot of makeup. And he made it a lot weirder than it needed to be too. Now I saw in a couple of places that Liam Nissen was also in talks to play Van Helsing, but I'm so glad it went to bonkers

Anthony Hopkins. He's so funny in this movie when he every time he just excitedly talks about chopping a vampire's head off and stabbing it through the heart. It's like nothing gets him going more than that. It's very funny. So a lot of his lines are completely improvised.

I was thinking it kind of had to be, it feels very similar to his performance in the Mask of Zorro. Oh, yeah. A little older, more seasoned than everyone around him and has a sense of humor when everybody else is freaking out. Anyway, I think he's great in this movie. I think that's very much right, especially what I've read from Winona Ryder about her time on this set, that he was a source of joy and light, as was Keanu Reeves, actually, in what was maybe not a joyful or light production, which we will get into.

So Christian Slater was offered the role of Jonathan Harker, but turned it down, saying, if he wasn't going to be Dracula, what was the point? But he later regretted that decision. To be fair, it seems like Jonathan Harker is going to be a main character right at the beginning of the movie. He's not. He's not. He's like, honestly, fourth behind Mina Harker, Dracula, and Van Halsing, I would argue,

by the end of the film. Yeah. Oh, for sure. So if you're a leading guy in the early 90s like Christian Slater was, that makes sense. I do wonder if that impacted his decision, though. He famously stepped in at the very last minute to replace River Phoenix in intervie an interview with the vampire after River Phoenix had passed away. And I wonder if this affected that as well.

Some other weird ones, allegedly Charlie Sheen also auditioned for Jonathan Harker. Can you imagine? No, that makes sense. I mean, he was coming off of a platoon. I think he'd done at least one of the Hot Shots movies at that point, which was a big hit, you know, and Major League. I mean, he was a big star, and he was a very charismatic actor. And, I mean, Johnny Depp would have been another person who you would have thought.

That's so interesting. You should mention that because that was Coppola's first choice for the role. I think he would have been perfect. I think he would have been absolutely perfect. I know. I think that's the one misstep of this movie, and it was not Francis Ford Coppola's fault. He pitched Johnny Depp, who again was engaged to Winona Ryder at the time. So that would have been a potentially better on-screen connection as well. And Johnny Depp, like, for all of his faults, he can do camp in a way that I think he gets it. He can play with the tone. He did Burton. You know what I mean? Yeah. We know what he can do. Right. But weirdly, the studio turned him down. They were like, he's not enough of a bankable star. But this is after Edward Cisorhands. And they still were like, no. It's...

Sometimes there are weird things where the studio will be like, oh, but the reason people watch that movie is because of Burton and Johnny Depp wore so much makeup. Nobody knew that it was Johnny Depp movie. Seriously, I've heard that excuse from... And I'm not saying the studio is wrong or executives wrong. I'm just saying I've heard that specific reason before. We're wrong on this one. Sure. Yeah, yeah. I would argue that is the only misstep in this movie. Yeah. So, Winona Ryder turned to another friend to step in pretty close to when filming was set to begin, and that is, of course, Keanu Reeves.

Now, Coppola invited the cast up to his estate in Napa Valley ahead of filming so they could bond and build a shared history. Apparently, he dragged Carrie Elwis, Billy Campbell, and Richard E. Grant out of bed one morning to take a ride in a hot air balloon, but the cloud cover was too low, so the balloon just kind of floated about 40 feet up in the air and sat there and Coppola came out in his bathrobe smoking a cigar and just laughed at them. I love it. Cari Yellow was like, would love to have a recording of that conversation in that hot air balloon between those three actors. I know. They were all like, what the fuck is going on? Coppola said, quote, these are young professional actors. Many of them

acclaimed and spoiled, what have you. So partly I'm the camp counselor. Interesting throwback. I have to always come up with some fun thing to get their interest, so they're not bitching about the costumes or whatever. He says, I played games with them the whole time, saying to them, Wynonna sat on my lap for half the movie. Well, we'll just move past that one. Yeah. But there is one person who didn't get to bond with the rest of the cast,

who will get to in just a bit. All right. Really quick, too. Billy Campbell, for those of you don't remember. I love him. He was, well, and he was the lead in The Rocketeer from 1991,

which was right before this. And I don't know if he'd had a big break before that, but that's like Carrie Elis, so he'd done Princess Bride at this point. And then you have Billy Campbell who had just done The Rocketeer, which I think might have been a financial flop. Don't hold me to that. But it was a big movie.

It was a Disney film. I really liked that movie. Jennifer Connolly, too, who I had a giant crush on. And then, And then obviously Richard E. Grant, who I don't think he was as known at the time, but he's an amazing actor. And he's obviously had a huge, I think, series of roles now. He had maybe done with Nell and I at that point. We can double check that. But yeah. That's like three kind of smaller supporting parts that you have awesome actors for. And they're so fun, all of them. Yes. Yeah. So production is about to begin. But Francis needs to fire some people first. So he had hired legendary Hollywood set designer. Dante Ferretti.

But he started to get frustrated when Ferretti was pushing back on what Coppola wanted, because as we said, Coppola wanted it real weird. He was like, weirder. Yeah. He kept pushing for really stark, bare set design, because to him, the thing that he kept saying was that the costumes in this movie are the set. He had hired Iko Ishioka to design the costumes,

despite the fact that she was not a costume designer. She was a graphic designer and production designer who had created some absolutely fabulous Japanese posters for Apocalypse Now. You can look these up. They are gorgeous. They're so cool. You're going to want some framed versions of these. They're great. What she does in this movie is unbelievable. It's so, like the way that they do the accordion bellows around the neck so it looks like people's heads are on platters. It's so good, the color. It's the red of Vlad's, like, weird robe that makes him look like an extended lizard person. Oh, it's so good.

It's so good, in fact, that she won an Oscar for her work on this, one of three Oscars at the movie. Well, deserved. Yes, absolutely. You can look up her initial drawings for the costumes, and they are so cool. They're really gorgeous. And as you pointed out, that red robe, of course, you know, that's not what we're used to seeing Dracula wearing. were used to him and the black cape that he, you know, swipes over his face. There's none of that in this anywhere.

But again, Dante Ferretti probably didn't love the idea that his sets were there to support the costumes. Right. So Coppola fires Dante Ferretti about six weeks before production was supposed to start. Yep. And I'd like to remind everybody that the Megalopolis reports about firing some of your VFX team like that far in. This is very normal for Coppola and you still got Dracula.

So, like, I have faith that my... is going to kick ass, just me. I do too. Let's, I mean, let's see if he brings on the same person. So he replaced Ferretti with Thomas Sanders as the production designer. And this is Tom's first IMDB credit as a production designer. He had been an art director on maybe like three features before this. He killed it.

I mean, absolutely killed it. And Coppola wanted to push the design even further in terms of being even starker and just use like projections and shadows, something sort of more akin to maybe what we saw and the tragedy of Macbeth to some extent. But Thomas Sanders was like, let's do some sets, please. Yeah. I think it's a good balance in this film. Yeah.

But the production designer was not the only person that Coppola shit canned right before cameras were set to roll. Great. So remember how he'd said that he wanted to make this movie the way that it might have been made in 1897? I do. Well, to him, that meant no digital VFX. Right.

And we're right in like the throes of what will be the Hollywood. would VFX Revolution because Jurassic Park's 93, Super Mario is 93, Terminator 2 was 92. I think that's right, yeah. The Abyss was 89. Exactly. Yes, so he wanted to do everything in camera. Now, Chris, what does that mean? It means mat paintings. It means set extensions. It means double exposures. It means mirrors and refracting glass. And it just everything, needs to be accomplished optically, which, you know, if you watch Blade Runner is an example of how you can do it, listen to our episode on Blade Runner, you know, you can either make sure that everything is being exposed one time onto a single piece of film, in which case everything is

captured in that one shot. An example of that might be a mat painting where you've probably seen photographs of John Cameron, James Cameron, excuse me, was a mat painter back in the day before he was a director, and he would paint these brilliantly detailed backdrops onto a pane of perfectly clear glass that is at the exact perspective that the camera is going to be positioned. And then when it's placed in front of the camera, what the camera sees is the foreground up to a certain point

that the director and the mat painter have established, and at which point the mat painting takes over the frame. And like the contrast has to match, the color has to match. I mean, everything has to match. optically in the camera. That's one way. And then obviously another way is through multiple passes on the same piece of film. So like a double exposure. And that's in Blade Runner, they were working with early motion control systems so that they could repeat the exact same

camera move with technically a computer over and over again down to, you know, millimeter level of accuracy so that they could re-expose the same frame and add an element with each pass. And Star Wars did a similar thing, obviously, as well. Well, Francis hates computers, and I mean, I don't know if that's true, but he certainly he was like, nope, not for this one. And his VFX team was like, why would we do that? Because to Chris's point, this is the literal dawn of CGI. This is when it becomes a very real tool that, like, major directors start using.

Go back and listen to our episodes on The Abyss and Jurassic Park. You'll understand why these guys might not want to go back to 1897 with Francis. But Francis doesn't give a fuck. He's had it with his team not doing what he's asking. So he fires the entire VFX team, just as he has done again. And then he pulls a trick out of his godfather three sleeve and hires someone unexpected to replace the team. His 26-year-old magic enthusiast son, Roman Coppola, who would also serve as a second unit director. By the way, I've seen both 24 and 26.

for his ages on this, but he's very young. Right. Unlike poor Sophia Coppola's performance in Godfather 3, this one actually pays off. He kills it. He kills it. So the reason not the reason why Coppola was right, if you watch this movie, the mat paintings look gorgeous. It's seamless.

Yeah. They're seamless. And then the in-camera photography that they do to obscure certain things that they don't have the money for. So for example, Vlad running out into battle in the beginning of the film where it's shadow puppets. It looks, but it's real people, but then it evokes shadow puppetry. Isn't that real people at the very beginning and then it's shadow puppets later in the projector

scene? Oh, yes, I think that's right. But it is shadow puppets when you see them on the stakes and stuff. Yes, yeah, yeah, in the foreground. Yeah, they're using force perspective. Yes, absolutely to achieve that. Well, I want to get into this a little bit. So this was his first directing opportunity, by the way.

He ends up getting the credit of visual effects supervisor and second. unit director. He did his research. So he poured over the early arts of film tricks, which included great directors like French illusionist Georges Melliers, who made a trip to the moon in 1902. If you've never watched this, it's on YouTube. It's like 15 minutes long. You should watch it. It's amazing. He also turned to articles written by Greg Tolan, the masterful cinematographer of Citizen Kane. And you can see that influence around Castle Dracul. I think. It looks like Zanadu. He also turned back to standard tricks like hidden jump cuts, as Chris was just saying, forced perspective. So many good shadow movements.

Yes. I mean, I don't know how they did those shadow movements. They're amazing. And there was actually, there were two where a shadow went across Wynonna Ryder. Yeah, at the beginning. Yeah, where I thought that has to be VFX, but it didn't look like it. And so obviously it's not. It's not.

And that's amazing. They also ran film backwards in the camera quite a lot, like the moment when Lucy is climbing. When she's climbing back into the coffin, you can tell it's reversed at the very end the way her like hands like go back. But they do it. She does a great job. And so it works. You know what I mean?

In the context of the scene. Shifting gravity also you'll notice a lot across this. Like that's again kind of just camera trickery when you see the liquid drip upwards that they just turned the camera upside down. Flod never really seems to walk. He's just always floating into. He glides. He glides. He's on dolly track the whole time.

Yeah. He really is just on a dolly. whole movie. I'm my favorite, maybe my favorite part in the whole thing is when Keanu Reeves opens the potion. It drips upward. Then he like looks out the window and sees Gary Oldman skittering backwards up the wall. Yeah. Yeah. And he doesn't just leave. He's just like, he writes a letter and he goes, I fear I'm trapped here. And it's like, it's so dead fan. That's one of my favorite shots though when Gary Oldman's on the side of the castle. Yeah. And you're looking up and Keanu Reeves is looking at it. And they have like some great, I'm getting. I'm

guessing they have some it's a lot of split frame stuff where like half the frame was shot one way and another you know because they have also like the they have the beam across the top of the frame where the rats are walking upside down as it's it's what I loved about it is it's great subtle things that are telling you that something's wrong and all the dying flowers were done so well like again it's amazing great work so there's one there's one shot that I have read the description of multiple times and I'm going to read this to you. I don't. Is it the shot with the blue flame as they come in through the front? No, that is actually the only shot in the whole movie that is VFX. But no. So if you remember

when Winona Ryder is in bed and there's that like neon green smoke that comes in through the window and then seems to come up underneath the covers of the bed. So this is how they did that. And this is from a Den of Geek article about this at about a 90 degree angle away from her bed setup. There was a duplicate of the exact same set, everything on the set, but everything was covered in velvet, black velvet. They used a 50-50 mirror. Oh, did they use a beam splitter? I think. So can you explain this? Continue to describe it and I'll see if I can figure it out. Okay. This is Roman Coppola describing it. He says it was a backwards photography shot with a 50-50 mirror. they were puppeteering dry ice fog in reverse,

so it would appear to be sneaking below the mattress and captured at a 45 degree, sorry, reflected off a mirror and captured at a 45 degree angle in a camera that was running its film backwards. Okay, so two sets right next to each other. The puppeteered action... That's them pushing the smoke in different directions with like tubes and stuff that they're using to blow it.

Yeah. Right, but that action's happening. It will ultimately be played. back backwards. Yes. Okay. What's happening then on that set has to be mirrored. Yes.

On her side. Now, what is not clear is if her side is playing, is recording the camera's recording in the correct direction or not. Do you see what I'm saying? I have no idea. My guess is that they would record both backwards and what would happen. So because it's a black velvet set with white fog, what they can do is they can screen that exposed film over the mirror image set that Wynonna Wider is in and only allow what is

brighter than what's in the Rhinona Ryder's shot to be exposed onto Wynonna Writers' film. And that will only be the fog, right? So what you'll have is you get two separate exposures. One has the fog and a black set. And then one has Wynonna Ryder on the regular set. And then you put the fog on top of Wynonna Ryder's shot. Now, what I would assume is that both cameras have to be running in reverse because otherwise, it would require the action to be like on one set, they would perform the action backwards. And then on the Wynonna rider set, they would perform it forward and hope that the timing would line up well enough, which may be how they did it.

She's not moving very much. I think it's like, it might have been that. My guess is both cameras are running backwards. Backwards. And that they are puppeteering to match whatever movements are happening on her side. Right. And then they super, and then they re-exposed just the fog from the, let's say, the set on the left to her exposed film on the right. I still don't get it, but it's amazing. So they're doing all this like turn of the century magic tricks, basically.

And apparently, I didn't know this, but a lot of the early days of cinema, was magicians using film to to like enhance their tricks. So filming begins. For what I can tell, it sounds like it was relatively smooth with just a couple of hiccups. One was the sheer amount of blood involved in this movie. A lot of blood. They used so much blood that the production designer was golf carting around the back lot and happened upon a river of blood flowing between sound stages. And it took him a few minutes to realize it was. coming from his own movie. Amazing.

Another thing was that Francis Ford Coppola didn't really love the idea of having to talk to two very young women about some pretty erotic sex scenes across this. Meaning Nina and Lucy. Yes, yeah. So Winona Ryder and Sadie Frost. Who were, yeah, Winona Ryder is probably 20, 21. If that, yeah, I'm not even sure. And I don't know how old Sadie is.

Very young. She seems around the same age. Yeah. he was really uncomfortable. The first thing that he, well, basically he was like, I don't want to ask a woman to take her clothes off ever. So he tried to get Roman to do it. Roman was like absolutely not. So they actually hired an acting coach named Greta Seekat to work with them directly.

And she's kind of like. The intimacy coordinator. Yes. Interesting. He kind of hires an intimacy coordinator on this. I love their introduction scene where they're like looking at Arabian nights. Arabian Nights, like, and they're like, could a man and a woman possibly do this? And she's like, I did it last night.

Apparently that book went missing from the set and no one knows where it went. So let's talk about something that Chris brought up earlier, which is, of course, the obvious thing that went wrong on this movie. Porchiannu, Porchiannu's accent. I don't know what it is. It's bad. His accent is bad. We can just get that out of the way. Yeah.

He knows it. We all know it. Here's the thing, though. He had just come off of a string of back-to-back productions and remember that he also came into this production quite late and did not have really any time to prepare. Now, many critics would later accuse him of being lazy, of like not even trying to do a good job and sounding like Victorian Johnny Utah. But according to Coppola, the critics had it quite wrong. He said, quote, he tried so hard. That was the problem, actually. He wanted to do it perfectly. And in trying to do it perfectly, it came off as stilted. I tried to get him to just relax with it and not do it so fastidiously. So maybe I wasn't as critical of him. But that's because I personally like him so much. Today, he's a prince in my eyes. And he's great. And I do think also

what we've learned of Keanu Reeves' work ethic in the ensuing 30 years. He is not lazy. Yeah, as he does all of his, you know, many of his stunts in these action movies. And even now, I think he's well into his 50s and he's getting, you know, beat to shit in the John Wick movies. Well, I also want to call out that Jonathan is a boring character. It's kind of funny. Like, I'm not going to lie. I kind of like it. It does almost work.

It actually kind of does work in the end because the movie's still great. Kind of an idiot. Like when you think about what the count is like when he shows up at his house, it's Gary Oldman in a giant long robe with like a beehive butt for a head who shows up with, you know, like, giant talons for fingers and is like, welcome to my home. Don't leave for a month. And then he's like licking a blade full of his knife.

And Jonathan's just like, oh. What is it you want to do in London? Yeah, Jonathan's dumb. Like, it's kind of okay. Yeah, he's just a poor guy. He's kind of a fuddy-duddy. Like they reference that when Lucy's talking to Mina too. She's like, you know, Jonathan says that like the eccentricities of Lucy or something that

he's concerned about. It's like, he's a snooze. Go with Dracula, for sure. The way they present him after he's been sucked dry by the brides of Dracula is like the insinuation is like he probably can't perform. Well, from the beginning, like all they do is kiss. He's very chased. So I have also come around to the camp of, I think Keanu kind of works. The only reason it stands out in my, actually, in my opinion, is it's kind of the one just fine part of a movie that's filled with so many great things. So Coppola said, I know the critics gave him trouble about the accent, but of all the young people I've met in the film industry, he's so endearing and sincere and a good person, and I'm glad I came to know that. He's the nicest person you'll ever want to meet.

And he's had the career he deserves following this. So, you know, it obviously didn't set him back too far. Well, guess who wasn't the nicest person you'd ever want to meet, Chris? I'm guessing it's Gary Oldman. Ding, ding, ding. So let's go. So let's get into the Gary Oldman of it all. First of all, I just want to say, I love him so much in this movie. This is one of the few times where I'm like, I don't care what he did on the set. It worked. It worked. And this was great. So let's talk about what he was like to work with on this. He slept in a coffin every night during pre-production and production. I'm all for it. He did not engage with the rest of the cast purposely and remained in character as Dracula for much of the shoot.

frequently scared the shit out of the rest of the cast, whispering things in their ears and then slithering away down dark hallways. This is who Jared Lido wants to be. Oh, yeah. He can't. He can't. He could never. Sadie Frost was relatively afraid of him ever since he had screamed at her on set, apparently as Dracula, but I don't know what scene that was.

So I imagine it was pretty weird when he sat off camera, apparently whispering, quote, unrepeatable things to her as she was writhing on the bed. Sadie felt it was important for her character that she have a connection to him, though. Winona Ryder, on the other hand, hated him, hated him. Coppola has said that they got along great until one day they just really, really didn't. And he does not know exactly what happened to set this off. I tried to find, and they've never said really what happened. She has talked about her experience, though, in quite a few interviews.

and although she and Gary Oldman are good now, they were not good then. She said that, like, this is her as a much older woman talking about this saying, you know, he was going through a divorce at the time and they were in such different places in their career. It's also a pretty decent age gap between the two of them. She says that they are good friends now and they've squashed their beef, but at the time, it was not a pleasant experience. Oldman was also a raging alcoholic when this was shot. In 1991, he'd gotten arrested for drunk driving, but it had not slowed him down.

Of his life in the early 90s, Gary said he used to sweat vodka. And he said, when I was drinking, I was working and I was remembering lines. So you feel like you're getting away with it, though deep down beneath the denial, you know. He also said, I would sit down and tell the waiter, I'll have a large vodka. Potonic and you can bring it now because I'm an alcoholic. I need it quicker. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

He's a remarkable actor. I don't know how anyone could function, let alone like this. I don't be amazing. I know. And like that quote kind of broke my heart because, you know, he's, he's right. Like, not only was he getting away with it. He was like crushing it. Yeah. Exactly. It's long been rumored that he was hammered while filming that infamous knife-ficking scene with Kianu Reeves. But by the sounds of it, he may have been hammered for a lot of this movie. I was going to say, yeah, for a lot of this movie.

Yeah. I wonder what it was like in the makeup chair with him. Because he must have been in that makeup chair for hours. Some of the makeup they did in this movie. We're going to get into it in just a minute. So just wrapping up this section, Wynonna Ryder said maybe it was his way of working, but I felt that there was a danger.

She really was not comfortable with him. On the press tour, she said, I still don't feel like I've met Gary, Oldman referring to obviously how far apart he kept himself and also the way that he carried himself on the set. It wasn't just the women that had problems with him. According to Coppola, the first scene that he filmed with Anthony Hopkins also did not go very well. It's where Oldman's in that weird crazy bat costume standing up on the bed. Yeah. And Coppola said basically that here is Anthony Hopkins coming in a very renowned actor and that Oldman was doing a bit of like posturing and peacocking around a

little bit and it just wasn't working. Coppola got frustrated and Oldman was basically like, it'll be fine. We'll just do something, you know, and it'll work or whatever. And Coppola was like, nope, and he just shut the set down for the day. I think he got pretty frustrated at times with him. Copla said the director's like a parent and I just want to say good things about everyone. They did work hard, pampered as they are. I think. I don't know how Coppola like always refers to his actresses as if they didn't go through the shit like he did. You know what I mean? Which is kind of of true. He's like, I lived off my own piss in the Philippines to make the apocalypse now. I do understand that, but I don't know. You don't need to constantly call out your quote pampered actors, you know.

I know. It's pretty funny. So you mentioned the makeup. So Oldman initially pushed to add a ton more makeup effects to this movie than were initially planned. They originally kind of just wanted to do like old age makeup on him at certain times. But because he spent about three weeks just messing around in the makeup trailer with effects designer Greg Canem. They came up with the weird batman creature thing, the like wolfman creature, all of that stuff is them just messing around. However, he would come to regret this because whilst playing Dracula, Gary Oldman slipped in a pool of blood and cracked his head on the floor.

Oh, no. Had to go to the hospital because of an allergic reaction to all of the latex he was wearing. Oh. And had to have the makeup effects designer rip open the front of his bat suit. because he was so claustrophobic and could not breathe. Wow. He hated it. You may notice that he's not done many roles with any kind of makeup since.

Well, until he did Darkest Hour. That's true, which he, of course, won the Oscar for. I believe the makeup artist also won an Oscar for this, also very much deserved. So, Winona, as we mentioned, was not having a great time on this movie, thanks to Gary Oldman. But fortunately, she did have two nights in shining armor. Can you guess who they were? Keanu Reeves? Yes.

Carrie Ellis? No. Oh, okay. Who's the other one? Anthony Hopkins. Oh, Tony Hopps. Yeah. She apparently has a well-known fear of fire,

so she was dreading that scene at the castle at the end where they're in the ring of fire. And she said that in-between takes, Anthony Hopkins would pick her up and carry her away from the fire. By all accounts, he sounded so sweet. He seems like a lovely person. I follow him on Instagram, and he seemed. very, very kind. I think that was the general impression was that both he and Keanu were just like

absolutely lovely to be around. She also didn't love the rats, but apparently she did okay with that one. Of this, Coppola told Entertainment Weekly, Wynonna has a fear of everything, but she did get on the bed and there were rats on it. That was her greatest day and she was very proud.

Dot, dot, dot. The rats were a mile away. It reminds me a little bit of Yon deBant during speed. been like, the cars were so far away, 10, 15 feet as we dropped them from the sky and they smashed down. Yeah, twister, yeah, exactly. At one point while shooting the scene where Mina has just drunk Dracula's blood, Coppola instructed the cast of vampire hunters to scream at Winona and call her a whore and say as many terrible things as they possibly could trying to elicit a reaction from her. However, Keanu Reeves and

Anthony Hopkins refused. They would not do it. They were like, this is not. productive. We don't feel good about this. Like, you're asking us to personally insult Winona, not the character, not something that's going into the scene. Makes me turn a hairy eyeball towards Carrie L was Billy Campbell and Richard E. Grant. So it's like, all right, whore. As they started screaming out. Also, you know, Gary Oldman was, like, volunteering from the sidelines. She called me in the corner, and then it slithers like a thick. He just, like, pops out from behind a set piece, like, whore. Yeah. It did not work by that. way. She was just kind of annoyed and pissed at Coppola. Of course. Yeah. Some scenes that ended up on the

cutting room floor because they were too much even for Coppola was Winona getting completely submerged in a room full of blood. I have to imagine this is the opening scene. Yeah. Yeah. Gary Oldman disappearing and turning into a giant clot of blood. I would have liked to see that. Yeah, I'd bring that one back in. And then I believe Monica Balucci skittering off down a hallway with an actual three-week-old baby and eating it. Yeah, I was wondering, like, they kind of just cut away in that scene. Yeah, that was pretty gnarly. She like, like, down the hall with the baby.

I would have kept that too. Yep. Now, also some surprising voices are dubbed in in this movie. Despite Gary Oldman's commitment to the role, there's one scene that he just couldn't quite nail. And that is the howl at the very beginning when he learns Elisabeta is dead and decides to become Dracoglia. It's like the howl, you know, arms to the sky.

Curses God. Right after that, yeah. So apparently Oldman just sounded kind of wimpy, no matter what they did and they just couldn't get it. So Sophia Coppola stepped in and she suggested a pretty surprising person to provide the rage scream. Lux Interior lead singer of the cramps is whose voice you hear doing that. Wow.

His instructions from Coppola were, just remember, you're back from the war, you're horrified, but you still have feelings of romance. Oh, yes. And you also have a feeling of despair. Now, the scream lasts one second. Okay, go. And he nailed it. He nailed it.

It's great. He nailed it. I never would have known. Yeah. Tom Waits, who you mentioned plays Renfield, also provides a lot of the snarls and growls that you hear throughout the film. Yeah, that makes sense. He's so good with his voice.

He's so good. When he's like eating the little books. Yeah. Yeah, he's great. If you watch again, though, you can, I think you can kind of hear where he's coming in in some places, because you hear him do it a little bit when he lunges at Richard E. Grant, Dr. Seward, and he does that kind of like roar when he does it. And that's him. And you can hear more of that throughout the movie. It's pretty cool if you're listening for it. Also, originally,

the movie had a pretty different ending. That was a bit closer to the book, I think. But Dracula was supposed to get stabbed with a bowie knife and then just sort of die. Like, it wasn't very exciting. So Coppola had his friend George Lucas, uh, watch a couple of of the movie. And George Lucas was like, this is a snooze of an ending. And also it contradicted the rules you've set up earlier in the film. Because as you pointed out,

Anthony Hopkins was so delighted to explain that they had to- Horny to chop heads. Yes. Yes. All he wants to do is chop off the heads. So Coppola reshot the ending with Dracula getting his throat slashed. And then Mina, of course, taking him inside and cutting off his head herself,

which also gives her quite a bit more agency. Yeah, it's a great, it's a very, it's a very dramatic, very emotional ending. Now, critics were getting whiffs of the rivers of blood streaming around the back lot and knew about Coppola's reputation for crazy productions that ran insanely over budget. So they start calling the movie The Bonfire of the Vampires, referencing... Super smart. Another... Clever.

Another what went wrong movie Bonfire of the Vanities. Listen to our episode on that to find out why it's a great reference for a garbage shit show. And even when the movie came out, critics were sort of lukewarm on it. So weird to me. Audiences were not. So Coppola was so afraid of the reaction to the movie that he took his family away for a vacation in Guatemala during opening weekend. Eventually, left the country. That is how scared he was about this.

Eventually, he asked his wife to call and check on how the movie was doing because he was too scared to look. So she came back with a bunch of numbers on Post-it notes. handed them to him and he was like, what is this? And she just said, add them up. Because Dracula crushed at the box office. Yes. It did great. Because America is repressed. Yes. And horny. And horny for Gary Oldman's butt hair. Yep. It grossed over 30 million dollars in its opening weekend and has grossed over 215 million worldwide to date. Now, legend has it that since this film saved his beloved Napa estate, Coppola still has a painting of Vlad Dracul hanging in the hall as a thank you.

That would be amazing. I really hope that that's true. And I would believe it. That totally would make sense. So that wraps it up. I guess... That's a great turn. I love that it worked financially because I didn't look it up.

I didn't know if it did well. And that was my biggest fear was that it's so weird that I didn't know if people would, you know, pay to go see it. But I'm thrilled that they did. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Chris, now that we sort of wrapped this one up, what would you say went right? This is going to sound weird.

I like the way that sex is such an important part of this story, and they allow it to be an important part of this story, and it's something that's important to the characters because it's a big part of their love and their carnal love. And that's why Jonathan Harker's not a good match for Mina Harker. And again, it cuts in both ways. Gary Oldman's super, you know, thirsty throughout the movie and more ways than one. banging everybody. Yeah, exactly.

And in some ways, in bad ways, and in other ways and good ways, and even like the brides of Dracula. My point is this, sex has been so stripped from movies now that you would think that we had figured out a way to get around it and that kids were grown in incubators. Because if you look at like Marvel movies, et cetera, like there is just, and by sex, I don't mean just the act physically, but just eroticism, people being attracted to each other. intimacy, feeling real tension between the characters, yearning. Those things I think are missing from a lot of movies now, at least I would say mainstream

studio movies now. And this, I just think this movie proves there's a mainstream audience for that. And so that's what went right for me. Also, should be noted that I believe Bram Stoker died of syphilis. So too horny, but. Brom shouldn't have stoked her. Oh, boy. Sorry, cut that one out.

Lizzie, what went right for you? So much. I mean, I really love this movie. As we discussed, I think the costumes are just beautiful. And I mean, I could watch this over and over again with no sound on just to watch the costumes. But I would say the costumes, obviously, Roman Coppola's work on this, I think is remarkable. Great. I think it's kind of a travesty he did not win an Oscar for this.

Terminator 2-1. and then Jurassic Park won the next year so whichever year if it was 92 or 93 I think it was going to get hosed I still think this movie looks amazing but it happened to go up against a couple of powerhouses sorry Lizzie please continue

well in terms of my final what went right hammered as he may have been difficult to work with as he may have been we will never get a better Dracula than Gary Oldman in this I just I love him so much he seems to like to your point

there's such a sense of humor to the way that he plays this, but then it's also like so romantic. Very romantic, very tragic. You're fully on Dracula's side the whole time. And like you want him to get his love that he has crossed oceans of time to find. I have crossed oceans of time. Fun fact, also, that line is one of the reasons he took this role. He wanted to work with Coppola,

believed he's one of the best living directors, and he wanted to say that line. Well, thank you so much, Lizzie. This was a real pleasure to watch and even more fun to listen about. Guys, if you haven't seen it, check out Bram Stoker's Drakulia from 1992, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It is available to rent online and or just get the Bluroy because Bluaries look better. They just do. And it's a gorgeous movie and you're not going to regret it. If you haven't, leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast you

you use. We are almost at 500 reviews. We really appreciate it. I will say, guys, when you give us feedback in a one-star review, we don't take it. But when you give it to us like a three or four-star review, sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah, we sometimes take it. There was someone once who told me that I needed to stop burping, and I have made a concerted effort to do that. So to that one, they were right. And to that person, thank you. That was actually me. But thank you guys for giving us those reviews. And we do read them and we do actually try to take your feedback to heart. And as always, if you have not consider joining our Patreon, where we have video versions of these podcasts, in addition to below the line interviews, our most recent one that just dropped, no, no, it'll drop next month. Phil Blade

is the Academy Award-winning production sound mixer from Darius Martyrs Sound of Metal, starring Riz Ahmed, and he is an extremely interesting person, and that movie is amazing. It'll be dropping in the next week or two. Lizzie, can you give a shout out to our full-stop supporters? I absolutely can, and I'll do it as Draculia. Thank you to our full-step supporters, Tom Christen and Soman Jenani.

Mr. Dee. That's what you paid for. Of course. We got to tell you what's coming up. up next and that is David Lynch's Dune from 1984 so check out Dune in the next two weeks if you get a chance we'll be talking about that next we appreciate you thank you for listening see you next time what went wrong with a sad boom podcast presented by lizzie bassett and chris winterbauer editing music by david bowman with cover art from utano yos