Original subtitles

We had it figured out, didn't we?

What we needed from the other, our proper roles, a less dictatorial

approach to the coven as embraced by my love.

A dreamy kind of balance.

Ah, July 1949.

The reading room.

We broke into the same library every night that month.

Hypnotized security, as one does.

Flipped the lights, laid our backs on long tables, stared up at the ceiling.

Hot. Iron pillars holding up terracotta domes. A light trick that made the

ceiling appear higher than it was.

And why not pass a month that way?

An effortless, eternal life ahead of us.

Funny thing.

Trying to remember what occupied one's time when one was ignorant of the

plotting around him.

Grab that.

Santiago had broken into our park.

I'm sorry.

Grab what?

Hmm? Oh, it's just a note to my assistant. It's nothing.

What did you want to grab, Daniel?

It's a thing with syntax. I see it a lot. The impersonal pronoun.

One. One's time.

One didn't.

Becomes the third person. Him.

Stops being I or me.

And that indicates what?

You're circling something.

You're getting close to something you want distance from.

Language as a chicken exit on a roller coaster.

Or it's daytime.

And the vampire of Louis' age is fighting the narcoleptic pull of the

sun.

Or that.

Ah.

Is this Malik?

It is, sir.

You're the guy.

You're going to chase me down in your little Jimmy Choo sneakers, sir.

Shall we take our business to the living room?

Who are they?

They are not your concern.

Hey!

Who are you?

Friends. If you'll excuse us.

Your friend here is a hot-headed young man.

Good thing to be.

Tell him to buy a bouquet.

Crash it into the guardrails.

What was that?

Armand rarely eats.

So when he does, he prefers to hunt for it. Does Malik know he's lunch?

Are you recording? No.

Malik knows if he makes it on foot.

to Jumeirah Mosque by evening, he'll be paid enough crypto to, well,

most anything he wants.

Has anyone ever cashed in?

Often it's someone carefully chosen for the harm he does the world with his

chosen profession.

And when he can't find an arms dealer dumb enough to answer his ad?

Someone half in love with an easeful death.

He's ditching us.

We don't have Malik begging for it in an hour.

His methodology, it's never violent, I assure you.

Follow up with the vampire Armand about diet and exercise.

And once again, Louis alone with himself.

So, everything in its right place before the theater burns down.

In middle school.

You stole your dad's Playboy magazine, sold them at retail.

I'm sorry.

A little dirty, a little deceitful, but it's enterprising. Is that what makes

you fascinating?

The girl! In high school, you told a girl you'd only do her.

Yes. She had a paper bag over her head. She agreed, and you did it. Daniel.

How long?

Is your boyfriend's lunch again?

An hour? Two at most?

Let's change it up. I was going over my notes last night. Something he said on

his initial flight to the bookshelves caught my ear.

This time I won't save your life.

Armand saved you from me in 1973.

Yeah, you bit me, I blacked out, he ripped you off me, dumped me in a drug

den. Yes.

500 years, hundreds of thousands of kills.

How often has Armand spared a life?

Armand could see I was partial to you.

Armand preserves my happiness, even when I don't or can't.

He had a hunch you might prove fruitful in later times.

Okay, sure.

Let's go with that.

Our first interview, the fog, I mean, it's the 70s,

all a blur.

Woke up in a parking lot in Milwaukee, once don't know how I got there. What's

the question, Daniel?

We had drinks. You paid.

We kept to your place in Divisadero. You paid.

That's right.

Did we?

I like what you've done with the place.

Getting some bail, boss, man.

Who's the fourth?

Five.

I want a few of these places.

Oh, yeah?

How many?

Many.

Are you a real estate mogul?

Oh, a lot of things.

Does that scare you, boy?

So you climb in it, close the lid, and bang?

Sometimes.

Okay.

I mean, I'm into countercultures.

So am I the first guy that you brought back here?

The pit?

Backgammon?

Well, that's wholesome.

Old-timey bun from the Sasanian Empire.

Oh.

Cheeseburgers or chicken chow mein? Take your pick.

Oh, well.

All of your slickness at the bar, all that's gone.

What do I seem like now, boy?

The veteran of many wars?

It's yours.

Cocaine's a fun boy's drug.

I'm not fun.

All right, so yourself.

I prefer you like the all dark and real.

Maybe I could cheer you up.

What are you doing?

Fulfilling my side of the social contract.

Do you normally interview your subjects with your shirt on?

Huh?

So, we didn't.

No.

I really, I really thought we did.

Do you want to now?

He sometimes lingers when boats come into harbor.

San Francisco.

Psychedelics, disco biscuits, angel powders, and young men.

Just about every night I lived there, you offered something off the menu.

Louis de Pointe de Lac from New Orleans.

You specialize in low-end real estate.

I like predicting what overlooked product will flourish in time.

Low-end property, little known art.

Worth is often miscalculated because of... You?

Minor factors.

You can squeeze profit out of that margin.

Did you gravitate to Sam Fran as a hub for homophiles?

Paris.

In the 1940s.

With its permissive, laissez-aller sexual atmosphere was the more

formative. Liberation for me.

Take this seriously.

I am.

I forgot to put a tape in.

I'm a vampire.

Okay. I mean, I'm really interested to know why you believe that.

Are those fangs?

Hi. Fuck, man.

Are you the Zodiac Killer?

Don't be afraid to start the tape.

Okay.

It's on now.

Um, first question.

You weren't always a vampire, were you?

No. I was a 33-year-old man when I became a vampire.

How did it come about?

There's a simple answer to that.

I don't believe I want to give simple answers.

I want to tell the real story.

You smoked shaky cigarette after shaky cigarette.

You shook more then than you do now.

What I remember most, other than that you were an alien five feet from me, was

how eager you were to spill.

No coaxing on my part. No journalism per se. You were terrified of me, Daniel.

You were lonely, Louie.

It was gratifying to tell you what I was after mingling with humans for so long.

You weren't thrill-seeking.

You were floundering, tape after tape of emotional upshot. Where's this leading,

Daniel?

I have some outstanding questions about 1973.

Like...

Why you talk to me in the first place? Yeah, curiosity, swagger. Nah. I would

chat for a few hours, and then who would come looking if another drug-addled

homophile disappeared?

The Berkeley Barb?

Malik will be dead in two hours. You've made me an accessory to murder, and

you've had 13 sessions.

I want 20 minutes.

For me.

I want to know, for me, what happened between us.

Okay? Okay.

Okay.

Then let me ask you this, Daniel Malloy.

What's the next thing you remember?

You eviscerating Lestat.

He had a dark pull.

A numbing affect on the senses. He was a handsome statement. Yeah, I mean, I know

the type. He stripped away his superficial charms beneath his flimsy

gentleman's veneer. The thought was trivial,

vapid, vulgar, maniacal, blind,

and sterile, and contemptible. Big time asshole.

He appeared frail and stupid to me, a man made of dried twigs with a thin,

carping voice.

And for all that Lestat boasted about his love of music, he played without

an iota of feeling.

Nothing. No one home.

Like an automaton, plunking away at the notes with all the emotional acuity of a

monster.

Yeah, but you were suggestible. I mean, he lured you in, you know.

He's a faker, but you figured that out. Just by then, you paid a biblical price

for your first love.

I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to. No.

That. was an astute boy.

You see?

You were nimble-minded even back then.

I was a moron.

Will you, uh, do the fang thing again?

I love that, man. Just for reference, that was Louis de Pointe de Lac just now

making his fangs come out.

Oh, shit.

Tape ran out. It's a 30-minute thing. If I had been an actual journalist and, you

know, not fried on Coke and lewds, I would have realized what a dangerously

unstable psyche I was with. Because the next thing that happened was you

detonated.

I sat on that bench in Jackson Square, watched

Claudia disappear into the night.

I'm kind of with her.

Get off that bench, brother.

I pictured her on the platform, boarding the train, carrying her off into her

future. A future I would be absent from.

Or you'd just pick yourself up.

Stay behind with Lestat.

And I knew within seconds it was the only choice.

The wrong choice.

And then what?

Then what?

Nothing but the bench I was sitting on. So I stayed on it for hours.

All I had to do was watch the sun come up, let it bleach my bones,

purify the putrid soul.

Are you kidding me? What, you were just going to end it?

I mean, what about life? Like joyride and night swimming and marriage and

cancer and all of that till the death rattle.

I mean, we gotta carry all this shit, and you had to take it out, and you were

just gonna throw it away?

You've opened up now, boy. Listen, no, obviously you didn't do it, but you were

given the gift, and I've been hearing you bitch the night away about it, and

since you used the past tense about her, I figured she... She what?

Well, I could see where this is going, and... And what?

And... Give it to me.

I won't waste it.

I think you could use me. I think we have an energy, you and me.

I could be your Lestat, your Claudia, but better. I mean, I got a little bit

of both of them in me, plus a few things they don't.

This, after all I've told you, is what you asked for, boy!

Yeah, well, you don't know what human life is like. I mean, you've forgotten,

man. I mean, you don't understand the meaning of your own story.

Suicide hotline 101.

Don't say to the person on the other end of the line, hey, why don't you cheer

the fuck up? I overreacted. Not sure that killing me was a totally warranted

response to my idiot thing? I took a scoop out of your throat. I deserve to

have my ass kicked.

For the sheer number of times I said, and then what?

All the drugs in your blood, it all went back into me. Probably why I can't

remember anything else. Prize winning journalism.

And then what?

I, um...

Daniel? Yeah.

A hesitation.

I have a surprise for you. Kind of a curveball, which will seem like less of

a surprise and more like an ambush.

Is that our original interview?

Turns out I had a copy saved in the cloud.

You're a liar, Dad. So are you, Louie.

Whether you know it or not.

You remember the last nine minutes at the end?

Betty Hutton drowning out the indecipherable moaning and yelling?

Yes. Well, um... My researcher assistant.

She's a bit of an audiophile.

And, well, she cleaned it up a bit.

Press pause on the betrayal of it all and listen.

That wet thud?

That's Armand saving me.

What?

What? Morning!

I lost time.

Things got a little heated. With a boy! Things got heated with a boy!

I was at home picking lint off the sofa. I said to join us. The night's gone. The

room's soiled. And once again, I'm here with mop and mindlessness to clean it

up. So the room got dirty. So what? I clean it up. No, I clean it up.

You make the mess and I clean it up.

Mark it on the calendar. Align it with Ursa Major. Louise, try annual. Fuck off

and find me with apologies to follow. I'm sorry.

But seek comfort in the arms of low life and unfortunate and broken children.

Fine. Fine. Fine. It doesn't sound like fine. But revealing... nature to a

reporter. You met in a bar ten hours ago. What if it was published?

I was having so much fun. I was in the middle of ending things.

You already passed out on the floor next to him, Louis.

Out on your feet from the drugs you suffered. This is boring.

You're boring.

You are so boring.

And here come the drugs.

By the world's softest, beigest pillow.

The ten hours I spent with that boy were more exciting,

more fascinating than decades with you.

Oh, there it is.

The half-blank, half-apocalyptic look. But what does it mean tonight?

But am I as boring as the blather committed onto the ferric tapes of your

fascinating boy?

Oh, it's so hard to beat me. Picking lint? It's so hard to kill humans.

Everyone I know

wrongs me.

Okay, okay.

Let's wake the boy up and let's try you.

I'm the vampire Armand and my daddy...

me into a little bitch. My daughter

was my sister, was my throw pillow. When he would look at me kindly,

I'd talk shit about him the whole time. The

name, the name unuttered in our home for 23

years said over and over again until it was pounding in my brain.

Like a hammer. Our problems aren't about him. And you threw her name around just

for cover, but it always circled back to him.

I loved her. But she didn't love you.

Not like he did.

Not like I have.

It's, uh, Harris.

Harris.

Can you hear that?

Can you hear that? Can you hear her?

She's calling me.

I think that's you running out of the room.

Hear that?

Second door slam, farther off.

What's that second door slam?

Remember, I don't remember any of that. First door open.

Slam.

Footsteps.

Second door slam.

Metal door.

Armand calls your name.

He runs after you.

Metal door opens.

It screws.

A few more seconds.

Tape runs out.

Where does Armand follow you, Louie?

It's morning.

You went out of the room.

Door open.

Slam.

Step.

Metal door.

Into the sun.

You remember that?

I'm remembering it now.

Let me ask you a really loaded question, Louie.

And then what?

My skin burnt to the color of...

Coming off me.

The pain.

Like a siren.

Like a noise in my body.

I walked out into the sun.

I think so.

Pieces of my life.

Gone.

I knew who I was without those pieces. Wait.

Sidestep the big picture.

Get the story straight first.

The pain.

Must be exquisite.

What happened?

You drained a drug fiend.

You said the worst things you've ever said to me.

And then you ran outside.

And now you're a convalescent.

What is it?

I'm sorry.

Meaningless word.

Meaningless.

The floor slants slightly north.

The boy's blood flowed that way.

We should fix that before we sell.

He's alive?

The boy.

The fascinating boy.

He's fine.

Don't. He's just fine.

Don't. No, he's fine.

You're fine. This is fine. We're all fine.

You two kept me in that apartment for how long?

He was there, Daniel. I don't remember.

That's why I'm asking.

I can remember a few things.

Like... He's just fine.

There's someone else there.

He's fine.

A cellophane corpse on the floor.

Meaningless word.

Meaningless.

A neighbor saw you while he was taking out the trash. I had to chase him down.

Floor slants slightly north.

The boy's blood flowed that way.

There's a TV in the corner near the corpse.

Some kind of sock or shoe commercial.

These sheets of plastic tarp, some duct tape, bleach.

Surely I'm next.

I can see him walking out of the

bedroom. I can hear you, but I can't see you.

Door frame is blocked.

Okay, yeah.

Armand looks at the table back and finds the recorder under the

TV, brings it to the table.

He ejects the tape, flips it over, and

practices play.

I hear a muffler on the recorder.

Right. Curious.

Armand stands over you.

He commandeered your body.

Rise.

Armand.

From Polynesian Marys, I was with Louis.

I can't move. Move your body.

Yeah.

I don't want to die.

On that item.

I think I know something you don't.

I'm told you've lived a fascinating life.

I never said that. No, Louie did.

Leave him alone, Ahmad.

Ahmad! You held Louie's attention.

He confessed his innermost secret to you.

I want a drug.

We didn't even have sex.

128 boys he's brought here. And you're the first he didn't consummate and

drain. That makes you special.

That warrants investigation.

I could be on my knees in a second.

Bartering with desire, is that what makes you fascinating?

He didn't even want me in the end.

I mean, look at my neck.

I'm fucking bleeding down to my ankles.

Vera?

She's a fickle mother, lives in a titty bar on Market Street.

Kevin? She's a Vietnam vet who lives in the Castro with his Vietnamese 52

boyfriend with no legs.

You think in all these fools you've arrived at some ineffable truth?

No. It's all bullshit. An instinct to sell her face.

Is that what makes you fascinating?

Yes.

I'm good at getting angles.

Getting people to open up.

I can't feel my body. It's freaking me out.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Armand! You're going to teach me how to be fascinating.

Leave him be, Armand!

In middle school, you stole your dad's Playboy magazine, sold them at recess.

A little dirty, a little deceitful. But it's enterprising. Is that what makes

you fascinating?

In high school, you told a girl you'd only do her if she had a paper bag over

her head. She agreed, and you did it even as she cried.

A splinter of coldness in you. Is that what makes you fascinating?

My legs are starting to cramp. Even if transgressions are ordinary, Louis, the

pinhole's closing back up. Okay, it's you who's fascinating.

You can read minds, right?

Louis thinks I'm boring.

Do you find me boring?

Do you

want to hear my story?

Yes. Yes.

My first memory.

I'm being run down by slavers in Delhi.

My second.

An eager black hole.

I'll keep digging.

But I'm late.

Not hopeful there's much more to you, Daniel, other than a hole.

I was in Zeliznogorsk to interview an operative for the KGB.

Halfway through, I tried to go to the bathroom. He'd locked me in.

I was the one being interviewed.

Your point?

I don't know.

No point.

other than fuck your boyfriend.

Raid is an imprecise emotion.

I'd hurt him, but I was fragile, an invalid.

Spiro Agnew.

Daniel?

Daniel? Washington insiders are claiming this Saturday evening that Vice

President Spiro T.

Agnew may be close to resigning in light of ongoing investigations.

Prosecutors will soon present evidence to a Baltimore grand jury over the vice

president's allegedly receiving illegal... Saturday.

It was Saturday. But we met on Tuesday.

So I was the house pet for... What?

One, two, three more days.

Your boyfriend... I'm with him now.

...was in a trance of some sort. I won't tell you why.

I don't know. I can't. No. Lunch is almost over. Try.

You fucking try. You were there. Go back to the chair.

There's a TV.

Feet in the box shit is bullshit.

You're in the chair. The TV is on.

I can't get up. It hurts.

Put me in the coffin.

Coffin.

Yeah, it's you.

You keep saying coffin.

My nose is bleeding.

Come on, can you come?

Where are you? The painted bag is like I'm still burning.

Come on, put me in the coffin.

Please. Thank you.

Red.

I listened to the tapes.

All of them twice.

What? The starts, the starts.

Claudia, the starts, the starts.

I thought that Ronald was trash.

Yes, you said that. But why?

Not exactly how you've talked about him to me.

Did I catch you in a fantasy where the boy somehow fumbles his way to

publication?

Well, if that strolls past a bookstore, your book displayed in the shop window

where he buys himself a copy, reads your nasty embellishments and comes chasing

after you again.

If you want the insanity back, if you want to escape from this prison of

empathy, I've locked you away in.

All you had to do was ask, Louis.

A final act of service I'd like to perform before I... I leave you to

yourself.

I know where he is.

I found his voice among the many.

No.

I told him I was with you.

No.

I told him you were thinking of him again.

It's dark.

No.

I'm here.

He's waiting for you.

I'm with him now.

He cannot hear you.

He has injured himself.

Louis.

No. This is your chance, Louis. I am your maker's voice.

Louis. Louis.

Mon cher.

Mon cher.

You wanted to say something to me.

You wanted to say something to me.

Why are you ill?

What's happened to you?

Why are you ill?

What's happened to you?

Tell him I love you, Mahmoud.

I love you, Louie.

Tell him, Mahmoud.

Tell him.

Louie?

Louie?

Louie?

It's not the more.

You left me to death.

Will I be on suicide watch for the next thousand years?

Have I atoned for my part?

Paris, have I crawled an inch forward?

Or am I a reminder of the worst of it?

I'll finish cleaning up.

Rest.

Rest. Rest.

He said that to me too.

Rest.

Rest now.

A bunch of words.

But it started with rest.

Rest. And then?

I've been calling to you for some time.

From every bad fix.

From the unnamed malaise you feel Sunday afternoons.

And now here I am and you can rest.

I don't want to rest.

I am the quiet you've been longing for.

After all the garishness of life.

The jostling.

The clawing.

The dull thrum of desperation in you. Will I get the fixes I need?

Will I be somebody?

Will I get the fixes I need to be somebody? But Daniel, you already

know who you'll be.

An ugly duplex back in Modesto.

A job in an office with drab carpets and flickering lights.

A woman in the mold of your mother.

vacuuming on Valium, a genteel drinking problem like your father, your wife

counting down your thrusts, your children shying away from you,

all the confidence and hope of your youth replaced

by a seething, boiling regret until one day

you're at a traffic light.

The light turns green.

Horns honking.

You don't move.

Horns honking.

You don't move.

Everything happening in the city.

Break on the border with a point of view. Shh. A comfortable chair.

In a room that slants to the north.

An easeful death.

Rest.

It is the comfort we all long for.

The end.

Rest.

Rest.

Come.

Come. I'll hold you.

You rest now.

Stop, my mouth.

I'm cleaning up the mess.

Doesn't need cleaning.

After what you've put me through here, I deserved it.

I know.

But I need this one to live.

It's a testament to our companionship.

Of its endurance.

this boy to live out the night.

Are you asking, Maître?

No, our Lord.

I'm not asking.

Daniel?

Page 484.

Listen as though I'm the voice of God or an angel talking to you, telling you

this room doesn't matter, this night doesn't matter.

You're not inconsequential or a junkie.

You're a bright, young reporter with a point of view.

There are stories that need to be told.

If things ever get bad again, these are the words you'll hear in your mind like

a tape playing over and over, like a song stuck in your brain.

These words will hold you up and carry you.

They are your lifeline.

That's a freebaser I befriended for a few days at the drug den.

He told me to get my shit together, and then he Richard Pryor'd right in front

of me.

Everyone scrambled, but I stuck around, watched him burn.

What always confused me was that...

You know, he said those words

to me...

And he was already all burnt up.

Figured I'd conflated the two events.

But I didn't.

Because it was you.

I destroyed two marriages.

I fucked up two daughters.

But I stayed a journalist.

I... I was never so lost. I couldn't hold down a job.

We, I think, gave you more drugs.

Distorted it all in your mind. You woke up in a drug tank.

Fed you a truncated version.

He bit you.

He bit me.

You blacked out.

I blacked out.

You woke up in a drug den. I woke up in a drug den.

He bit you. He bit me.

You blacked out.

I blacked out.

You woke up in a drug den. Armand clogged my brain.

He bit you.

Redacted himself, which accounts for why I didn't remember.

Yes.

And what accounts for why you didn't?

I was disfigured.

I was in pain.

But you remember right up until when you bit me.

And I remember right up until when you bit me.

And then both our memories cut out.

Same precise edit on two brains.

How was your lunch?

Entertaining.

He made it all the way to Burj Khalifa.

How's Paris?

We paused Paris.

Reminisced about San Francisco.

And? What started with Daniel.

He asked why you saved him in 1973.

I could see you were partial to him.

I preserve your happiness even when you don't or can't.

I had a hunch.

Daniel might prove fruitful in later times.