So... I've been trying to develop a vampire script for some time now. I'm actually on my third attempt. Initially, I was developing a comedy that evolved into a drama/thriller, a completely different script. I developed the latter into a full blown treatment that was just about good to go but in putting the finishing touches on it, I realized that it probably wouldn't work well as a script and more importantly found it was not something I could get behind anymore (for multiple reasons). I deleted the treatment file just to make sure I wouldn't revisit the project and I've yet to regret that decision.

So as of a few months ago, I've decided to start fresh and deliberated over a multitude of ideas. To date, I'm still keen on writing something in the genre and have essentially boiled things down to two characters, a specific tone to pursue, a few flourishes here and there and certain staples of vampire mythos to avoid outright, so as to keep myself in line. No plot.

So now I have these two characters that I think are interesting whom I want to meet each other but once I try to connect the dots, I start to get into trouble. I've cycled through multiple potential plots to incorporate the characters into but have constantly found myself unsatisfied. At times, I've treaded too close to standard vampire conventions while others, I've come up with interesting concepts but that are not cinematic, are better suited for shorts or just flat out have nowhere to go beyond a certain point in development. Others still, I've come up with something that is fresh and dynamic but that I'd be lying to myself to say I was actually interested in.

I've actually done a pretty extensive amount of research for this project. I've read up a lot on the history of vampires in mythology and classic literature. I've read a lot of articles on vampires in contemporary culture and the effects that they have on society. I've read about "real vampires" and read/watched interviews with many of them. I've also watched a ton of vampire films. I mean everything from old black and white films to sleaze/sexploitation to modern films. I finally got to see The Hunger and Martin and am even considering watching Twilight, if only for research.

What I've found is that the vampire genre has covered a lot of ground, thematically. I mean a lot. I'd say the majority of themes any seriously thoughtful writer might come up with have not only been done, they've been down frequently. Interview with a Vampire especially covered a lot. Some themes might have been more obvious but I think it covered a lot of subtleties as well and I've found myself surprised how many of the same subtleties have been explored in books and films that aren't like Interview with a Vampire at all. I think vampires, being the most human and, shall we say, eloquent of mythical creatures, lean towards a thematic approach in their fiction likely more so than the majority of other character archetypes in general, not just the supernatural.

I've heard a lot of talk on the site about how vampires are getting played out but I never realized how played out. I hate to sound like I'm stating the obvious but maybe the genre's exhausted more of its potential than pretty every other subgenre out there.

In short, I set out to write a vampire script and basically thought it'd be easy. I mean, how apropos that vampires should suck blood given how much of vampire fiction sucks. Write a vampire script that avoids the regular pitfalls and you should be golden. So I'm surprised at just how hard it's been to even conceive a vampire story (that's worthwhile, anyway).

At this point, I have to wonder. I've been doing a lot of over-thinking on the project, which is never a good thing. Things only get more and more hazy that way. But maybe that's not the problem. Maybe vampires really are as played out as everybody says they are. Maybe I really don't like vampire films at all. I mean I only hold a few in a substantial affinity.

I don't think I have definitive answers for these questions and I don't really expect any. Although I do think they make for an interesting discussion, hence this thread.

Any thoughts?

It's hard to say that vampires are played out when Dark Shadows just made a fortune (even though it sucked), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is gonna make a fortune, and the new Twilight movie may flirt with a worldwide box office of a billion dollars.  Keep in mind that pirates were also played out 10 years ago, especially after Cutthroat Island destroyed everything it came in contact with, but then Pirates of the Caribbean came along and the rest is history.

That's not really what I'm talking about. I mean, I'm sure you could rehash any of those movies for the next decade under different titles and they'd still make bank. But they'd still be rehashed. In that sense, it's not really for me to say if they're played out or not but again, I'm not debating whether or not vampires are marketable or whatever. That seems to be a no-brainer at this point.

Vampires are definitely being over done and played out these days.  You have Twilight to thank for that.  My girlfriend is a fan of reading teen novels-- drugs, alcohol, suicide, anorexia-- anything including teens.  She really gets into it.  She said ever since Twilight that the entire teen section has been almost cleaned out completely and replaced by Teen Vamp novels-- and I didn’t really notice this until one day I walked in with her and that’s really all they had.  And it’s pretty much the same thing.  My boyfriend is secretly a vampire.  My girlfriend is secretly a vampire and I look like Joe Jerk off while she sucks off everyone in town when the sun goes down.  It’s ridiculous.  It takes all the fun out of vampires too, because they aren’t meant to be all sissy-types like Jack Crow says in John Carpenter’s Vampires:  “they're not romatic. Its not like they're a bunch of fuckin' **** hoppin' around in rented formal wear and seducing everybody in sight with cheesy Euro-trash accents, all right? Forget whatever you've seen in the movies: they don't turn into bats, crosses don't work. Garlic? You wanna try garlic? You could stand there with garlic around your neck and one of these buggers will bend you fucking over and take a walk up your strada-chocolata WHILE he's suckin' the blood outta your neck, all right? And they don't sleep in coffins lined in taffeta. You wanna kill one, you drive a wooden stake right through his fuckin' heart. Sunlight turns 'em into crispy critters.”
They’re mean bad asses, so all in all, I say if you’re gonna write a script about blood-suckers, make sure you don’t travel the Twilight route and have them “glitter and sparkle” when the sun light hits ‘em.

James,

I recently wrote "Arterial Motives". It was requested by the SyFy channel to the same people making Blackout and Finders Keepers. They were told they wanted a "Dracula Begins" type of story that is nothing like Twilight.

AM is in pre-pro, but with no guarantee it will show on SyFy. However, if you have a script along those lines, perhaps you can pitch it to SyFy....

Vampires aren't dead yet!  

Hopefully Arterial Motives will be a nice change from such classics as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus.

I've been working on a Vampire script as well.

As part of my research I read large numbers of the novels considered the best written in the genre.

There seems to be two essential stories and they aren't mutually exclusive:

1. Fight for survival.  Vampires start to terrorise somewhere. No-one believes it's Vampires. Then they realise it's true and a small group of people have to go to the Vampire lair to kill them off.

2. Fight for soul. The Vampire is in internal conflict trying to reconcile being immortal and beautiful with their need for human blood.

Few deviate from this well trodden path.

The "best" Vampire story I came across wasn't really a Vampire story. It's called Necroscope by Brian Lumley..about a guy who can speak to the dead and ends up working for a PSI Ops division of MI6 battling similar people from the Soviet Union...including a vampire.

Perhaps the best way to approach it is not to write a Vampire story at all, but to write another story that just happens to have Vampires in it.

A buddy movie with Vampires.
A space opera wth vampires.
A heist movie with vampires etc

How about a story about a vampire and his talking dog?



My first post in a while and I come up with that shit.  Great!

Rick said it best with write a story and put a vampire in it.  This would, hopefully, keep you away from some of the vampire cliches that are out there.  Hopefully, whatever you do, you will remember that vampires are monsters and lost souls with angst.


Phil

Hey James,

Two options came across my mind while reading your post...

1) Rick and Phil hit it...

Write a GENRE BASED SCRIPT that just happens to have vampires in it.
I actually have a treatment for a heist picture with vampires!
Just haven't gotten around to developing further... yet. For example...

"Sundown" is a Western adventure comedy about vamps with Bruce Campbell.
Playing switcheroo with the genres could hit the mother lode for you. Or...

2) Focus on character conflict THEN add the vampire twist.

Six months ago, I was tasked with a rewrite by a producer.
I kept the genre beats and basic framework of the original script...
But I completely reinvented the leads to MAXIMIZE CONFLICT POTENTIAL.

So, come up with the best oil and water characters you can...
THEN add the vampire twist to them and see where they take you.

Regards,
E.D.

Best vampire movie I've ever seen is Thirst.  http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/thirst-2009/

A must-see if you're thinking about ways to reinvent the genre, IMO.

Good luck

The best advice I've got in regards to the project is to figure out a basic story first and then add the vampire so I think you guys are totally on point with that. I think the best vampire films are really about human concerns e.g. Thirst, Let the Right One In, Trouble Every Day, even Vampire's Kiss to a point. I kind of want to follow suit and write a vampire drama with a strong human element. Honestly, I think the vampire character of Rick's "fight for soul variety" tends to deal with immortality and living off murder in a more or less human way anyway and I suppose my intentions would be to write that much more than a "fight for survival" story.

Still, you have to deal with the vampire angle at some point and that's when things get tricky. You can either go with a "turned" vampire or a vampire who's been at the game for a while. Both have their own cliches, one, I think, more than the other. Those cliches are compounded if you decide to go with a "good" or "moral" vampire. I feel like at that point, you're facing a veritable cliche minefield. Likewise, if you go with an evil vampire (although I think the good vampire is more vulnerable to being derivative). Then you get to gender roles and you've got even more problems.

I'm not saying it's impossible to come up with something interesting out of all this criteria, nor am I necessarily saying you have to avoid every single cliche that pops up. Some of them work. What I am saying is that I think there's an especially fine line to walk in trying to write an intriguing, adult vampire drama that doesn't pander to superficialities and black and white morality...

...perhaps I'm over-thinking again.

And for the record, I think Thirst is the best vampire film ever made. I think Park Chan-wook's essentially left every writer with a tough act to follow.

Near Dark is my fave vamp movie by some distance. That's how you do a genre mash up.

Perhaps a helpful way to look at this is...

Does the story I write work on a fundamental level when I remove the vamps?
If yes, then I think you;re onto something!

Regards,
E.D.

Vampires originally were monsters - not human.  I think what's overdone is  trying to make them human.  Make them monsters and make them unstoppable.

A very good choice, at the very least for marketability, would be to combine vampires with a viral zombie story. Flesh-eating vampires wreak havoc on a small town -- something like that.    

Michael, that sounds like the I Am Legend approach.

A recent script that combined vampires with zombies really well was actually on last year's black list. It's called Bethlehem and is about a vampire that offers to protect humans during a zombie outbreak in exchange for blood. Pretty original concept and it has not been filmed yet.

There are ways to recreate things.

Quoted from mcornetto Vampires originally were monsters - not human.  I think what's overdone is  trying to make them human.  Make them monsters and make them unstoppable.

There was a time when I agreed with this and to an extent, I still do. But I'm definitely no longer interested in vampires as monsters. I think movies like Vampires, 30 Days of Night, Daybreakers, etc. can be just as lame as any Twilight or Anne Rice fare. I agree that humanizing vampires has been overdone but I think that's because generally speaking, writers have only tried to create one type of "human" vampire, namely a moralistic one. I'm interested in characterization and making vampire monsters kind of takes that out of the equation.

Quoted from James McClung I'm interested in characterization and making vampire monsters kind of takes that out of the equation.

Not at all. Nosferatu had plenty of character but he was most definitely a monster. Or taking it to a group mentality and the other end of the spectrum, the Raptors in Jurassic Park had character and at the same time they were monsters.   One doesn't preclude the other.

Quoted from mcornetto Not at all. Nosferatu had plenty of character but he was most definitely a monster. Or taking it to a group mentality and the other end of the spectrum, the Raptors in Jurassic Park had character and at the same time they were monsters.   One doesn't preclude the other.

Hmm. I can agree with Nosferatu, I suppose. You could apply the same logic to Werner Herzog's Nosferatu although I think he was humanized even more in that version so it starts to get a little more complicated.

I don't agree with the raptors in Jurassic Park. They're smart, scheming and have character in the way they behave, carry themselves and react to situations. All true. But this is obviously not the kind of characterization I was talking about.

I read the book Jurassic Park so I tend to give the Raptors more credit than they are due. They were fantastic in the book.  

But it sounds to me like you want to give your vampire a bit more lost-soul searching than I'm suggesting.  So, go for what inspires you.

Vampires are still in demand. Rules may change, but the song remains the same. It hasn't even been a year and H'Wood has a hundred Dracula pix in development, second only to Frankie.

And they keep churnin' out Underworld flicks too.

And even I got a vampire tale optioned, although the focus is more on the ghoul that watches over them.

Quoted from James McClung I think movies like Vampires, 30 Days of Night, Daybreakers, etc. can be just as lame as any Twilight or Anne Rice fare.

To each his own James. I thought 30 Days ruled, Daybreakers was interesting...and Interview With A Vampire remains outstanding.

But I'm also a big Hunger fan too.