Robert Kojder chats with Bones and All screenwriter David Kajganich…
Bones and All marks the third collaboration between writer David Kajganich and director Luca Guadagnino (the others would be the Suspiria remake and A Bigger Splash), and given the narrative (based on the novel by Camille DeAngelis) is essentially a romance involving cannibalism, it’s a challenging story to adapt. They have yet to strike out as a unit, so I suppose it’s no surprise that David found humanity and empathy in these characters, making for one of the year’s best films. It was a privilege to speak to David Kajganich about his writing process, so enjoy below:
I saw that Antonio Campos was first attached to direct Bones and All. I’m curious how it shifted to Luca Guadagnino.
David Kajganich: As sometimes it happens, directors fall off because there was some other project that they’ve been trying to get off the ground longer that ends up getting green-lit. And in this case, Tony had been developing The Staircase, a limited series, for a long time and had finally had the chance to make it. So we were happy for him, and he stepped off Bones and All. But I had already spoken to Luca in the past about the project. As soon as I had read the book, I sent it to Luca, but he just wasn’t in a place where he could take it on. But now, after Tony dropped off and I finally had a script, I thought, well, maybe this will work out for the best. So I sent it to Luca, and he read it in a day. He called me back and said, if Timmy {Timothée Chalamet] does it, I’ll do it. We were shooting the film four or five months after that.
You mentioned if Timmy was in, Luca was in; what kind of convincing did either of you have to do to get Timothée Chalamet involved?
I don’t think any. I think Luca sent him the script, and they met shortly after that in Rome because that’s where he was shooting. They had one conversation about it, and that was it. Lee is a specific character, and it’s a specific combination of tones and genres. Timothée was happy to be reunited with Luca first and foremost, but also happy to have a character to play that he originally hadn’t. Who has played somebody like this character before in their career? It struck me as a creative opportunity he hadn’t seen yet.
The film is a beautiful romance-horror hybrid. So while adapting the script from the novel, what half of that equation spoke more to you?
That’s a great way to put that question. The love story spoke louder for me because I had never written one before. The idea of writing a love story that the audience experiences somewhat through the grammar of horror just seems like a very interesting, tricky technical challenge. At the end of the day, the characters pull you through a first draft and a second draft, pulling you through a whole production.
If the characters aren’t there and if you can’t feel them and connect to them, then I can’t write a film. These characters are falling in love, and maybe that’s even secondary to the fact that they can see one another without judgment. It just was exhilarating to find words for them to say and articulate those feelings. Some of this is in the novel, but we wanted to raise the volume on it even higher in the film, and I just never wrote anything like it.
Humanizing any of these characters feels like it shouldn’t have been possible, but you pulled it off. So what was the trick to figuring that out?
Having the right collaborators is certainly one trick to figuring it out. But in terms of the page, to the degree that these characters felt like real people, I suppose I would credit to deciding pretty early on to take a very naturalistic tone to this film and not try to spend time building a mythology about cannibalism or overly explaining the rules of it. I had a rule for myself: if there was a reason for one character to talk to another character about cannibalism, then that was permissible, but I wasn’t going to force information about it into their mouths just for the audience’s learning. That ended up being the trick: just not letting this become driven by the rules of genre but letting the rules of drama drive it.
When genre elements were useful, we would bring them in, but I was never going to try to put information in the mouths of these characters that were there simply for the audience to understand. A mild sense of confusion about the world of this film is actually important for the audience to feel, both for the suspense that it generates and also for the sense that this is how you encounter real people out in the world. If you overhear someone on the bus, an airplane, or wherever, you feel they are real people with full lives, but they’re not pointing out the structures of their lives or the rules by which they live to you. Once you start doing that to the audience, you deflate the characters.
Another fascinating aspect is that cannibalism can stand in for so many other things that would make someone an outcast, especially given the 1980s setting. So as a gay man, how does that influence your adaptation of the script?
It was the lens through which I read Camille’s wonderful book that this is all based. Once I got to the end of the book and really started to think about how many other lenses could be applied to that metaphor of cannibalism, it became really important for me. I did code in some of my own interpretation of it, but I left a lot of other moments in the film open so that other people with other conflicts embedded into their lives, whatever those might be, might have a chance at being able to sort of see the film through the lens of those other pains. I rolled the dice and just bet that if I didn’t try to control the metaphor too much, it would prove itself very flexible.
Many people have talked to me about other ways they’ve seen the film and none of them feel unreasonable at all. It’s rewarding to think that there’s a way to talk to so many different people about the ways that they themselves haven’t felt seen or embraced by the wider culture. Those conversations are loaded with people’s pain, but the energy with which people have talked to me about the movie has been very gratifying.
Mark Rylance’s Sully is slimy and creepy, but he’s also lonely with deep sadness. He’s not a traditional villain, and that seems challenging to write. So what did you enjoy most about that process?
What you just described, which is having him have a place in the structure of the film as a kind of antagonist but not treating his character that way. Mark’s character Sully is sort of the key to a lot of what the film is about because he has a vision of where Lee and Maren might find themselves in 30 or 40 years if they lose touch with other people and they try to do everything on their own like Sully has and cut himself off from so many opportunities that might have come his way to connect with other people. Your personality becomes completely chaotic, and your understanding of how the world works, how emotions work, and psychology become curdled.
When I watch the film, I am so moved by Mark’s performance because he somehow captured both the weird and sad flamboyance of someone who doesn’t know how to relate to people anymore and, at the same time, the pathos of that level of loneliness. It’s a really hard technical thing to pull off as an actor, and there isn’t a false note in his performance.
I’m also glad you mentioned that many of these eaters are possible future versions of Maren. So I’m curious, were there any other versions that you had to cut out of the story for time constraints or anything?
There was only one, which was very brief, and we cut it. We didn’t even shoot it. Actually, there was a moment in the first real conversation Maren has with Sully where he says you’ve certainly met other eaters before and asks if anyone has ever done a double-take. There used to be a scene in the script where we saw that happen. Early in the script, Maren was at a bookstore, and one of the employees later in the film, you’ll realize must have been an eater and must have been able to smell her because he tries to engage with her in a conversation. She just reads him as a creepy older guy who’s interested in her for who knows what reason but going to walk away. That’s the only other eater in the script cut for the film, and I don’t miss him at all.
Were you instructed to write the characters with any actors in mind for the roles?
No. Even if that’s the case, I push back. I would rather not have any specific actors in my head most of the time, but you develop relationships and friendships with certain actors. For instance, I’m working on a television project right now where I’m writing lots of parts for some of the guys that were in The Terror because I can’t get them out of my head, They’re such lovely people, and they’re such fine actors that now I sort of am writing specific parts for them. Normally I don’t, but I’m starting to find that harder and harder not to do because of just the circle of wonderful collaborators I’ve had.
This is now your third collaboration with Luca Guadagnino. What keeps you coming back to working with him?
We’re great friends. Making movies is hard, so the idea that you might actually be able to make some of them with people you love and have fun being with and get joy out of spending time with is a real win. If Luca and I ever had a big grudge and stopped being friends, I probably would stop making films with him. But I don’t see that happening, thank goodness. We just love spending time together. A lot of people in Luca’s circle, from the department heads to some of the actors, I’ve now had more than one experience with them and I count them all as friends. Luca’s version of filmmaking is a family-style version of it. We get close pretty quickly and stay close.
I do love his movies. This is one of my favorites of the year, and you did a tremendous job adapting the book.
Thank you, Robert!
Many thanks to David Kajganich for taking the time for this interview.
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
