Brendan (4:35)
I did it. That's. It's Brendan. Brendan's sending me the pronunciation. Luca Guadarino. I had seen Call me by your name, and I found it moving and bold and poetic and provocative, sexy. But I didn't really know his other stuff. And, you know, the opportunity came to interview him. And I hadn't seen Challengers yet, and I didn't really know his work that well, other than, you know, call me by your name. So I had to kind of get into it. And he did this new movie, Queer, which I'd heard about. I knew Daniel Craig was in it, but I didn't realize it was an adaptation of the William Burroughs book. And I love William Burroughs. William Burroughs, for me, is like, this. Never. It's a chasm that, you know, narrows as it deepens. I don't. It's. It's just a portal into things that, you know, I can sometimes understand, sometimes I can't. But I've been fascinated with William Burroughs most of my adult life. And I've made attempts at reading him and I have read him and I've gotten through a lot of stuff, but some of it is very challenging. But I'm obsessed with William Burroughs. So when I heard that this movie was an adaptation of the William Burroughs story, I was like, holy shit. I had no idea. So it turned out to be a very engaged conversation. And I watched some of his other movies. I watched A Bigger Splash. I did watch Challengers, which is a great movie. These are the kind of movies that, you know, in the world that we're heading into, where the dominant culture is cultureless and you know, the sort of idea of the Western canon and what's important in terms of, you know, what builds a mind, what builds a life, what is art is just slowly, if not quickly being bulldozed by bullshit and thick headed momentum. You know, where do these movies stand? Who are they for? What do we do? Is art gonna save us? And you know, these are questions I've always asked. If not save us, does it us a lifeline to what is important or provocative or inspiring or moving in a bold and courageous way? You know, I fear for it because, you know, I'm lazy myself. I don't engage as much as I should. I feel like that I have to, you know, with the art. Go take it in. Go get, go put yourself in front of it. There's a lot of courage involved in this stuff. But the. I watched A Bigger Splash, which you should really watch with Ray Fiends and Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson. And it's like, it's kind of a funny, great movie. And I need to watch more of his movies. He reshot Suspiria, which I read about. I saw the original, didn't see his. But needless to say, by and large, when I talk to directors, because they are such, you know, fully rounded intellects, it's always an exciting conversation for me. So that's gonna happen in a few. I'm at Largo in LA on Friday, December 13th with the band with the comedy Sacramento, California at the Crest Theater on Friday, January 10th. Napa, California. I'm at the Uptown Theater on Saturday, January 11th. I'm in Fort Collins, Colorado at Lincoln Center Performance hall on Friday, January 17th. Then Boulder, Colorado at the Boulder Theater on Saturday, January 18th. I'll be in Santa Barbara, California at the Loro Theater on Thursday, January 30th. Then San Luis Obispo, California at the Fremont center on Friday, January 31st. And Monterey, California at the Golden State Theater on Saturday, February 1st. Go to wtfpod.comtour for all my dates and links to tickets. I'm going to be in NYC for a couple of days. I'm doing a little music show, a little kind of invite only benefit music show with Vivino and his fellows. It's going to be something a little comedy, a little music, going to play some songs. I guess Kingfish is coming down to do a few. It's very All I want, my friends, all I want is to experience something as being exciting and fun as opposed to something that I want to do and nervous and dreading to a certain degree. I I can't seem to switch the switch between like oh fuck and like yeah, I just can't seem to switch the switch so it functions properly. I'm gonna have a good time man, this is gonna be fun. It no, it's like, oh, I hope I don't fuck it up. I mean enough already. I'm old enough. I'm sure you put a lot of thought into gifts at this time of year, but I want to recommend a gift you can get for your whole family right now. The gift of peace of mind. Simplisafe is our choice for home security and you can still get in on their huge Black Friday deal. If you take my suggestion here, you'll get all the Simplisafe features that we've told you about over the years, as well as all the latest achievements in professional monitoring like the Simplisafe Active Guard Outdoor Protection. Simplisafe agents will be able to see suspicious activity on your property in real time and prevent crime before it happens. Hey pal, get away from the house. Black Friday might be over, but Simplisafe is extending its massive Black Friday deal for WTF listeners this week. You can take 50% off any new system with a select professional monitoring plan. This is your last chance to get their best offer of the year. Head to SimpliSafe.com WTF to claim your discount and make sure your home is safe this season. Don't wait. This offer won't last long. Keep your home, your family and your peace of mind protected by going to simplisafe.com WTF there's no safe like Simplisafe. Yeah, so look, William Burroughs. I don't even know you know where to start with William Burroughs. And as I said earlier, he's an endless fascination for for me in so many ways, just his whole being. And I can't say that I fully understand his thing, but I do remember the first time I saw him. I've talked about it a bit on this show at some other points. I remember I was a freshman in college, Curry College, Milton, Massachusetts. Lombard dormitory, Lombard hall, whatever, bunk beds. And I had a black and white TV set on top of a dresser. And I just met one of my best friends, Jimmy Loftus. And I had a coffee pot and we were making coffee. And I remember later that night I was hanging out. I can't remember if Jim was with me, but I was watching Saturday Night Live. So this must be 1981. And they bring on this guy, they go, please welcome, you know, William Burroughs. And he's sitting down at a desk with his hat, this old man. And I didn't know who William Burroughs was. I thought, is this the guy who wrote Tarzan? That's how like, fucked up I was in terms of what I knew and what I didn't know. Edgar Rice Burroughs. I thought he was dead. William Burroughs is on snl sitting there reading a passage from, I believe, naked lunch. The Dr. Benway thing. Dr. Benway, ship's doctor. Bring me a new scalpel, nurse. This one's got no edge to it. So I didn't know what the fuck to make of this guy. But I was in. I was like, it was hilarious. It was dark, it was fucking weird. And I just. I was like, who is this old man? And that began the fascination, you know, of, you know, reading Naked Lunch, of Reading Junkie, of trying to read some of the cut up books. There's dozens of books and he's written a few that aren't impossible to read. The trilogy, what is Cities of the Red Knight, Place of Dead Roads, Western Lands. Those are the last full novels I think he wrote. Queer was another one. The Soft Boys. I guess I could run a list of them, but there's a lot of experiments, the cut up method. Taking pages of text, cutting them up, rearranging them in a different way to sort of time travel and create magical poetry. You know, he did the Oregon box business. He was hanging out with Gyson in Morocco, I think, with the Dream Machine. I mean, he was a. You know, and he had this sort of Persona of hombre invisably. And, you know, he kind of had this secret agent thing going. He had, you know, it's a multilevel thing. He wrote a book about cats later in life. It's just the intellect, the humor, the experimentation, the art, you know, he deals, you know, he's a gay man who dealt very aggressively and interestingly with gay culture at different points in the history of his life. Which queer is one of them? One of the books and now the movie. There's a rare book that I'm sure is reprinted. You know, he does some. A lot of thinking about things about control. Needs control to survive. Control. Needs control to survive. What? But there's a book called William S. The Adding Machine. Selected essays that. I've just always been trying to figure this guy out. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don't. But I'm just reading these essays, just trying to get into the brain to talk about them. This is from an essay called the Limits of Control. A basic impasse of all control machines is control needs time in which to exercise control. Because control also needs opposition or acquiescence. Otherwise it ceases to be control. I control a hypnotized subject, at least partially. I control a slave, a dog, a worker. But if I establish complete control somehow, as by implanting electrodes in the brain, then my subject is little more than a tape recorder, a camera, a robot or a phone, maybe, huh? Consider the distinction and the impasse implicit here. All control systems try to make control as tight as possible. But it's the same time, if they succeeded completely, there would be nothing left to control. Suppose, for example, a control system installed electrodes in the brains of all prospective workers at birth. Control is now complete. Even the thought of rebellion is neurologically impossible. No police force is necessary. No psychological control is necessary other than pressing buttons to achieve certain activations and operations. We're there, folks. God damn it, I love this guy. This is from an essay called the Hundred Year Plan. Politics is the only area where stupidity and ignorance are brazenly preferred as qualifications for office. And so guided by the least intelligent, the least competent, the least farsighted and most ill informed. The species invites biological disaster. Other species have come and gone. Dig it? Then he writes about the dinosaurs. And then he's got this bit in here where. Fellow reptiles, at this dark hour, I do not hesitate to tell you that we face grave problems. And I do not hesitate to tell you that we have the answer. Size is the answer. Increased size. It was good enough for me. Parentheses. APPLAUSE Size that will enable us to crush all opposition. APPLAUSE There are those who say size is not the answer. There are those who even propose that we pollute our pure reptilian strain with mammalian amalg amalgamations and cross breeding. And I say to you that if the only way I could survive was by mating with egg eating rats, then I would choose not to survive. APPLAUSE but we will survive. We will increase both in size and in numbers, and we will continue to dominate this planet as we have done for 300 million years. Wild applause. He writes bits, man. He's a bit guy. A lot of bits. A lot of fucking interesting, dark, provocative stuff. And Luca has, has done it. Luca Guadagnino has taken on Queer and really kind of taken on Burroughs as a. As a person. And it's a very interesting portrait of him and it was a real honor to talk to the guy. The new film is Queer. It's now playing in theaters and it's a challenging movie and it's a trippy movie and it made me think a lot of things. But again, my fascination with Burroughs was kind of stimulated and this conversation was kind of lit up by that. This is me talking to Luca Guadagnino. Life is busy, people. And if you're like me, no matter how busy you get, you've got to get your fitness in. Peloton has a variety of challenging classes and programs that fit in into your schedule. Whether you're a new parent or traveling for the holiday or training for something big or just busy like everyone else. From four week strength building classes to running, cycling and everything in between, Peloton.
