‘Stay tuned’: Anne Rice’s new film could herald the release of an unpublished work by the late author Anne Rice

TThe worst heartbreak and triumph of Anne Rice’s life happened in relatively quick succession, each beginning when the American novelist’s daughter — Michelle, who was three at the time — told her she was too tired to play.

Rice had never heard such a comment from a child that age, and subsequent blood tests ordered by the doctor revealed that her beloved “mouse” had acute granulocytic leukemia, which for her was considered incurable.

Mouse died in 1972 shortly before he was six years old. As the devastating end approached, and then the initial grief of losing her daughter, Rice coped mostly by sitting over the typewriter, crafting what became her first novel: the enduring classic Interview with the Vampire.

“I knew writing was the only thing I could do, and when I wrote it was like fighting the darkness, pushing away all the absurdity and horror,” Rice later said of her novel about vampires battling the complexities of immortality, including a five-year-old girl inspired by a mouse.

When Rice was finished, the first reading went to her husband, Mouse’s father, poet Stan Rice. Stan Rice once recounted how he read it in “almost one sitting” and after finishing it said to himself: “Our lives will never be the same.”

“And,” he said, “it was never like that.”

Actually it wasn’t. The best-selling book, released in 1976, inspired a movie starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and a young Kirsten Dunst, and more recently a Netflix series. It prompted sequels including Queen of the Damned and a Broadway musical scored by Elton John. Rice gained international fame, a large following and fortune, and the most prominent reminder of her is one of the most famous mansions in her hometown of New Orleans: the old St. Elizabeth’s Orphanage.

Now, on AnneRice.com, this story and countless other related stories are being retold in an anthology of documentaries that is available to stream for free starting Thursday.

Anne Rice: An All Saints’ Day celebration officiated by her son, author Christopher Rice, and his business partner and close friend, Eric Shaw Quinn. Contains archival footage, special photographs and new interviews in tribute to the literary giant who died aged 80 towards the end of 2021 after suffering a stroke. It chronicles a live event in New Orleans at the beginning of November celebrating Rice’s legacy.

Part of the documentary anthology, reviewed by The Guardian, not only honors the role older sister Christopher Rice played in their mother’s career. It also explores Rice’s influence on authors who came after her, including fantasy and romance novelist Jennifer Armentrout, who says on screen: “A lot of us wouldn’t have the careers we have now without her.”

It reveals the sense of acceptance that arose through some of the characters she created in the early years of the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement, especially Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis de Pointe du Lac. In Rice’s debut as an author, the pair form a family of sorts with their fellow vampire, kindergartener Claudia.

“When I was a kid reading Interview with the Vampire, I was a gay kid,” Rob Roth, director of the Elton John-backed play Lestat, says in the anthology. “And the love between Lestat and Louis, just reading about it…made me feel better—like I wasn’t alone.”

Quinn, a novelist, says in the film that he faced an interview while “going through one of the worst times of my life.”

“And it was as if Anne reached out to me and said, ‘You’re fine — just the way you are,'” Quinn says. “And you don’t have to apologize to anyone for it.”

This approach pushed her into the rarefied air. For example, one clip from the anthology shows Rosie O’Donnell introducing Rice as a guest on her talk show — describing how the host, at the height of her career, waited five hours outside a bookstore for the author.

Speaking with The Guardian recently, Christopher Rice shared another anecdote he’s been keen on about the types of celebrities they might look up to. Ozzy Osbourne once left his mother backstage when he was performing in New Orleans, but she didn’t show up, preferring primarily to spend her evenings — in her son’s words — “in a Laura Ashley sundress and eating cookies and cheese.”

Her absence from the performance crushed Osbourne so much that when Christopher Rice and a friend tried to use passes, the former Black Sabbath frontman refused them entry. “They wanted to meet Anne, and that’s what happened,” Christopher Rice said with a wistful laugh.

Christopher Rice and Quinn said they made it a point for viewers of their documentary anthology to listen to those who caught a glimpse behind the curtain of Anne’s public persona. A staple of that persona were coffins – either for book signings or for display in her imposing home on the northeast corner of Napoleon Street and Britannia Street in New Orleans.

One of the most humorous voices in “Anne Rice: A Celebration of All Saints’ Day” is that of Amy Troxler, a New Orleans religion teacher who also worked as the author’s part-time assistant — and she addresses those coffins with a distinctive local accent.

“There was a coffin in the living room, and I thought, ‘What is this coffin?’” a visibly confused Troxler says in one of the anthology’s documentaries. “What kind of people put coffins in their living room?” It was a beautiful coffin, though, I must say.

If Christopher Rice and Quinn get their way, the anthology won’t be the final word on Anne. Her son said he and Quinn were “reviewing the archive of Anne’s work, both published and unpublished, with an eye toward future publications and productions across multiple platforms.

“Stay tuned.”