How I love Amy Heckerling. Vamps, from last year, came and went in a flash. Are we too vampire-saturated now in our culture? Do we no longer like the camp aspect of vampires, and need them to be glittery and romantic and all serious? Similar to comic book movies now needing to pretend they’re Apocalypse Now? I don’t know. Vamps is a very good script about aging and change. Embrace of change, resisting change. People stuck in time (literally – like the vampires), and metaphorically (like the aging liberal-hippie played by Richard Lewis who is still living on his 60s protest days). There are a couple of scenes which really got to me, one being Alicia Silverstone’s vampire pointing out to her younger friend a building on a Manhattan street (what looks like St. Mark’s Place), and telling her friend what used to be there through the decades. We see the building change, we see what used to be there, all overlaid on the modern street. (Exactly like this fascinating photography project.) I have often looked around me in New York, especially if I knew what used to be on such-and-such a corner, and try to overlay those older images on the current reality. Those wrinkle-in-time moments. And then the final scene, where Alicia Silverstone, now old and decrepit, stands in the middle of Times Square and stares around her. Words can’t do it justice. It is the final scene in the film. Tremendously emotional. Heckerling continues to make insightful and funny films, refreshing, comedic, social satires.
This film went completely under (my) radar. With a few exceptions I find most vampire stories tiresome, but I loved Clueless so I just added this to my netflix queue.
Dan – Awesome! It’s not quite up to the level of Clueless but it’s really solid. The whole vampire thing is treated in a very silly way (they all go to Vampires Anonymous meetings, so funny) – it’s really a movie about growing older, and trying to be okay with that (not easy in a youth-obsessed culture). Funny and cute, great cast.
and, like I said, a final scene that almost made me collapse into a puddle on the floor. I’ve thought of it often since then when i walk through Times Square.