Fal-net > The Vampyre / Questions and Answers

Questions and Answers

Information about the final edits to Glen Eric Reed's screenplay, The Vampyre, based on the short story written by John Polidori.

Why did it take you so long to edit The Vampyre?

When I first finished the script last year [1998], I felt I was still a little too close to it to begin editing right away. I'll often find that I need a little distance from something I've written before I start to see what's wrong with it. That was especially the case with this. I read the original short story as a grad student, and got pretty involved with the thing back then, so I just needed to give it time. The editing process was much smoother that way, and I found I ended up not changing a lot of the stuff that I figured I would change when I first read over my completed script.

How do you differentiate your drafts?

I use color-coding, normally on three drafts. The original draft for The Vampyre was Yellow. I did have a sort of in-between draft on this one, mostly grammatical corrections and some minor dialogue changes, that I chose not to bother designating. The final draft, which is the completed script minus a correction or two, was Blue.

What changed between the Yellow and Blue drafts?

There were quite a few minor dialogue changes throughout the script, but only two major section edits. Toward the beginning, I added scenes 9A through 9C, after the original drawing-room scene. This gave William, Mary, and Christian a chance to discuss their opinions of Ruthven a little further. I also changed what happened to Lady Mercer here: Instead of throwing herself to her death later in the script, she's attacked up front. That allowed a little more suspense to build at the beginning.

I also corrected a major error that a friend brought to my attention. In the Yellow draft, William breaks his oath two pages after he makes it. I changed some dialogue to fix that, until William started breaking the oath right and left. That led me to remove scene 41, and add 41A. The new scene parallels the original: Mary and William chatting as William prepares to unpack. The difference is William not breaking the oath, plus the scene takes place in William's room instead of the foyer.

Were any more scenes added?

The only other addition was scene 68A, right at the end of the script. This just shows the full moon in Paris, before Mary is attacked. I wanted to be sure to establish that the vampire attacks only during the full moon, like in the original short story.

Did anything else change?

Actually, most of my work went into expanding the relationship between Mary and Christian. I also wanted to have Christian reappear at the end of the script, since he sort of fades away at the beginning of the third act. I accomplished that by putting him in the scene at William's deathbed. By doing that, I was also able to avoid introducing the Aubrey guardians two pages before the end of the script.

I expanded two scenes between Mary and Christian that take place while William is still abroad. Scene 23 had about a page added. That now establishes that Christian believed his proposal to Mary was genuine, while Mary intended to use it only to bring her brother home. I added about two pages to scene 31, bringing the tension between Mary and Christian to more of a climax, and show her a bit more unstable, boldly accusing Christian of loving her only for her money.

Why do you no longer refer to this as the only script to remain true to the original short story?

In the first draft, I felt I stayed close enough to the original plot to claim that. In the Blue draft, though, I strayed a little further. The character of Christian does not appear at all in the short story. I added him to give a little more depth to the plot, to help develop Mary's character (which is left totally undeveloped in the short story), and to provide breaks from the William/Ruthven plot. Although my plot is entirely true to Polidori's short story, due to my expansion of Christian's role, I can't comfortably claim that I "remain true."