Queer, the new film from Academy Award-nominated director Luca Guadagnino, has just hit Irish cinemas. Starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey as Lee and Aldrich, it follows the two American expats in 1950s Mexico City as they take a trip through the highs and lows of love and intimate connection. An adaptation of William S. Burrough’s novel of the same name, Justin Kuritzkes was tasked with bringing the story to screen. The writer is also the mind behind, Challengers, through which he first met Luca Guadagnino.

In an interview with GCN, Kuritzkes explained: “I wrote Challengers on spec, which means you’re really just writing it for you. It was a movie that I wanted to see, and so I wrote it because it didn’t exist. I had no idea who was going to make it with me or whether it was going to get made.”

He sent the script to producers through his agent, and it ended up in the hands of Amy Pascal and Rachel O’Connor, before eventually making its way to Zendaya and Guadagnino.

“We had to make the movie very quickly after that because Zendaya had to go shoot Dune: Part Two. So that meant that Luca and I needed to become really close really fast.

“We spent a lot of time together and we discovered really quickly that we kind of spoke the same language. We didn’t have to spend a lot of time explaining ourselves to each other,” he shared.

Guadagnino would insist that Kuritzkes be on the set during the Challengers process, “which is completely rare and a real testament to him,” the screenwriter said. 

“One day he just handed me this book by William S. Burroughs and said, ‘Read this tonight and tell me if you’ll adapt it for me’. It’s a short book, so I did read it that night and I called him at midnight or something and said, ‘Yeah, I’m in’.”

This was Kurizkes’ first time doing an adaptation, and he admits it was “a brand new way of writing” in many ways. “But I found that because I was coming from set every day, watching Luca make this movie I had written before I met him, I was so immersed in Luca’s cinema that by the time I was writing Queer, I was really selfishly writing scenes that I was excited to watch him direct.

“That gave me a lot of confidence to really go to places in the script that I wouldn’t if I were writing it for another director. Because I knew I could hand Luca a crazy scene and he would not be shy. He would know what to do with it. So that was really exciting,” he continued.

“We were sort of like dreaming together about the vision for this thing. But I also knew the whole time I was writing that this was a movie Luca had been wanting to make since he read the book as a teenager. So I felt this tremendous responsibility and this real honour that he would trust me with that.”

Even so, Guadagnino gave Justin Kuritzkes lots of creative freedom, as he does with all of his collaborators. While the early sections of the script are very close structurally to the book, the screenwriter was sure to put his own distinct stamp on the story.

“One of the first conversations we had was that the book kind of ended abruptly,” Kuritzkes explained.

“Without spoiling too much, there’s a moment in the book where it seems like a door is about to be opened, and then it is and then it’s quickly closed. We both felt like the book wanted to open that door and walk through and see what was on the other side. So I knew I was going to depart from the book in this pretty radical way.”

Two weeks after they wrapped Challengers, Kuritzkes delivered the script to Guadagnino.

“The whole thing was really fun to write,” he remembered. “I really love the early scenes with Lee and Allerton, where Lee is trying to suss Allerton out and figure out whether the door is open at all between the two of them.

“In the book, I found those scenes both really tender and also really funny because it’s funny to watch somebody be so deeply infatuated with somebody, you know? It’s painful for him but when it’s happening to another person, it’s really funny.”

With Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist working on Challengers, and now Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Leslie Mandeville and Jason Schwartzman working on Queer, Justin Kuritzkes admits, “I’ve been really spoiled so far” in terms of casts.

“It’s only a joyful thing because you show up to rehearsal and you’re just in heaven. Obviously, Daniel and Drew are so incredible in this movie, but Leslie Mandeville is somebody I’ve admired forever, Jason Schwartzman forever. So yeah, I was never worried about anything. I was only just excited.”

Justin Kuritzkes and Luca Guadagnino’s radical adaptation of Queer is in cinemas now. With Daniel Craig in perhaps his boldest role yet, and a gay love story at its core, this is not one to miss for LGBTQ+ film fans.