From ‘Challengers’ to ‘Queer,’ Writer Justin Kuritzkes on His Breakthrough Year in Film 

Alci Rengifo

This has been quite a year for writer Justin Kuritzkes. The playwright, novelist and screenwriter has been launched to the forefront of arthouse cinema with director Luca Guadagnino. Early in the year, Kuritzkes’ screenplay, “Challengers,” was directed by the Italian auteur into an adrenaline-fueled tennis opus starring Zendaya. Having built a solid foundation, the collaboration continued with “Queer,” an adaptation of the novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs, in which Daniel Craig leads as William Lee, a Burroughs alter ego wandering around post-World War II Mexico City, marked by an addiction to heroin. Like the real Burroughs, William hangs out in the local expat gay community, soon becoming infatuated with a younger fellow American, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Driven by desire, William gets close to Eugene, but his drug addiction holds a vice-like grip on his body.

“Queer” isn’t a Burroughs biopic, considering the source material is officially fiction. Kuritzkes’ adaptation does however channel the very spirit of the famously dark writer, a legendary member of the Beat Generation, who formed part of that tragic gallery of wordsmiths defined by radical freedom and vice. Kuritzkes spoke with Entertainment Voice about working with Luca Guadagnino for “Queer” and “Challengers,” and turning William S. Burroughs’ tragically intimated novella into a hypnotic cinematic experience.

Adapting William S. Burroughs is no easy feat. How did you approach Queer in terms of breaking down the book and pulling a movie out of it?

It was a real learning experience for me because it was the first time I adapted anything. All the plays I had written were original, my novels as well. “Challengers,” my first ever screenplay, was original. This was the first time I was writing something from source material. It was also the first time I was writing something knowing who the director was going to be. So I had not only Burroughs’ book, but many conversations I had with Luca about how to approach the material. When I was reading the book for the first time, I was really surprised, having read much of Burroughs’ work before, that this was a very straightforward love story between two complicated people. It worked on a level of psychology. I was thinking about how to focus the film and it kept coming back to that, letting the psychology of Lee and Allen drive the movie. At the same time, you want to include everything Luca and I were talking about.

This is your second collaboration in a year with Luca Guadagnino after Challengers and it has a much more meditative, even trippy tone. Why do you both click so well?

It was really clear to me early on when I met Luca about “Challengers” that we spoke the same language. He was responding to the same things in that script that excited me and to the kind of cinema that excites me. So, that was the foundation. Then, we just found during the process of collaborating on that movie that we could speak with a sort of shorthand. We didn’t need to explain where we were coming from because we kind of were already keyed into our process. When he handed me “Queer” on the set of “Challengers” and said, “read this tonight and tell me if you would adapt it for me,” I read it that night and it was the easiest decision to make. It wasn’t because I knew immediately how to adapt it. I was honored Luca would trust me with it. I was so excited by the idea of Luca making that movie

You also have a background as a novelist and playwright. Outsiders tend to consider writing to just be, well, writing. We know that’s not the case. What challenges do you face writing films that are unique when compared to your other styles of work?

Who you are as a writer carries over because that’s just built into your point of view and life experiences. That’s consistent. What’s particular about screenplays is that plays and novels come from a place of language for me. They come from discovering the voice of a character and following that voice. Screenplays to a large extent come from a visual arrangement of people and things. “Challengers” presented itself to me at first as this geometry of people on a tennis court. The particular thing about a screenplay is that it has to be two things at once. It should be an exciting reading experience where the reader can see the movie on the page. Then it has to act as a blueprint for what hundreds of people will be doing. It’s almost like writing architectural blueprints. It could have seemed very daunting to me but what I’ve learned is that the more you learn about the process of filmmaking, the more exciting the writing becomes.

As a writer, what has been your relationship to William S. Burroughs?

Like a lot of people I fell in love with Burroughs through “Naked Lunch” when I was a teenager. I think there’s something very seductive about the voice and world of that book but also the persona Burroughs built for himself in the culture. He comes across as this very gruff and macho, austere and cool writer. That’s a very seductive way of moving through the world, especially for someone who wants to be a writer. What “Queer” surprised me with is that I found a character, William Lee, who is at times very tender and sweet and embarrassing. He says the wrong things and doesn’t know when to shut up. He can’t control his expressions even when he wants to seem dignified. That guy seemed like someone I could reach out and touch, while William S. Burroughs, this guy who hung out with Kurt Cobain, seemed harder to reach.

There’s a grunge and punk energy to the movie. Burroughs and the Beats were, of course, an influence on those movements and Nirvana is even featured on the soundtrack. Did that approach begin early in the writing process?

I knew from the beginning that Luca wanted to have Nirvana on the soundtrack. He talked to me about that before I even started writing and I thought that was brilliant. Generally, I don’t write music cues into movies unless it’s something happening in the reality of the scene, like a record player or something. But knowing that was going to be the sound of the movie to an extent certainly had an influence on how I approached it. 

Your wife, Celine Song, had a major success last year with Past Lives, which is also driven by great writing. How do “you bring the work home” so to speak? Do you comment on or inspire each other’s works in progress?

We’re each other’s first readers and we’re usually each other’s harshest critics. There’s a way you can respond to someone’s work when you really trust them and love them. We tend to keep our work lives pretty separate but we do that so we can be there for each other and support each other. While we’re each other’s harshest critics we can be each other’s support system. Anyone would become a better writer if they lived with Celine, so I’m very lucky to be in that position.

Right now you’re in pre-production for another adaptation, this time of Don Winslow’s “City on Fire.” He is another unique voice on the page. What can we expect from that project?

We’re not quite in pre-production. It’s still too early to say much about that project other than I’m incredibly excited about it. I loved the book and can’t wait for people to see it. It’s still a little too early to say much about it.

“Queer” releases in New York and Los Angeles on Nov. 27 and expands Dec. 6 in select theaters.