25 Things You Didn’t Know About Interview With The Vampire
2. Neil Jordan Walked Back Most Of Rice’s Changes
Oddly, practically all of Rice's paranoid alterations to character and narrative ended up being revised when Jordan himself tackled her screenplay.
Jordan had signed on because of the book, not because of the screenplay, and replaced the sections that Rice had reworked or excised, keen to be more faithful to the novel, not less. Geffen, who had worked for years to bring the book to the screen as almost a passion project, was more than happy for the talented director to take a stricter approach to the adaptation.
Jordan had gotten the job primarily because of his revelatory work on The Crying Game, after all - a film in which ideas of sex and sexuality are used as molotov cocktails.
Jordan did so much work on the screenplay that he was a little narked that he wouldn’t get a nod for it - but WGA rules prohibited him from adding his name to the writing credits. He claims to have brought back “the little girl, and the blood, and the sex”, although it’s difficult to imagine Anne Rice submitting a screenplay without any blood and sex involved.