Question: Build a movie plot around this: What is in Greta's blood that puts Shreck to sleep? the laudanum
Answer:
Bram Stoker's widow has refused to sell the film rights for Draculato F.W. Murnau, so Murnau [John Malkovich] decides to film it anyway, changing the names ofthe characters, the title, and the locations. Thus, Dracula becomesNosferatu, Transylvania and England become Germany, Count Draculabecomes Count Orlock, and Mina becomes Ellen. After filming the beginningsof the movie on a soundstage in Berlin, Murnau is anxious to get cast andcrew to Czechloslovakia where they will be meeting up with Max Schreck [Willem Dafoe],the vampire hired by Murnau to play an actor playing a vampire.Murnau introduces Max Schreck as a character actor from the ReinholdCompany and explains that Schreck will remain in character at all times.Yet no one, not even producer Albin Grau [Udo Kier] knows anything about him. As avampire, Schreck is no Dracula. He is old and bald. He can't remember hishumanity; he knows only that his turning had to do with a woman, whoseface has long ago passed from his memory. He has lost most of his powers,e.g., his strength and his ability to pass through locked doors. He hasn'tseen the light of the sun for centuries. He lives in the filth of anabandoned abbey, keeping himself alive on the blood of the occasional rathe can catch. He thinks the saddest part of Dracula, which he read afterMurnau gave him a copy, is when Dracula was forced cook for Harker becausehe had no servants. He reads and angsts over Goethe's poem about Tithonus,a mortal who wished for immortality but forgot to ask for external youthand is now aged, powerless, and yet must endure...just like himself. Hehas agreed to make this film only because Murnau has promised to providehim with blood during the filming and, at the end of the movie, Murnau haspromised that Schreck can feed on Greta [Catherine McCormack], the actress who is playing EllenHarker.As the filming progresses, Schreck's performance is both inspiringand creepy, inspiring in how he captures the essence of the vampire andcreepy in his own personality...