ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDERSTERN ARE UNDEAD

Posted on | June 14, 2008 |

If you’ve recently seen David Slade’s arctic blood bath, 30 Days of Night, you may be in the mood for a vampire themed movie with a little more class, for vampires you’d actually want to go out with for a drink – maybe a bite. If that’s the case, you’ll want to check out Joradan Galland’s eclectic brainchild, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead, which somehow combines Shakespeare, Vampires, and a quest for the Holy Grail in a modern-day setting. “How,” you may rightly ask? We sat down Galland, to get the skinny. By Lars Bohr

I understand the film draws a connection between Hamlet, the Holy Grail, and vampires. Care to say how that works?
Oh, yes … well when you look at Hamlet, you notice a lot of similarities between his behaviour and a vampire’s. He’s always dressing in black and stays away from the sun. Plus, there are some lines from Hamlet that have some pretty strong vampiric undertones.

Really? Like what?
Off the top of my head, there’s a quote that reads:

“Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion into this world: now I could drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.” – Hamlet, Act 3, scene 2.

(Later, Galland got back to us with some other interesting fragments:)

“I am too much in the sun,” – Act 1, scene 2.

“Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned …
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee ‘Hamlet,’” – Act 1, scene 5.

Neat. How big a role does Shakespeare play? Is a lot of the screen time filled with lines from Hamlet?
Oh no not at all. I didn’t want the audience to have to come into it with a lot of prior Shakespearian knowledge. But it does allude to ideas that Shakespeare wrote into some of his plays. I have great respect for him as a writer; I’m not trying to insult his memory at all.

Is there anything Shakespearian about the script or the plot of the movie itself?
It’s a movie about people putting on a play, so there’s that…Hamlet is like the actor’s bible. In a sense it’s a literary bible. Moby Dick references Hamlet, and so does James Joyce.

What kind of vampires are we dealing with here?
Each new vampire movie that comes along creates a new rule for vampires, and all of them are built on what came before. Some of the conventions are based on tradition – killed by a stake through the heart, aversion to garlic and sunlight, et cetera – but a lot of them come up randomly. In this film, if a vampire drinks from the Holy Grail, the curse is lifted

How does Jake Hoffman think of his role?
He was really excited to do it. We had a lot of fun. He’s really funny, brought a lot to the table. Him and I had met each other several times before that and had hung out. He’s done several short films himself, so the production had that quality of life referencing itself.

Is there anything that’s happened on-set that you’d like to share?
It was such an amazing experience, I just feel like I’m incredibly lucky to have worked with the people I worked with. The actors were so surprisingly great. When I wasn’t intensely directing everyone, my jaw was just dropping to the floor at what we were doing.

The film has been shot in the East Village of New York, and features Jake Hoffman, Devon Aoki and Waris Ahluwalia. Galland aims to have the film premiere during 2008, in Hollywood.

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