Brad Pitt says 'Interview with the Vampire' was a 'miserable' experience

With his latest buzz-generating movie landing in theaters this weekend, sometime-New-Orleanian Brad Pitt has been playing the good soldier, making the rounds and talking up "Moneyball," based on the book by local writer Michael Lewis.

But it's his memories of a film based on the work of another New Orleans writer -- Anne Rice's "Intervew with the Vampire" -- that provided a good deal of the juice for an in-depth interview Entertainment Weekly conducted with Pitt submitted for the cover story of its Sept. 23 issue. It offers an interesting bit of insight on a unique chapter in New Orleans' film history.

"Interview," of course," is the 1994 movie based on Rice's New Orleans-set literary phenomenon, in which the actor co-starred with Tom Cruise. It was shot in town not only before vampires were cool (or sparkly), but before Louisiana's tax credits made shooting in New Orleans necessarily cool. And so even though director Neil Jordan's film doesn't exactly hold up lo these 18 years later -- it comes off as a laughably overwrought and frustratingly paced blend of bloodlust and homoeroticism -- Warner Bros.' big-budget, big-name production brought a certain amount of Hollywood excitement to town that many locals still remember fondly.

After all, it's not every day you see Tom Cruise -- 1994's hunk of the moment -- wandering through Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, or Pitt occupying the grounds of Oak Alley Plantation, doubling as the estate of his character's family. Or, for that matter, an entire Hollywood film crew setting up camp down in Vacherie or at Jackson Barracks.

Pitt, however -- who in the EW interview exhibits all the wit and charm you'd want from the closest approximation the modern movie era has to a matinee idol -- doesn't look back on that period with the same sense of nostalgia.

It all starts with a comment from EW interviewer Jeff Giles, covering Pitt's career movie by movie, that the actor looks miserable in "Interview."

"I am miserable," Pitt said. "Six months in the f---ing dark."

There were those contact yellow lenses, there was pasty makeup to be caked on. He didn't even get around to mentioning the "Lion King" hairdo he had to wear, which ranks right up there with his hair from "Burn After Reading" as one of his goofiest on-screen coifs.

But it wasn't all bad, he said.

"The great thing that came out of that movie is that it birthed my love affair with New Orleans," he said. "We were shooting nights. So I just rode my bike around all night. I made some great friends there.

"But then we got to London, and London was f---ing dark. London was dead of winter. We're shooting in Pinewood (Studios), which is an old institution -- all the James Bond films. There's no windows in there. It hasn't been refabbed in decades. You leave for work in the dark -- you go into this cauldron, this mausoleum -- and then you come out and it's dark.

"I'm telling you, one day it broke me. It was like, 'Life's too short for this quality of life.' I called David Geffen, who was a good friend. He was a producer, and he'd just come to visit. I said, 'David, I can't do this anymore. I can't do it. What will it cost me to get out?' And he goes, very calmly, 'Forty million dollars.' And I go, 'OK, thank you.' It actually took the anxiety off of me. I was like, 'I've got to man up and ride this through, and that's what I'm going to do.'"

Another big problem was the script, which was written by Rice herself, taking her first shot at writing a screenplay. Pitt hadn't seen it until two weeks before shooting started. When he finally did get a copy, he realized that everything in Rice's book that was interesting about his character -- Louis de Pointe du Lac, the Louisiana vampire who tells his bloody life story in the film's titular interview -- was gone.

And so here he was, a rising young actor and budding sex symbol, stuck in an uninteresting, passive role.

"In the book you have this guy asking, 'Who am I?' Which was probably applicable to me at that time: 'Am I good? Am I of the angels? Am I bad? Am I of the devil?' In the book it is a guy going on this search of discovery. And in the meantime, he has this Lestat character that he's entranced by and abhors. ... In the movie, they took the sensational aspects of Lestat and made that the pulse of the film, and those things are very enjoyable and very good, but for me, there was just nothing to do -- you just sit and watch."

It couldn't have helped that Rice herself was vehemently opposed to the casting of Cruise and Pitt. As recounted in a 1994 story in The Times-Picayune, she went on record calling it "the worst crime in the name of casting since 'Bonfire of the Vanities,'" likening it to "casting Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer" as her lead bloodsuckers. (She would later take it all back after seeing the finished product.)

With the death of River Phoenix from a drug overdose just days before he was to begin shooting his part -- a role filled at the last minute by Christian Slater -- it would all combine to for a dark chapter in Pitt's filmmaking history. "Depression is not interesting to watch," he said. "It's also the failure of my 'Vampire' character."

Pitt would return to New Orleans, of course, and build happier memories. He would buy a home in the French Quarter, where he lives part-time with partner Angelina Jolie and their growing brood. His post-Katrina rebuilding efforts have won him an enduring affection from the city's full-time residents.

Career-wise, he would earn an Oscar nomination in 2009 for his work on director David Fincher's locally shot, locally set "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Last year, he shot the yet-to-be-released crime thriller "Cogan's Trade" in town.

Still, he says he doesn't necessarily regret "Interview with a Vampire."

"I don't lament the failures," he said. "The failures prepare you for the next one. It's a step you needed to take, and I'm all for it."