COMMOTION STRANGE NO.5.

THE PERSONAL NEWSLETTER OF ANNE RICE TO HER READERS.
WRITTEN BY ANNE RICE

This, our fifth number is written specifically for our readers. But anyone is welcome to read it. You just maybe won't like it too much if you haven't read my books.

No rights reserved; you can reprint, copy, distribute, as you please. And quote anywhere anytime you want, only quote me right, please ... and I'll love you for it.
July 05, 1996
1239 First Street
New Orleans
a very warm evening

Dearly Beloved Readers,

The last issue of Commotion Strange was in October of 1995. If anybody had told me it would be that long before I would create a new issue, I wouldn't have liked it or believed it.

But this has been one very marvelous and extraordinary period of time for me.

Since I last wrote to you, raving, if you recall about the great Gary Oldman in IMMORTAL BELOVED, I have been to Vienna, simply to see the city that meant so much to Mozart and to Beethoven and to so many other brilliant men, including Freud, and musicians almost beyond count.

At the first of 1996, I then realized a lifelong dream to go to Rio. If you've read BELINDA, or THE TALE OF THE BODY THIEF, you know that both novels end with my characters going off to Rio. But I myself had never taken that route to paradise.

My head was teeming with a new novel when I arrived in Rio, and staying at the Copacobana, right on the beach, watching the waves, I did something I have rarely done -- I wrote out in shorthand form every scene of the novel.

Now, when I last spoke to you I said this would be a sixth vampire novel. It's not. Vampire novels are coming but I want them to be in another form. I'll get to that later.

What happened in Rio was the creation of new characters, including a new ghost, and the final result, which is now written, accepted by the publisher and causing the usual meaningless early buzz in Hollywood, is a novel called VIOLIN, which I think is more bizarre and full of pain than anything I've ever done.

If I disappoint you, I'll be crushed but undeterred. You are the judges.

VIOLIN poured out, inspired by Gary Oldman's Beethoven, inspired by the lush film of AMADEUS, inspired by the strange beauty of the culture of Rio, and deeply inspired by my own bitter disappointment as a child that I had no talent to make great music, especially on the violin.

The details of what I saw in Vienna, and in Brazil are all in VIOLIN. They are right there, still warmon the pages ... I don't want to go into them, except to say that in Brazil I got to Manaus and to Salvador Da Bahia! And I love this country. I will return as soon as I can.

Whatever, VIOLIN is a ghost story, as consistent with the cosmology of my other novels which embraces both witches and vampires as you know. But this novel VIOLIN contains another darker, more confessional and sometime more gruesome element.

As I had mentioned before, seeing Gary Oldman as Beethoven had made me reexamine the true meaning of the romantic. Well, this led me to be pushing very deep not only into romantic poetry, but into the poetry of Shakespeare and his contemporaries as well -- the work which in fact did much inspire the great romantic Keats.

I rewatched Kenneth Branagh in the brilliant HENRY V, and the new lazer disk of Lawrence Olivier in RICHARD THE THIRD. I re-discovered and was awed by the brilliance of Mel Gibson's HAMLET.

VIOLIN contains a new kind of language overflow, a ferocious abandon., somewhat like the excess of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, and I hope it will work. Once again, I have that comfortable feeling --- this is either really good, or really awful. It ain't in between.

BUT! It will not be published until 1997.

What IS being published now -- this August -- August lst to be exactly -- I am proud to say is --
SERVANT OF THE BONES, the novel I had only just finished when I last wrote to you.

ANYWAY, THOUGH THIS NOVEL, VIOLIN -- A GHOST STORY, WITHOUT VAMPIRES -- WAS THERE READY TO BE BORN, CRYING, SCREAMING, AND RAGING TO BE BORN, I had to do the final proofs on SERVANT OF THE BONES, which plunged me back into that world before I could write VIOLIN.

Not altogether a bad experience, as after a brief period of desertion I saw the flaming themes of SERVANT more clearly, but not so clearly that I might ruin it. That's the trick, I think, understanding just enough about what you are doing, and no more.

(Also there was Mardi Gras ... that requires a newsletter or a volume in itself. You can't get away from it in New Orleans. You either leave town or go nuts. I stayed and went nuts.)

SERVANT OF THE BONES is now ALMOST HERE, and as ever I am keen to hear what you have to say. Azriel, my Hebrew ghost, tells the tale and I fell so deeply in love with this character before I was finished that I think another supernatural wanderer -- like unto Lestat -- has now been created, and I'm going to be lying in bed at night asking myself what is Azriel doing now?

Everybody in this novel is Hebrew --in fact, I dug deep into the history of the Hebrews during the Babylonian captivity and before, into the history of ancient Sumer, into the history of every form of scripture we possess, both Christian and Hebrew -- to discover and realize this novel, plus I read everything I could on the Hasidim in New York and in Eastern Europe before the war. You won't see all of that in the novel. It's the underpinning; the foundation.

Of course this novel, SERVANT OF THE BONES, so deeply rooted in Jewish history, with its numerous references to the Kaballah is bound to offend somebody, but let me hasten to point out that the novel never never ridicules religion, and none of my novels ever have.

MEMNOCH THE DEVIL -- Lestat's confrontation with God and the Devil -- never for a moment ridiculed the concept of God or the Devil, or the churches that exist in God's name. On the contrary I take these cosmic questions so seriously that a huge religious audience turned out to show a serious response to MEMNOCH. In a couple of instances, ministers came to the signings and offered me their own books about the existence of God. Many Catholics felt that Lestat's questions of God and the Devil embodied their own.

I have no interest in ridicule, satire or cynicism. I think big.

So, with MEMNOCH, I think I got away with something. I pulled off a kind of incredible trick. I got by with a novel that should have raised protests -- before publication -- from religious groups that had never read it. But that didn't happen. Instead the novel went out to the people, and I discovered I had far more religious readers than I ever realized.

And I ask in it over and over again what the hell mankind and womankind are doing on Earth and who are our Leaders under God and what can we believe, and what will happen to us. So maybe it will all work again. We will be received and then judged, which we can accept.

One of the special joys of SERVANT OF THE BONES was bringing in contemporary events, and I'll tell you something that is both interesting and discouraging. The news events I described when I was writing the book a year ago -- the terrorism, genocide, the wars, etc -- are almost all still going on now, over a year later, as the novel appears! We do indeed live in interesting times.

Anyway, SERVANT OF THE BONES will be the first novel I ever published as Anne Rice which wasn't already sold to some Hollywood Studio BEFORE publication. This is a great feeling. It's all mine, this novel, the merchandising rights' haven't been sold to somebody in Hollywood I've never met. I have more than a passing interest in these merchandising rights" because there are many things I want to make in connection with my works -- shirts, bookmarks, small statues, dolls, emblems, lockets fine things, things that I envision, and compose or design that I hope will be worth having.

I've set up a company to do it. Kith and Kin. We are already in operation with brilliant kith and kin at the helm. But a lot of the merchandising waits on me -- my pen, my choices, my conversations with local craftsmen in New Orleans about how they can execute for me exactly what I see.

And though I have done what I called Pra yer Shirts before, and some pictorial shirts of our houses here in New Orleans, using a local artist (we want to use local artists as much as possible) . But SERVANT OF THE BONES is really my novel to truly pictorialize in a new form.

For starters, I'm going to try to compose the face of Azriel as I see him -- the character was inspired by Antonio Banderas -- but I can't use Antonio's image and wouldn't think of doing such a thing, and also Azriel really is a fictional character who doesn't look entirely like Antonio and I must compose the face, using several Renaissance paintings as inspiration as well as the beauty of Antonio, and my own conception of how this character should appear.

I dream of items carrying this image -- beautifully printed objects that might have some value in themselves for their form -- unrelated at all to my work.

This is, of course, a Renaissance vision -- beauty and commerce, wed in carefully crafted and finely executed paintings, pictures, momentoes, etc. We find ourselves horrified by the emotional poverty of the T shirt world, and hope Kith and Kin will make some history as well as enough money to keep going in healthy American style.

Which brings me to this.

We just returned from three glorious weeks in Italy! No sooner had I finished VIOLIN and gotten it off to the publisher than we set out on a trip from New Orleans, to New York, to Rome, to Venice, and to Florence and to several small and magnificent cities along the way, including Assisi and Siena.

If I owe my novel creative life to Beethoven and Gary Oldman for giving me the guts to let loose VIOLIN (and let me not fail to mention again my debt to the film, AMADEUS, especially in its new wide screen laser version from Pioneer -- a feast, I tell you,) I will now try to take from the Italian churches, paintings, castles, and towns I saw the strength for a new novel -- the third in the non sequel ghost series -- and the novel is already writing itself and was before I left my beloved Venice.

In fact, the novel was sort of born, the way novels often are while I was in a magnificent building in Venice looking up at an enormous painting of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin by Veronese.

This building, far from the wild crowd of San Marco, was once a Franciscan monastery where men would wait two or three years even for a CRUSADE to build up, and -- it contained several important graves -- but Veronesels gigantic painting The Assumption of the Virgin into Heaven, best seen from a distance, dominated it.

Standing there on the stones, I began to see this next novel.

Then we moved on to another building almost entirely decorated by Tintoretto. The largest wall in this place was devoted to a Crucifixion scene by Tintoretto, so full of activity, agony, beauty, and classic perfection, that I was speechless. obviously Salvador Dali was influenced by this painting. So have others been.

One might subtitle it: the Turmoil on Golgotha.

Whatever, the new untitled ghost novel was born as I roamed these two buildings.Added to the inspiration of these paintings -- their audacityand their secretive sanctuary in this untouristed place --is all my walking through stone corridors and up stone staircases, and through cellars and prisons, and alleyways in Venice.

I see my ghost for this novel, untitled, and I see something else -- a heroine thousands of miles away to be brought in contact with my ghost.

Let me stop to say that I think this is what psychiatrists in their constant vain efforts to understand authors call: hyperconnectivity.

I just call it: the lightning strike.

These ghost novels are all part of a plan I made af ter finishing MEMMNOCH when the ever unpredictable character, Lestat, walked off on me creatively. I vowed to write three novels, each independent of other works, and each involving the supernatural in a way that had to do with spirits.

And this third one, title-less -- is coming to me so fast that II 11 no doubt scribble on it the whole time we are out in August and September touring for SERVANT OF THE BONES.

NOW. THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES. I HAVE AN IDEA WHAT I WANT TO DO NOW ABOUT THIS ... THE QUESTION OF THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES.

As I have mentioned on my phone line -- you know, call 504-522-8634 and listen to me talk and talk and talk -- Lestat just walked out of my life. He just left me. He released the grip he had had on my throat for the last twenty years and went silent -- possibly as anyone might do who had confronted what he did in MEMNOCH.

But I cannot desert my vampires -- even if Lestat has -- so another form of dealing with them has occurred to me. I want to do short novels -- what they call the short form in the trade right now -- and if you've seen the beautiful LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE you know what I mean -- I want to do a series of short form nouvella length stories concerning individual vampire characters.

One that has been haunting me for years is this the ancient Roman vampire Pandora writing out for newly made vampire David Talbot, once a mortal psychic detective and now a vampire historian -- the whole story of how Pandora met the vampire Marius in Roman times, and seduced him into making her a vampire. I know the story. I know it.

And the fact that I can write it, and make it what Henry James called "the beautiful and blessed nouvella" or a "short form" all by itself, rich, dark, thick, blood red, is very enticing, so enticing in fact, that I'm going to do it.

Yet another has come to me from a wholly different perspective. It involves Louis and those who wander into his path.

And I am seeing that the character of David Talbot is going to pitch himself into vampire scholarship soliciting the tales of characters I know very well and dream about -- like the Italian vampire Santino for instance -- but of whom I have written very little.

Understand, guys, when I say "short form," I'm talking about what most people consider a normal novel. I've always been a writer of massive tomes, lured into cosmic themes. These books will be shorter, yes, but developed tales, more tightly focused upon the emotions of the characters involved, and will not attempt to advance the entire history of the vampire tribe in the cosmic scheme of things.

My, how strange all this must sound to some one who has never read any of the Anne Rice books. But then, who but readers of the books would read this?

Let me remind you again how much I love talking to you directly, and how I have sworn never never to do a print interview again because I'm sick to death of having my words mangled by lying, vicious, shallow and careless journalists.

So? What do we have? Pages written to you that presume you are a reader of the books, and if you do happen to be a stranger, who picked up COMMOTION STRANGE for some eccentric reason, welcome to one part of the world where one creative mind seeks to make the rules of her work and of f er to the God in whom she believes the finest that she can do.

Do I need to add at this point that I am seeing my novels as more spiritual and more religious all the time? That I now realize they are what a commerical world might call "metaphysical thrillers?" But! I'm not going ecclesiastical or vaguely New Age. My early despairing searches will not culminate in platitudes and a dreary succession of "bright lights" and "stairways to heaven." I'm not going to let you down!

In the cathedrals and museums of Italy, blazoned on the walls of the Cathedral at Siena, in the niches of St. John Lateran, I saw the magic and the glory that is also embodied in the concept of vampires, ghosts, witches, magi, discarnate and lost souls the haunt who seeks salvation and is the metaphor for us all I saw THE SPIRITUAL which can totally inform the suspenseful and tight "horror novel."

Rereading compulsively the play Macbeth I brood over the Weird Sisters, the ghost of Banquo, and the stunning beauty of Macbeth's words:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Okay, I know you've heard it, read it, pondered it, but just think about it. This was written by a man who died before 1616, in a work that makes noble use of rich supernatural components. Not content with witches, and ghosts, it embraces madness as well, and finally a despair on the part of its fallen hero that is so rich, so contemporary in expression that one can not imagine that it didn't come out of the mouth of a bare stage existentialist actor talking to an empty house in New York.

I have to aim for the best with my winged and fanged and bewitched characters. I seek for the truth with the instruments of the spellbinder.

Mediocrity, get thee behind me. If I fail, it must be as far as Icarus, from the greatest attempted height.

Last prayer on this subject: Oh, if I could see Kenneth Branagh do Macbeth.

RADICAL CHANGE OF SUBJECT AND UPDATE FOR THOSE WHO ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT HOLLYWOOD:

Okay. Regarding THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, as far as I know nothing is happening at all. This movie simply isn't being made. Why? I have no idea. The person in control of it is a young woman named Courtney Valenti at Warner Brothers. I had the pleasure of meeting her. She seemed very pleasant and interested in the project, but rather new to my work in general and not aware of other books which I had written.

Regarding THE WITCHING HOUR, I was, over repeated protests, persuaded by producer David Geffen to do a script for it, which I did, using LASHER (the sequel) as well, and this script is languishing at Warner Brothers too.

I am adamant that I won't touch this WITCHING HOUR script, until there is a director attached (pray the guy doesn't want me around, and I have no contractual obligation to touch it anyway) because I feel the narrative links of this script are utterly tight, it is a powerfully coherent story, and I'm not about to start hacking at it in Hollywood committee style just to make it it "short."

I hope to God THE WITCHING HOUR is my last script. I only did this one because my script for INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE had earned me sole credit (read soul credit), and because David Gef fen (my hero) asked me to. And I loved the film, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE ... but you know all that.

Things change, however. And what changed was that David Geffen went off with his friends Jeff Katzenberg and Stephen Spielberg to make a new studio -- DREAMWORKS -- and the WITCHING HOUR remains with his old partners, Warner Brothers, where it is probably collecting dust.

I love movies so much! That's how they get me! I see a miracle like BAD LIEUTENANT or Mel Gibson's HAMLET and I think Yes! It can be done, and I can be part of it.

Well, the truth is I belong in my own home, as they say. I should just write novels and feed off the richness of movies, never seeking to know how geniuses like Gary Oldman and Mel Gibson survive that world out there!

Yet every time they suck me in.

But I'm getting tougher. I've got books to write! And scripts I've done for Hollywood have gone into the file cabinets, save for one, and the books I write here go into print and into the hands of my readers.

Well, here I s the good news on some other things from this eternally conficted and optimistic author:

As I may have told you two years ago or more, the brilliant director Roland Emmerich (STARGATE) wanted to do my novel, THE MUMMY. I was overjoyed, having great admiration for the way this man was building his career. What happened? Coralco, a studio, bought THE MUMMY for Emmerich. But then something happened between Coralco and Emmerich and Emmerich wound up going somewhere else -- and Coralco for reasons of its own, went broke.

THE MUMMY was on the auction block -- an asset to be sold.

Then... a few weeks back, Antonio Banderas makes a call, or so I am told by near to him -- a call from Hungary where he is making EVITA, expressing interest in the status of THE MUMMY. I almost lost my mind.

Antonio Banderas is one of the most beautiful men in the world, obviously, one of the sexiest which is by no means insignificant to anyone who loves Tintoretto, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Michaelangelo, or Veronese. And also Antonio happens to be a fine, fine actor -- something perhaps we've never known in America -- the "Latin Lover," the terrifying gunslinger, a comedian, a hunk, a vampiric seducer with MAJOR TALENT. His American career, as far as I'm concerned, is barely begun.

I go crazy when I hear that Antonio has expressed interest in THE MUMMY. I call everybody involved. Please. Let's do it. But I don't own THE MUMMY. And everybody connected to its original purchase for Coralco has gone away.

So what happens? There is Hollywood buzz on THE MUMMY. It is now a hot asset of a bankrupt studio. Bidding war. Antoniols interest has sparked this like a gift from God. There is an auction, and SOMEBODY ELSE BUYS THE MUMMY.

NOT ANTONIO'S PEOPLE! SOMEBODY ELSE!

HOWEVER, THE SOME ONE ELSE IS A GENIUS:

IT IS JIM CAMERON, the truly original and monstrously talented director who made TERMINATOR 1 AND 2, and THE ABYSS, the director's cut of which has only this year been released on disk and is quite astonishing. I am in awe of this man! I am major intrigued that he is presently doing a movie on the TITANIC. I am eager to see what he wants to do with THE MUMMY, and though he is controversial in more ways than one, I think he's terrific. TERMINATOR changed movie making forever. have never underestimated TERMINATOR -- its cleverness, the perfection of its execution, its subtle use of Linda Hamilton's innocence with its highly stylized and often dazzling violence and I have total faith in Cameron.

But what about Antonio? Antoniols interest sparked this sale, but he is not involved. I owe him one. I really do. I really, really do. But then I owe him one for just getting to see his performance in PHILADELPHIA or in HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS. I owe him one for just finding a post card of him in Italy last week.

And the truth is that Jim Cameron is too big, too brilliant and too much his own man for me to get on the phone and recommend Antonio for the role.

And Antonio is too big a star, too incrediby successful to need me or want me to do any such thing. It would be an insult to him and his representatives.

These are State of the Art dudes.

The men know about each other, they know about each's interest in the film.

I have come out of this dazed. I wait to see Antonio in EVITA. I wait to see Antonio in ANYTHING. and I wait to see whether Cameron can make the MUMMY work for him, because I know that if he can't make it work, he won't make a bad movie out of it, he'll pass. He's exactly that kind of genius.

That's Hollywood from my perspective: endless telephone drama. And the glorius privilege of sitting in a darkened room, watching a crisp lazer disk of an unforgettable movie like TRUE ROMANCE, wondering how does anybody out there ever get anything done at all? How did WITNESS get made? How did FARINELLI get made? What gives?

I am the author of about 19 books now (I've lost count) and ONLY ONE FILM HAS EVER BEEN MADE BASED ON ONE OF MY NOVELS. INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. It grossed (let's get really vulgar) over 200 million world wide before we even got to video, HBO and Cinemax. Yet Warner Bros has done nothing with the other four books by me which they own. In addition, they control another three books. Ah sigh! It's a world in which neither commerce nor art means anything logical.

But Mr. Cameron has THE MUMMY and I am overjoyed.

AND, AND AND ... AS I WRITE THIS, ROLAND EMMERICH, the first one to show serious insterest in the MUMMY -- the one who got Coralco to buy it -- has a movie opening this weekend called INDEPENDENCE DAY which everyone is raving about. I haven't seen it yet, but I couldn't be more happy for Emmerich. I mean STARGATE was exciting, suspenseful and delicious. I hope Emmerich breaks every box office record this weekend!

When I left New York this morning, I heard that they had been showing INDEPENDENCE DAY all night, and people were sleeping in the streets to get in. Bravo, Mr. Emmerich!

ONE WAY THIS MOVIE MANIAC CAN CONNECT WITH HOLLYWOOD. To let off some of the movie-love frustration. Invite my friend, MICHAEL RILEY, author of the recent CONVERSATIONS WITH ANNE RICE -- Michael who is a teacher of film and has been for years, and knows infinitely more than I do about film, and loves as it as much or more than I do, -- invite Michael to write with me a book on the films we most passionately want to recommend or study or simply celebrate.

In the meantime, let me mention to you some of the gems I have recently seen.

No. Actually, let's talk about people. A few years back, our great actors were almost all New York Street geniuses -- Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, and Dustin Hoffman. Ray Liotta is a damn fine new addition. And let us never forget Nicolas Cage. (I know I'm forgetting people. But) The point is some of the finest American films made in the 70's 80's and 90's were "gangster films." With THE GODFATHER, the gangster film became a spiritual form, transcending itself, and from there on, it seemed almost every profound talent we had came from the New York Italian streets. The gangster film was speaking for us. The gangster film was speaking not only about America but War and Peace. Okay.

BUT NOW THE WHOLE SITUATION HAS CHANGED.

THOSE GUYS ARE STILL AROUND AND STILL KNOCK DEAD BRILLIANT. Joe Pesci and Robert de Niro were fabulous in CASINO. Al Pacino was so good in SCENT OF A WOMAN that it was unforgettable. Dustin Hoffman is capable of genius any time he emerges to make a film. Ray Liotta is terrific in anything he does. And these dudes do have flexibility of a certain kind.

BUT A NEW CROP HAS COME, AND THESE NEW ACTORS ARE NOT ONLY VIRILE AND POWERFUL ACTORS, BUT THEY ARE REFINED, CLASSICALLY SKILLED, AND VERSATILE TO THE POINT OF DOING MAGIC.

They can do the New York Streets or Shakespeare. They have so mastered the techniques of acting, they have so developed their voices and their styles that they can move easily between Tarantino and historial dramas of immense emotional and moral scope. They can go toe to toe with anybody.

I'm speaking now of Kenneth Branagh, who made the brilliant HENRY V, and MUCH A DO ABOUT NOTHING, who is so crashingly creative and so seductive an interpreter of Shakespeare that we ought to beg him on our knees to make us an entire archive of Shakespeare!

Of Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange who were masterly in ROB ROY, going toe to toe with brilliant older actors like John Hurt within a flawless evocation of Scotland in the 17th Century. What a gem of a film!

Of Tim Roth, nominated thank god for ROB ROY, who was mesmerizing as the villainous bastard in the film, and just as brilliant in his Tarantino crime roles.

Of Kevin Spacey, a remarkable talent who can enthrall us with narrative in a mind boggling delicious suspense film like the USUAL SUSPECTS and even make endurable a loathesome seriel killer in SEVEN DEADLY SINS.

Of Gabriel Byrne, gangster in MILLERIS CROSSING and in THE USUAL SUSPECTS.

Of Kirstin Dunst who in INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE was at one moment a child and at another an eloquent and beguiling girl-woman -- destined for greatness, if she hasn't already achieved it in that one role.

Add to this list those who have been around a while and are gaining daily in range and brilliance. Careers just aren't predictable anymore! It's wide open! Try to shut somebody down and they come back with a smash hit. Try to peg them and they show you a new soul.

MORGAN FREEMAN! Sheer brilliance. God, what wouldn't I give to have Morgan Freeman star in a f ilm version of my novel FEAST OF ALL SAINTS with Whoopi Goldberg, both of them using their mesmerizing and distinctive voices to narrate the tale.

Whoopi can do anything! If only she'd play Madame Lermontant in FEAST OF ALL SAINTS. (ONE OF MY UNSOLD NOVELS, AND DOOMED NO DOUBT TO BE UNSOLD FOREVER SINCE IT CONCERNS A HIGHLY UNPOPULAR SUBJECT - - THE FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR (BLACK PEOPLE WHO WEREN'T SLAVES) BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR.)

SALLY FIELD. The woman has the world at her f eet. She can tear you to pieces in STEEL MAGNOLIAS or make you die laughing in SOAP DISH. Her career has been marked by explosive twists and turns from the start.

HOLLY HUNTER. Same thing. The woman's fabulous. She was perfect in BROADCAST NEWS, a dazzle in THE FIRM, and from that she plunged into the nineteenth century, in the exquisite and daring and unforgettable THE PIANO, acting toe to toe with miracle performer Harvey Keitel.

Ah, Harvey Keitel! Who would have thought he could have done THE PIANO? AHHHHHH!

Susan Sarandon continues to grow, adding challenge to challenge with total success.

ERIC ROBERTS was immortal by the time he f inished KING OF THE GYPSIES.

JEREMY IRONS continues to make one dazzling film after another, no matter how savage and stupid the critics are in their treatment of him. (He gets alot of praise too of course. ) M. BUTTERFLY is one of his many masterpieces. DAMAGE, THE MISSION, REVERSAL OF FORTUNE -- THERE ARE TOO MANY TO COUNT. He defies all rules moving between Olivier authority and sexiest man in the world with utter ease. He will live forever, and I can't wait for his LOLITA.

Anthony Hopkins made NIXON a matchable work of genius, instead of just another Oliver Stone work of genius.

OTHER FASCINATING PEOPLE, POPPING UP ALL OVER.

Madeline Stowe is one of the most intriguing screen presences I've seen. She was unforgettable in THE LAST OF MOHICANS.

Then there's Demi Moore, who, although she can make millions in f ilms like GHOST nevertheless attempts an immense vision in THE SCARLET LETTER. Her supernatural film, THE SEVENTH SIGN was terrific.

The history of Sharon Stone is well known. Anyone who saw her with Richard Chamberlain in the satirical KING SOLOMONIS MINES knew then she was beautiful, funny, sexy and magnetic. But what has happened to her? She has become a brilliant actress who can tackle a role of any depth.

Dennis Hopper is growing in power with every film, utterly engaging whether it's in TRUE ROMANCE or SPEED.

Kevin Bacon and Christian Slater deserve accolades for what they accomplished in MURDER IN THE FIRST -- truly one of the finest films I've ever seen.

Antonio Banderas -- I have spoken above.

Dare I mention Gary Oldman again? GARY OLDMAN, GARY OLDMAN, GARY OLDMAN, GARY OLDMAN. In the SCARLET LETTER he was as brilliant as the film allowed him to be. He was beautiful to behold. With his long hair and beard he was spectacularly alluring -- taking on in costume a seductiveness that outdistanced DRACULA and IMMORTAL BELOVED. In fact, he gets more fascinating just to look at with each new role. My honest opinion on that one -- as an Oldman freak -- is that Gary Oldman is best as a hero or a character -- that is, Beethoven, Napoleon, Dracula, that kind of thing -- but he can not really play a nerd. He's just too great for that. And the minister in THE SCARLET LETTER is an all time famous nerd. A really cowardly little nerd. Oldman is just too huge for a role that inherently weak.

Whatever the case, there was plenty in THE SCARLET LETTER for me to watch and appreciate including the role of Joan Plowright, another fabulous older actress. And again, I thought Demi Moore was quite wonderful in her role and in what she attempted with this film.

When have we ever had talent like this?

And BRAVEHEART. Where can I find the words to describe Mel Gibson's talent in BRAVEHEART?

The vision and execution were magnificent. He was so compelling as the hero, so competent as the director and so damned brave as the man who did this film that it is stunning. And what is more stunning is that the Academy actually recognized his achievement. Usually when a film is as great as BRAVEHEART, as original, as unusual and as huge, the ACADEMY ignores it. The touches of romance in BRAVEHEART, the raw convincing violence, the immense expressive emotion of the hero, Wallace -- all this was handled with remarkable restraint in the midst of glorious battle scenes and spectacles and images that were near blinding.

Also BRAVEHEART did a brilliant thing. It created a tragic ending that was beautiful rather than shocking, an ending that young children could see that wouldn't send them home having nightmares. It gave us violence but it gave us goodness in greater measure. It gave us shocks and action, but it gave us lessons in honor,, honesty, and decency. A rich, incredible film.

Frankly, I didn't know Mel Gibson had it in him to do a film this great. I mean I didn't know that he wanted to do that kind of film. I knew he was a brilliant actor. I loved him in his early films and I enjoyed LETHAL WEAPON.

But I just never knew he wanted to go that deep. Immediately after watching BRAVEHEART twice, I went out and found his HAMLET and watched it twice two. Brilliant stuff.

Please, please, please, Emma Thompson, Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh, Glenn Close, Jeremy Irons, Alan Bates ... DO MORE SHAKESPEARE!!!!! Do more great films. We need it! We need a great Macbeth! I am going crazy trying to find great films of Shakespeare! To return to the point, we're in a golden age of actors and actresses, and I am guilty of not being able to think of many who deserve mention even in a personal letter like this.

We saw the the age of the stars, the age of the gangsters, and the age of the tough guys -- and now we're in the age of the absolutely flexible and brilliant.

Maybe it's television that has raised the standards of acting so high -- not through films or shows made for television, but through the merciless close ups on television from films made in the last thirty years.

My guess is it is really the VCR revolution -- the fact that film is now archival, and you can get any film you want sooner or later from somebody, and that film to be really considered great has to stand up under repeated watching. That's what people want from film now, that it be good not just on Tuesday night at the local show, but after the sixth and seventh watching. They want films to be like symphonies and paintings -- continuously yielding pleasure with every reconsideration.

Well, I have said enough on my favorite subject. The great films of our time, so broad in range, so full of surprises -- are my spiritual nourishment. They give me the heat and strength to keep writing. I need ROB ROY. I NEED BAD LIEUTENANT. I NEED BRAVEHEART. I need Gary Oldman in anything

When the historians of the future look back on our times, I wonder if they will not see in these films some of the grandeur I saw in Italy in Renaissance architecture and painting. Only our novels and our films attempt this large scale now.

Our architecture? Well, let's just change the subject. Our music? I'm not qualified to say. Modern operas have left me confused. I simply haven't found anybody since Bartok or Shastakovitch that I love. I'm still learning from Tchaikovsky.

But our films and our books -- in these lie our large visions, the fullest expression of our cosmic consciousness.

Contemporary painting and poetry no longer seem to be public art forms, though we desperately need both of them, and we are guilty of making it near impossible for them to be widely understood and received in our modern world.

But in novels and in films lies our monumental work.

God knows I shoot for greatness in my books, and am fully prepared to be ridiculed for it. I never had any interest in normality or acceptance or being one of the crowd and I have none now. Soooo....

UPDATE:

We're going out on tour for SERVANT OF THE BONES on August lst. Our first signing is here in New Orleans. Then we go on up to New York.

We'll have the whole list of cities on the phone line -1-504-522-8634. We hope we see you somewhere along the road. Last time our passion was wedding dresses. We did seven and eight hour signings in wedding dresses. This year, inspite of August heat, it will be velvet and silver and gold, and long curls, curls like those of my Hebrew angel Azriel.

This is long enough, isn't it?

President Clinton, please, please give us universal health care, a standard minimum income that does not require people to stay sick, weak, or unemployed to get it but helps them get back on their fee, a flat income tax so we can all stop loathing the government, and of course same sex marriages. I know we can't expect any earth shaking statements in an election year, even though the Republican party has committed graceful public suicide by nominating kind and gentle Mr. Dole, but please, please, please, get radical, man!

I have figured out why the press is so mean to Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. They're beautiful. They're physically beautiful and physically threatening to people for that reason.

Well, guess what? We have to forgive them that, and think how incredibly brave, energetic and hard working they are -- and how little their enemies have accomplished with all the muck raking. Just think back on the real scandals of the Republican administrations.

And don't forget that this young, optimistic, idealistic couple has since the beginning of the new administration faced Biblical weather in America, terrorism on a hideous scale never seen before, and apocalyptic wars and genocide all over the globe.

The president talks straight to us. He thinks on his feet. He looks the world in the eye. The First Lady is admired all over South America and Europe, and what do we get in America from our own press? Nitpicking and stupidity about the Clintons.

It's a joy to watch them carry on, oblivious to the idiot elements of the press. They have a true sense of what the Romans called gravitas.

Well, I will vote to give them four more years to beat the insurance companies, and bring back health care, jobs and safety to our people.

Love to you all.....

P.S. I saw Allison Krause and Union Station at House of Blues! Man, can she play that violin. And she has one of the most delicate and beautiful voices in blue grass music. Check it out. And Leila Josefowicz is now moving into the dark gorgeous concerto by Jean Sibelius that is on this same CD -- Phillips Label. Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Sir Neville Marriner.

Go for it.

Anne Rice in New Orleans ... listening to Alison Krauss with joy.

P.S. Thanks to my friend Brian Robertson of Easley, South Carolina for his continuing stimulating talk on film, and for helping me spell the names of the actors correctly. Thanks to all the angels in my office for their proof reading help.

And thank you for your calls and letters about Michael Riley's CONVERSATIONS WITH ANNE RICE. That really was a book that came spontaneously. I'm pleased and proud of what Mike enabled me to say in that book.