INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

LOUIS
Can a vampire feel love?

MALLOY
You loved your wife, surely.

LOUIS
I was human then. Might as well ask can an angel feel love. Both are blesses or cursed with a certain... detachment. Though whether angels take as long to learn it as I, I will never know.

He looks directly at Malloy, shocking him with his gaze.

LOUIS
Yes, I loved Yvette. As I loved Pointe Du Lac. And as with each thing I loved, I destoryed it.

EXT. NEW ORLEANS. EVENING.

From the sea, at evening, shrouded in mist.

LOUIS (VO)
Lestat I did not love. And he survived.

INT. INN. EVENING.

A lavish little supper chamber with coffered bed, fancy French furniture. Open to rooftops of colonial city. Louis sits by an open window looking out over the city. Behind, we can hear the laughter of Lestat and tow female voices. Louis turns and sees -

Lestat, in the main chamber with two drugged or drunked whores. One runs her finger down his chest. The other seems out of it.

WHORE 1
You're skin's icy.

LESTAT
Not always...

He presses his thumb on her neck and holds her tight, sinking his teeth into her neck. After a time she falls to the bed, dead. he turns to the other.

LESTAT
Your friend has no head for wine.

WHORE
She's stupid. I can warm that cold skin of yours better than she can.

LESTAT
Do you think so?

He rubs her breast.

WHORE
Why you're warm now.

LESTAT
Ah, but the price is pretty high. Your sweet friend - I exhausted her.

He bites her in turn, drinks her blood. She does into the swoon.

Louis looks on in disgust. He stands.

LOUIS
I'm leaving you. I can't stand this any longer.

Lestat pulls away from the whore.

LESTAT
What, no flowery speeches? About what a monster I am? What a vulgar fiend?

LOUIS
I'm not interested in you. You disgust me. I'm interested in my own nature and know I can't trust you to tell me the truth about me.

LESTAT
What do you imagine you are Louis?

LOUIS
I don't pretend to know.

LESTAT
Don't you understand, Louis, that you alone of all creatures can see death with impunity... you alone under the rising moon can strike like the hand of God.

The girl moans.

LOUIS
Lestat, she's alive!!!!

LESTAT
Vampires are killers. Predators, who's all seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment.

The girl moans again, open her eyes.

LOUIS
The girl, Lestat -

LESTAT
I know. Let her alone.

He slashes her wrist with his teeth, and lets the blood drip into a glass.

LESTAT
You think you can be human. You think you can go back. But you can't. You live off the blood of rats now Louis. How human is that?

The girls moans again. Lestat drinks that glass.

LESTAT
Lie still, love...

The girl begins to scream. Lestat picks her up.

LESTAT
You're tired love, you want to sleep.

He walks to his coffin, puts her inside and sits on the lid. We hear muffled screaming and banging from inside.

LOUIS
Why do you do this Lestat?

LESTAT
I like to do it. I enjoy it. Take you aesthete's taste to purer things. Kill them swiftly if you will, but do it! For now doubt, you are a killer Louis. Ah!

He stands up. The girl pushes the lid off, hysterical. She looks at Louis.

GIRL
It's a coffin, a coffin! Get me out!

LESTAT
Of course it's a coffin. You're dead, love.

Louis screams at Lestat

LOUIS
Lestat - finish this -

LESTAT
You finish her - if you feel so much -

The girl grabs Louis and pleads.

GIRL
You won't let me die, will you? You'll save me?

LESTAT
But it's too late, love. Look at your wrist, you breast.

He picks her up again. He turns to Louis laughing.

LESTAT
Unless I make her one of us...

LOUIS
NO!!!

LESTAT
THEN YOU KILL HER!!!!!

The girl screams. Louis puts his hands to his ears. Then Lestat, in a fit of pique puts his teeth to her neck. She dies at last.

A terrible silence descends. Lestat looks at Louis.

LOUIS
My God... to think you... are all I have to learn from...

LESTAT
In the old world, they called it the dark gift, Louis. And I gave it to you.

Louis leaves without a word.

EXT. DANK NEW ORLEANS BACK STREETS. NIGHT.

A rat scurried down a gutter, then another and another. Louis' hand graps the rat. We see him from behind, walking down the street, gripping one, then another.

LOUIS (VO)
Am I damned? Am I from the devil? Is my very nature that of a devil? And all the while, as these dreaded questions caused me to neglect my thirst, my thirst grew hotter, my veins were threads of pain in my flesh, my temples throbbed.

A smaller side street, in which every house is marked with an X. The street is crawling with rats, and Louis is following them. A man passes with a lantern.

MAN
Don't go that way Monsieur. It's the plague. Go back the way you came.

Louis smiles bitterly at these words, repeating them to himself.

LOUIS
The way I came...

He walks on, following the rats.

LOUIS (VO)
...and finally, when I could stand it no longer, I stood in an empty desolate street and heard the sound of a child crying.

A house, the door slightly open, marked with an X. The sound of a child crying inside. Louis walks towards it.

INT. HOUSE. NIGHT.

A little girl, pulling at a figure in a rocking chair.

CLAUDIA
Mama, please wake up. Mama, I'm frightened, please wake up.

As Louis enters, he sees the woman is dead. Her eyes are being eaten away by rats.

Louis gasps in horror. Claudia turns. She is a radiant doll or angel as she stretches out her hand to Louis.

CLAUDIA
Monsieur, please help us. Papa's waiting for us at the ship. Please wake mama, Monsieur.

She runs to him. Instinctively, he gathers her in his arms. He looks down pitying on her beautiful face.

LOUIS (VO)
And if I am damned, why do I fell such pity for her gaunt face? Why do I wish to warm her tiny arms? Comfort her beating heart?

She snuggles into him, suddenly utterly secure. She tugs at his hair, brings his head down towards her. And we see Louis shiver, as his lips go to her neck.

Her breathing becomes calm as she goes into the swoon. Gradually another sound replaces it.

LESTAT'S LAUGHTER, GROWING LOUDER AND LOUDER.

Suddenly Louis backs away, caught redhanded, the child in his arms. He sees Lestat slapping his knee and laughing in the doorway.

LESTAT
Ah, my philospher, my martyr. "Never take a human life". Well you must admit it is funny. Or is it merely touching? I'm not sure.

Louis stares at hte unconscious Claudia in horror, then lets her slip gently into a chair. Shamefully he wipes his mouth, sees the tiny wounds on her throat.

Lestat snatches up the dead mother from the chair and begins to dance with her in great circles, humming and talking. Her head falls back. Black water flows from her mouth.

LESTAT
Let's make some party of it, shall we? Maybe there's some life in the old lady yet?

Louis flees into the street.

LESTAT
Come back, Louis, you are what you are. The plague would have got her within hours anyway. Merciful Death how you love your precious guilt.

EXT. STREETS. NIGHT.

Louis running through an assortment of streets. All the night life of New Orleans flows by him.

LOUIS (VO)
For years I had not savoured a human. And when I had Lestat's words made sense to me. I knew peace only when I killed and when I heard her heart in that terrible rhythm I knew again what peace could be. Yet even then I could not contenance it...

EXT. WATERFRONT. DAWN.

Fingers of light in the sky. Louis, pale and shivering, walks splashing through the water. He comes to a huge sewer-pipe, crowded with rats. He crawls inside.

EXT. WATERFRONT. SOME EVENINGS LATER.

The same sewer-pipe. Now the bodies of dead rats lie all around. A pire of fine leather boots splash through the water - LESTAT'S.

INT. SEWER-PIPE. EVENING.

Louis huddled there, so pale and shivering he seems close to death. Lestat comes through.

LESTAT
All I need to find you Louis is follow the corpses of rats.

He bends down to him, suprisingly gently and puts his own coat around him.

LESTAT
Pain is terrible for you. You feel it like no other creature because you are a vampire. You don't want it to go on.

LOUIS
No...

They emerge from the sewer and walk along the waterfront.

LESTAT
Do what it is in your nature to do. And you will feel as you felt with that child in your arms.

LOUIS
Oh God Lestat. I felt peace. I felt an end to the craving.

LESTAT
That and more.

He puts his arm around Louis, to stop his shivering.

LESTAT
Evil is a point of view. God kills, indiscriminately, and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are, none so like him as ourselves.

LOUIS
Is God merciless? Greedy and cruel?

LESTAT
Ah, but we have even more in common with our creator. come, I am like a mother tonight. I want a child.

Louis is baffled. He follows.

INT. INN. SUPPER ROOM.

Lestat enters.

LESTAT
She's here, your wounded one.

LOUIS
What are you saying?

LESTAT
You need company, Louis. More congenial than mine...

Lestat holds up a candle and walks towards a large four-poster bed. Claudia lies there, angelic, under the coverlet, two marks on her neck.

LOUIS
Lestat!

LESTAT
You remember how you wanted her, the taste of her -

LOUIS
I didn't want to kill her.

LESTAT
Don't worry, Louis, you're conscience is clear. You left her alive.

Lestat shakes her gently.

LESTAT
Claudia, Claudia, listen to me. You're ill, my precious and I'm going to give you what you need to get well.

LOUIS
Lestat, what do you mean?

Louis runs at him, but Lestat brushes him aside efforlessly, so he falls to the floor. Lestat bites his wrist and presses the bledding wound to the child's mouth... He winces in pain.

LESTAT
That's it dear. More. You must drink it to get well.

Claudia sucks on the wound, reviving, making little noises like a person waking from sleep.

Louis rises to his feet as Claudia clutches Lestat's arm, sucking the blood fiercely. Lestat moans.

LESTAT
Stop, that's enough. No more.

He pulls her losse and she growls and stares at him with big clear astonished eyes.

CLAUDIA
I want more.