The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Queer.

Lee feels like he’s vibrating with how nervous he is. He has this energy that makes you feel like you could touch him and feel static. Was that exhausting to play?
Daniel Craig: If it was, I don’t remember. I mean, I’m trying to think of something intelligent to say and I can’t think of anything, because I’m trying to think of something that sort of says that, “yes, I was trying to achieve that,” but I can’t say what I was trying to achieve. I just… I was just trying to embody him. You know, through Burroughs’ words, Justin’s words, you’re kind of… you can feel this man just trying to communicate, trying to attract people’s attention, probably quite annoyingly, doing all of these things.

And none of that mattered. I didn’t want to judge him; he was trying to connect with the world. That was all I wanted to do. Luca asked his brilliant researcher to go and find a piece of work by Burroughs about love. And it’s the last page in his journal. And I was like, “well, that’s it. That’s it right there.” That tells me everything I need to know about the man. And all of the drug taking and the sort of, you know, that image that he set up for himself, that was the sort of the truth of it right there.

I told him I’d never seen anything like that in cinema.

How is Lee described, on the page?
Justin Kuritzkes: Well, interestingly with this film… Maybe it was just because of the work I had gotten to do with J.W. Anderson, our costume designer on Challengers, which he was also our costume designer for this. I think the first line of description is of what Lee’s wearing, and it’s this tattered white Oxford, you know, that he’s sweating through.

And he’s looking across the table, and that was the first scene I wrote, which was the first scene of the movie. And I kind of knew that… I knew that I had found the rhythm or the vibe of the movie, when I figured out that the movie was going to start with Lee looking into the camera and saying, “You’re not queer.” That involving the audience somehow in that, you know, and then we would flip around and see that he’s talking to this nervous straight kid who’s… you know, whose mother wouldn’t like it if he were queer, because he’s got the Star of David on his neck, you know. And so that was… all of that was something that sort of came before anything else and helped me get into who this character was.

Do you allow yourself to look at Burroughs himself when you’re preparing to play Lee?
DC: For sure. There’s actually very little real footage of Burroughs. Well… two things: One, Lee is an invented character of Burroughs. So it was important to remember that. I wasn’t trying to do an impression of William Burroughs. And two, the only footage I really could find of him shows him in very sort of stiff-mannered interviews that he would give, and where he would talk in this very deep voice. And I just thought that was sort of a carapace around something, especially because I’m reading Queer and, and even Junkie to a certain extent. And you know, the person underneath was who interested me, so we had to construct that. And so Lee is an invention. There are only little bits of footage of Burroughs where they’re caught sort of more privately of when he’s, let’s say… more at ease. Those felt much closer to reality, to me. Those are the bits I really clung on to.

There is sort of a performance art element to the movie, which is the tripping scene deep in the jungle. I understand it was carefully choreographed; it’s a stunning sequence. Have you ever done anything like that before?
DC: No, isn’t it obvious? No, I haven’t. I’ve wanted to. I’ve always dreamed of being a dancer. I’ve always had an admiration for dancers and people who use their bodies so beautifully. When Luca was talking about that scene, he said, “I’ve never taken ayahuasca, I don’t want to, but this is what I think it could be,” and for me that was just sort of glorious, you know, how delicious, to be able to kind of get into something like that. Drew [Starkey] and I had to discover this relationship very quickly, as you always have to do on a movie. There’s never enough time. So from day one of rehearsals, we were sort of rolling around on the floor doing interpretive dance! It’s a great icebreaker. I encourage you all to do it.

Justin, what did that scene look like on the page? Is it detailed, or just in brackets, “[cool things happen?]“
JK: Very detailed. I mean, I could have just written in brackets, “cool things happen,” and you guys would have figured out something beautiful, but You know, it’s, with something like that you want to evoke what’s going to be more than describe it. Because you’re dealing with light, and sound, and, you know, mood, and texture, and all these things that you couldn’t possibly describe.

You know, I mean, I remember when Luca showed me the first cut of the movie, and I saw what has become the ayahuasca dance sequence, and I told him I’d never seen anything like that in cinema. That’s like the first time I’ve seen something that moves like that. So I tried to write something that would give the energy of that, the mood of that. But certainly, I didn’t describe every movement – I left that up to my brilliant collaborators.