The director detailed his ambitions around the William S. Burroughs novella while the actor known for playing James Bond praised the daring script.

The star kills off his Bond to inhabit a dissolute American expat in Luca Guadagnino’s handsome adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novella.

Luca Guadagnino talks to IndieWire about his William S. Burroughs adaptation 'Queer,' starring Daniel Craig, in a wide-ranging interview.

I know the story of Queer well — the book itself, the circumstances of it being written, and the mythology that preceded the publication of it, the “lost” William Burroughs manuscript. And so I was truly dreading seeing Luca Guadagnino’s $53 million Queer,

All of that is there in Luca Guadagnino ’s Queer, the adaptation of the story. What’s different is the depiction of Lee and Allerton's profound, hallucinogenic experience while on ayahuasca and the movie’s full jump into the surreal with its epilogue.

Mounting a risqué novella by William Burroughs, filmmaker Luca Guadagnino finds an expressive way forward for the former James Bond, who finds a new register.

"He’s pushing things. That’s the big attraction," Craig says of director Luca Guadagnino, who adapts William S. Burroughs’s novella to the big screen.

Still, the salty scent of sweat and the weight of unspoken yearning lingers in the atmosphere, waiting for a wholly committed Daniel Craig to saunter into the frame in a white linen suit to pick up where “Challengers” left off.

The context of Burroughs writing “Queer” is unspeakably tragic, and Guadagnino refers to it without making the film a biopic; he is more concerned with the character’s state of mind, which is troubled, addled from drugs and booze, and driven almost mad with yearning.