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When Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes first agreed to adapt William S. Burroughs’ Queer for director Luca Guadagnino, he had no thought the place to start.

“This was a film that I mentioned sure to writing with out actually figuring out how I used to be going to do it,” Kuritzkes instructed Mashable. “Instantly after I mentioned sure, I used to be fully scared shitless, as a result of it is a e book that was so essential to Luca, and it is a legendary e book by a legendary creator who’s such a large cultural determine.”

Guadagnino first approached Kuritzkes about writing Queer whereas they have been in manufacturing on Challengers. Each Challengers and Queer premiered in 2024 and share appreciable overlap between their artistic groups (together with composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and costume designer Jonathan Anderson), in addition to themes of craving and what Kuritzkes calls “unsynchronized love.” But tonally, they’re worlds aside. Challengers volleys forwards and backwards by time, fueled by love triangles and a pulsing techno beat. Queer, then again, is the phrase “languid” put to movie, slowly guiding us by the push and pull between American expats William Lee (Daniel Craig) and Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) throughout their time in Mexico Metropolis. (There’s additionally a surreal third-act odyssey into the Amazon rainforest.)

This was a film that I mentioned sure to writing with out actually figuring out how I used to be going to do it.

The movie’s stark variations are mirrored in Kuritzkes’ writing course of for each. He wrote Challengers (his first produced screenplay) on spec, with no thought who would make it, or whether or not it might even get made. “You are writing [the movie] to will it into existence,” he mentioned.

Queer, then again, is an adaptation — one Kuritzkes knew he’d be writing for Guadagnino. Having gotten to know the filmmaker extensively through the Challengers manufacturing course of, Kuritzkes tailor-made the screenplay to him.

Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in “Queer.”
Credit score: A24

“I used to be writing a film that I used to be excited to look at Luca make, so I might selfishly write scenes that I actually wished to see what he would do with,” Kuritzkes mentioned.

Amongst these “egocentric” scenes? Moments when Craig’s Lee imagines touching Allerton, reaching out a ghostly hand to stroke his face or leaning into his neck. Kuritzkes drew these situations from Lee’s inner monologue within the novel, excited to see how Guadagnino may externalize these ideas and emotions of want.

Different scenes Kuritzkes could not wait to see Guadagnino’s tackle have been crafted solely for the movie. Chiefest amongst them is a scene in direction of the top of Queer the place Lee and Allerton take ayahuasca after looking out the jungle for it. Within the novel, they don’t discover or take the drug. Nonetheless, earlier than Kuritzkes even started writing the script, Guadagnino requested him to jot down in a brand new ending exploring what would occur if the 2 males did take ayahuasca. The end result is without doubt one of the most placing sequences within the movie: an intimate journey the place the pair dance collectively, intertwined at midnight jungle, with their fingers generally disappearing beneath their accomplice’s pores and skin.

“The entire time I used to be writing that sequence, I used to be actually giddily imagining Luca doing that,” Kuritzkes mentioned. “That is not a sequence you write if you do not know that it may be dealt with by a filmmaker like Luca. However I had a lot belief that he would do one thing unbelievable with it, so I simply went for it and mentioned, ‘Will you work it out?’ figuring out that he would.”

As Kuritzkes labored on the screenplay for Queer, he started to see himself as a “medium” between Guadagnino and Burroughs. “It was this strategy of opening a channel between someone I knew rather well and was working with very carefully, and someone who I used to be by no means going to know besides by the work that he left behind,” he mentioned. “I actually wished to make it doable for the 2 of them to speak with one another.”

A essential a part of this course of turned negotiating how a lot Burroughs as a personality discovered itself into the movie. In any case, the novel Queer options a number of autobiographical particulars, like Burroughs’ time in Mexico Metropolis and the Amazon. The movie additionally incorporates some parts from Burroughs’ life that are not within the novel, like allusions to him capturing his spouse Joan Vollmer in an tried William Inform stunt.

I actually wished to make it doable for [Luca Guadagnino and William S. Burroughs] to speak with one another.

Nonetheless, Kuritzkes stresses that he and Guadagnino weren’t out to make a Burroughs biopic. “We have been making a fictional film a couple of character, and although that character was an alter ego to some extent of the creator, it is nonetheless a personality who has his personal logic and his personal psychological actuality,” he mentioned. “That was the individual I needed to be trustworthy to, greater than William Burroughs.”

Daniel Craig in “Queer.”
Credit score: A24

Find out how to unlock that character past Burroughs? By trying past the persona he projected to the world, which Kuritzkes describes as a “very gruff, cool, macho man.” Queer, then again, presents a extra weak inside to Burroughs and his stand-in Lee.

“It is actually shocking to discover a character that is very tender and candy, and at occasions is a whole asshole, however can be actually embarrassing,” Kuritzkes mentioned. “He is a personality who would not know when to close up. He is the sort of man who will get caught in the midst of the room as a result of he began to method someone, after which that individual goes and sits at one other desk, and now he would not know the place to go.”

Maybe nowhere is Lee extra stereotypically embarrassing than throughout his early courtship of Allerton, when he affords up just a little bow in the midst of a bar.

The second is strictly as written within the e book, which describes Lee’s “ghastly” try and muster a dignified greeting, solely to as an alternative set free a “leer of bare lust.” (A misreading of the road by Allen Ginsberg led to the title of Burroughs’ novel Bare Lunch.)

“That is precisely the factor that made me really feel linked to this character,” Kuritzkes mentioned. “I can not actually join with the man who has an obsession with weapons, does heroin his entire life, and tasks this macho, cool, austere literary persona. That individual I can not actually contact. However I can contact the one who can not help however set free ‘a leer of bare lust’ when he is attempting to look cool. That felt like a personality I may write, and that felt like a personality that might be thrilling for somebody to play.”

Queer is now in theaters.