There is no shortage of directors who have made movies about gay life only to then backtrack and claim they were not specifically gay stories after all: Tom Ford did it with A Single Man, William Friedkin with both Cruising and The Boys in the Band. Luca Guadagnino, the director of Call Me By Your Name and this year’s steamy tennis romcom Challengers, is not about to play that game. “It is the most gigantic gay film in history,” he says of his latest picture, for which he recreated 1950s Mexico City on 12 stages at the Cinecittà studios in Rome. “I don’t think there has ever been a bigger gay movie.” Then again, he doesn’t have much wriggle room: the film is called Queer.
His feverish adaptation of William S Burroughs’s novel, which was written in the early 1950s but not published until 1985, concerns an American expat, William Lee, who locks eyes with a young stranger across a crowded cockfight. This is Eugene Allerton, a clean-cut, blade-like presence, played by Drew Starkey. And who should star as Lee, the gauche, fumbling, sweaty goofball, but Daniel Craig? If No Time to Die hadn’t killed off James Bond, Queer would have done it in a trice.
Craig’s performance, which is touching, unguarded and funny, has earned him a Golden Globe nomination and made him one of the favourites for a best actor nod at next year’s Oscars. We meet today in a London hotel room. Craig, who has long, sandy, swept-back hair, is wearing a light blue shirt; Guadagnino sits beside him dressed in black save for white trainers and an olive baseball cap. The actor is cock-a-hoop about the nomination but won’t be drawn on any Oscar predictions. “That way madness lies,” he says.
No one could accuse him of not putting in the hours to make sure Queer gets seen. Is this an acknowledgment that Queer – which is, after all, a sexually explicit period piece culminating with a drug trip that is part-dance, part-trance – is an inherently hard sell? “No, I don’t think so,” Craig says. “There isn’t the advertising budget that we would like there to be, so it’s up to us to sell the movie.” Guadagnino sounds more aggrieved: “This is crazy, you asking us this question!” he splutters. “You guys want us to do press and now you’re telling us …” Craig completes the thought: “That we’re doing too much?”
The movie certainly doesn’t want for fans. John Waters, director of Pink Flamingos and a queer legend himself, chose it recently as one of his favourite films of the year. “Daniel Craig may be queerbait for taking on the role of William Burroughs’s alter ego,” Waters wrote, “but … he’s absolutely brilliant and even has a ‘snowball’ scene, a happy reminder of a sex act I had long forgotten.” Guadagnino wrinkles his brow: “What is a ‘snowball’?” he asks. Craig enlightens him by miming the swishing of a fluid that definitely isn’t mouthwash. “Ah!” the director gasps. The idea of watching the former James Bond explain the intricacies of gay sex to the man who directed the peach scene from Call Me By Your Name might seem far-fetched. And yet here we are.
Now Craig has a question. “What’s ‘queerbait’?” he says. I explain the concept of straight actors courting queer cachet, and how it came up a few years ago during the conversation over whether LGBTQ+ parts should only be played by actors who identified as the corresponding sexuality. Of course, Craig has played other gay roles, not just Benoit Blanc, the dapper sleuth of the Knives Out whodunits (the third of which, Wake Up Dead Man, is out next year), but further back in his career, pre-James Bond, when he was Francis Bacon’s bit of rough in Love Is the Devil and a sexually conflicted Mormon in the original London production of Angels in America: Perestroika.
How loud was the conversation back then over authentic casting? “It was never even discussed,” Craig says, looking askance. Guadagnino is equally dismissive: “Sexuality is not one thing. Is it five things, is it seven? There is no such thing as ‘the gay’.” Craig has another thought: “Sexuality is a very modern idea,” he says. “People’s sexuality, or whatever they desire, is as individual as a fingerprint.”
There is no doubt that Craig commits fully to the part of Lee, even before we reach the snowball. The screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who was asked by Guadagnino to adapt Queer while they were in the middle of making Challengers, was taken aback by the vigour with which the actor embraced the role’s less flattering qualities. “Lee is this tender, embarrassing guy who loves in an almost adolescent way,” Kuritzkes tells me later. “In some ways, I see it as a comedy about this lovelorn person. And I was shocked by how fully Daniel committed to that. I sometimes want to yell at the screen, ‘Stop pawing at Allerton, he doesn’t like it! You’ll make him run away!’ That was all in the script but it feels so sharp because of what Daniel does with it.”
Guadagnino emphasises that, despite the age gap, there is nothing predatory about the relationship between Lee and Allerton: “To say so would be huge bullshit.” They are simply lovers who experience a passing connection. Their search for something deeper (which eventually takes them on an ayahuasca trip overseen by a shaman played by an unrecognisable Lesley Manville) is thwarted by what the director calls the “asynchronous” nature of their dynamic. Does he believe all love is asynchronous? “Oh, it would be a bore to always be in sync,” he exclaims, much to Craig’s amusement. “The beauty of love and relationships is that we are individuals and then we decide to cross life with someone else as a companion.” Guadagnino has been drawn to dating other film-makers; for just over a decade, he was in a relationship with the director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino. Does sharing a vocation reduce the chances of being asynchronous? “No, it enhances them because film-makers are radical narcissists who just want to do their own thing. It’s a disaster.”
This prompts more laughter from Craig, louder this time. If the actor were not married to Rachel Weisz, is it fair to say he wouldn’t be dating civilians either? “It’s not a choice,” he says. “You’ve got to go with what you feel.” And yet the sort of chance encounter that occurs between Lee and Allerton can never happen to him again. “What are you fucking saying?” he huffs. “That I’m too old?” No: too famous. Guadagnino is 53, Craig 56, yet neither of them will experience either the invisibility of middle age, or the pleasure of that innocent flirtation with a stranger.
Guadagnino goes into splutter mode again. “I would never put myself on the same shelf as Daniel. Come on, he’s an icon! I’m a grey, balding Italian-Algerian director who’s made some movies. I’m boring.” Craig leans forward: “So am I. Let’s say I wasn’t famous, and I was a free agent. It either happens or it doesn’t happen. Those moments are magic. I think of moments like that from my life and, my God, they’re electrifying. Whereas if you’re out on the prowl, that’s really sad. And look, Lee sort of was on the prowl. But he wasn’t looking for what he found with Allerton. That’s what I’m interested in capturing as an artist. The moment where you go, ‘Oh fuck!’”
He isn’t one to look back. Of his Bond years, he says: “When clips get shown at Q&As, I’m like, ‘Oh, that looks quite good.’ I’m proud of what we achieved.” But he must be able to remember a time before he was mega-famous – “Just about,” he interjects with a rueful smile – when he could be looked at without anyone knowing who he was. When a glance could just be a glance. “Yeah. And it’s so nice. I wish only those feelings on people every day of their lives because they are joyous. Those moments of human connection occur on such a mysterious and beautiful level.” And they are now beyond his reach forever, I remind him. “Fuck off!” he laughs. “I’ve had my share.”
• Queer is in UK cinemas from 13 December and Australian cinemas from 6 February
