Original subtitles

This is the part of my story back in San Francisco

where you said,

and I paraphrase, "Give it to me."

You weren't always a vampire, were you?

Hey, stop! No!

That's my voice, but I don't remember it.

The boy we met in San Francisco, he's still in there.

We can have him saying what happened next in no time.

Would you like to join us?

You go ahead. Have your fun.

I see they've separated you from your laptop.

Tapes are an admitted performance.

Give it to me. I won't waste it.

This is the premise of our interview.

The odyssey of recollection.

I let you whine and have your say.

I used to be real good at running things.

Yes

What about me and you?!

Picked another one over me!

You and fucking him!

Memories just keep bubbling up.

I want this.

To remember.

Things got a little heated. With a boy!

Things got heated with a boy.

We had it figured out, didn't we?

- Mmm. - What we needed from the other.

Our proper roles.

A less dictatorial approach

to the coven is embraced by my love.

A dreamy kind of balance.

Ah, July, 1949.

- The reading room. - Mmm.

We broke into the same library every night that month,

hypnotized security, as one does, flipped the lights,

laid our backs on long tables and 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 apartm...

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?

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.

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 a vampire of Louis's age

is fighting the narcoleptic pull of the sun.

Or that.

Ah. Is this Malik?

It is, sir.

- You're the guy? - Mmm.

You're gonna chase me down

in your little Jimmy Choo sneakers, huh?

Shall we take our business to the living room?

- Who are they? - They are not your concern.

Oi! Who are you?

- Friends. - If you'll excuse us?

Your friend here is a hot-headed young man, hmm?

Good thing to be.

Tell him to buy a Bugatti,

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?

He'll have Malik begging for it in an hour.

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

Mm-hm.

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 magazines.

- Sold them at recess. - I'm sorry!

Little dirty, little deceitful but it's enterprising.

- Is that what makes you fascinating? - The coffin!

In high school you told a girl you'd only do her... Rest.

- if she had a paper bag over her head. - Daniel?

- She agreed and you did it... - Daniel.

How long is your boyfriend's lunch again?

An hour. Two at the most.

Let's change it up.

I was going over my notes last night.

Something he said on his initial flight

to the book shelves 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. - Five hundred 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.

Um... Our first interview... It's a 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 cabbed to your place on Divisadero, you paid.

That's right.

Did we...?

I like what you've, uh, done with the place.

Getting some bail bondsman, post-divorce vibes.

I own a few of these places.

Oh, yeah? How many?

Many.

Are you a real estate mogul?

Oh, I'm 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 counter-cultures.

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

The fifth.

Backgammon?

Well, that's wholesome.

Old-timey fun from the Sasanian Empire.

Oh, wow!

Cheeseburgers or chicken chow mein, take your pick.

Oh! Oh, well...

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

What do I seem like now, boy?

A veteran of many wars. It's yours.

Cocaine's a fun boy's drug. I'm not fun.

Alright, suit yourself.

Mm!

I prefer you like this.

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 off?

No.

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 du 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...

Hue?

Minor factors.

You can squeeze profit out of that margin.

Did you gravitate to San 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.

Shit!

I forget to put a tape in.

- I'm a vampire. - Okay.

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

Fuck!

Are those fangs?

Hi.

Fuck, man...

ae you the Zodiac killer?

Don't be afraid.

Just start the tape.

Okay.

It's on now.

Uh...

First question.

You weren't always a vampire, were you?

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

And how did it come about?

There's a simple answer to that.

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

I wanna tell the real story.

You smoked shaky cigarette after shaky cigarette.

You shook more 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, Louis.

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 upchuck.

Where's this leading, Daniel?

I have some outstanding questions about 1973.

Like... why you talked to me in the first place?

- You had 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'd like to know, for me, what happened between us.

Okay?

Okay.

Okay.

Then let me ask you this, Daniel Molloy.

What's the next thing you remember?

You eviscerating Lestat.

He had a dark pull, a numbing effect on the senses.

- He was a handsome Satan. - Yeah, I mean, I know the type.

When you stripped away his superficial charms,

beneath his flimsy gentleman's veneer...

- Mmm. - Lestat was trivial,

- vapid, vulgar. - Mmm. 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, he lured you in.

You know? He's a faker, but you figured that out.

By then you'd paid a biblical price for your first love.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...

No, that was 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 du Lac

just now making his fangs... come out.

Oh, shit!

The tape ran out. It's just a small 30 minute thing.

If I had been an actual journalist and, you know,

not fried on coke and ludes, I would have realized

what a dangerously unstable psyche I was with.

Because the next thing that happened was, you detonated.

♪ Oh, the sewing machine ♪

♪ A girl's best friend ♪

I sat on that bench in Jackson Square,

watched Claudia disappear into the night.

I'm kinda 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 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?!

I had nothing.

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, joyrides 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 a ticket out.

And you were just gonna throw it away?

You've overstepped 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 use the past tense about her,

- I figure she's... - She's what?

Well, I can see where it's 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 ask 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!

No! Hey, stop!

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 idiocy.

I took a scoop out of your throat.

I deserved 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... - Cornerstone of prize-winning journalism.

And then what?

I, um...

- Hmm. - Daniel?

Daniel?

Yeah, uh...

A hesitation.

I have a surprise for you.

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, Daniel. - So are you, Louis.

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, uh, assistant,

uh, she's a bit of an audiophile,

and, uh, well, she cleaned it up a bit.

Press pause on the betrayal of it all and... listen.

Louis?

That wet thud?

That's Armand saving me.

What?

- What?! - It's 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'll 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.

Louis' tri-annual fuck off and find me

- with apologies to follow. - I'm sorry.

Seek comfort in the arms of lowlifes and unfortunates,

- and broken children, fine. - Oh, fine!

The fine that doesn't sound like...

But revealing our nature to a reporter

you met in a bar ten hours ago?

- What if it was published? - I was having some fun!

You don't have enough to fear from Paris?

I was in the middle of ending things, when you...

You'd have been passed out on the floor next to him, Louis!

Out on your feet from the drugs you stuffed him with!

Oh, this is boring! You're boring!

You are so boring!

- And here come the drugs. - Colorless.

- Up the fangs, down this road. - Flavorless.

- Dull! Dull! Dull! - Into the heart and off with the fingers, feet.

- Dull nights, dull weeks! - And wallowing brain.

Dull months, dull as fuck!

Suffocation by the world's softest,

beige-est 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, huh?

Does he want to lick my boots or chop my hands off?

Is it the gremlin or the good nurse tonight?

Huh?

Okay.

Okay, perhaps.

But am I as boring

as the blather committed onto the ferric tapes

of your fascinating boy?

"Oh, it's so, so hard to be me."

- Picking lint off the sofa?! - "It's so hard to kill humans."

"I can feel their feelings as I drain them."

You sat on your hands and put your ear to the wind.

- "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 vampire

groomed me into a little bitch."

- "My brother tossed himself off a roof!" - "Vampires who murdered my daddy

- made me pretend I didn't have a dick for 240 years." - "My sister buried me alive.

My daughter was my sister was my throw pillow.

Well, he wouldn't look at me kindly.

"Lestat. Lestat. Lestat. Lestat. Lestat. Lestat. Lestat."

I talked shit about him the whole time.

- So what?! - 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.

I know.

I know!

Yes!

I know.

Thank you for saying it.

It's all creeping back.

Paris and the, uh, what, what, what?

But there's... all of it coming back.

There's, uh, Paris.

Paris.

Can you hear that?

Can you hear that, hm?

Can you hear her?

She's calling me.

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

Hear that?

Second door slam further off?

What's that second door slam?

I don't... I don't remember. I don't remember any of this.

First door opens.

Slam.

Footsteps.

Second door slams, metal door.

- Armand calls your name. - Louis!

He runs after you.

Metal door opens to screams.

A few more seconds,

tape runs out.

Where is Armand following you, Louis?

It's morning.

You went out of the room.

Door opens.

Slams.

Steps.

Metal door.

Louis!

No! No, no, no! No!

I walked into the sun.

You remember that?

I'm remembering it now.

Let me ask you a really loaded question, Louis.

And then what?

My skin burnt to the color of pitch.

Char 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.

- No. No. - And then you ran outside.

And now you're a convalescent.

So... so...

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!

Oh, he's fine. Your fine!

This is fine! We're all fine!

You two kept me in that apartment for how long?

- You were there, Daniel. - I don't remember.

I... 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.

We're all fine!

A cellophaned corpse on the floor.

Meaningless word.

Meaningless.

A neighbor saw you while he was taking out the trash.

I had to chase him down.

The 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?

There's sheets of plastic tarp, some duct tape, bleach.

Surely, I'm next.

Armand!

I can see him walking out of the bedroom.

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

The doorframe is blocking you.

Okay, yeah.

Armand puts the table back and...

finds the recorder under the TV.

Brings it to the table. Huh.

He ejects the tape.

Yeah. Flips it over...

and...

presses play.

I hear my voice on the recorder.

the more you liked it.

A fresh young girl that was his favorite food,

but the triumphant kill for a sadist like Lestat

- was always a young man. - Armand!

A young man like yourself

would have appealed to him in particular.

You see, they represented

the greatest loss to Lestat, because they stood

on the threshold of the maximum possibility of life.

- Rest. - Of course...

Lestat didn't understand this himself.

Lestat understood nothing.

Curious.

Armand stands over you.

He's commandeered your body.

Rise.

Armand.

From Polynesian Mary's. I was with Louis.

- I can't move. - Move your body?

Yeah. 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, Louis did.

Leave him alone, Armand!

- Armand! - You held Louis' attention.

He confessed his innermost secrets to you.

I wanted drugs.

We didn't even have sex, man.

- 128 boys he's brought here. - He said five.

And you're the first he didn't consummate and drain.

- This is so bad! - That makes you special.

Please, man, I'm just a shitty little kid from Modesto.

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 single mother.

Works in a titty bar on Market Street.

"Kevin."

Some Vietnam vet who lives in The Castro

with his Vietnamese refugee boyfriend with no legs.

You think, in all these spools,

you've arrived at some ineffable truth?

No, it's all bullshit.

An instinct to self-efface.

Is that what makes you fascinating?

Okay, yes.

I'm good at getting angles,

getting people to open up.

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

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

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

Leave him be, Armand! Stop!

In middle school you stole your dad's Playboy magazines.

Sold them at recess. A little dirty, a little deceitful,

but it's enterprising. Is that what makes you fascinating?

- How are you...? - 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 his 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.

- I have Charlie Horse, left leg. - Do you find me boring?

No.

Do you want to hear my story?

Yes. Yes!

Yes.

My first memory.

I'm being run down by slavers in Delhi.

My second.

Hmm.

An eager black hole.

Oh, my God.

I'll keep digging.

But I'm not...

not hopeful there's much more to you Daniel,

other than a hole.

I was in Zheleznogorsk

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.

Rage 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.

Federal prosecutors will soon present evidence to

- a Baltimore Grand Jury over... - Yeah, I'm with him now.

- The Vice President allegedly... - I won't say where.

Saturday. It was Saturday.

But we met on Tuesday.

So, I was the house pet for what?

One, two, three, four 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.

- I won't say where. - You fucking try.

- You were there. - Go back to the chair, the TV.

Vice President Spiro T. Agnew may be...

This feet in the block shit is bullshit.

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

- Some service stations... - Armand, can you come?!

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?

- Some service stations... - Armand, can you come?!

Where are you?!

The pain is back!

It's like I'm still burning!

Armand, put me in the coffin!

Please!

- Yes. - Thank you.

Rest.

Uhh! Oh!

...consumers and gas station owners.

I listened to the tapes.

All of them twice.

Lestat, Lestat.

Claudia, Lestat, Lestat.

And all I talked about him was trash.

Yes, you said that. But why?

It's 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?

Where Lestat 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 wanted 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.

Lestat.

No.

I told him you were thinking of him again.

- Lestat. - No!

Yes. 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?

I love you, Louis.

Uh...

Tell him I love him, Armand.

I love you, Louis.

Tell him, Armand.

Tell him!

Louis?

Louis.

Louis!

Louis!

Uh...

He was my maker.

It's nothing more.

You left me for death.

Will I be on suicide watch for the next 1,000 years?

Have I atoned for my part of...

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.

Shh, shh-shh-shh.

Rest now.

A bunch of words...

but it started with "rest".

"Rest" and then?

Shh, rest.

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... - I like my life.

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.

I have a thing happening in the city.

I'm a bright young reporter with a point of view.

Shh-shh-shh. A comfortable chair

in a room that slants to the north.

An easeful death.

Rest.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It'll feel like a bath.

Rest.

Like honey on your tongue.

It is the comfort we all long for.

The end.

Rest.

Rest.

Come.

Come.

I'll hold you, you rest now.

Stop, Armand.

- I'm cleaning up the mess. - It doesn't need cleaning.

After what you've put me through here, I deserve this.

I know.

But I need this one to live.

As a testament to our companionship.

Of its endurance.

This boy to live out the night.

Are you asking, Maitre?

No, Arun.

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 free-baser I befriended

for a few days at the drug den.

He told me to get my shit together

and then he Richard Pryor'd in front of me.

Everyone scrambled but I stuck around, watched him burn.

What's 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 den.

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 fogged my brain.

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 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 the Burj Khalifa.

How's Paris?

We paused Paris.

Reminisced about San Francisco.

And?

It started with Daniel.

He asked why you saved him in 1973.

Hmm.

I could see you were partial to him.

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

- I had a hunch... - I had a hunch...

Daniel might prove fruitful in later times.

You're stronger. I can feel it.

But you got to give up something to get something.

You fear Armand.

You should fear the other one.

Can you imagine me without the burden of her?

Today we're turning a spotlight on ourselves.

Are you ready?

Episode 5, "Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape,"

explains the past.

It explains the relationships, and it explains the betrayal.

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

if she had a paper bag over her head. Louis: Daniel.

She agreed, and you did it. Daniel.

What's in the bag?

In Season 1, we saw the...

Hello... original meeting in the bar...

Hi... of young Molloy and Louis in San Francisco.

Would you like to join us?

With Armand there lurking in the background.

No.

You go ahead. Have your fun.

And now we're back with that same trio.

Louis and Molloy have returned

to the apartment in San Francisco, and...

I like what you've, uh, done with the place.

We see this interview play out.

Are you a real-estate mogul?

Oh, I'm a lot of things.

Re-creating 1973 was a lot of fun.

Those of us who know something about that era

just sort of laugh at everything from the clothes to the hair,

and every detail, every prop,

every set dressing has to be right.

Backgammon?

Old-timey fun from the Sasanian Empire.

This went through many permutations,

but basically it's a beautiful

'70s backgammon board,

rebuilt to handle all the drugs,

all the... the fun and games

that Louis is offering to Molloy in the '70s.

It was actually the first thing we shot this season.

It was like shooting a little play, really,

'cause you're in the one set for the whole time.

At first blush, it is a one-off episode,

and yet it explains everything that's happened up till then

and, more importantly,

everything that's going to happen.

Does that scare you, boy?

It was really fun to revisit that dynamic

with the younger Daniel.

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

It was amazing to work with Luke,

having seen up close Eric's Daniel.

Our first interview, it's a fog.

I mean, it's the '70s, all a blur.

Unbeknownst to me when we met in New Orleans,

before we even started shooting anything,

I didn't realize that he was watching me

and planning a strategy on how to play the younger me.

Some of the stuff that Luke was doing,

I was like, "That's Eric.

That is... That's Eric."

I'm a vampire.

Okay. I mean, I'm really interested

to know why you, uh, believe that.

Even when they first meet in '73,

Louis has a real fondness for Daniel.

Are those fangs?

He likes him. He's cool. Hi.

That's why Daniel lived as long as he did.

First question.

You weren't always a vampire, were you?

We have these two guys in Dubai who,

with the help of the Talamasca,

they start trying to piece together what happened.

Armand: We're all fine.

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.

Bogosian: It's intense. It's intense for me.

Having watched it,

it then informs everything that I am doing in later scenes.

I have a surprise for you, kind of a curveball,

which will seem like less of a surprise

and more like a... ambush.

Louis?

That's Armand saving me.

The relationship between Armand and Louis

was very up and down.

Louis, as much as he wants to say

that this relationship cured him of his malaise...

The 10 hours I spent with that boy,

were more exciting, more fascinating

than decades with you.

Clearly has all kinds of problems.

Many of the same issues he had when he was with Lestat

have resurfaced.

Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat...

Armand is always conniving. He's always working.

And I think that's also the tragedy of him

is that he can't ever relax with the truth.

I'm remembering it now.

It's kind of the biggest betrayal, isn't it?

When you choose to spend your life with somebody,

you accept each other.

I can't think of a bigger betrayal than lying

to that person in such a significant way,

to the extent where you would rewrite their history.

- Rest. - Rest.

He said that to me, too.

It makes me angry now.

Armand is so wrong for that.

Don't.

He's just fine.

Don't. Oh, he's fine.

You're fine. This is fine.

We're all fine.

Stop, Armand.

We both discover the depths of duplicity

that Armand has gone to and what he's done to each of us.

Up to this point,

the Molloy/Louis dynamic is adversarial.

It is really this kind of amazing moment

of connection between the two of them.

Like a song stuck in your brain,

these words will hold you up and carry you.

Jacob has said it. Louis doesn't have any friends.

They are your lifeline.

And Daniel doesn't have any friends.

So if they have any... any friends at all,

maybe it's each other.

There's an odd couple for you.