Historical Events  Movies
Interview with the Vampire

Alternate:
Interview with a Vampire

Current:
Interview with the Vampire

One little word

The Mass Memory Discrepancy Effect applies to the 1976 novel by Anne Rice which was later made into a Hollywood movie starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. Was it originally called "Interview with A Vampire" or "Interview with THE Vampire"? All references today show the latter, but many people are claiming the former.

The German version is still titled "Interview mit einem Vampir (Interview with a vampire)", so at least we have concrete evience today of there being an actual discrepancy. 

One supporting argument is that there are many vampires in the story, so theres no special reason to just single one out as the "the" version seems to.

A simple mishearing?

One explanation is the idea that while saying the claimed "original" out loud, the connecting words blur into the title seen today, i.e.

"Interview with a Vampire" - what is originally claimed
"Interview withaVampire" - said quicker
"Interview withthaVampire" - said quicker
"Interview with the Vampire" - what we have today

Just repeating either phrase quickly over and over again does tend to end up with the same one no matter where you start.

interview vampire 700x250

YouTube users are as usual quick to jump in on this:

Affects Googles searches

YouTube poster "Same Feet" has noticed that the search results for the term starting "Interview with..." also changed to "Interview with the..." from "Interview with a...", but this might just be the auto updating mechanism it feeds back into its search engine based on many peoples search queries.

Ann Rice is apparently very annoyed at all this, and of course adamant she knows the title of the book she wrote being "Interview with the Vampire", but this won't change the minds of those aware of the effect since they will actually just acknowledge that she really did - in her universe.