Interview With The Vampire *Script*

[spike]

Part fifteen -- Meeting Armand

LV: Paris. September 1870, the city I had always dreamed of. I was Creole after all, and Paris was the mother of New Orleans. A universe whole and entire unto herself.
EXT. BOULEVARD FACADE OF GRAND HOTEL AND PARIS OPERA.

Crowds and gaslight everywhere. Carriages, horses, OPERA coming from the opera house.

INT. OPERA STAIRCASE

Louis and Claudia hurrying hand in hand with a crowd of mortals towards the sound of an ORCHESTRA TURNING beyond.

INT. SALON. NIGHT.
Claudia, surrounded by discarded dresses and outfits, being attended by couturiers. All the clothes are tiny, to fit her frame, but have an adult cut and shape. She twirls, looking at herself in the mirror, then stops, stares at herself.



LV: we where alive again. Just the two of us. And so euphoric was I, that I yielded to her every desire. And so it was that when I had given up the search for vampires, a vampire found me.

CU LOUIS' FEET -
Walking. A step echoes his. Louis stops. Turns, sees nothing. Then walks again. The echoing steps begin again. Louis again. Sees a shadow, flitting. Nothing. He walks again, hears the same effect. Then he stops. He stares at a gas lamp opposite. Santiago, a tall vampire, materializes under the gaslight. And Louis gradually realizes that this vampire has assumed the same attitude, posture, clothes and hairstyle as Louis. Louis gives an involuntary shake of the head. Santiago mimics. Louis takes a step forwards. Santiago mimics. Louis folds his arms. Santiago mimics.



L: Buffoon!
Santiago knocks his hat off. Then slaps Louis in the face. Louis has broken his composure. Santiago disappears and a new vampire appears. He stares, awestruck, at this new one

Armand (A): Santiago. (He looks like an angel.)
L: I have searched the world for an immortal and this is what I find.(Card)
A: (He reaches into his waistcoat, takes an engraved invitation out of his pocket and thrusts it at Louis.)

THEATRE DES VAMPIRES
By Special Invitation
Friday, 9 p.m

A: Bring the petite beauty with you, no one will harm you, I won't allow it. And ah, remember my name, Armand.

[spike]

Part Sixteen -- The Theatre Of The Vampire

EXT BOULEVARD DES CAPUCHINES - THEATRE DES VAMPIRES - NIGHT
Louis formally dressed with Claudia in rich attire on his arm. They pass people buying tickets for the theatre and go inside.
L: Now Remember what I told you, They will have different powers, they will read your thoughts if you let them. He's the one, that's the vampire.
Warily, they show their invitations to the mortal ticket taker at the door. He glances away indifferently.
INT THEATRE BOX. NIGHT.
Claudia and Louis look at the crowd as the lights go down.
Stage: curtain rises.
An elaborate painted set of an Italianate castle. Death standing before it, the traditional image of the Grim Reaper, complete with magnificent scythe.
Santiago (S): Two lovers wonder down their violet way, who's passionate embraces each to each, commence no meditations on decay, until they find themselves within my reach...hahaha
L: Vampires who pretend to be humans, pretending to be vampires.
C: How avant-garde.
A version of the Poe story unfolds before them. All of the participants are vampires. All beautiful gleaming white, aged 20 or 30.
S: A monk who soul with heaven duth commune, and spends his day in pious contemplation, finds he will meet his maker all to soon, for all his prays he gets no enumeration. The lesson endith here, and it is this each one of you my clammy hands must touch, each one must bend his forehead to my kiss,.
S: But hark me think a mortal duth approach. What have we here, what beauty by my side, A rose in bloom a shrinking violet, perhaps she has mind to be my bride, perhaps my lesson has not ended yet.
A spotlight uncovers a mortal woman suddenly forced out upon the stage.
The audience laughs uneasily, then stops as the Mortal Woman comes into the footlights. She is too beautiful, too confused. Santiago, as Death, advances on her. She backs away, terrified, then sees the other vampires, in a phalanx, advancing from behind, in a half-circle.
Girl (G): I don't want to die.
She looks around in panic. Santiago swoons, arms over his breast as if he is hopelessly in love.
S: but death we are and death we have always been.
The Mortal Woman steps to the footlights.
G: Someone help me, please! What have I done?
S: We all die,
Santiago gestures to the audience.
G: But if we all die.
Santiago approaches her and tears the drawstring out of her peasant blouse. It opens completely and starts to slip. She tries to catch it, but gently stops her wrists. The blouse falls, exposing her young breasts.
S: Death is no respecter of age, it can come any time, any place. Just as this flesh is pink now, so it will turn gray and wrinkle with age.
G: Let me leave, I don't care.
S: Then why should you care if you die now. (She shakes her head, confused.) and Suppose death had a heart to love and to release you, to whom would he turn this passion, would you chose a person from the crowd there. A person to suffer as you suffer.
A young girl cries out in jest.
Audience Member: Oh yes, Mousier Pete. Take me, I adore you.
Audience roars with laughter.
S: Oh you wait your turn. Do you know what it means to love death, to become our bride.
The Mortal Woman shakes her head in panic.
MORTAL WOMAN looks up on the verge of hysteria or fainting. But then her eyes mist over. She is being entranced.
FROM HER POV we realize she is looking past Santiago at the divinely beautiful Armand, who has just stepped out of the wings. Armand has entranced her. He passes Santiago. Santiago stiffens, but yields the stage.
ARMAND takes her by the naked shoulders.
Other Vampires: (Hiss)
Armand gestures to the others who slowly, gracefully close in.
He pulls the drawstring from her skirt and it falls revealing her nakedness. But she is spellbound.
A: (Raise arms) No pain. No pain. (Remove Skirt)
Armand embraces her, drinks, her naked body stark against her black clothes, then he passes her to the other vampires one by one.

CLOSE ON LOUIS who battles desire and hunger with anger.
L: Monstrous.

ON STAGE
The naked Mortal Woman lies dead on the floor. The vampires seem to vanish one by one. As the curtain draws across, the Audience loudly applauds what they presume are theatrical tricks.

ANOTHER ANGLE
The audience, milling towards the exits. They talk in vacuous terms about the beauty of the show, the symbolism of it, the daring of it as they leave.


INT. FOOT OF STAIRWAY.
Armand leading, Louis and Claudia following. Fine wooden coffins line the walls. Candles burn in sconces, casting alternate shadows and pools of light. Armand walks through, gesturing Louis and Claudia to follow him. As they walk through, vampire man and women appear out of the shadows like wraiths, startling them, drifting around them.
A: We live beneath, let me show you.
L: Monsters.
A: yes, but very beautiful. (Toss of cloak) Welcome to my home, (Gesture Young boy comes forward, lift hand) Try him.
(Louis glances at Armand, who smiles. Louis sees the puncture marks on the boy's neck. Louis is utterly confused. Can't resist. Drinks his blood. The boy gasps. Louis, suddenly ashamed draws away.)


INT. MEDIEVAL ROOM.
Medieval chairs, table, an old coffin, a bed in one corner, a blazing fire. A medieval painting of Satan, being banished from heaven, above the fire. Armand places the boy on the bed, settling him so he sleeps.
A: Two vampires from the new world, come to guide us into the new era. As all we love slowly rots and fades away. (He glances at Louis, then at Claudia, who averts her eyes.)
L: Are you the leader of this, this group
A: If there were a leader, I would be the one. (Claudia stares at him constantly, guarded.)
L: so you have the answers
A: so you have questions.
L: what are we?
A: nothing, if not vampires.
L: Who made us what we are.
A: surely you know the one who made you.
L: Yes but the one who made him, the source, of all this evil.
A: (He smiles at Louis. A smile of infinite compassion.) I understand, I saw you in the theater. Your suffering, your sympathy for that girl, you die when you kill, you feel you deserve to die, and you still do nothing, does that make you evil, or sense you comprehend what you call goodness does that make you good.
L: then there is nothing.
A: Perhaps but perhaps, (He passes his finger through the candle flame.) this is the only real evil left.
L: Then god does not exist.
A: I know nothing of god or the devil. I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that will damn or save my soul, and as far as I know, after 4 hundred years I am the oldest living vampire in the world. (He stares at them, his face angelic, hypnotic, young. His eyes hold them both in a trance.)
L: then it's as I have always fear.
A: You fear too much, so much you make me fear. (He stares from Claudia to Louis. He seems to be reading their souls.) The one who made you should have told you this. The one who left the old world for the new.
L: The one who made us knew nothing, nor did he care.
A: knew?
C: (Claudia appears suddenly to Louis' shoulder, interrupting.) Come beloved, its time we where on our way, I'm hungry and the city awaits. (She stares hard at Armand. Armand looks from her to Louis. Armand seems genuinely regretful. But Claudia pulls Louis out.)

INT. DARKENED CORRIDORS AND THEATRE. NIGHT.
Louis and Claudia feel their way through darkened corridors, trying to find their way out.

LV: The place was empty as we left, silent as the grave, and as we blunder threw it again came the thought, I have wronged Lestat, I have hated him for the wrong reasons.
Suddenly a light comes on. They see they are in the empty theatre. Santiago stands on the stage, under a candle.

S: How did you wrong him? (Louis is stunned.) You said a name.
L: Yes a name I don't care to repeat.
S: There is but one crime among us vampires here,(He looks at Claudia.) the crime that means death to any vampire, Kill your own kind.

[spike]

Part seventeen -- Teaching by Armand, Act One

INT. HOTEL ROOMS. NIGHT.
Louis closes the door behind him. Claudia paces.

L: Do you think I would let them harm you.
C: No you would not Louie, danger holds you to me.
L: Love holds you to me.
C: Love?
L: Love.



C: (She smiles at him. A strange, sad, adult smile.) You would leave me for Armand if he beckoned you.
L: Never
C: He wants you as you want him, He's been waiting for you, he want's you as a companion. He bides his time in that place. He finds it a dull and lifeless as we do.
L: Perhaps, yes.



C: do you know what his soul said to me without saying a word? Let him go he said, let him go. (She touches his face.) Is that what I should do Louie, Let you go. My father, my Louie, who made me.



L: It will be all right.
C: You really believe that.

INT. THEATRE. NIGHT.

Louis, sitting alone in the box, as the curtains draw back, to show Santiago as death, as before. Louis takes advantage of the darkness to slip away.

S: The soldier on returning from the war. Thinks victory has inoured him against sorrow, till death comes by and chops him from his horse.

INT. ARMAND'S ROOM. NIGHT.
Louis opens the doors and walks in.

A: I was waiting for you.
L: Listen to me, Claudia is very dear to me, she is my daughter.
A: You love her.
L: or my beloved my child
A: you say so you are innocent.
L: She's in danger, isn't she?
A: She is
L: but why?
Armand's Voice: I could give you reasons her silence, her youth, it forbidden to make one so young, so helpless, that cannot survive on it's own

EXT. DOLL-SHIP. NIGHT.
Claudia, staring at the dolls. We see Madeleine inside, painting a doll. She sees Claudia and smiles and waves.

INT. ARMAND'S ROOM. NIGHT.
Louis and Armand continue to talk.

L: Then blame the one who made her.
A: Did you kill this vampire who made you both. Is that why you won't say his name Santiago thinks you did.
L: We want no quarrel with him.
A: No no it's already begun, If you want to save her, send her away.
L: Then I leave to.
A: (Armand smiles.) So soon. With out any of those answers you so long for
L: You said there where none.
A: But, You asked the wrong questions. You know how few vampires have this talent for immortality, how quickly they parish of their own will, and the world changes, we do not, there in lies the irony that finally kills us. I need you to make contact with this age.
L: (Louis laughs bitterly.) Me. Don't you see, I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with everything, I've always have been.
A: (Armand smiles.) Louie That's the very spirit of you age, The heart of it, your fall from grace, has been the fall of a century. (Louis is stunned.)
L: The vampires in the theater..




A: Decadent, useless, They can't reflect anything, but you do. You reflect it's broken heart. (Louis is speechless.) Vampire with a human soul, immortal with a mortal's passion. You are beautiful my friend. Lestat must have wept when he made you.
L: Lestat? You knew Lestat?
A: Yes, Knew him,: Knew him well enough not to morn his passing.


EXT. THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. NIGHT.
Louis, in the street outside, as the door closes behind him.

LV: I felt a kind of peace at last. I had found the teacher which Lestat could never I knew now have been. I knew knowledge would never be withheld from Armand. I knew it would pass threw him as threw a pain of glass.

[spike]

Part Eighteen -- Madeleine Bocomes A Vampire

INT. HOTEL SUITE. NIGHT.
Louis enters. There is unfamiliar scent in the air, a doll sitting by the mirror. Louis looks in the mirror and sees -- MADELEINE, the doll-maker, resplendent in green taffeta. The contrast between mortal woman and immortal child is plain.


C: Madeleine, Louie is shy.
Madeleine (M): (Madeleine rises and comes towards Louis. She draws back the lace fringes round her throat, so he can see the two marks there. She says softly, dreamily.)Drink.



C: (Louis turns away. Claudia speaks, icy, from the bed.) Do it Louie, because I cannot do. I haven't the strength. You saw to that when you made me.
L: (Louis turns to Madeleine.) You haven't the vaguest conception under god what you ask.
M: oh contraire Mousier, I have. (Louis pushes her away. Claudia screams.)
C: You have found your new companion Louie, You will make me mine.

L: How do we seem to you. Do you find us beautiful, magical. Our white skin our fierce eyes. Drink you ask me, Do you know the thing you will become.
C: Your evil is that you cannot be evil, and I shall suffer no longer.
L: Don't make me do this, I cannot.
C: Yet you could do it from me. Snatch me from my mother's hand, like two monsters in a fairy tale. And now you weep. You haven't tears enough for what you've done to me. (She points to Madeleine) You give her to me Louie, Do this before you leave me. (She begins to weep, sobbing like a child.)


C: Oh god, I love you still, and that's the torment of it. but who will care for me my love, my dark angel when you are gone? (Louis looks at Madeleine.)
L: what do you think she is Madeline, a doll?
M: A child who cannot die.
L: For a child who did die?
M: A daughter.(Bite)
Her finger clutches a locket around her neck, Louis touches it, opens it.
THE LOCKET -- A picture of a young girl, Claudia's age, wistful, beautiful.

Louis pulls her to him and starts to drink her blood.




M: (Madeleine is now on the floor, two sets of vampire bite marks on her neck. She screams out in pain.)

EXT. HOTEL BALCONY. LATER.
Louis on the balcony, weakened terribly. A breeze blows on the gauze curtains behind him. Claudia comes through the curtains, alarmed. Louis speaks without turning.

C: Louie what happening to her?
L: She is dieing. It happened to you to, but you where to young to remember.
C: But if she dies?
L: (He turns to look at Claudia.) It's only mortal death. Bare me no ill will my love, we are now even.

C: What do you mean?
L: What died in that room was not that woman, but what has died is the last breath of me that was human. (She takes his hand.)
C: Yes father, at last we are even.
She bends down and kisses him. He looks up, at the wafting curtains. he sees
-- MANY VAMPIRE SHADOWS Silhouetted, coming closer. CLAUDIA Looks up and screams.
THE CURTAINS Are ripped aside. The vampires of the Theatre surge through.




Lady Vampire-Estelle (LVE): It's time for justice, little one
The vampires close on them as Louis struggles, Claudia's scream pierces the night air.

INT. CORRIDOR OF THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. NIGHT.
In a press of vampires, Louis, Claudia and Madeleine are forced down the dark corridor.

THE BALLROOM.
Vampire chaos, as they are dragged through. Louis struggling like a demon.

L: Get me Armand, he won't stand for this.



S: Death for the others, for you eternity in a box, walled in a dungeon, your only comfort will be your screams, Perhaps it will take centuries, Take them.
L: Claudia, Armand Armand, Armand, Claudia, Claudia, Armand!
The sound of something being dragged through the crowd. Horrible echoing, scraping. A huge metal coffin being dragged through the vampires. Claudia screams. The vampires grip Louis. They force him towards the coffin. Louis struggles fiercely as he is forced into the coffin. Louis, struggling in the coffin. Then the lid is forced down, huge locks closed over it.

S: Laugh.



INT. COFFIN.
Louis, in the smallest imaginable space. Beating his forehead against the metal.

EXT. COFFIN.
Claudia is carried away. Vampire hands drag the coffin across the stone floor.

LVE: Laugh.
Other Vampires: Laugh.

EXT. CELL. NIGHT.
The Vampires of the Theater throw Madeleine and Claudia into a cell locking the door.

C: Let me out, no...

EXT. COFFIN.
Is thrust into a niche in the wall. Bricks being placed over, mortar trowelled on.

S: Pleasant dreams
L: No, help.

INT. CELL. DAY. Claudia wakes up. The cell is open to the blue sky above, and the sun is slowly creeping over the rim of the top of the tower like cell.

C: Madeline, wake up. (Claudia shakes Madeleine waking her up. They both gasp and huddle together. The sunlight reaches them and they scream as their flesh burns.)


INT. COFFIN.
Louis upside down. Sounds of bricks and mortar. Then terrifying, unearthly scream pierces the coffin, striking to his very soul.

L: Claudia!
The lid opens. He sees - ARMAND Above him, reaching down to take his hand.

L: Where's Claudia?
.

A: Claudia? I cannot help her.
L: Where's Claudia? (Armand points to his cell at the end of the passage, the foot of the steps. )

.

A: I can't save her, I could only risk losing you. Louie don't. ( Armand approaches, trying to pull him away, but Louis shrugs him off. He draws nearer and nearer.)
The other vampires are gathered around the cell. Santiago gives Louis a smug look.

INT. BRICK AIRWELL
.
On the stones lie Claudia and Madeleine, burn to ashes, in each other's arms. Louis looks up at the walls of this air well, many stories to the sky. The ashes fly up into his face.)



A: Come Louie, not here.

[spike]

Part Nineteen -- Louis' Vengance

INT. ROOM. SAN FRANSICO
A tear falls onto Louis's hand from his eye.
I: So a vampire can cry.
L: Once may twice in his own eternity. Maybe it was to quench those tears forever that I took such revenge on them.

INT. THEATRE
Louis hurls kerosene all over the stage, the curtain, the sets, the seats below. He grabs the scythe from the playlet. He walks out. Dribbling a trail of kerosene behind him.



INT. STAIRS.
Louis walking rapidly down, leaving the trail of kerosene. He creeps quietly into the
-- BALLROOM Leaking kerosene from the cask. He splashes over the coffins that gleam in the dimness. Then he knocks a candelabra into the kerosene. Everything bursts into flame. The trail of kerosene roars into fire through the ballroom over the coffins and up the stairs. We hear EXPLOSIONS of fire from above.



Louis, shudders all over, fighting the morning weakness. He readies the scythe, like the grim reaper. ESTELLE rises from her burning coffin, screams and tries to run through the fire but Louis slashes her down with the scythe and she goes down screaming, her dress in flames.

LVE: Help me. It's burning fire.

.
Others rise, choking in the smoke. Screams from everywhere. They are burning. Louis backs up the stairs to the -- Theater.

.

(Screams)

.

L: (Scream)



S: (Laugh) (Slice)
. .

SANTIAGO Comes at him from behind. Louis turns. Santiago rushes him in a blur. Louis swings the scythe, too fast to see what he himself is doing.



Santiago's head streaming blood flies through the air. The body drops, flapping its arms. SCREAMS come from everywhere.



EXT. THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. DAWN.
Louis staggers out of the burning theatre, into the thin daylight. Great gusts of smoke cover the street. He staggers through the daylight, weakening, about to fall, when through the clouds of smoke comes < theatre. burning the of spectacle leaving smoke, through vanishes hearse The inside. him pulls and Louis to out hand a reaches He Armand. see we interior, enclosing curtains Through opens. door boy. human Armand’s by driven dream, in As - HEARSE MAGNIFICENT A>




A: Louie.

EXT. THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. TWILIGHT.


The gutted Theatre and ballroom, the roof collapsed, exposed to the evening sky. The life of Paris goes on around it, oblivious.

[spike]

Part Twenty -- Teaching By Armand, Act Two

INT. LOUVRE. NIGHTS LATER.
It is already a museum by this time and Louis and Armand, fancily dressed and composed, walk through it. They stop by a Gericault - The Wreck of the Medusa.

L: You didn't even warn them, did you.
A: No.
L: And you knew what I would do.
A: I knew, I rescued you didn't I?
L: hum.
A: from the terrible dawn.
L: You where their leader, they trusted you.
A: (He looks at Louis affectionately.) You made me see their failures Louie, they where doomed, stuck in their decadent time. They had forgotten the first lesson we must be, powerful, Beautiful and without regret.
L: And you can teach me this.
A: Yes.
L: To be without regret.
A: Yes.
L: Then what a pair we could make, but what if it's a lesson I don't care to learn
A: What do you mean?
L: What if all I have is my suffering, my regret.



A: Don't you want to loss it?
Armand and Louis walk slowly through the Louvre together. Camera follows them for a while, then comes to rest on a portrait in black of a girl's face in a dark hood, but with bright eyes.
L: So you can have that to, the heart that mourns her, her that you burnt to a cinder.
A: Louie I swear it..
L: Ah...but I know you did...I know, You regrets nothing, You feels nothing, and if that's all I have left to learn I can do that one my own.
A: Louie.
L: yes.
A: I will die.
L: No you are dead, and you want me quicken you once more. And as much as your invitation might appeals to me, I must regretfully decline.

(Music Plays in the background)
LV: For years I wondered, Italy, Greece, all the ancient lands.



LV: But the world was a tomb to me, a graveyard of broken statue, and each of those statues resembled her face.



LV: Then out of curiosity boredom, who know what. I left the old world and came back to my America. And there a mechanical wonder, let me see the sun rise for the first time in two hundred years.
(On the screen, Murnau's SUNRISE, in black and white. We see a montage of sunrises, from a whole range of movies, in black and white.)
L :And what sunrises, seen as the human eyes can never see them, Silver at first then as the years progressed tones of purple red, and my long lost blue. (The SUNRISES continue, in color now, and the backgrounds in them change to the fifties.)



The lights come up in a different theatre. Louis sitting there, alone, in a half empty theatre, dressed in the clothes of the fifties. He rises, exits with the others.

LV: In the spring of 1988, I returned to New Orlands. And As soon as I smelled the air, I knew I was home. It was rich almost sweet, like the fragrance of jasmine and roses around our old courtyard. I walked the streets, savoring that long lost perfume. and Then on Pertania street, only blocks from the Lafayette cemetery, I caught the scent of death.

EXT. GARDEN DISTRICT. NIGHT.
Louis walks past the many Greek Revival Mansions. Louis sees rats darting across the street. They rush into a great overgrown garden surrounding a ruined mansion. No lights. Louis stops at a rusted gate. He forces it open and enters
-- A VERITABLE JUNGLE of overgrown rose and oak tree and wisteria. he sees a faint glimmer of light coming from a distant glass window of a huge Greek Revival house. He approaches then he sees -- OLD SHRIVELLED CORPSE of a man, long dead and dried up, snagged in the thorny rose vines. Louis sees dead rats lying near the steps.

LV: And it wasn't coming from the graves. The scent grew stronger as I walked, old death. A scent to faint for mortals to detect.
Louis treads carefully on the rotted steps. he moves along the porch. More dead rats. He sees through the floor-length window into rooms lined with stacked books. Virtually walled with them. Water seeps down from the ceiling, gleaming as it streaks over the books. The floors of the splendid rooms are bare, except for a rotten French chair by a dead fireplace. A single mirror reflecting the moon. Dead rats. He moves along the porch to the parlor windows. The candle flickers inside. He sees -- Lestat sitting in a chair. He is gaunt to near starvation. All his scars are gone, but he is almost a skeleton and his eyes are enormous in their sockets. His clothes are rags.



E: (Without turning his head, he speaks.) Louie, I'm so glad you are here. I have dreament of this moment, she never should have been one of use.
L: It's all past Lestat.
E: Yes past. (He turns and looks at Louis. Old, fearful, broken.) Still beautiful Louie. You always where the strong one.
L: Don't be frightened, I mean you no harm.
E: You've come home to me then? You remember how I was? The vampire that I was?
L: Yes I remember.
E: Oh, No one could refuse me, not even you.
L: I tried.
E: Yes you tried, and the more you tried the more I wanted you. (Louis shakes his head. A series of police sirens go by, piercing the night sky. A helicopter goes overhead. Red flashes illuminate his face. Lestat shivers, covers his ears. He's terrified. Louis touches him, calming him, until the lights pass over.) I can't stand Louie. Such lights. and that noise, make the night brighter then the day.
L: Lestat. It's false light, it can't harm you.
E: Yes. If you stay with me, I could venture out again, become the old Lestat.
L: (Louis shivers. He releases him.) I must leave now. (Louis walks slowly away from him.)

Lv: what ever happened to Lestat I do not know. I go on, night ever night. I feed on those who cross my path. But all my passion went with the golden hair, and all the spirit of preternatural flesh detached, unchangeable empty.

[spike]

Part twenty-one -- Conclusion

INT. ROOM. SAN FRANCISCO. NIGHT. (PRESENT)
Malloy, staring at Louis.

I: Empty, that's it, no it can't end like that.
L: But it has, there is no more to tell.
I: There has to be more to tell, You, you don't understand yourself, your not empty, um what people wouldn't give to be, what I wouldn't give to be like you. To have your power, to be able to have seen the things you have seen in your life.
L: You haven't been listening.
I: Yes I have been listening, The story you have told me is, is incredible, it's amazing.
L: (Louis looks at the cassettes on the table.) Do what you want with it, give the story to others, learn what you can.
I: There is one way I will ever truly learn and you know it, Now you brought me up here for a reason, didn't you, didn't you?
L: (He stares at Louis.) And what reason, would that be?
I: You want a companion You want a link to the outside world. Why that's me, I mean, take me. That's what I want, I want what you have, I refuse to let it end like this.
L: (Louis is slowly horrified, then outraged and angry. Louis turns away.) Dear god I failed again, haven't I.



I: You haven't failed, God has nothing to do with this
L: (He looks at the boy. Then suddenly grabs him, lifts him off the floor, bares his terrifying fangs and brings them to his throat. Malloy is in terror.) Do you like this?
I: Ow



L: Do you like being food for the immortals? Do you like dieing?
I: (Malloy, now terrified, whispers) Stop.
Louis drops him. Malloy, falls on the floor, terrified. When he looks up, Louis has vanished. He looks up at the tape. It is still turning. He shakes his head. He gets up, and with shaking fingers gathers his tapes. He runs out of the room.

EXT. STREET OUTSIDE. NIGHT.
Malloy running for his car, a convertible. He leaps in and screeches off through the night.

EXT. STREETS. NIGHT.
Malloy whips the car through the tiny streets, in sheer, unfocused terror.

EXT. GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE. NIGHT.
Malloy driving with streams of traffic over the bridge. He breathes deeply, to calm himself. He takes a tape from his pocket, and with still shaking hands, sticks it in the deck.
Louie's Voice (On Tape): 1791 was the year it happened, I was 24 younger then you are now, but times where different then, I was a man at that age, the Master of a large plantation just south of New Orlands, I had lost my wife in child birth
I: Somebody change my shorts.
LV(OT): She and the infant had been buried less then half a year.
I: This is good stuff.
LV(OT): I would have been happy to join them.
I: Good stuff

Suddenly a bony hand shoots out from the back seat, pulls his neck backwards -- LESTAT sinks his teeth in his neck. MALLOY'S hands on the wheel shaking, shuddering, losing their grip. MALLOY'S eyes bulging, as the life drains out of him. Lestat sucking him like a rat. THE WHEEL swinging free of Malloy's dying hands. THE CAR veers wildly into oncoming traffic. LESTAT drinks regardless. A TRUCK coming towards them, about to crush the car. LESTAT'S BONY HAND grabs the wheel, jerks it as he drinks. THE CAR misses the truck by inches. LESTAT throws Malloy to one side, climbs into the front seat.

E: I assume I need no introduction. I feel better already.
LV(OT): Most of all I longed for death. I invited. A release from the pain of living.
E: Oh Louie, Louie, Still whining Louie, have you heard enough? I've had to listen to that for centuries. (He smiles.) Don't be afraid I'm going to give you the choice I never had.

(Music Starts - Guns 'n Roses)
The End

.
Credits
Directed by Neil Jordan

Cast (in credits order) verified as complete
Brad Pitt.... Louis
Christian Slater .... Malloy (The Interviewer)
Tom Cruise .... Lestat
Stephen Rea .... Santiago
Antonio Banderas .... Armand
Kirsten Dunst .... Claudia (S:GGN)
Virginia McCollam .... Whore on Waterfront
John McConnell .... Gambler
Mike Seelig .... Pimp
Bellina Logan .... Tavern Girl
Thandie Newton .... Yvette
Lyla Hay Owen .... Widow St. Clair
Lee Emery .... Widow's Lover
Indra Ove .... New Orleans Whore
Helen McCrory .... 2nd New Orleans Whore
Monte Montague.... Plague Victim Bearer
Nathalie Bloch.... Maid
Jeanette Kontomitras .... Woman in Square
Roger Lloyd Pack .... Piano Teacher
George Kelly .... Dollmaker
Nicole Dubois .... Creole Woman
Micha Bergese .... Paris Vampire
Rory Edwards.... Paris Vampire
Marcel Iures .... Paris Vampire
Susan Lynch.... Paris Vampire
Louise Salter .... Paris Vampire
Matthew Sim.... Paris Vampire
Francois Testory .... Paris Vampire
Andrew Tiernan .... Paris Vampire
Simon Tyrrell .... Paris Vampire
George Yiasoumi.... Paris Vampire
Sara Stockbridge.... Estelle
Laure Marsac .... Mortal Woman on Stage
Katia Caballero .... Woman in Audience
Louis Lewis-Smith .... Mortal Boy
Domiziana Giordano .... Madeleine


Written by
Anne Rice
(also novel)

Cinematography by Philippe Rousselot

Music by George Fenton (score rejected)
Elliot Goldenthal (GGN) (O:AAN)
Georg Friedrich Haendel
Joseph Haydn
Ludwig Van Beethoven

Production Design by
Dante Ferretti (AAN)

Costume Design by
Sandy Powell (II)

Film Editing by Mick Audsley
Joke Van Wijk

Produced by David Geffen
Redmond Morris (co-producer)
Stephen Woolley

Other crew
Jan Archibald.... hair styles
Jean-Pierre Avice .... unit production manager
Chris Brigham .... unit production manager
Michelle Burke .... make-up
Joseph R. Burns.... assistant director
Patrick Clayton .... assistant director
Nancy Cone.... costumer
Yves De Bono.... special effects
Diana Dill .... script supervisor
Nick Dudman .... make-up
Robert Elhai .... orchestration
John Engel .... unit production manager
Eithne Fennel .... hair styles
George Fenton .... music supervisor
Susie Figgis .... casting
Ed Fincher .... costumer
John Higgins .... gaffer
Peter Holt.... foley
Philip Kohler .... unit production manager
Robert Legato .... visual effects supervisor
Francesca LoSchiavo.... set decorator
Malcolm Middleton.... art director
Sarah Monzani.... make-up
Morag Ross .... make-up
Carol Schwartz .... make-up
John Scott (VI) .... costume supervisor
Michael Stevenson.... assistant director
Juliet Taylor .... casting
Michael White .... hair styles
Stan Winston .... vampire make-up
Clive Winter .... sound mixer