The Dracula Legend:
Five Questions for Author Matt Cutugno

 

By THIRSTY

 

Matt Cutugno’s debut book, The Winter Barbeque, became an Amazon #1 Bestseller (Aging Parents). With a long history of produced plays to his credit, he shifted gears for his second novel and decided to tackle the Dracula legend. With a nod to history, Cutugno recounts a previously untold story of how author Bram Stoker developed his most famous character.

Stay Thirsty Magazine caught up with Matt Cutugno at his home in Indio, California, for these five questions.

 

STAY THIRSTY: What is it about the mythology of Dracula that attracted you to write The Dracula Legend?

MATT CUTUGNO: The fictional character of Dracula is one of the most well-known in modern literature. The original book, written in 1897, has inspired other books, movies, television shows, plays, and Halloween costumes. But I frankly had grown tired of the over-use of the Dracula icon in general and blood-sucking sexy vampires in particular. I was looking for a new, truer way to tell the old story. 

STAY THIRSTY: How did you become interested in Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad the Impaler?

MATT CUTUGNO: I have passion for history, historical chronicles have always entertained and informed me. Years ago, when I first heard of the Wallachian prince, Vlad Dracul, aka Tepes, I found him immediately more compelling than the fictional Dracula. Vlad Dracul lived in the 15th century, in Wallachia, what is now Romania, and he fought against the invasion of the Balkans by the powerful Ottoman Turks. His struggles were part of the clash of civilizations, Muslim v. Christian, the effects of which are still felt today. I was intrigued by his life and times and I kept on researching. 

 

STAY THIRSTY: What was it about Vlad that led Bram Stoker to connect him with the Dracula legend and vampires? 

MATT CUTUGNO: Well, for someone living in England, Eastern Europe had always represented mystery, its folklores filled with superstition and fearsome fantasy. It’s important too to understand that in Bram Stoker’s time, what was known as Invasion Literature was very popular. Inspired by the dread caused by Prussia’s easy victory over France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, writers subsequently fashioned stories of invasion by mysterious or even other-worldly forces. The work of H.G. Wells, Robert Lewis Stevenson and others was inspired by this fear of invasion. I think in Vlad, Stoker found a powerful antagonist, one known in history for over-the-top cruelty. While Tepes did not “invent” impaling as a form of torture, he used it to intimidating effect. 

 

STAY THIRSTY: Why has the idea of blood-sucking vampires continued to thrive in contemporary culture?

MATT CUTUGNO: Well the idea of someone who is “undead” waking at night and stalking the earth looking for victims is scary and always will be. I’m not sure when in the history of our pop culture vampires became “sexy,” but they did, and given our sex-obsessed culture we can see the appeal. In my opinion the notion of a popular high school student who just happens to be a vampire is silly and juvenile, and uses the compelling legend of Dracula to poor effect. 

 

STAY THIRSTY: If you had a chance to chat with Bram Stoker, what would you ask him?

MATT CUTUGNO: There are serious Dracula scholars that claim Bram Stoker did not use Vlad Drakul as his inspiration for Dracula. I never understood this objection because as I read the pages of Stoker’s work, I find reference to the Wallachian prince at least twice. It would be my contention that the Dracula in Stoker’s work is indeed Dracul “undead.” So if Mr. Stoker and I were sitting in a pub having a beer, I’d have him clear up the mystery once and for all. 

 

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Matt Cutugno