Mucho Maas and Babylon (2022)
So I recently watched Babylon, a 2022 movie directed by Damien Chazelle about the crazy world of 1920s Hollywood and the transition from silent film to sound. I liked it personally, but this post isn’t about the movie itself.
There’s a character that appears throughout the movie called “the Count” who wears a Dracula-style cape and deals drugs to movie stars. I thought that seemed familiar until I remembered what it reminded me of: Mucho Maas in Vineland, who after divorcing Oedipa became a successful record producer and took on the persona of “Count Drugula”, wearing a stereotypical Dracula costume while doling out drugs to people.
To me this seemed too specific to be coincidental. While it’s possible that Chazelle got inspiration directly from Vineland, I was wondering if maybe both him and Pynchon were drawing from an existing archetype/character/historical figure. Was there anything like this in pop culture before? Was “drug dealer Count Dracula” an actual person or character?
Looking up “Count Drugula” you see songs with that title released after 2000. “Dracula” and “drug dealer” shows some articles about Bela Lugosi confessing to drug use, which is interesting but unlikely to be THE inspiration for both characters.
Anyone here have any insight into this? Curious to see what people say