Lestat's launch of The Vampire Lestat Project is a calculated public challenge to the secrecy that governs vampire life. He develops a plan joining a rock band, a book telling his own story, and sequential videos into a coordinated release: a cultural spectacle meant to reach mortals, summon other immortals, and make him impossible for his kind to ignore.

Decision and Objective

After studying rock history and repeatedly reading Interview with the Vampire, Lestat reaches a decision about what to do next. His ambition goes beyond making his band successful: he wants fame that will carry his name and voice to the remotest parts of the world. He presents the undertaking to his young lawyer, Christine, in her darkened office, insisting that the scale of the project matters more than its cost.

The project is designed as a unified work rather than a collection of separate ventures. Lestat proposes to write a book about his life and to accompany it with rock albums and films released together, keeping the work secret until the moment of public revelation. The videos are to be sequential and to tell the book's story, while the music includes songs he has already written. The book supplies the narrative; the recordings and films carry that narrative outward.

Building the Project

Lestat gives Christine practical instructions for turning the idea into a production. He asks her to recruit leading French directors from New York and Los Angeles, locate studios, and hire the best young record producers to mix the sound. He also specifies the need for superior equipment, including synthesizers, sound systems, electric guitars, and violins. Costume design, how to present the work to rock television stations, and the arrangements for a first public appearance in San Francisco are left for later; at this stage he wants the necessary calls and information gathered.

Christine initially advises him against risking his fortune. As Lestat presses the plan with confidence, however, her attention shifts toward its prospects for wealth and power, and she begins taking notes. The undertaking moves from conversation to organization: Lestat waits until agreements are reached and signatures secured, dates fixed, studios rented, and letters of agreement exchanged before returning to Satan’s Night Out.

The Band and the Public Reveal

With Christine, Lestat meets the young players Larry, Alex, and Tough Cookie, bringing them in a limousine and presenting the project over champagne beneath the Garden District's oaks. The name they celebrate, The Vampire Lestat, is to belong both to the band and to the book he intends to write. The shared toast marks the venture's transition from private proposal to a collaborative undertaking, with the musicians joining a plan whose full purpose they do not know.

Lestat considers the danger that publicity could bring to his mortal friends. Once secrecy ends, they will enter the international spotlight beside a vampire star, exposed to possible attention from other immortals. He intends to surround them with bodyguards and other helpers and protect them as well as he can. He reasons that ancient vampires would be unlikely to risk a conspicuous confrontation with a human force, but his protective arrangements do not remove the risk that the project's publicity creates.

Secrecy, Provocation, and Purpose

The project directly violates a rule Lestat regards as sacred among vampires: mortals must not be told that vampires exist. He reflects on how Interview with the Vampire has already broken that boundary. Louis, its narrator, has told hundreds of thousands of readers about vampires and disclosed information that could point toward Lestat's resting place in New Orleans, though Lestat is unsure what Louis knew or intended. The planned book and media campaign would take the breach further, making disclosure not a side effect but an instrument.

Lestat wants to break the old rules and draw out Louis and the other immortals he has known and loved, including those he has lost and those sleeping as he once slept. He expects fledglings and ancient vampires alike to recognize him through the videos, records, and book, and to know where to find him: his first live performance is to take place in San Francisco. The project therefore serves as a summons as much as a bid for celebrity. Lestat identifies this confrontation among vampires—not fear that mortals will believe the story—as the real reason for the undertaking, while the possibility of genuine revelation and public disaster adds a further risk to the spectacle.