Daniel Craig was ultimately the one who convinced Luca Guadagnino to cast Drew Starkey after watching audition tapes with Guadagnino and telling him "That's the guy" after seeing Starkey's.
The film contains two Nirvana songs - "Come As You Are" and "Marigold" - and a cover of "All Apologies" performed by Sinéad O'Connor. Kurt Cobain was friends with William S. Burroughs, having been introduced to his work in school, and even collaborated with Burroughs on an EP titled "The "Priest" They Called Him" released in 1993. Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino revealed in an interview during the film's release that the use of these songs was intentional to highlight Cobain and Burroughs' friendship.
This film utilizes the use of detailed miniatures extensively, from the streets of Mexico City to the airplane takeoff scene. Even the movie theater is made of miniatures, and a reel of many of the models made for the film can be viewed on YouTube.
Several articles about this movie's screening at the 2024 Venice Film Festival (including Jada Yuan's piece in the Washington Post and Kyle Buchanan's profile of Daniel Craig in the New York Times) noted that there were loud and frequent vocalizations of disgust from some male members of the audience every time there was a love scene between two men. Yuan derided anyone who saw the movie but somehow did not know to expect an LGBTQ storyline based on the title alone. Audience members who expressed shock that Craig (best-known for playing the hyper-masculine womanizer character James Bond) would take a gay role were clearly unfamiliar with much of his prior career; Craig has played several other gay men, including in the blockbuster "Knives Out" mystery movie series. On the stage, Craig originated the role of one of the best-known gay characters in the history of world theater: in 1993 he played the deeply closeted Right-wing Mormon lawyer and political consultant Joseph Porter Pitt in the UK premiere of the Pulitzer-prize-winning play Angels in America by Tony Kushner at the National Theatre in London; Pitt's love interest, Louis, was played by Jason Isaacs (who went on to play Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies).
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