Close 'Encounters': Luca Guadagnino and Daniel Craig Talk about Sex, Love, and 'Queer'

Burroughs wrote "Queer" in the early 1950s, when censorship around gay themes practically guaranteed it would not be published. Unsurprisingly, the book didn't see print until 1985, well after Burroughs had established himself as a major (if controversial) literary voice with "Naked Lunch" and, after that, subsequent novels such as "The Ticket That Exploded" (1962), "Nova Express" (1964), "Cities of the Red Night" (1981), and another Guadagnino favorite, "The Wild Boys" (1971).

But the vintage origins of "Queer" didn't worry Guadagnino.

"The magical fascination of the language of Burroughs is something that will last forever, so you are not bound to anything of the moment," the "Call Me By Your Name" director declared. "He is a writer that is going to travel across time. In fact, he has been a model for many, many generations.

"At the same time," the director added, "I don't think the book was written as a pamphlet about the way in which American expatriates, maybe homosexual expatriate Americans, live their lives hiding in plain sight in Mexico City. I think the book is about the thing that is inside of you that wants to go toward the other, and what you want from the other. And I think these themes and feelings are gonna be relevant forever, because the most terrifying thing that we face in our life is the moment of encounter with the other."

The encounters in "Queer" are many, and they are hot; out singer Omar Apollo is also featured in the film in a brief turn as one of Lee's hookups.

The steamy content is not a problem for Craig, who has never shied away from playing gay. He starred opposite Derek Jacoby in the 1998 John Maybury biopic "Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon," playing the painter's boyfriend (and showing more than a little skin in the process). Since then, he's starred as gay American detective Benoit Blanc in the "Knives Out" movies, and during his 15-year stint as James Bond – an icon of heterosexual masculinity – Craig brought a hint of bisexual energy to the role, hinting at the superspy's same-sex assignations in the 2012 Sam Mendes-directed "Skyfall."

Drew Starkey has spoken about having been "nervous" when it came to the film's steamy passages but has also said that he and Craig had "fun" with the film's erotic content. For Craig, though, it wasn't the hot and heavy stuff that proved worrisome.

"It's the first day. That's it," Craig said when asked if anything about the screenplay made him anxious. "I've stopped looking at scripts, going, 'That's going to be a hard bit. This is going to be an easy bit.' That doesn't help in any way, shape or form, because that leads to over analysis, and over analysis will kill it."

Craig reckoned that preparation is a must, but even so, "knowing your lines, all the work you've done before you go in and do it – [on] the first day you're shitting yourself, and everything you do feels unnatural. You think, 'I can't act anymore. This is just awful. I don't know what I'm doing here.' But I think everybody's feeling exactly the same. So, you just get through it, and after that, it's just day by day. You just get on with it."

As for what drew him to the role, Craig was quick to say the major selling point was the chance to work with Guadagnino. But also, he added, the character was too juicy a role to pass up.

"I think that what fascinated me so much about this part is his emotional journey, and I could relate to most of it," Craig reflected. "We thankfully don't live in a country where [gay sex is] an illegal act anymore, but people haven't changed, have they? All I can do is try and do it justice. That's all I can do."

Moreover, he added, he enjoyed being "offered a character that is properly complicated." Lee, he explained, "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. And it's rare that you get a chance to do a character as layered as this."

Summarized the actor: "It was just too tempting and a wonderful opportunity."

When it comes to the chemistry he and Starkey shared, Craig reflected on the "generosity" and the "life experiences" that cast mates can draw on.

Leaping in, Gudadgnino praised performers he's worked with on previous productions who, he said, didn't like each other – but you'd never know it from their onscreen electricity.

Would he spill a little tea about that?

"Not even in my 90-years-old memoir," Guadagnino vowed. "It's going to stay a secret." He illustrated his philosophy with an anecdote about seeing an exhibition about Stanley Kubrick and being "dispirited" to find that the prop for the "star child" from "2001: A Space Odyssey" was nothing more cosmic than a piece of rubber. "I think the mystique of the process should stay [unspoiled]," the director asserted.

"It's show business," Craig agreed, "and we have to keep it like that, because if you give all the secrets away, then it has no magic anymore."

And speaking of magic... the film incorporates another facet of Burrough's real life. A longtime heroin user, the writer was interested in other hallucinogenic experiences, including the South American concoction ayahuasca, which is made from the yage plant. Burroughs traveled to the Amazon rainforest in a quest for yage, and in adapting "Queer" to the screen, Kurtizkes added a similar quest... and a psychedelic trip, something that Guadagnino noted was not part of his own never-produced screenplay.

Eventually, the conversation came around to the film's soundtrack – specifically, its inclusion of the Nirvana song "Come As You Are."

"Well, the title says it all – in every sense," the director said to startled laughter. "Guys, I'm so sorry, I'm so embarrassed," the director hastened to apologize – but not before Craig jumped in with, "I'm just glad someone else made the joke, not me."

Surprisingly, the director indicated that the LGBTQ+ content of his films and TV projects wasn't necessarily a matter of consciously "explor[ing] themes of identity and queer identity in my work.

"I can only speak for what I am attracted to, and what I want to tell the story of," Guadagnino reflected. "If we can take the world of 'Queer' in the sense of [it being] something that doesn't need to be included, so doesn't feel to be excluded, then that's the 'Why.' I love these characters, and I love this world, and those are specific people and places that I want to see onscreen."

Guadagnino went on to say that while he may be an openly gay filmmaker, "I don't know if the duty of a movie is that of changing the ideas of representation in an industry."

Even so, he lavished praise on Craig "and the rest of the cast, who embraced the movie, [such] that, as Marcel Proust used to say, there is nothing that cannot be said. It depends on how you say it.

"I think that as much as we can consider ourselves free to be expansive in representation and not narrow in that, then there is hope," Guadagnino added.

Craig, for his part, felt he could add nothing to those words: "I couldn't be that eloquent," the actor said.

"Queer" opens in theaters on Nov. 27.