Queen of the Damned
In 2000, friends and I flew to Melbourne to take part as unpaid extras in the filming of Queen of the Damned, the shambolic sequel to Interview with the Vampire. We filmed the concert scene in a quarry on December 1. This is the report I wrote for The Courier-Mail newspaper.
Is Death Valley really this cold? The Goth girl in the PVC skirt and halter top is freezing, her exposed flesh goose-pimpled as she shakes in her boyfriend’s arms. Then the music starts and she gratefully turns back to the stage and resumes dancing, embracing the action and the warmth it brings. It is 4am and the vampire Lestat and his rock ‘n’ roll band are lip-synching their way through their canon of two songs for the umpteenth time. Thousands of fans are gathered at the foot of the stage, huddled under the flood-lights, hands raised in adulation as they sway to the crunching beat, mouthing the words to the familiar chorus.
Hundreds — thousands — of blackclad faithful gathered from across the nation with a single purpose — a chance to be famous.
After all, what self-respecting Goth wouldn’t want to be in a vampire movie? Especially the sequel to Interview with the Vampire, the Anne Rice yarn that made folk wonder if there wasn’t more to Tom Cruise than a nice smile after all.
No Tom here tonight. His role has been taken by Stuart Townsend. No Death Valley either, for that matter. Not even California.
The faithful are mostly Australian, who have travelled from across the continent to be unpaid extras for a night on the set of Queen Of The Damned.
The Death Valley concert is being filmed in a quarry near Werribee, a market-garden town south-west of Melbourne with more cabbages than cacti.
It is a strange landscape — lunar white dust and rocks and waist-high thistles; an alien landscape made even more other-worldly by the undulating column of blackclad pilgrims winding towards the beckoning floodlights.
Most have caught buses from a rendezvous in Melbourne, been plied with coffee, soft drink and fast food at a circus tent before the sunset march across to the movie set.
There are more tents, cranes, a stage no bigger and somewhat less spectacular than most you’d expect at an outdoor concert. Two columns of chimneys occasionally belch fire, a godsend in the early hours when the temperature plunges towards zero.
The production has been set up here for the past week, shooting with some 500 paid extras the climatic concert scene. Queen of the Damned is named after the third book of Anne Rice’s vampire chronicles that began with Interview With The Vampire, but is largely also derived from the second novel The Vampire Lestat, in which the vampire becomes a rock-music idol until he attracts the ire of others of his kind who resent the sudden publicity.
That final confrontation is being filmed this week in studios set up in an abandoned factory in Melbourne, again with the paid extras who form the backbone of the concert scenes. Some of them are expecting to “die” this week, caught in the crossfire between the warring undead. Or at least, that’s the rumour.
“The don’t tell us anything,” said one paid extra, sporting fangs and a full-length coat of purple velvet, to a group of envious unpaids. “Still… I would have done it for nothing. Getting paid is a bonus. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”
There were no arguments from her rapt listeners, who came from Queensland for this single night. They and the hundreds of others responded to ads on the radio and the Internet.
From sunset to sunrise they stood under the floodlights in that alien world, stamping feet and cuddling against the cold. Moving left, right, forwards, backwards, to fill out the camera angles with black velvet, PVC, leather, nose rings, white faces, bizarre contact lenses, fangs. Dancing on cue, fists raised, screaming out a chorus they’d been taught only hours before. Looking enviously as the actors and the stunt people are wrapped in blankets between takes. Making an exodus for the coffee urns and port-a-loos during the two breaks.
It will probably be a year before the movie is released and the pilgrims can see on the big screen whether their dreams of immortality have been realised.
“Yeah, that’s me, down there by that girl in the pink hair, just behind that fellow waving a plastic pitchfork…”
I would have killed to be there. I was really only wanting to see this movie because Aaliyah was my fave singer and it’s a rare occasion to see a black vampire on celluloid. I loved all the music for the film, though, I think a lot more than the film itself. the concert scene was great, I kept trying to see more vampires in the crowd but the scene moved pretty fast.
Thanks for sharing this post, you never really hear the tales of the extras on film so it was interesting to read 🙂
Aaliyah’s death was a tragedy, all right, and an avoidable one, from all accounts. It’s still weird seeing the concert scene and knowing she was on what amounted to a see-saw as she rose out of the stage! It’s a shame the movie wasn’t a little more coherent and that the most excellent Claudia Black didn’t get a bigger role.
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I have very little interest in vampires – or anything gothic for that matter, but I love reading everything that you write, and this is no exception. You always manage to totally engage the reader and take them with you, regardless of the subject matter. I love it – you’re great!
I want to be notified of follow-up comments and new posts and forgot to tick those, so here I am doing just that!
Thanks, Paula. Blushing so much now I could stop traffic.
I am a student at the Art Institute of California – Sacramento interested in editing music videos. You wouldn’t happen to be in contact with the film makers, I am wondering if there is any way I could borrow some of the unused raw footage from that night for my current project. Thanks for your help.
Hi Kimberly, I’m sorry, I’m not; you’d have to try the studio. It was Warner Bros, so I don’t know what your chances would be.
My girlfriend and I were there. Long night but worth it. Great experience. Dressed in black as usual and we had long hair. We fit in perfectly. Ready for a part 2. Hopefully a speaking roll this time. Been in other big movies too but this was definitely unique and we love night shoots. Music was our kind of music too.
Thanks for sharing! Great fun 🙂