Of
all the stunts that gained him a reputation
(now firmly in his past) as a Hollywood hellraiser,
Nicolas Cage's performance in Vampire's Kiss
is the one that he has never managed to live
down.
For
the sake of realism, Cage refused to simulate
a scene that required him to eat a live cockroach.
He gamely went the whole hog.
It's
perhaps not such a surprise,
then, to see that Cage's first production
from his Saturn Films outfit, formed three-and-a-
half years ago, takes vampirism as its starting
point.
Set
in the early 1920s, the film centres on the
shooting of FW Murnau's classic Expressionist
horror film Nosferatu but with a twist.
Rewriting
history with a flourish, Shadow Of The Vampire
portrays the film's cadaverous
star Max Shreck (Willem Dafoe) as a real
vampire, employed by the film's eccentric
director unbeknownst to the rest of the cast.
"About
10 or 11 years ago I became very interested
in Nosferatu," says screenwriter Steven Katz.
"I
especially liked the fact that the film looks
incredibly realistic to the point that
you almost think you are watching an old documentary
about a vampire. I then got the idea of what
would happen if the actor who played the vampire
in the film was really a vampire."
"I
started to do some research on Murnau," he
adds, "and I saw this amazing picture of him
filming all his crew were wearing lab
coats and goggles. From that I got the idea
of Murnau treating the whole thing as a documentary,
as a scientific project."
But
this is not simply a Coens-style attempt to
have fun with the history books. "There was
a whole array of things that I wanted the film
to say about cinema, theatre and the 20th century,"
he explains.
"The
20th century is the most self-conscious of
all centuries as a result of the motion picture
camera," he continues. "It's looking into
the past to invigorate the present, and to
help us understand what the past is, as well
as looking towards the future. I also wanted
to touch upon the nature of genius, and genius
as a
potential monster if it's left unchecked."
Steve
Grayson
