Interview by Elisa Leonelli
Luca Guadagnino said he had admired you as an actor “sculpted in celluloid” since he saw you play the lover of painter Francis Bacon in Love Is the Devil (1998), but never thought he would accept this role in Queer. What convinced you to say yes?
“I too wanted to work with Luca for a long time, since we had met at a party in Rome twenty years ago. I’m drawn to his energy, his punk-rock style, his outsider worldview. He makes films like no one else does, the individualism of his works is surprising. So I’m delighted, both personally and professionally, that we’ve finally been able to do this.”
Daniel Craig-Queer (c) A24
Had you read the book before you accepted the role of William Lee, alter ego of William Burroughs, in the film?
“I knew very well who William Burroughs was, and I read Junkie years ago, but not his other novels, like Naked Lunch; it was not part of my literary history, he was not my favorite writer. I first read Queer when I talked to Luca about making this film. Since then, of course, I have read more and researched, I enjoyed finding out about it and entering its world. So if I didn’t know him before, I’m a Burroughs fan now.”
Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey-Queer (c) A24
Detective Benoit Blanc is also homosexual, as revealed in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022), a sequel to Knives Out (2019), but for Queer you had to shoot quite explicit sex scenes with Drew Starkey. Did you feel embarrassed?
“No, because I consider those scenes rather modest. However, Luca had explained to me from the beginning that, in essence, in this novel William “Lee” Burroughs was looking for one thing, love. In life, in television interviews that I watched, the writer was a reserved type, with a deep voice, but I wanted to understand what was underneath, who he was as a human being behind the facade of the intellectual poet. I didn’t have much reference material, so I didn’t copy it, I made it up. Under that tough, masculine manner, and the armor he had built around to repel others, that gun he carried his belt, lay a desire for tenderness.”
Daniel Craig-Queer (c) A24
The publication of Queer, written between 1951 and 1953 and never completed, did not take place until 1985, after the resurgence of gay activism as a response to AIDS. What do you think caused this reluctance in the author?
“Burroughs was part of the Beat Generation, which was by nature counter-cultural, but he refused to be co-opted by the gay movement. In the preface to Queer, the author tells this terrible thing that had happened to him, when he was extremely drunk in Mexico City with his wife Joan and they were playing “William Tell.” She had put a glass of cognac on her head, instead of an apple, he fired his gun and killed her. It was precisely that great tragedy that prompted Burroughs to begin writing, as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (Jason Schwarzman in our film) had long encouraged him to do.”
Guadagnino added towards the end of the film a surreal scene that does not exist in the novel, where the search for yage in Ecuador proves unsuccessful. How was it for you to shoot that sequence in a recreated jungle in Cinecittà?
“In the book there was no psychedelic journey with the ayahuasca, but Luca wanted to add it, because Queer is not a love story not reciprocated, but a story of an unsynchronized love, and that is the only time when these two men who love each other really feel together, touching and embracing each other, merging one into the body of the other. Drew and I had many hours of rehearsal under the guidance of choreographers to prepare for this dance. The tragedy is that the next day his lover can’t take it and leaves. They will never see each other again.”
Read here original Italian version