They are simply lovers who experience a passing connection. Their search for something deeper (which eventually takes them on an ayahuasca trip overseen by a shaman played by an unrecognisable Lesley Manville) is thwarted by what the director calls the “asynchronous” nature of their dynamic.

How loud was the conversation back then over authentic casting? “It was never even discussed,” Craig says, looking askance. Guadagnino is equally dismissive: “Sexuality is not one thing. Is it five things, is it seven? There is no such thing as ‘the gay’.” Craig has another thought: “Sexuality is a very modern idea,” he says. “People’s sexuality, or whatever they desire, is as individual as a fingerprint.”

Does sharing a vocation reduce the chances of being asynchronous? “No, it enhances them because film-makers are radical narcissists who just want to do their own thing. It’s a disaster.”

Guadagnino goes into splutter mode again. “I would never put myself on the same shelf as Daniel. Come on, he’s an icon! I’m a grey, balding Italian-Algerian director who’s made some movies. I’m boring.” Craig leans forward: “So am I. Let’s say I wasn’t famous, and I was a free agent. It either happens or it doesn’t happen. Those moments are magic. I think of moments like that from my life and, my God, they’re electrifying. Whereas if you’re out on the prowl, that’s really sad. And look, Lee sort of was on the prowl. But he wasn’t looking for what he found with Allerton. That’s what I’m interested in capturing as an artist. The moment where you go, ‘Oh fuck!’”

Guadagnino reminded me that as we come of age, we decide for ourselves what informs us, and spoke to the first time he read Burroughs. “You enter into the language of Burroughs and you understand, at 17 years old, that there are ways we can express ourselves that are so wide, sophisticated, complicated, and that you never have to adapt to a logic that is preordained.”

Burroughs in fact traveled there in 1952; The Yage Letters chronicles his experiments in his letters to Ginsberg. He was obsessed with the idea that yage could enhance telepathy. In the hallucinatory new scenes, the connection between Lee and Allerton goes to places the earthbound book could never take it.

When the screenplay is his own, firmly in Guadagnino’s hands, it’s actually fabulous — and a relief after the earlier conflict between the director and his material. At the same time, it makes no sense. That’s the most Burroughsian nod in this film: the sheer randomness and trippy outrageousness of the end. It’s very Naked Lunch — both the book and David Cronenberg’s 1991 film inspired by Burroughs, which was clearly on Guadagnino’s mind.

It’s paying more of a tribute to an adaptation of a different Burroughs book, a film that feels genuinely Burroughsian but has less of a basis in the underlying text than his own. Something is off, the essential is missing, and this may be why I didn’t feel Burroughs’s spirit.

still, I wept through scenes of Guadagnino’s film — including a hallucinatory reference to Joan’s death in which Lee does the same failed William Tell routine with Allerton — but it wasn’t for Joan or Burroughs; it was for James’s lover Michael Emerton, who  killed himself with a   gun. I wept as this beautifully designed movie, with gorgeous men in well-cut suits, gave me time to think about the karmic connections that both blessed and cursed me. I wept for Billy Jr., whose mother Burroughs had killed. Then I wept for Burroughs, and I wept for Joan.

I wept for the portrayal of transactional sex that was the “romance” the director referred to. I wept as I questioned notions of intent and integrity in transactional relationships: mine with younger, troubled men who lived on the fringes of gay culture; Burroughs’s with James; and James’s with me. Those relationships, for better or worse, follow the karmic path laid down for me 40-plus years ago. That karma, at least for me, as I flew through the past making sense of it, was neutralized by the acceptance of its very existence, its painful impact on me and those affected by it, and, finally, by releasing it. That was Guadagnino’s gift to me.

Most poignantly, I wept for James, who lives alone, unable to walk, with a brain injury that was inflicted during a gay bashing and made worse by his falls at home and sustaining further concussions. But there has been some nice news for him, as a double LP of his work as a singer-songwriter is being released on Lotuspool Records. And he told me he liked Guadagnino’s Queer — though he quibbled with the casting and look of Allerton — and that’s even better news. Guadagnino liked hearing that

On the Zoom with Guadagnino and Anderson, I wanted to ask about legacy. Are there responsibilities we who make art or work in the arts have to our elders, to the radical spirits who pushed open the doors? I mentioned the affluent gay men, usually heteronormatively married, who “rent a womb” and maybe buy an egg to drop in it so their children have their genes — all of which seems to me to be the furthest thing from queer. In response, some signifiers were mentioned. Anderson speaks to the look of the film, citing George Platt Lynes’s influence; they both chimed in about Powell and Pressburger (the Archers), of The Red Shoes; I mentioned Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s adaptation of Jean Genet’s Querelle, which Guadagnino said, indeed, influenced him. The point has been missed, and the clock is ticking. I move on, disappointed.

Will this film ignite a radical spark in younger viewers — be they queer or not? That’s what Burroughs did for me and for many, many of his readers

The craftsmanship of the film is sterling on many levels. But it is not the book I know by the writer I knew so well. It is stylish in the modality of fashion — having a “look”; it is beautiful in its entirety as a complete visual construction. It is, essentially, a gay location film. It is romantic, something of a travelogue — you might want to go where it is set, eat at the restaurants, while wearing the clothing, certainly in the company of some of the flawless boys cast. But it is not the world that the book conjures for most readers, certainly not me. This is the work of the director — as any film should be.

Still, a bad match of director and material renders confusion at best, emptiness at worst; I worried that this film could potentially misconstrue the importance of Burroughs’s role as a visionary queer writer for future generations. I was incapable of explaining this to Guadagnino and Anderson, in our 20-minute Zoom, not to mention it might have stopped the interview. But I tried.

It wasn’t just the peculiar casting of a beefy daddy like Daniel Craig as the Burroughs character, William Lee, or pretty Drew Starkey as the aloof, younger love interest, Eugene Allerton, who spends the film looking great in fabulous knitwear by Jonathan Anderson, Guadagnino’s friend and the film’s costume designer, but nothing like the image of the character I had in my head.

Lee is chasing Allerton, but he’s really chasing a sense of self. This isn’t just a film about queer characters with a queer form — it’s also a film with very specifically queer motivations and conflicts. This is a film for anyone who has every desired assimilation, who has ever looked for self-love in self-hate, who has ever sought control with a desperate fuck.

Allerton is an idealized figure for Lee. (With their glasses and similar hair coloring, Allerton could even appear to be an idealized figure of Lee.) His disconnect from his queerness is a pull for Lee. The same way Lee wants to distance himself from the more feminine gays, he wants to run toward Allerton. It’s not just an addiction to desire, it’s an addiction to self-loathing.

Daniel Craig embodies Lee’s desire with an idiosyncratic charm. He may yearn for Allerton’s neutral normalcy, but, as portrayed by Craig, he’s undeniably queer. This isn’t shown with the obvious cues often inhabited when famous actors play gay. Instead, Craig finds the layers in Lee’s queer presentation — how he plays it up and how he tries to quiet it down.

On the one hand, I think the progressive trans movement has moved so far it’s trying to defend an untenable position: that all you have to do to gain access to a protected space is claim a protected identity for yourself. Imagine a situation where someone known to family and friends (and identifiable to the public) as a man declares one day that they are transitioning to female. Nobody could reasonably expect all girls and women to be comfortable with that person showing up in their bathroom or locker room a few days later. And yet, this isn't how transitioning always (or even often) works. To take the example at hand, Rep.-elect Sarah McBride is 34 years old. She was her student body president at American University in college, and in her final week in that role, she came out as trans in the school newspaper. She described how she wrestled with her gender identity, writing that being trans was her "deepest secret" and something that she "couldn't accept," thinking she had to pick a pursuit of politics over being trans and couldn't possibly do both together. That was over 12 years ago, and now she is an openly trans woman who has been elected to Congress. Regardless of your views on this issue, we should all be able to empathize with McBride and the intentionality behind her transition. She is not a confused teenager. She is not someone attaching themselves to an identity for personal gain, or to be a predator, or on a whim. She is an adult exercising her freedom to live as she chooses.

Many on the right seem to think they can just legislate trans people away — pretending that by excluding them they will somehow cease to exist. They won’t. Whether they exist because of gender dysphoria or ambiguous sex organs or social contagion is, for the purposes of legislation like this, irrelevant. As a pluralistic society, we should strive to create free societies for all.   At the same time, many on the left seem to think they can use academic theory to set the definitions of common words and reorganize social norms without listening to concerns about comfort level, fairness, basic differences among the sexes, and perceived or actual safety. This, too, is entirely unrealistic.

I genuinely think someone like McBride should be able to use the women's bathroom in Congress’s halls, yet I can also hold that this doesn't mean all self-identified trans women are entitled to all women's spaces. I wish more people could hold these things at the same time, too, but alas — that doesn’t appear to be the country we have.

When you grow up having to navigate the world with two minds, you can at least (hopefully) bask in the absurdity of it all. It also helps numb the pain.

Growing up differently and gay oftentimes made us feel alienated, lonely, and the black sheep of our families. To figure out who we really were and to learn to navigate the world in a healthy way we were forced to do a form of work that not many straight people are confronted with. The stuff that bothers straight men I know seriously makes me laugh. You can tell they've had to never do the work to search deep within themselves to find meaning and to move past unacceptance. I seriously look at being gay as a gift now. I wouldn't change it for all the money in the world because I'm proud and grateful to be who I am. I've honestly become the systemic change in my family because I've never had to follow the cookie cutter mold and I'm not afraid to speak up and voice important opinions.

The amount of self reflection one has to go through for being gay in this world is insane.

I still in my early 20s but I've changed so much backwards thinking in my family just by being myself and challenging some of their opinions. Also when straight men talk about being lonely I always just laugh and tell them I do feel lonely but I've been lonely since I was like 12 or so, atp I don't even feel lonely I've learnt how to keep myself company due to years of introspection.

Rules matter less than people think. We've already broken the grow up get married to a nice girl and have children rules that most of the world goes along with, so we tend to be more questioning when it comes to other rules

You can live your life however you want - not to societal expectations. Your partner is someone you likely truly get and gets you because they're also a guy - no mystery or gender related differences. No external expectations of marriage, or having babies / kids etc. Also no PMS, no biological clock ticking and putting deadlines in your life. And also added bonus, if you're similar size then you can share your clothes.

DavidtheMalcolm • 23h ago Oppression doesn't make us all better people. Like the narrative that feminism pushes hard is that oppression makes us kinder, nicer, more empathic than straight white men... and sometimes that's true. Sometimes there's great examples of that. But so many of us are just broken trash people who no sane person would want in their life.

I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying. And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic.

I’m so viscerally disgusted by 95% of the things that I have to do to promote this movie. To operate in these hallowed halls of capitalism and not feel absolutely insane, it requires some kind of taking the red pill. Or privilege-tinted sunglasses.

“‘The Matrix’ is very in conversation with trans themes that my work is also interested in: this feeling of unreality that can be a potent metaphor for being trans in the world or figuring out that you’re trans,” they continue

I’m very suspicious of any externalized representation of transness,” Schoenbrun confesses. “Trans experience is something that’s classically represented by Hollywood as this very external force, when actually it is so internal.

Back to “The Matrix” and feeling not quite right in the world: that is a much more potent, relatable way of talking about how it feels to be trans but not quite understand it yet. As opposed to, ‘I looked in the mirror and wanted beautiful lashes and locks.’”

“I worked really hard to make this film weird, like a provocation,” Schoenbrun says. “I’m structuring my life in a way where I can keep my values and my gaze outside of a system. I describe it sometimes as angry sex between art and commerce.”

“To be trans is not just a thing I was born with, but a political ideology and a decision to exist in a certain way that’s non-normative and challenging the hegemonic structures of power,” Schoenbrun continues. “I want to stay a person who I like. Too much power and too much collaboration with a system of power, I start to get hives.”

“Everyone has a Maddy. Most queer people have someone who’s shepherded them through the discovery of their own queerness.”

the story is pulled from Mago’s perspective into 3 subsequent perspectives over the years: Lena, the best friend; Joseph, the ex-husband and father; and finally Monstrilio himself. It is a stylistic choice that (mostly) works and allows us to see how these events radiate outward across many lives.

M’s perspective being saved for last is not just because it is the best section of the novel and wraps up all the disparate elements into a tight punch of a finale, but because M’s feeling and needs are constantly being pushed aside to fit the ideas of what the other character’s think they need (this is most evident in the surgery aspect). This makes for an excellent look at the way the push and pull of families affects everyone, especially the younger ones caught up in it, and is made more ominous and chilling through the lens of horror.

On one hand we have the fact that M is quite literally a monster created out of a dead child’s lung, yet despite his form he is no less a part of the family or loved like a child. But in later portions of the novel he transforms into a human form which helps him disguise who he is inside. And what he hungers for cannot be hidden. Hunger is a quite a dynamic symbol here, being both his literal hunger but also as an investigation into sexuality.

it does all sort of touch on the idea that queer sexuality is often othered or seen as unnatural despite being very normal and natural, especially to the person having those emotions.

Tashi Duncan is exactly what we have been missing from our screens; a selfish, messy, calculated woman who wields her intelligence and sensuality as weapons. She’s a cheater, a woman unable to see beyond her own needs, who refuses to lie even when she could save someone the heartbreak of the truth — “unlikeable” by all standards. When her golden retriever malewife of a partner Art tells her he loves her, she simply looks over and purrs “I know” in response. It is coolly dismissive and self-assured in a way that we do not usually get to see Black women behave onscreen.

Tashi Duncan is too formidable a character to be pushed around, least of all by white stans who don’t know what it means to strive beyond the approval of men. The story underneath all the tennis is about Tashi’s heartbreak, the mourning over the loss of her career and the identity it gave her and how she forges ahead anyway.

in every charged moment we see between Patrick and Art, Guadagnino makes it clear that the center of their connection is Tashi. Even the now infamous churros scene revolves almost entirely around Tashi. Patrick says that he likes seeing Art riled up, that he enjoys seeing him willing to connive and fight for something — even if that thing is his girlfriend. Even their lust for one another is moderated by her, unleashed by her. They would have stayed perfectly content meandering in suggestion if she had not forced them to confront their attraction for one another tongue-first in that bedroom scene.

Tashi Duncan is a woman so in control of herself that even in her greatest moment of heartbreak — sitting alone under a tree with an injury that has ruined her chance at doing the only thing she knows how to do — does not allow herself to break. Zendaya’s portrayal of her is glorious here. You watch the hurt, pain, grief, anger, and then finally resolute determination pass over her face as she makes her choice. She will not mope. That moment makes the woman we meet years later, who tells her husband that her love is absolutely conditional on his success as a player.

Tashi Duncan is utterly unique, a manifestation of a particular kind of female rage that makes her hard to forget or even fully hate. It’s what makes the boys so obsessed with her.

Much of the mockery towards Che came from the queer community, who were pretty easily able to see the difference between an authentic representation of a queer character, and a kind of walking diversity checkbox designed to bring a style of woke chaos to a story.

AJLT has clearly been engaged in the criticism of SATC - the three main characters all get a black friend who is given almost equal time and importance. And Che not only answers criticism of lack of representation of sexuality on SATC, but cuts off future criticism of AJLT.

In one scene, Che is watching a focus group give feedback on the pilot of their sitcom. A young, clearly queer member speaks up about how much they hate the “character” of Che in the sitcom. They clearly represent the fan and critical response to Che Diax in AJLT season 1, and it’s fascinating to see what the show thinks these kinds of people are - ie a minorly updated blue haired woke stereotype.

In the show, this brings Che to tears, and through this scene, our criticism of Che is emotionally rebuked. We can see that the tears of Che Diaz are the tears of the writers, appalled at our meanness.

fans are always going to be motivated by different things to the writer. A fan, especially ones with the kind of parasocial relationship to shows and characters that are big these days, are always going to want the best for the character, to see their favourites thrive and find love and get the magic sword, etc. A writer doesn’t and shouldn’t care about any of that - a writer should only be writing the best story, creating the most fulfilling narrative arc. Sometimes, when it comes to crafting a narrative, pain and suffering is important for the character, goals need to be unreached, swords remain in the stone.

Introduced as Carrie’s “modern” podcast partner, and then later Miranda’s queer sexual awakening, Che was a non-binary standup comedian who unfortunately had a lot of functions to fulfil in the story. They were a kind of stand-in to represent exactly everything that had changed in sex and dating and gender and sexuality in the years since the original Sex and The City had gracefully left our screens.

They were a truly baffling character, a kind of frankenstein’s monster cobbled together from hazy ideas of gender and queer theory, mashed into one character to be a comedic foil for the older (and somewhat startlingly conservative at times) original characters - but also as a way to try and seriously engage with ideas of representation and diversity. You never knew if you were meant to laugh at Che, or at the other character’s moments of less-than-wokeness around Che - or take them seriously.

And Just Like That - a show that can only be described as watching Sex and the City through the aged filter on TikTok while suffering a potentially fatal fever - is the greatest show on television. By that I mean it’s so bad. God I love it. It’s just inexplicably confusing, a show defined by big swings that almost never hit, but that doesn’t matter, there’s a kind of deranged joy in that. It’s almost perfect. But it’s also so weird.There seems to be a happy chaos to the show, a willingness to just put forward insane new developments for these beloved characters, and just run with it.

the reason that Che Diaz felt so out of place, a sore thumb, is  because their entire arc in the latest season is responding to fan and critical discourse.

Haigh tells this potentially maudlin story with such a light touch that even its biggest reveals hit like a velvet hammer, and his screenplay so movingly echoes Adam’s yearning to be known — across time and space — that the film always feels rooted in his emotional present, even as it pings back and forth between dimensions.

And so Haigh, in rather overt terms, slowly begins to recontextualize Adam’s sexuality as more of a conduit for his despondency than a root cause, leveraging a personal story about the consequences of keeping pain out into a primordial one about the catharsis of letting it in

“All of Us Strangers” does too, and it never shies away from how hard it can be to start again, especially once Harry begins to struggle with his own advice