Luca Guadagnino & Daniel Craig Host Queer Press Conference

Luca Guadagnino already dazzled audiences earlier this year with the tennis love triangle Challengers, but that’s not his only film in the awards season conversation. More gentle and introspective than the glitzy world of professional tennis players, but no less sweaty, Guadagnino’s upcoming Queer is based on the 1985 novella of the same name by William S. Burroughs. Daniel Craig stars in the lead role of Lee, an American expat living in Mexico in the 1950s. He spends his days wandering the city, drinking, taking drugs, and hanging out with fellow expats. Lee becomes infatuated with Allerton (Drew Starkey), a discharged Navy serviceman who has found his way to Mexico. As the two spend more time together, Lee falls deeper into his crush on Allerton.

In preparation for Queer’s United States limited theatrical release coming November 27th, Guadagnino and Craig participated in a press conference with film journalists, including Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis.

Guadagnino was asked why now was the time for Queer to make it to the big screen. Guadagnino had written the first draft of the script when he was seventeen, but it was Guadagnino’s Challengers’-scribe Justin Kuritzkes who took the reins for the big-screen adaptation. The reason Queer was finally made in 2024 was Guadagnino’s self-described stubbornness.

Lee sits at a cafe table reading a newspaper in the Luca Guadagnino film Queer. — Daniel Craig as William Lee in Queer. Courtesy of A24

“There was something about this book that engraved in me this kind of hyper-romanticism that [Burroughs] brings on the pages,” Guadagnino said. “I think I learned throughout my life, throughout my work, throughout my movies and the people I met, that yes, the quest for contact is a beautiful idea to explore and to bring to life on screen.”

Guadagnino went on to discuss “the magical fascination of the language of Burroughs. It’s something that will last forever. [He is a] writer that is going to travel across time…I think the book is about these things that are inside of you that want to go toward another and…what you want from the other. I think these feelings are going to be relevant forever, because the most terrifying thing that we face in our life is the moment of encountering each other…it’s always very important to understand what you do in the eyes of the other, which ultimately is the movie. Understand yourself into the gaze of the other.”

Craig’s desire to be part of Queer came from a desire to work with Guadagnino. “That was the first attraction and only really needed attraction,” laughed Craig. “To be offered a character that is properly complicated…this really embodied somebody who I felt was many things, all of which were fascinating to me, all of which I thought I could key into. It’s rare that you get a chance to do a character as layered as this. It was just too tempting and a wonderful opportunity.”

Lee and Allerton under a yellow towel on the beach in the Luca Guadagnino film Queer. — Daniel Craig as William Lee and Drew Starkey as Allerton in Queer. Courtesy of A24

Queer’s poster comes with a distinct, splattered font that loudly prints the film’s name over the legs of Craig and Starkey. The font is also used in the film and was at the center of Film Obsessive’s question during the conference. The writing does not match that of Burroughs’, so what did Guadagnino want to convey with this stylistic choice in font?

Chen Li is the calligrapher responsible for both the writing in Queer and Call Me By Your Name. It was her idea to have the splattered ink drops that leap off the poster and Guadagnino explains that it was “something we worked on while we were shooting the movie, not after it passed. And we never intended it to be the calligraphy of Burroughs,” he explained. “This is the calligraphy of the movie. The identity of the movie that calls for itself.”

The identity of the movie is so meaningful to Guadagnino, who has been working on it since he was a teenager. Now, the movie is done. After playing at a few of the fall festivals, Guadagnino’s Queer is headed to the big screen for the public to see.

“It was a beautiful process. Very close, very intimate somehow, which means then that it was also sometimes a painful process. Now that the movie is finished and finally the general public can watch the movie in theaters. I feel like the movie is a younger adult person that can go out in the world alone. I wish the movie everything, and I hope the movie’s going to find the people who are going to soak into the feelings that I felt when I read the book that I was determined to bring to life.”