TV Interviews about a Vampyre (apologies to Bren!)
This as a short scene from a proposed TV drama that might- or might not be - an episode of Dr Who. (Dr Who would only be one thread of many story lines. He often appears half way though an existing story and could be eliminated from the plot)
TV utilizes a variety of sources and genres for it’s dramas and a certain amount of genre bending occurs, This vampire story could start with a news item ‘VAMPYRE SLAIN’ (or not, as may be) The plot could be experiences of a journalist following up a story (Viz Citizen Kane) It occurred to me that the drama would be more effective if the vampyre is never seen - a subconscious fear - merely shadows and suggestions. It all takes place in real time and cinema - or video - verite.
This is the proposed scene. A psychiatrist of the Viennese School is being interviewed about his sessions with the vampyre. The interview takes place at night in a hospital. The moon is shining and a window is open. (It could be suggested that the hospital is a mental asylum. An inmate could be Dracula’s assistant - the fly eater)
The psychiatrist is pure caricature and the interviewer could be just a voice heard of screen. The voice is optional. The Vampyre is now a ‘celeb ‘and his problems concern more his ‘celeb’ status than any other. ie Max Clifford and a proposed interview with a Jeramy Paxman look-alike. But the psychiatrist is also injecting the vampyre with warm blood taken from other patients - suggesting a link between blood injection and drug addiction.
(Excuse my Dutch - it is the nearest I can get to German)
SHRINK Ja, Ja, hey comt. Avant.
VOICE At night?
SHRINK Ja. hevening (He indicates the window) I am seated - so. (He indicates his desk), There vass sound - ssss, like a Zephyr. How you say?
VOICE The wind?
SHRINK Ja Ja just so. The curtain - it moves - sssh- I turn. He Iss there. (He indicates a line from the window to his couch)
VOICE What does he say?
SHRINK Nix. Hey sprechen nill. His arm - ah - so. (He makes a gesture rather like Mar lon Brando in the Godfather)
VOICE Languid?
SHRINK Precise, He acknowledged me. I rise. (He rises ands clicks his feet and bows) Gooden Avant Herr Vampyre, .He is comme - ah - un Junker. He wears cloak. Maybe he come from the opera house? Hah, hah!
VOICE An aristocrat
SHRINK He haff, how you say - I throw zee bon mot - yah - blue blood. Hah hah (there is silence) Hum hum. , ja ja. So! But he is Count. (he clicks his heels once more)
VIOCE What did he want?
SHRINK (Sitting down and producing a syringe filled with red liquid.) Ah, the elixir of life. But first we talk. He says, I want the Doctorr. take me to the Doctor
VOICE Dr Who?
SHRINK Ja. Mais! We talk in German. Zee Vampyre and I. He is hoff Eastern European stock. I cannot tell Hungarian? Maybe?
VOICE What do you discuss.
SHRINK. About zee Dr. I will transcribe
VOICE ranslate?
SHRINK Ya! Ya! Zee count says, “We are both travellers in time and eternity.” Yah! That is so!
VOICE Is that all?
SHRINK Is good, no? Well. Ah, so (sighs) Ess paradox, a paradox - a most hingenious paradox (sings Gilbert And Sullivan)
VOICE It’s funny?
SHINK Gott in Himmell No -no - no. C’est tragic - tragic monumental. Berg! Wozzeck! A paradox. The vampyre- he wishes to die - he cannot. In order to live he must kill the very thing he loves, Very Wildean. Dear Oscar. Is no?
VOICE What then?
There then follows a scene in which the psychiatrist describes injecting the vampyre with blood - a syringe of AV positive - the Count’s favourite blood group. He describes the injection as though he is the Vampyre’s lover. (There is a good description of the relationship between the drug addict and supplier in Charles Dickens. An opium den in ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood)
Then the psychiatrist describes the vamprye’s corpselike appearance changing as the blood beings to course though the veins - highlighting the viens in red, He turns to place the syringe on his desk and when he turns back the vampyre has gone,
The whole drama is built up out of scenes like these - almost a montage effect. Bits of arts programmes, police interviews, etc etc, Once the premise is set up, the drama almost writes itself as there is so much material from films etc that can be used as visual sources, It is my day off work and the weather has turned for the worse, so i spent the morning doing this, The sun seems to be coming out now.....
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2 Comments
Think it would be great idea Mike with footage.
Where did you get the idea of Freud injecting a vampire who wants to die?
Drug addiction. An image of blood coursing though a vein! Without his fix of blood the Vampyre will die. But one is trying to find a voice for a vampyre of the 1820’s and to locate this voice within the intellectual context of the time while finding resonances for today. Drug addiction was well known in 1820. (But the idea evolved from my imagining the vampyre being interviewed on Breakfast TV - when he is given a glass of blood in an attempt to solve his dilemma. I have put this scene at the end of this essay)
‘Would that I had never set foot on these accursed isles’ the vampyre might well bemoan to Jeremy Paxman and he has just cause for saying so. Witness his descent from a pot-boiler though ‘Hammer Horror’ to ‘Carry on Screaming.’ (Though this is more a reflection on English popular culture.) Could things have gone otherwise? Is the Count decadent? Is he an aesthete? Can we put him in the Oscar Wilde camp? Can we recover his Eastern European past? Can he inhabit the world of Berg’s ‘Lulu’ and the Germany of the inter war years? (Wilde/Strauss/Salome etc) Can he inhabit ‘high’ culture as opposed to ‘low’ culture? Hence the Viennese psychiatrist. Was it necessary to dumb him down?
The Case for the Count
In his own defence The vampyre could argue with Paxman ‘Does one censure the lion in the jungle for his kill? Does one forbid the cannibal in the forest his meal? Does one deny the Catholic in his sacrament, his glass of wine? (the last could be argued in a religious debate)
The Vampire morphs into a bat. He becomes an animal and has no choice over his actions. Like the drug addict he is aware of the harm he does to himself and others,but there is the upside. Lou Reed’s ‘Heroin.’ (I had wondered if Reed’s heroin trip has any parallel with the upturn in bi-polar-disorder. Feeling like Jesus’s son etc.) However, the 1820 vampyre realizes that in giving into his addiction he is killing he thing he loves. The romantic hero/vampyre is more likely to deny himself the fix - his version of cold turkey -- and kill himself. (The ‘fangs’ have to go. They are the sort of things that land up in plastic bags accompanying the ‘Beano’ No vampire with any self respect would be seen dead with them.
Of course, Paxman is more likely to go for the jugular with ‘But vampyre’s don’t exist. ’ To which the vampyre might respond,’The King is dead, Long live the king,’ or ‘Who said ‘God is dead?.’ Paxman could argue that “myths have to transform themselves in order to survive - a sort of social Darwinism - and that he must forgo his Gothic Castle and re-locate to Surbiton. It is the age we live in.” To which the vampyre could reply that he is the only vampyre. Why should he be dumbed down? He is totally misunderstood and has come into the open to clear his name and eliminate the impostors. (In the interview he is only seen as ‘Nostrafau’ - German expressionism)
In ‘Breakfast TV ‘an older man and a younger girl sit on a settee. With them is Dr Neverwell or Dr Fillgrave (I think Phillgrave is Trollope) They interview a vampyre - a celeb. The Doctor offers the vampyre a glass of blood - which she has taken from a hospital container. The all eagerly await his response. He sips appreciatively but then coughs and spits out the blood. ‘A bad taste?” enquires the elder man? ‘But it’ s cold’ replies the Vampyre “ Oh It should be 68 degees. says the doctor, ‘Ah, body temperature,’ says the girl. ‘Its dead’ says the Vampyre,’the blood is dead.” but his face glows reddish. Hr is now a bat. He lunges for the girl and his fought off by the older man. They recover and they say, ‘And now for the weather forecast.’ There is a scream and the camera pans to the dead weather forecaster.
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