INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

Claudia is shocked to her core. She steps back. Louis stares at the rippling waters. Gradually the movement of alligators stops. Then he hears a sound he hasn't heard in years. Soft, chocking. He turns, sees Claudia sitting by a cypress tree, like a little girl for the first time in years. She is weeping copiously.

LOUIS
Claudia - You're crying -

We see her face, tears of blood running down it. She is heartbroken, lost.

CLAUDIA
You never talked to me like that - in all these years.

LOUIS
And you never cried -

CLAUDIA
I can't bear it when you do - I would die rather than lose you Louis. I would die the way he died.

Louis gathers her in his arms.

LOUIS
Hush, Claudia, hush now my dear -

CLAUDIA
Tell me you don't hate me Louis. I did it for you -

Louis walks her towards the carriage.

LOUIS
I love you Claudia. Always. And we are free now, Claudia. No Lestat. Just the two of us, beginning the great adventure of our lives.

He lifts her into the carriage and drives off, leaving the silent waters of the swamp.

INT. FLAT. NIGHT.

Sturdy mullato workmen lifting cases and trunks out of the apartment. All the furniture is covered in white sheets. Claudia dressed in a cap and hat, is playing the piano by the light of one remaining oil-lamp.

Louis comes from her room with the cage of canaries.

LOUIS
The birds. We forgot about the birds. There's nothing for it but to let them go.

He opens the cage, and the canaries fly around the room.

There is a knocking on the door. Claudia falters.

CLAUDIA
What was that?

LOUIS
The workmen must have a trunk - don't stop, cherie -

He goes downstairs. Claudia plays a moment, then stops, perturbed. She goes to the window. Then sees something out there that makes her face go white. She screams.

CLAUDIA
Louis!!!

THE STAIRWAY --

Louis walking to the door. The knocking gets louder.

THE PARLOUR --

Claudia runs for the stairs, after Louis.

THE HALLWAY --

Louis reaches the door. The knocking gets louder. He opens the door as -

CLAUDIA -

Reaches the stairs. She screams -

CLAUDIA
Don't Louis -

But Louis has opened the door. Nothing there. He looks back at Claudia, puzzled, then at the door again when, swooping into his vision comes the nightmare image of --

LESTAT --

In filthy swamp-soaked rags, robust again, but his flesh shrivelled, covered in scars, his eyes riddled, bloodshot. he roars.

LESTAT
WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS THAT ACCURSED CHILD?

Louis throws his body against the door, slamming it on Lestat's reaching hand. The hand withdraws, as Lestat roars. Louis bolts the door.

Louis runs up the stairs, sweeps Claudia in his arms, watching apalled as the door shudders with the force of Lestat's body.

IN THE PARLOUR

Louis runs through with Claudia in his arms.

LOUIS
It can't be -

CLAUDIA
It is! Take the back stairwell -

Suddenly Lestat crashes through the casement window, scattering blood everywhere, reefing himself on the shattered glass. He tumbles to the floor and gets unsteadily to his feet.

LESTAT
GIVE ME HER LOUIS!!

Louis throws Claudia behind him and hurls himself on Lestat, who fights like a ravening animal, bits of his broken body coming off in the process. Then with a terrifying effort, Lestat hurls Louis off, goes for Claudia, who grabs the poker from the fireplace, scatters burning coals over him. He falls back, then comes at her again, as the drapes catch fire. Louis grabs the lamp.

LOUIS
Stay back--- for the love of God... or I'll burn you alive...

Lestat lunges again at Claudia. Louis hurls the lamp, which explodes him in flame.

Lestat screams in agony, whirls around the room, then comes on Claudia again. She hurls another lamp. Louis throws the flaming sheets around him, wrapping him further in fire. Lestat falls to his knees, choking, hands up over his face in the smoke. The whole parlour is afire. Louis gathers up Claudia, smothering the burning house, carries her down the back stairs, through the carriage way and through the gathering crowds of mortals into the street.

EXT. STREET. NIGHT.

Louis running, with Claudia in his arms. He looks back at the flames of the house. Sound of a ship's horn.

CLAUDIA
The ship is sailing wihout us!

LOUIS
Not yet.

Holding her tightly, Louis runs.

EXT. DECK OF SHIP. NEAR DAWN.

Louis stands at the railings in the morning mist as the ship moves down the river. He sees...

CITY OF NEW ORLEANS

With flame lighting up the sky.

LOUIS (VO)
Though the fire seemed to spread through the quartier, I stood on that deck until dawn, fearful he would come out again of the very river like some monster to destroy us both. And all the while I thought, Lestat, we deserve your vengeance. You gave me the dark gift. And I delivered you into the hands of death for the second time.

INT. ROOM. SAN FRANCISCO

Louis and Malloy.

MALLOY
Did he die in the fire?

LOUIS
He was dead to us. We were free. That was all that mattered.

EXT. SHIP. EVENING.

The ship, shrouded in mist.

LOUIS (VO)
Though the ship was blessedly free of rats, a strange plague nonetheless struck its passengers.

A body is slipped into the sea. A priest reads last rites to a mourning family.

INT. SHIPS HOLD.

Turnks and cases, creaking with the ship's movement. Dead rats everywhere.

LOUIS (VO)
Claudia and I alone seemed imune. We kept to ourselves, pondering the mystery of Lestat and the greater mystery of each other.

EXT. SHIP. NIGHT.

Passing through the Straits of Gibralter.

LOUIS (VO)
We reached the Mediterranean. I wanted those waters to be blue. They were black, nightime waters and how I suffered then, straining to remember the colour that a young man's senses had taken for granted, that my memory had let slip away for eternity. It was balck off the coast of Italy, black off the coast of Greece, Europe itself was black.

EXT. DECK. NIGHT.

Claudia, sitting with an easel and sketch-pad, sketching the bay of Naples. A beautifully realised drawing, all in shades of grey and black. Louis observes.

CLAUDIA
Louis, your quest is for darkness only. This sea is not your sea. They myths of men are not your myths. Their history isn't yours.

The sketch changes to a sketch of -

THE ACROPOLIS --

In the moonlight.

LOUIS (VO)
We saw the Acropolis by moonlight, shades of grey and silver. And I longed for the brilliant white of those marbles in the hot sun of Homer...

The sketch changes to a sketch of --

TRANSYLVANIA --

And the traditional shapes of the vampire landscape.

LOUIS (VO)
We docked at Varna and searched the rural countryside of the Carpathians, for what she liked to term "our kind"...

a montage of sketches now - A TRANSLYVANIAN VILLAGE, A GRAVEYARD.

RUINED CASTLE AFTER CASTLE, LOOKING INTO THE SKIES...

LOUIS
The quest for these Old World vampires filled me with bitterness. We searched village after village, ruin after ruin and I was glad when always we found nothing. For what could the damned really have to say to the damned?

INT. ROOM. SAN FRANCISCO.

Malloy and Louis.

MALLOY
You found nothing?

LOUIS
Peasant rumours, superstitions about garlic, crosses, stakes in the hear, all that - how do you say again? Bull shit. But one of our kind? Not a whisper.

MALLOY
No vampires in Transylvania? No Count Dracula?

LOUIS
Fictions, my friend. The vulgar fictions of a demented Irishman... So we repaired to Paris...

EXT. BOULEVARD FACADE OF GRAND HOTEL AND PARIS OPERA.

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

LOUIS (VO)
I think the very name of Paris brought a rush of pleasure to me that was extraordinary. I was a Creole, after all and Paris was the mother of New Orleans, a universe whole and entire unto herself...

EXT. 18TH CENTURE PALACES ALONG THE SEINE - NIGHT

The high walls of the Louvre, dark figures walking in pairs through the shadowy tulieries.

EXT. STREET - SHOP WINDOW

Claudia, in furtrimmed muff and bonnet, peers through the glass at a display of dolls. Each doll in there seems to resemble her, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She peers deep into the shop and sees -

MADELEINE, a young woman bent over a workbench painting a doll's face, oblivious to being watched.

INT. OPERA STAIRCASE

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

INT. NOTRE DAME.

Claudia and Louis standing in the deep shadows, looking at the branching arches. Louis is overcome with sadness, Claudia is fascinated.

INT. GALLERY.

Louis and Claudia walk among a series of mythological nudes by Poussin.

INT. SALON. NIGHT.

Claudia, surrounded by discarded dresses and outfits, being attended by cautouriers. All the clothes are tiny, to fit her frame, but have an adult cut and shape.

LOUIS
We were alive again. We were in love and so euphoric was I that I yielded to her every desire...

INT. SUMPRUOUS HOTEL SUITE

Full of late 19th century furniture, lots of Empire style, Regency, gilt, velvet and brocade.

CLOSE ON A HUGE BLACK EBONY CHEST

Against a wall, solemn among all the light and glitter.

CLAUDIA

By a large gilt mirror, in her new clothes. She is covered with jewelry, fixing earrings to her ears.

CLAUDIA
Help me, mon chere...

Louis walks over, helps her with the earrings.

CLAUDIA
How do I look?

LOUIS
Still my beautiful child.

Claudia laughs.

CLAUDIA
A beautiful child! Is that what you still think I am?

LOUIS
Yes...

He turns away.

CLAUDIA
Why do you turn away? Why don't you look.

She twirls, looking at herself in ht emirror, then stops, stares at herself.

CLAUDIA
You want me to be your daughter forever, don't you?

LOUIS
Yes.

CLAUDIA
Well tell me, papa. What was it like making love?

Louis is stunned. He blushes.

CLAUDIA
You don't remember? Or you never knew.

LOUIS
It was something hurries...and seldom savoured... something acute that was quickly lost. It was the pale shadow of killing.

CLAUDIA
But how will I ever know, Louis?

She stares at him through the mirror.

CLAUDIA
I'll never find them, will I? My own kind...

EXT. BOULEVARD. EVENING.

Louis and Claudia walk along a boulevard like father and daughter. All around them are bourgeois Parisian families on their evening stroll. Claudia points at the children that pass.

CLAUDIA
Have I anything in common with her, Louis?

She points to a beautiful French child walking by with her mother.

CLAUDIA
Or her, or her - or any of them?

LOUIS
Claudia, you torture yourself.