‘Challengers’ screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes on his trippy, scary adaptation of ‘Queer’

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

“This was a movie that I said yes to writing without really knowing how I was going to do it,” Kuritzkes informed Mashable. “Immediately after I said yes, I was completely scared shitless, because it’s a book that was so important to Luca, and it’s a legendary book by a legendary author who’s such a massive cultural figure.”

Guadagnino first approached Kuritzkes about writing Queer whereas they had 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 means of time, fueled by love triangles and a pulsing techno beat. Queer, alternatively, is the phrase “languid” put to movie, slowly guiding us by means of 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 realizing 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 concept who would make it, or whether or not it could even get made. “You’re writing [the movie] to will it into existence,” he mentioned.

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

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

“I was writing a movie that I was excited to watch Luca make, so I would selfishly write scenes that I really wanted to see what he would do with,” Kuritzkes mentioned.

Amongst these “selfish” 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 need.

Different scenes Kuritzkes could not wait to see Guadagnino’s tackle had 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 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 write down in a brand new ending exploring what would occur if the 2 males did take ayahuasca. The outcome is without doubt one of the most putting sequences within the movie: an intimate journey the place the pair dance collectively, intertwined at the hours of darkness jungle, with their arms generally disappearing beneath their associate’s pores and skin.

“The whole time I was writing that sequence, I was really giddily imagining Luca doing that,” Kuritzkes mentioned. “That’s not a sequence you write if you don’t know that it’s going to be handled by a filmmaker like Luca. But I had so much trust that he would do something incredible with it, so I just went for it and said, ‘Will you figure it out?’ knowing 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 process of opening a channel between somebody I knew really well and was working with very closely, and somebody who I was never going to know except through the work that he left behind,” he mentioned. “I really wanted to make it possible for the two of them to communicate with each other.”

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 potential 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 were making a fictional movie about a character, and even though that character was an alter ego to some extent of the author, it’s still a character who has his own logic and his own psychological reality,” he mentioned. “That was the person I had to be faithful to, more than William Burroughs.”

Daniel Craig in “Queer.”
Credit score: A24

How you can unlock that character past Burroughs? By wanting past the persona he projected to the world, which Kuritzkes describes as a “very gruff, cool, macho guy.” Queer, alternatively, presents a extra susceptible inside to Burroughs and his stand-in Lee.

“It’s really surprising to find a character that’s very tender and sweet, and at times is a complete asshole, but is also really embarrassing,” Kuritzkes mentioned. “He’s a character who doesn’t know when to shut up. He’s the kind of guy who gets stuck in the middle of the room because he started to approach somebody, and then that person goes and sits at another table, and now he doesn’t know where to go.”

Maybe nowhere is Lee extra stereotypically embarrassing than throughout his early courtship of Allerton, when he provides up a bit bow in the course of a bar.

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

“That’s exactly the thing that made me feel connected to this character,” Kuritzkes mentioned. “I can’t really connect with the guy who has an obsession with guns, does heroin his whole life, and projects this macho, cool, austere literary persona. That person I can’t really touch. But I can touch the person who can’t help but let out ‘a leer of naked lust’ when he’s trying to look cool. That felt like a character I could write, and that felt like a character that would be exciting for someone to play.”

Queer is now in theaters.