From its grunge rock and ‘80s pop soundtrack to the intentionally artificial backdrops inspired by old Hollywood studio films, “Challengers” director Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” is a trippy tribute to the life and work of Beat writer William S. Burroughs. Largely based on Burroughs’ unfinished novel of the same name, the film stars Daniel Craig as the writer’s alter ego — a loquacious, heroin-addicted expat living in 1950s Mexico City — and Drew Starkey as the younger man who becomes his obsession. Teeming with references to the “Junkie” and “Naked Lunch” novelist’s life and works, “Queer” portrays two men searching for connection but stifled by their own repressive tendencies and an era that views their desires as deviant.
“Luca put it beautifully in that, it’s not a story about unrequited love, it’s a story of unsynchronized love — in another time and place, yes, but not now,” Craig told NBC News ahead of the movie’s limited theatrical release on Nov. 27 (its nationwide release is Dec. 13).
“That’s the tragedy of the film: There’s a moment where you think, ‘This could be,’” he said. “And it’s not to be.”
“Queer,” which was almost exclusively shot on a soundstage at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, opens with a Sinéad O’Connor cover of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” in a nod to frontman Kurt Cobain’s own affection for Burroughs, a writer known for his public aloofness and icy, obscene wit. From there, the film loosely follows the plot of the Beat novelist’s slim book, composed during a tumultuous handful of years living in Mexico City to avoid drug charges — before shooting and killing his wife, allegedly, during a game of "William Tell."
Like Burroughs’ protagonist, Craig’s convivial but haunted William Lee wanders the streets and bars of the Mexican capital looking for his next drink and unsatisfying sexual encounter, until he comes across a moody and mysterious ex-soldier named Eugene Allerton, played by Starkey. Awakened from years of drug-fueled apathy, the older expat forms a slavish attachment to the younger man whose reticence only fuels his yearning.
Transfixed on the idea of mind reading, Lee entreats Allerton to accompany him to Ecuadorian jungles in search of a hallucinogenic root that he imagines will give him telepathic powers. But whereas Burroughs’ book ends with the characters empty-handed, the film, penned by “Challengers” screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, climaxes with a balletic sequence where the men are intertwined in desire while tripping on ayahuasca.
“It’s the moment in the movie where they get synchronized, and they become one,” Craig said, riffing on his earlier comments about the characters’ ultimately “unsynchronized love.”
The intimate encounter — which brings Guadagnino’s vision of the men as star-crossed lovers, rather than moths to a flame, into focus — is all too eye-opening for Allerton, who abandons Lee. And shortly after, the film descends into a series of dreamy vignettes, which like the disillusioned protagonist being left in the jungle, are drawn from other devastating bits of Burroughs lore.
‘Romantic character yearning for love’
The road to Guadagnino’s interpretation of “Queer” began when he encountered Burroughs’ unfinished novel, published in 1985, as a teenager living in the Sicilian capital of Palermo. Reading it, the future director of “Call Me by Your Name” and other films about tortured desire came to view the author as “a truly romantic character who was yearning for love,” according to the film’s press notes, and he resolved to make a film that would portray that softer side.
Decades later, when it finally came time to cast his William Lee, an amalgamation of literary and real-life references, the director immediately thought of Craig, who has played roles ranging from tormented painter Francis Bacon’s muse in 1998’s “Love Is the Devil” to the reigning James Bond. But Starkey’s casting, with help from one of the film’s producers, was an unexpected boon.
As the withholding younger man, said to be based on Burroughs’ lover Adelbert Lewis Marker, who abandoned the author during a jungle expedition, Starkey is an alluring combination of detached and coy — even in the way he wears the character’s tailored wardrobe (designed by Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson). But maintaining Allerton's almost mocking ease opposite Craig’s larger-than-life performance as Lee took effort, according to the actor best known for playing the villain in the teen drama series “Outer Banks.”
“Well, it’s incredibly difficult to work with Daniel,” Starkey joked, as his co-star quipped back, “No secret there.”
“No, but I did have a feeling early on, like, I’m surrounded by all of these incredible characters. It felt like I was in the middle of a circus,” Starkey said of acting opposite Craig and co-stars like Jason Schwartzman, who plays an Allen Ginsberg type who hovers in Lee's drunken Mexico City orbit.
Forcing himself not to react to the chaos around him unlocked the composure he needed to play the character, Starkey said. Equally important was the jovial relationship he shared with Craig when the cameras weren’t rolling, especially since, when they were, there was a fair amount of onscreen sex.
“It’s not like we had a lot of open conversation about what the relationship between the two of them is. Luca said it had to lead with love, and I think we always had that in our minds,” Starkey said. “We laughed a lot. We got to know each other as co-workers. And it all felt very instinctual on set.”
What turned out to be an instinctual chemistry between the two actors is evident in their characters’ almost exhausting cat-and-mouse courtship, as well as their full-frontal-heavy sex scenes — the subject of chatter when the movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year. But the heat between the co-stars in those moments pales in comparison to their connection during the climactic ayahuasca sequence, where their characters literally fuse together, with the help of special effects.
“Unless your kicks are doing it in front of a bunch of people in a room, then [filming a sex scene] is very technical. Where the camera is, the lighting, all of these things that are going on around you, you have to have an outside awareness of,” Craig said. “The ayahuasca trip, which is for all intents and purposes a dance, we rehearsed and worked on very intensely for the whole of the shoot. We got to know each other by working on it.”
After pausing to land a joke about the experience being akin to “Dancing With the Stars” — “there were tears, there was glitter” — Craig continued: “At the end, the crew shot the whole sequence, and we got through it on camera and on one take. They didn’t applaud after the sex scenes, but they did after that.”
Unable to resist, Starkey added, “It really was like being on ‘Dancing With the Stars’!”