It seems appropriate that such lines appear at the beginning of a film by Amy Heckerling, a director easily described as a specialist in depicting youth. Here, however, they are placed in the mouth of a young woman who was transformed into a vampire in the 1840s and whose identity has long been structured on her being paradoxically aged and youthful at the same time. But note the was—though she has not aged externally, Goody's investment in the shifting cultural constellation that is “youth” has frayed over time, leaving her angry and alienated. The film invites being read through Heckerling's status as an aging specialist in youth cinema and a long-time commentator on society's construction of youth.

One need not be a hardline auteurist to interpret Vamps as a personal film for Heckerling. In addition to its references to earlier works in her career featuring her daughter's music, some events take place at Heckerling's alma mater, the New York University film program. Further, Vamps resonates with many of Heckerling's core themes: education, motherhood, slang, fashion, New York City, age-mismatched relationships, and perhaps above all, youth. At a Q&A and screening in April 2012, Heckerling described the genesis of the film in terms of “thinking about what would make [Goody] happy … [I] concluded that she didn't want to get old; she just wanted to “horse around with [her] friends.” She wanted, in essence, “to be a teenager, at night.” But, as she admitted, “The problem is that you really are meant to grow up.” Vamps, then, both indulges this fantasy and acknowledges its impossibility. The tension between the desire to cling to the trappings of youth and the need to acknowledge youth's inevitable passing is central to Vamps, with movie stars and their simultaneous permanence on screen and public aging as a key point of reference.

Next to Heckerling's famous and influential Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and Clueless (1995), Vamps is an obscure film that attracted only a small audience3 and failed to ride on the recent popularity of cinematic vampires (the final Twilight film, Breaking Dawn—Part 2, earned $830 million the same year).