INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE  

Adapted by Neil Jordan
From the novel by Anne Rice

INT. ROOM. NIGHT (SAN FRANCISCO)
A small bare room, illuminated only by the streetlight coming through the window.

A hand presses a cassette into a recorder and fiddles with a small microphone.

Malloy sits over a table fiddling with the tape. He is young, half-shaven, dressed in T shirt and jeans. He looks too --

LOUIS, who stands by the window, looking out on the streeet, with his back to Mallowy. Louis is dressed in an old-fashioned suit.

LOUIS
So you want me to tell you the story of my life...

MALLOY
That's what I do. I interview people. I collect lives. F.M. radio. F.F.R.C. I just interviewed a genuine hero, a cop who -

LOUIS
(quietly interrupting)
You'd have to have a lot of tape for my story. I've had a very unusual life.

MALLOY
So much the better. I've got a pocket full of tapes.

LOUIS
You followed me here, didn't you?

MALLOY
Saw you in the street outside. You seemed interesting. Is this where you live?

LOUIS
It's just a room...

MALLOY
So shall we begin?
(Playfully, almost teasing)
What do yo do?

LOUIS
I'm a vampire.

Malloy laughs.

MALLOY
See? I knew you were interesting. You mean this literally, I take it?

LOUIS
Absolutely. I was watching you watching me. I was waiting for you in that alleyway. And then you began to speak.

MALLOY
Well, what a lucky break for me.

LOUIS
Perhaps lucky for both of us.

Still in shadow he turns from the window and approaches the table.

LOUIS
I'll tell you my story. All of it. I'd like to do that very much.

Malloy is uneasy as he studies the shadowy figure, fascinated but afraid.

MALLOY
You were going to kill me? Drink my blood?

LOUIS
Yes but you needn't worry about that now. Things change.

Louis stands opposite, hand on the chair. Malloy is riveted.

MALLOY
You believe this, don't you? That you're a vampire? You really think...

LOUIS
We can't begin this way. Let me turn on the light.

MALLOY
But I thought vampires didn't like the light.

LOUIS
We love it. I only wanted to prepare you.

Louis pulls the chord of the overhead naked light bulb.

LOUIS' FACE
appears inhumanly white, eyes glittering. Inhuman or not alive. the effect is subtle, beautiful and ghastly.

MALLOY
Good God!

He struggles to suppress fear and understand.

LOUIS
Don't be frightened. I want this opportunity.

The light appears to go out by itself and suddenly Louis is in the chair, dimly lit by the street-light from the window. The cassette is turning.

MALLOY
How did you do that?

LOUIS
The same way you do it. A series of simple gestures. Only I moved too fast for you to see. I'm flesh and blood, you see. But not human. I haven't been human for two hundred years.

Malloy is speechless, frightened yet enthralled.

LOUIS
What can I do to put you at ease? Shall we begin like David Copperfield? I am born, I grow up. Or shall we begin when I was born to darkness, as I call it. That's really where we should start, don't you think?

MALLOY
You're not lying to me, are you?

LOUIS
Why should I lie? 1791 was the year it happened. I was twenty-four - younger than you are now.

MALLOY
Yes.

LOUIS
But times were different then. I was a man at that age. The master of a large plantation just south of New Orleans...

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. LOUISIANA. DAY. (1791)

A dishevelled Louis, hair in pigtail, in deep pocket frock coat, rides his horse through the fields of indigo, passing an overseer and slaves at work.

He passes slave quarters and the distant colonial mansion of Pointe du Lac.

He comes to a small parish church and a graveyard. he dismounts and walks through the tombs to an elaborate one in Greek Style.

LOUIS (V.O.)
I had just lost my wife in childbirth. She and the infant had been buried less than half a year.

There is a marble angel above the tomb, feminine, with a tiny cherub angel in her arms. Louis looks from the angel, down to the inscriptions on the tomb:

DIANNE DE POINTE DU LAC 1763 - 1791
INFANT JEAN MARIE - 1791

Louis rps away the vines already covering the inscription, then drinks from a pocket-flask. His face is ashen.

LOUIS (VO)
I was twenty-four and life seemed finished. I couldn't bear the pain of thier loss. I longed for a release from it.

INT. WATERFRONT TAVERN. NIGHT.

Louis in ragged lace and dirty brocade sitting between two whores at a gaming table, drinking absinthe. All around him flatboatmen, whores, gamblers, black african freedmen.

LOUIS (VO)
I wanted to lose everything. My wealth, my estate, my sanity. But Lady Luck didn't oblige.

Louis dsiplays a hand of four aces. A gambler at the table stands in fury, over turning money, cards, drinks.

LOUIS
You're calling me a cheat?

GAMBLER I'm calling you a piece of shit -

The gambler pulls out a pearl-handled pistol and points it at Louis. The crowd hushes and draws back. Louis smiles drunkenly and stands. he rips open his lace shirt, exposing his chest.

LOUIS
Then do me a favour. Get rid of this piece of shit...

The gambler's finger on the trigger. His hand shakes.

LOUIS
You lack the courage of your convictions, sir. Do it.

LESTAT, a hooded figure in the corner, smiles from beneath the shadow of his hood. Gleaming blue eyes.

LOUIS (VO)
Most of all I longed for death. I know that now. I invited it, a release from the pain of living...

The gambler lowers his gun, scowling. Louis pockets the fistfulls of coins he has won.

EXT. WATERFRONT. NIGHT.

Loud, crowded riverfront taverns full of ruffians. Louis staggers down, an arm around a whore, drinking from a bottle. A pockmarked pimp follows behind.

LOUIS
My invitation was open to anyone. Sailors, thieves, whores and slaves...

EXT. WHARF. NIGHT.

Louis, quite insensible, being propped up against a wall by the whore in a dank wharf over the water. The pimp rifles his pockets, then pulss a knife, about to slice his throat, when a shadow falls over him. He turns, and we see the face of Lestat, who lifts him into the air by his throat, breaking his neck. the whore screams and Lestat's other hand clamps over her mouth. Lestat drags her towards him. Louis falls to the ground, supported no more, insensible. Close on his face, as we hear the last breaths of life of the whore, off.

LOUIS (VO)
But it was a vampire that accepted.

IN THE WATER -