It’s said that even the worst work by a great writer is a great work. This is, of course, nonsense, and great writers know this. It’s why they bury their worst works under the bed and try to forget they ever existed. But fans and acolytes will always be convinced that such unread volumes are secretly their best work – the unwrapped present under the Christmas tree more alluring than what’s in their hands – and so campaign for it to be published.
The two greatest examples by midcentury authors are undoubtedly Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diaries and William S. Burroughs’ Queer. While not quite coal in the literary stocking, both books were juvenilia pulled out of the slush pile for a late-in-life paycheck. Now both have faced mediocre cinematic adaptations seemingly based on the filmmakers’ love for the author rather than some pressing need to adapt the story.
Thus it is with Queer, Challengers‘ director Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of Burroughs’ scarcely-disguised autobiography of his relationship with Adelbert Lewis Marker. The 37-year-old Burroughs became obsessed with the 21-year-old former military intelligence officer when the pair met in Mexico City in 1951, so much so that he fictionalized their relationship as Queer– then buried it as an overly personal embarrassment.
When it comes to this film version, Burroughs would probably be orgasmic about his proxy, William Lee, being played by macho man Daniel Craig. (After all, when he met Marker, Burroughs was a skeletal heroin addict, dwarfed by the expensive suit he was drenching with sweat as he evaded the law south of the border.) When we meet Lee, he’s been working his way through one night stands he doesn’t care about while striking out with slender young Yanquis who may not even be gay. So Eugene Allerton (Starkey) is the best of both worlds, providing the romantic and sexual companionship Lee desires while also giving him the standoffish cold shoulder to which he’s become addicted.
That’s about all there is to the novel – which barely runs long enough to be a novella – and so Guadagnino has to greatly expand this slight, fetid, and febrile text into something more like a feature-length story. He does so by building this all out as an unrequited romance. At the heart of this disaster is Lee’s great and increasingly fulfilled fear – of being a junk-sick old queen humiliated by a glistening young trick. That’s where Craig excels, giving one of his most rounded performances since he became a Hollywood leading man (even if he’s more camp than Burroughs, who aspired to a bullish machismo, may have liked). There’s a ghostly yearning to his actions as he is emotionally battered by Allerton’s remoteness, a sadness that grounds him as he wanders through Guadagnino’s Panavision version of Mexico and South America.
But in his three-acts-and-an-epilogue structure, Guadagnino inserts more story than Burroughs intended, and Queer becomes aimless – especially in the third chapter, in which Lee and Allerton head into the jungle to get the author straight (as in, off heroin). The script genderflips ayahuasca researcher Doctor Cotter (Manville) in a seeming attempt to introduce a female character – and that’s where Queer becomes uncomfortable. It excises Burroughs real-life wife Joan Vollmer but makes overt reference to her murder at his hands – stealing her death for narrative reasons. It’s one of many instances where Guadagnino’s Lee is too much Burroughs, and yet unprepared to deal with his more loathsome history. But then, outside of Craig (and a hilarious turn from Schwartzman seemingly inspired by fellow Beat pioneer Allen Ginsberg), so much of Queer appears gorgeous but superficial, sketched out and there only to respond to Lee. Like the book, maybe it should have stayed in the slush pile.
This article appears in December 6 • 2024.
