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Exit to Eden (1985)
by Anne Rice

I just must ask: has anyone seen a little-known movie from 1994 called Exit to Eden?  Or read the book of the same name it's based upon?

If you ever decide to sit a spell and read the book, let me tell you this now: you are highly unlikely to utter the words, "Sleeping is fun."

I have to wonder if something has shifted when it comes to anything by Anne Rice.  Or perhaps it has to do with anything NOT by Anne Rice but still has her name on it.  The 1994 film Interview With the Vampire and 2001's The Feast of All Saints are the two adaptations that Anne Rice herself actually liked.  She didn't care for 2002's Queen of the Damned, which to me seemed as if it was trying to cram both The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned into one film adaptation.  I think that film is still more remembered for its soundtrack than the film itself.

What I am trying to grasp is if the appeal of Anne Rice's novels, the source material of tv shows and movies, has decreased in favor of their screen adaptations.  It's sort of like the appeal of V.C. Andrews that has continued long after Andrews' death.

Allow me to elaborate.

Flowers in the Attic V.C. Andrews
1st Ed. Pocketbooks

In 1979, a novel called Flowers in the Attic was published.  Four children are locked in the attic wing of the mansion belonging to their mother's family after their father is killed in a car crash on his birthday.  The children find out that their mother actually has a family, and that this family is a wealthy Old Dominion family (that's Virginia) and that the mother had been disinherited and more or less disowned when she had married their father.  Why?

Weeeeeell...it turns out this is also...a-HEM...their father's family.  Their surname isn't their true surname, their mother's maiden and married names are one and the same and I think we know where this is headed, folks.

Since the mother was a housewife with no job skills in 1950s Pennsylvania, the house and furniture all ended up repossessed.  The mother, out of options, had no choice but to turn to her parents for help.

Those parents had become religious zealots, but the father, the children's grandfather, was dying.  The children hiding in the attic was supposed to be very temporary, but of course, it wasn't.  This novel was so extraordinary, so shocking, that even though it was going to be published, apparently, the publishers though no way would anyone believe a woman wrote this book.  So, instead of her actual name of Cleo Virginia Andrews being used, her literary identity became V.C. Andrews.

Flowers in the Attic became part of a series of novels that would be called the Dollanganger series.  The pattern in the reading order of the series novels V.C. Andrews wrote would be set by this series and the next one, the Casteel series.  The original story (Flowers in the Attic), three sequels written in sequence of time, and a fifth novel, the prequel, that explains the history and how the events in first novel (Flowers in the Attic, Heaven, etc.) came to happen as they did.  

The "prequels" are often numbered as the fifth and final in the series, but the reading order goes like this:

Garden of Shadows (the "prequel")

Flowers in the Attic

Petals on the Wind

If There Be Thorns

Seeds of Yesterday

V.C. Andrews published one stand-alone novel during her lifetime, My Sweet Audrina.  She was also publishing novels in her Casteel series at the time of her death n 1986.  The first of her novels published after her death was Garden of Shadows, published in 1987.

Also in 1987 was a film adaptation, Flowers in the Attic, which featured Andrews herself in a brief cameo.

There had been some discussion of adapting the other novels in the Dollanganger series to the screen then, but Andrews' novels about dark family secrets and real, flesh and blood horror without a single ghost, vampire, witch, zombie, superhero, or anything paranormal or supernatural at all would not see the screen again until the 2010's.

By then, V.C. Andrews's novels were--and are--a franchise.  Starting with notes, outlines and material Andrews had at the time of her death, ghostwriters were hired to complete incomplete novels and to write new ones based upon her materials.  Since then, other series in the same basic formula as Andrews' own Dollanganger and Casteel series' have been published and been wildly popular.  In the last decade or so, new entries in the Dollanganger series have been made, such as Secrets of Foxworth, which are based upon diaries kept by the oldest of the four imprisoned children, Christopher.

Even My Sweet Audrina turned into a series novel, the first of the Whitefern series, after having been a stand-alone novel for decades.

  

Going back to what was not in V.C. Andrews's published works, recently, a novel she had allegedly written in the early 1970s surfaced, called Gods of Green Mountain.  It is believed she wrote this, her only sci fi novel, in or about 1972, well before Flowers in the Attic was published.  As I understand it, her publisher had chosen not to publish the novel at all, which does beg its own set of questions.  

Then, Flowers in the Attic was remade by Lifetime Television.  This time around, though, the whole Dollanganger series was adapted to the small screen, not just the one novel.  Each film was an adaptation of each book.  The film titles corresponded with the novels for all but one.  Garden of Shadows was renamed Flowers in the Attic: The Origin for the four-part miniseries.

In fact, Harry Hamlin appeared in Flowers in the Attic: The Origin as Mr. Winfield, Olivia Winfield Foxworth's father.

Now, for the record, I was actually quite familiar with the Dollanganger series.  If you are screamingly hateful of my Mayfair Witches content, don't worry.  I can always do a review of this series--sin by sin.  And I have a suggestion.  I would suggest you read the Dollanganger novels for yourself and then watch the film adaptations of the novels.  Start with the 1987 film version of Flowers in the Attic and then watch the newer Lifetime Television film series.  

I would love to know your perspective on just which specific plot points in the novels you believe should have been omitted and/or included.  Or if the series should have been adapted at all.  Why?

If you decide to read the novels and then watch the film adaptations of them, I think you will understand why.

For decades after her death, new novels and series under her name, V.C. Andrews, have been published.  The earliest series to have all novels in it published after V.C. Andrews' death was the Cutler series.  This series, which began with Dawn and finished with the prequel Darkest Hour, has also been adapted to the screen.  It was almost immediately followed up with the Landry series, which is largely set in--wait for it--New Orleans.  

V.C. Andrews herself is dead, but her own literary legacy has endured in a way that could be described as a franchise.  Some might even consider the many subsequent series written after her death but still bearing her name as the author as officially sanctioned or just plain glorified fanfiction.  I've seen comments to that effect about the AMC shows based on the Mayfair Witches and Vampire Chronicles novels, and I'm sure it's already been said of the upcoming show, Talamasca.  Like V.C. Andrews, the show seems to have been inspired by characters and stories created by Anne Rice and not based upon any novel she specifically wrote that is being adapted to the screen. 

Has there been a shift towards taking characters and their stories into new realms, such as Louis relocating to Dubai at some point in his afterlife?  Or Season 3 of Mayfair Witches supposedly being set in Salem, Massachusetts?  Would audiences who also read the source novels be as interested in those source novels now if the series' based upon them had not been made at all?

There is no way to know for certain if either Anne Rice or V.C. Andrews would have approved of what has been done with their work since their deaths.  In Anne Rice's case, most who make a "best guess" do so based upon her opinions of the adaptations made during her lifetime.  Christopher Rice has made it clear on multiple occasions that he will NOT discuss the AMC shows based upon his mother's novels.  Even though he is still listed as an executive producer along with Anne Rice and administers her estate, he has, it appears, felt compelled to make it clear that he will not discuss the shows at all.  Why that is, I do not know.  But it is what it is.

I, however, will discuss the novels and the shows because...I can.  Again, I am well aware of the negative sentiment expressed by Anne Rice fans towards the recent AMC shows.  I am well aware that Immortal Universe, which I guess serves as a sort of collective for planned adaptations by AMC of Anne Rice's novels, has in recent times divided up its social media presence so that their Mayfair Witches content is separate from their Interview With the Vampire content.  One reason, supposedly, is many fans of Interview With the Vampire hated the Mayfair Witches series so much they wanted to see none of it alongside content about the other show.

Is that true?

I might just have to find out.  On occasion, I do skim through to look at content promoting the shows.  There was a brief clip posted on Instagram by Immortal Universe promoting Talamasca, an interesting little video meant to give a brief overview of the Talamasca.  Which I liked, by the way.  With very few exceptions, the comments section was Immortal Universe being blasted for "using AI" to make the little video.

Ouch.