0:00

From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters,

0:02

and this is The Business.

0:05

Playwright Justin Kuritzkis knows how lucky

0:07

he is to be enjoying the

0:09

rollout of his first effort at

0:11

writing a movie, Luca Guadagnino's spicy

0:13

tennis romp, Challengers. When you write

0:15

a script on spec, you're really just writing

0:17

it for yourself, and you have no idea

0:20

who's going to eventually collaborate on it with

0:22

you. And in the case of this movie,

0:24

it all came together incredibly fast to the

0:26

point that from the time I had finished

0:28

the first draft of the screenplay to the

0:30

time we were in pre-production was only a

0:32

couple months. Justin Kuritzkis talks

0:34

about how Challengers, starring Zendaya, was

0:36

inspired by a particular U.S. Open

0:39

match that turned him into a

0:41

tennis obsessive. And he shares how

0:43

he and his wife Celine Song,

0:45

known for her Oscar-nominated past lives,

0:47

managed to keep their work separate

0:49

from their relationship. And we ask

0:51

him about some of his corkier

0:53

creative efforts over the years. But

0:55

first we banter. Stick around. It's

0:58

the business from KCRW. I

1:02

am joined by my colleague and banter, Matt

1:04

Bellany. Hello, Matt. Hi there. So

1:07

as the world now knows, the appeals court in

1:09

New York, which is actually the highest court, has

1:12

overturned Harvey Weinstein's conviction to

1:14

the dismay of so many

1:16

women. His

1:18

lawyer proclaimed that a great day

1:21

for America and noted that Harvey

1:23

had always proclaimed his innocence. Maybe

1:25

it's just me, but I somehow feel when like

1:28

dozens of people come forward on you, maybe

1:31

you're not innocent, but you're a lawyer, you know

1:33

that this is going to a

1:35

thing that I feel like is very much

1:37

at the heart of sexual assault and rape

1:39

allegations, which is whether you can have witnesses

1:42

come in to testify to

1:44

a kind of pattern of behavior that

1:46

Harvey did this to other people. That

1:48

was what helped get Bill Cosby convicted.

1:50

It got Harvey convicted here

1:53

in Los Angeles and in New York. And

1:56

the court was split, the appeals court in New

1:58

York, four to three. a one

2:00

vote margin, but obviously I think this

2:02

kind of thinking makes it really hard

2:04

to get a conviction. In a lot

2:07

of cases, we've seen what's happened to women

2:09

who have brought forth rape allegations. Yeah.

2:11

And let's be clear, the appeals court did

2:14

not say that Harvey Weinstein is innocent. The

2:17

appeals court ordered a new

2:19

trial specifically because the judge,

2:21

improperly in the appeals court's

2:23

view, allowed prior bad

2:25

acts, witnesses, to testify as

2:27

to the pattern of behavior.

2:30

And the appeals court, just like it did

2:32

in the Bill Cosby case, ruled that that

2:34

was improper and that

2:36

the court needed to curtail the

2:39

number of witnesses because it was prejudicial to

2:41

the jury. That is

2:43

very interesting because we've seen

2:46

these judges in a post-MeToo

2:48

environment allow more

2:50

women to come forward and tell

2:53

their stories. And essentially in perhaps

2:55

the two highest profile criminal cases

2:57

of the MeToo era, those have

3:00

now been overturned because of this

3:02

willingness to let women testify. Yes.

3:05

And I saw where Harvey's lawyers said,

3:07

you can't throw away 100 years of

3:09

precedent like that. I think

3:12

we've seen the Supreme Court throw away 50

3:14

years of precedent, not that

3:16

long ago. Well, and it gets

3:18

to the question of was that

3:20

precedent suppressing a lot of testimony

3:23

that maybe should be allowed

3:25

in court? And maybe these women

3:27

should be allowed to tell us

3:30

the pattern of behavior that this

3:32

person may or may not have

3:35

had before the acts are committed.

3:37

And that gets to a philosophical

3:39

question about the law, about circumstantial

3:43

versus primary evidence, all

3:45

sorts of things that perhaps now the

3:47

Supreme Court will eventually weigh in on

3:49

this. Well, the Supreme Court, I'm not

3:51

necessarily in that much of a hurry.

3:54

Well, they denied the Bill Cosby appeal.

3:56

They declined to take that case. So,

3:58

you know, not that long ago. they were

4:00

not interested in this, but maybe this new

4:02

court might be. Well, yes. And another question

4:04

is, you know, Harvey is not going to

4:06

be sprung out of jail and walking the

4:08

streets again. He was convicted here. And

4:11

will the California court differ from

4:13

the New York appeals court? We

4:15

haven't had that much time since this news came

4:17

out, but I've heard some people say they think

4:19

the California Supreme Court will be more

4:22

progressive than the New York court. Yeah,

4:24

perhaps. But again, that could set up

4:26

a conflict of jurisdiction. And

4:28

maybe that would be something that

4:30

the Supreme Court would be interested

4:33

in. They tend to like to

4:35

resolve disputes between circuits and between

4:37

states that have different standards. You

4:39

know, these state court judges do

4:41

not have lifetime appointments. So you

4:43

could make the argument that they

4:45

have been swayed over the past

4:47

seven to eight years by public

4:49

opinion on the MeToo issue and

4:51

have been more lenient in allowing witnesses

4:53

because of the culture and what's going

4:55

on in the world. Now, you could

4:58

argue that that's a good thing, that

5:00

society is evolving and progressing here and

5:02

the judges are simply reacting to what

5:04

the new standard of appropriateness is. But

5:07

ultimately, the law is the law. So if

5:10

the Supreme Court has to weigh in here,

5:12

they will. But right now, I think we

5:14

might be headed for a split between California

5:16

and New York. Yeah. You

5:18

know, and the other thing I think is a big,

5:20

big picture question aside from the law is that, as

5:22

you know, as a former editor at The Hollywood

5:25

Reporter and me as the reporter who did

5:27

a lot of these stories, a lot of

5:29

people have been moved out of a lot

5:31

of jobs and a lot of industries because

5:33

of the Time's Up movement and the MeToo

5:35

movement. So does this

5:38

ruling set back society's reaction?

5:40

Do we see people now

5:42

saying, well, you know, I

5:44

got MeToo'd, but you know, this whole thing

5:46

has been so unfair and overdone. I don't

5:49

know the answer to that question. I certainly

5:51

hope we don't go backward like that. I

5:53

sort of note that this came just as we

5:55

saw the first of Kevin Sujihara, the former

5:57

head of Warner Brothers, emerging in a business

5:59

deal. past week. He's not a

6:01

straight-up Me Too story, but he certainly

6:03

was caught up in a scandal that

6:05

involved inappropriate conduct. So I don't know

6:07

whether we backslide or the courts are

6:10

now going to be behind where most

6:12

people I think in this society are.

6:14

Great question. And obviously each of

6:17

these cases is different, but Harvey

6:19

Weinstein has always been held out

6:21

as sort of the apex of

6:23

the Me Too movement. He was

6:26

the one that everybody in Hollywood

6:28

knew was a sexual predator. And

6:30

if his conviction is overturned, then what does

6:32

it say about some of the others? Well,

6:35

some of them never went to court, you

6:37

know, we've had people that we've done stories

6:39

about and they're gone. Yeah, no, absolutely. And

6:41

some of them are in civil court, not

6:43

criminal. But yes, it's a very significant development

6:45

in the evolution of the Me Too

6:47

movement. Yeah. And I'm not sure we

6:49

can assess right now the full impact,

6:52

but a lot of women, of course,

6:54

are absolutely beside themselves and enraged. And

6:56

it's, in my opinion, a very sad

6:59

day for women. Thank you, Matt. Thank

7:02

you. That's Matt Bellamy, founding partner of PEP news.

7:07

The past couple of years have been

7:09

wild for writer Justin Kuritskis and his

7:12

wife Celine Song. Her first

7:14

film, The Past Lives, was just up

7:16

for two Oscars. And Kuritskis'

7:18

first screenplay made the blacklist and

7:20

was quickly snatched up by producer

7:22

Amy Pascal and director Luca Guadagnino.

7:25

The just released Challengers with Zendaya

7:27

starring alongside Josh O'Connor and Mike

7:30

Feist is sitting at 95% on

7:32

Rotten Tomatoes. Kuritskis

7:35

has written the screenplay for

7:37

another Guadagnino project, an adaptation

7:39

of William Burroughs' Queer starring

7:41

Daniel Craig. That film is

7:43

awaiting a distributor. And

7:45

he's currently set to adapt Don Winslow's

7:47

City on Fire for Austin Butler. In

7:50

Challengers, best friends and doubles partners

7:52

Patrick and Art, played by O'Connor

7:55

and Feist respectively, are both swooning

7:57

over star tennis player Tashi Donah.

8:00

Duncan, played by Zendaya. When

8:02

they approach, Patrick finds that Tashi may

8:04

be beautiful, but her words can be

8:06

biting. Hitting a ball with a racket

8:08

is a great way to avoid having a job. Well,

8:11

that's also your problem. Because you

8:13

think that tennis is about respecting yourself, doing

8:15

your thing. That's why you

8:17

still have that serve. It works. Yeah,

8:21

but you're not a tennis player. She

8:25

doesn't know what tennis is. What

8:28

is it? Relationship.

8:32

Kruskas actually wasn't that crazy about tennis

8:34

until he watched a match that inspired

8:36

him to try writing a screenplay about

8:38

it. I wrote the script

8:40

on spec towards the end of 2021, and then

8:42

I gave

8:45

it to my agent, and we

8:47

shared it with a few producers,

8:49

and eventually I decided to

8:51

work with Amy Pascal and

8:54

Rachel O'Connor. And

8:56

then through them, the script eventually got into

8:58

the hands of Zendaya and Luca. And

9:03

Luca was somebody who was always

9:05

very deep in my mind as

9:07

somebody who could make this film,

9:10

because I had been such a fan of his films for

9:12

so long. And he was somebody who

9:14

Amy had a relationship with, where they

9:16

had been trying to find a way to work together for

9:18

a long time. And so she

9:20

sent him the script, and he responded to it, and

9:23

that was it. So Zendaya was

9:25

first. Yeah, I had met

9:27

Zendaya about the script through Amy before I

9:29

had met Luca. This may seem like a

9:31

sort of a strange question, but were you

9:34

surprised to come roaring out of the gate

9:36

like that? You know, you've done plays, but

9:38

a screenplay is a different thing, obviously, and

9:41

most people struggle forever. And we

9:43

had one guest who took him

9:45

12 years to get his thing made, and

9:48

here you are. It was completely surprising.

9:50

I mean, you know, when you write a

9:52

script on spec, you're really just writing it

9:54

for yourself, and you have no idea Who's

9:57

going to eventually collaborate on it with

9:59

you. You know this going to to

10:01

join you on this path towards actually

10:03

making the movie. So you're really just

10:05

trying to see the movie on the

10:07

page because it's a movie you want

10:10

to see that doesn't exist yet and

10:12

you're hoping in doing that that you

10:14

make other people see it there on

10:16

the page. And in the case of

10:18

this movie. It. All came together

10:20

incredibly fast, to the point that

10:22

from the time I had finished

10:24

the first draft of the screenplay

10:26

to the time we were in

10:28

preproduction was only a couple months.

10:30

Wow, just completely abnormal. Yes, and

10:33

don't try this at home. Can

10:35

seek assistance as an earlier Atlantis

10:37

the doesn't know, it's completely crazy

10:39

and I feel very, very spoiled

10:41

by it. I. Mean, I hope

10:43

you had to appropriate celebrations for

10:45

past lives and yourself. Salinger's Best!

10:47

Really sweet of you say. I

10:49

know it's been so amazing to

10:52

watch shows past lives have the

10:54

life that it has done with.

10:56

it was just so incredibly gratifying

10:58

to watch all of that happening

11:00

for saline and for the movie

11:02

it's been a wild couple of

11:04

years. I understand it's completely coincidence

11:06

that both movies have this kind

11:08

of ah, ex boyfriend, new boyfriend,

11:10

old boyfriends or for and then

11:12

taste. Test lysis not explicitly boyfriends. that's

11:14

just pure he didn't say let's have

11:16

a contest and both right? A movie

11:18

or six the Spanish and see who

11:21

wins. Know we

11:23

didn't have a contest where where

11:25

of course aware of the fact

11:27

that the the movies have something

11:29

in common I say you know.

11:32

Structurally, And emotionally and cinematically

11:34

their to very very different.

11:36

Sold absolutely him that the

11:38

I It is not lost

11:40

on us that connection now.

11:42

So explicit, tedious question I

11:44

must ask. and everybody's from

11:46

least Alaska's Do you actually

11:48

played tennis? I played for

11:50

a bit as a kid

11:52

and as a teenager and.

11:55

it was so frustrating for me because

11:57

i can tell exactly how mediocre I

12:00

was and that I was

12:02

never going to get much better. And

12:04

so I quit. And then

12:06

I really didn't even watch tennis for

12:08

most of my life. I wasn't

12:11

even much of a sports fan. And then I

12:13

sort of randomly turned on the US

12:16

Open in 2018 because it happened to be

12:19

on and it was the final between

12:21

Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka. And

12:25

there was this really controversial call from

12:27

the umpire where he said

12:29

that Serena Williams had received coaching

12:31

from the sidelines. And

12:33

she got very upset and said, I didn't do

12:35

that. I would never do that. And

12:38

I had never heard of this rule

12:40

before, but immediately it struck me as

12:42

intensely cinematic, you know, that you're all

12:44

alone on your side of the court.

12:47

And there's this one person in this massive tennis

12:50

stadium who cares as much about what happens to

12:52

you as you do, but you can't talk to

12:54

them. What if

12:56

you had to talk about something really important

12:59

that was beyond tennis, you know, that was personal between

13:01

the two of you and between the person on the

13:03

other side of the court? How

13:05

would you have that conversation? That was really

13:07

how my connection to tennis started. And

13:10

parallel to the seed of the movie of

13:12

being planted in my head, I

13:14

started becoming a legitimate tennis

13:16

obsessive and was watching everything I

13:19

could get my hands on and reading every book

13:21

that was ever written about tennis. Yeah,

13:24

I fell into this deep, deep rabbit hole.

13:27

You did. Yeah,

13:29

I mean, it's an intense concept and we

13:31

won't say anything about what happens in the

13:34

movie. But once people have seen

13:36

the movie, they will understand what you mean. Certainly.

13:38

I hope so. Yeah. Yeah.

13:41

And I imagine, I mean, you may not know this, but

13:43

I have to assume that Zendaya was very

13:45

much the rising star and they're looking

13:47

for something great for her to have

13:50

a fairly meaty role in. And

13:52

there you come along with your script at the perfect moment.

13:55

Yeah, it did feel like it was meant

13:58

to be. I don't know what's meant to be.

14:00

but it did feel like a kismet

14:03

in a sense. You know, I think you

14:06

never, especially when you're writing a script on

14:08

spec and it's your first script, you can't

14:10

write with somebody like Zendaya in mind because

14:12

there's no reason for you to believe it

14:14

will ever get to her, you know? But

14:17

once I had finished the script and

14:19

I was thinking about this character and who

14:21

could play her, it's really hard to

14:23

think about anyone who could do it

14:25

besides Zendaya. So it did feel

14:27

very natural when we first spoke about

14:29

the role that she just understood this

14:31

person so completely and had this

14:34

relationship to the character that

14:37

was already there, you know? It was already

14:39

sort of in her, which

14:41

was really thrilling. And the Luca

14:43

element, which is so fortuitous as Zendaya

14:46

was first, I mean, did he read

14:48

the script and just say, I'm into

14:50

it? It certainly has the kind of,

14:52

you know, he has a knack for

14:55

portraying sexually fraught situations, let's say. Yeah.

14:58

Well, Luca and I spoke, you know, on

15:00

the phone after he had read the script,

15:02

or like immediately after he had read the

15:04

script because he really responded to it. And

15:07

a week later, I was on a plane to Milan

15:09

to go hang out with him. Oh, what a shame.

15:12

Yeah, I know. Yeah, what a bummer.

15:16

Yeah. And we just spent a week really feeling

15:18

each other out and then seeing if we could

15:20

vibe and collaborate together and seeing if I could

15:22

make space within this movie for Luca to

15:26

find what he needed creatively inside of it, you know,

15:28

so that it could be his own, so

15:31

that he could feel like it was a Luca Guadagnino

15:33

movie. And

15:36

that was this kind of joyous process between the

15:38

two of us where we really

15:40

clicked immediately and trusted each other

15:42

immediately. Because we could

15:45

tell that we spoke the same language, and that we

15:47

were excited by a lot of the same things in

15:49

film generally, but

15:51

when it came to this film specifically. So

15:54

I just immediately kind of knew that he really loved it.

16:00

cared about these characters as much as I

16:02

did. Were there many changes? I

16:04

mean, you're a first-time filmmaker, as we've noted. I

16:07

don't know how common it is to get to

16:09

sit with a very established director and make

16:11

sure you like him. Well,

16:14

I mean, yeah, it's... There

16:16

are many changes that happen in any film

16:18

when you go from bringing

16:21

it to something that's really meant to be an

16:23

exciting and meaningful reading experience, and then all of

16:25

a sudden you're trying to make it exist in

16:27

the real world with real people. You know, that's

16:29

a sort of natural part of the filmmaking process.

16:32

Right. With this film in particular,

16:34

we had an interesting thing where we

16:36

didn't really have a traditional development process.

16:38

We kind of just went right into

16:40

pre-production. And so we were tailoring the

16:42

script to the cast that we had,

16:44

Ensel Luca, as we were building a

16:46

schedule and starting to go on locations,

16:48

counts and all that kind of stuff.

16:50

You know, we were really doing

16:53

everything at once. And

16:55

that was a kind of crazy

16:57

and condensed process that I think

16:59

the energy of that actually really

17:02

benefited the movie that we ended up making. Sounds

17:05

kind of bracing. Yeah. Bracing

17:07

is a perfect word for it. Yeah, it was. You

17:10

were at MGM, I guess Amazon

17:12

slash MGM, but you would be in there

17:14

in what I call Mike and Pam era,

17:16

Mike, Deluca and Pam Abde, who are now

17:18

at Warner Brothers Discovery running their film studio,

17:20

at least a part of it. But

17:23

they were the ones who said yes to this. And then

17:25

they left. But I

17:28

don't know whether there was a sort

17:30

of a lag there when Courtney Lellinty

17:32

wasn't there yet at that job. Or did

17:34

that happen for you where you were

17:36

sort of in between in between while you were making

17:38

the movie? Well, I remember the

17:41

day when we learned that MGM had

17:43

been bought by Amazon. That happened like right

17:46

as we were about to go into production.

17:48

Yeah, I wasn't really a part of the

17:50

conversations around how that affected us. So I

17:52

can't really speak to that. Right. But

17:55

I definitely remember the day we

17:57

were we were on set wondering what's. studio

18:00

was taking our movie. The uh-oh

18:02

moment. Yeah. And then you hear

18:04

Amazon and you're like, eh. But

18:07

it turns out they're making movies for real.

18:10

Yeah, no, but we all kind of quickly realized it was

18:12

all going to be all right. We

18:14

were all sort of that

18:16

we could keep going as we had been.

18:18

And at least from my perspective, it didn't feel

18:21

like that much changed. Coming

18:23

up after the break, Justin Kuritskas talks

18:25

about how a goofy video he made

18:27

in college years ago on his MacBook's

18:30

photo booth app unexpectedly turned into a

18:32

viral sensation. You're listening to the business

18:34

from KCRW. Introducing

18:41

the KCRW donation car

18:43

designed to be recycled. This

18:45

first of its kind vehicle will save

18:48

you time, space, and hassle by

18:50

disappearing. Enjoy the luxury and comfort

18:52

of turning your underused car into

18:55

a donation worth hundreds, even thousands

18:57

of dollars. The KCRW

18:59

donation car already in your

19:01

garage, driveway, or on cinder

19:03

blocks outside your house. Act

19:06

now at kcrw.com/cars.

19:11

This is the Business and I'm Kim Masters. We're

19:14

talking to writer Justin Kuritskas about

19:16

his first screenplay, now the

19:18

Luca Guadagnino-directed Challengers, starring Zendaya,

19:21

Josh O'Connor, and Mike Feist.

19:24

Long before Challengers, Kuritskas

19:26

unexpectedly made a splash with

19:28

something completely different. Let

19:30

me step back a minute, though, in your

19:32

career. You were a playwright in New York.

19:35

Yes. Before you did that, you

19:37

were a successful YouTuber

19:39

making comedy videos.

19:42

I saw the one called Potion Cellar.

19:45

Oh, cool. It

19:47

went viral. I think it has like 11

19:49

million views. Potion Cellar,

19:52

enough of these games. I'm

19:54

going into battle. And

19:56

I need your strongest potions. My

19:59

Friend, you're the best. Ocean would give you tablet

20:01

you can't Advice: August Bosoms you better

20:04

go to a seller that says week

20:06

a person. Has

20:08

have Snow God Assist assist. I'm just

20:11

as confused as you are or how

20:13

those started was that I was in

20:15

college and I was working on my

20:18

senior thesis which was a a play

20:20

or that I ended up performing later

20:22

in New York and I would at

20:25

night when I was sort of exhausted

20:27

from working on this thing. I started

20:29

just messing around with the Photo Booth

20:32

app on my Mac book and in

20:34

oh that's the app that distorts your

20:36

face rights and. As I

20:38

was messing around with it, I sort

20:41

of realized that if you moved your

20:43

face back and forth, you could create

20:45

multiple characters depending on the way. You.

20:47

Are interacting with the distortion and

20:50

as a feeder person that felt

20:52

like. It had some

20:54

relationship to mask work for a clown

20:56

work or you know, improvisation than and

20:58

so it. It really felt like this

21:01

digital outgrowth of a lot of the

21:03

stuff that I had been doing. In

21:05

Cedar. And. So I mean he

21:07

just. Started making those to. Make

21:10

myself laugh and make my friends laugh. When

21:12

I was sharing them I put them on

21:14

you tube. really just a share them with

21:16

my friends. And then a year after I

21:18

had posted potion seller. Somehow.

21:20

For some reason it got posted on

21:22

some for on. And then all

21:24

the sudden that went viral. And

21:27

then all the sudden people started watching all the

21:29

other videos on the channel and this kind of.

21:32

Many fandom forests and began in

21:34

I say many because within the

21:37

context of You Tube were like

21:39

their makeup tutorials. That gets. Two.

21:41

Hundred million views in an hour.

21:44

My stuff is pretty small change

21:46

but. But. I found

21:48

it really exciting. As somebody who was at

21:50

that point living in New York working off

21:53

Broadway as a playwright that you know here

21:55

I was working really seriously and for a

21:57

long time on these things that if I.

22:00

was lucky a couple hundred or maybe a thousand

22:02

people would see. And these

22:04

things I would make in five minutes and put

22:06

online were being seen by millions of people. And

22:10

that kind of delighted me. Sure.

22:12

I mean, as long as it's

22:14

not something where, you know, people ride down on

22:17

you, then it's all good, right? I

22:19

like it. Yeah, no, I see it as a

22:22

thing that makes it very hard

22:24

for me to ever take myself seriously because

22:26

there's evidence forever on the Internet that

22:28

I'm deeply not a serious

22:30

person. Not

22:33

to mention your 2016 comedy

22:35

album called Songs About My Wife. You didn't

22:37

have wife at that time, I think, did

22:39

you? No, I was married

22:42

when I made that album. That

22:44

album is not about my wife. Well,

22:46

I will note that there are cuts on

22:49

it, including I slept with a man and

22:51

one called F*** Your Blood. So

22:53

it's probably going to be hell. Can you

22:56

say that on KCRW? I

22:58

believe that our producers will protect

23:01

me from myself. Okay, sure. Yeah,

23:03

you know, that album was sort

23:05

of a concept album that I

23:08

made with a friend

23:10

of mine who's a very serious music

23:12

producer. And we had always joked

23:14

around forever that we should make

23:17

a pop album together and release it on

23:19

my YouTube channel and not tell anyone

23:21

that he was involved and just make my

23:23

YouTube fans think that I was this musical

23:25

savant and sort of see how that went.

23:28

And that's now like the YouTube videos, it's

23:30

there for posterity. Yeah. And

23:32

you wrote a novel, 2019, called Famous People.

23:34

You are what you call a man of

23:37

parts, I suppose, right? Yeah,

23:40

I just sort of follow

23:42

whatever impulse creatively presents itself

23:44

at the time. You know,

23:47

the novel started out as a

23:50

monologue, which I thought maybe I would do

23:52

on stage or have an

23:54

actor do on stage. And then I

23:57

got about 60 pages into it. And I realized

23:59

that not only nothing was happening plot wise.

24:01

But then I liked the guy who was

24:03

talking. And so I thought, okay, if this

24:05

is a play, we're in trouble because this

24:08

is already three hours of stage time, but

24:10

if this is a book, we're fine. So

24:12

I just kept writing and

24:14

that became a book. That's amazing. You

24:17

are definitely a fountain of creativity,

24:19

clearly. You have a couple

24:21

of upcoming things, one of which maybe, I

24:23

don't know what the state of play is.

24:26

Queer, I think Luca gave you

24:28

the William Burroughs book, if I'm

24:30

reading this right. Yeah, I started

24:32

writing during production on Challengers. Luca

24:34

gave me the novel for queer

24:37

one day when we were on set and

24:39

said, read this tonight and let me know if you

24:41

want to write it for me. Read it tonight, just

24:43

read the whole thing tonight. Well,

24:45

it's a short novel. It's only 100

24:47

and something pages. Yeah, I don't know

24:49

if I'm that good, but call it.

24:51

You certainly have an incentive to keep

24:53

going. Yeah, well,

24:56

and it is also the kind of novel where once

24:58

you start reading it, it's very hard to put it

25:00

down because it's this legendary, brilliant book

25:02

by the legendary guy and

25:05

the prospect of doing that. Would

25:07

Luca was so exciting to me. So I read

25:09

it immediately and said, yes, I want to do

25:11

it. And I started writing it

25:13

while we were on set and then

25:15

really finished it around when we wrapped.

25:17

And then we pretty quickly were able

25:19

to put that movie together and we

25:22

shot it last year in Rome. Done

25:24

and dusted? Yeah, I don't

25:27

have any information about the release or

25:29

anything like that, but the movie is

25:31

already shot. This was with Daniel Craig.

25:33

Yes, this is Daniel Craig

25:35

and Drew Starkey. And then a

25:38

number of other amazing actors, including Jason

25:41

Schwartzman and Leslie Manville. That

25:43

was a very, I'm really, really excited

25:45

for people to see that movie. Wow,

25:47

you are going great guns. And

25:50

then I see that you are set to

25:52

adapt on Winslow's, what he says is his

25:54

final book. That's for Austin Butler, City on

25:56

Fire. I have to say, I just

25:58

have a sort of. of a

26:00

strange feeling that I have some

26:02

kind of a stake in it because somehow

26:05

Don Winslow, I don't know him,

26:07

I've never met him, but we sort of became

26:09

Twitter friends when Twitter was not what it is

26:11

now. And he

26:13

was sometimes very kind and complimented

26:15

me on my writing. He

26:17

sent me all three of the books, including

26:20

an advance of the latest one. So

26:23

it's just a funny thing in the internet era,

26:25

you know, the friend that you've never really met.

26:28

But where are we on that project? It's

26:31

super early on that project. And

26:33

I haven't met Don yet. I'm going

26:35

to meet Don, but it's a fantastic

26:37

book and there's not much else I

26:39

can say. But yeah, I'm very

26:41

excited. I certainly wish you luck on

26:43

that one. Thank you. And

26:46

just a guess to round the bend here

26:48

a little bit on the original. So

26:51

as you know, in your wife's film, The

26:53

Husband, it's quite in some senses

26:55

autobiographical, although it's not, she doesn't

26:57

say it's an autobiography. She says

26:59

it isn't. The Husband

27:01

character, which some people would clearly assume is

27:03

you, is incredibly

27:05

understanding. And meanwhile,

27:08

in your work, you did the wife

27:10

album with some choice words. So

27:12

do you guys just accept that you are

27:14

dealing totally in fiction? Or do you

27:16

look at the character in past lives

27:18

and say, yes, I am a great

27:20

guy? No, I

27:23

think it only it only does

27:25

a disservice to the amazing work

27:27

that Celine and her actor John

27:29

McGarrow did in creating that character

27:31

for anybody to confuse it

27:33

with me. I would hate to have

27:35

anybody conflate those two things, because I

27:37

think it can only serve to

27:39

make the spell of that movie for you to all

27:41

of a sudden have this real guy

27:43

in your head when you're thinking about that

27:45

character. I got to confess when

27:48

I watched it, I thought, wow, her

27:50

husband must be a great guy. But

27:53

I mean, I'll take that. And

27:57

then your stuff, she doesn't say, why are you thinking

27:59

this? is about your wife when I'm your wife,

28:01

and you just accept that you're both artists and you

28:04

do things that are not about each other, even if

28:06

they're theoretically could be about each other. Yeah,

28:08

that's kind of one of the benefits of

28:10

spending your life with somebody who does the

28:12

same thing as you, that you pretty much

28:15

understand how this all works. And there's not

28:17

the same kind of confusion you

28:19

might have with somebody who's

28:21

not in the arts. So I think we

28:23

really see our work as our work and

28:25

our lives as our lives. And we don't

28:28

really see much overlap between them. Justin

28:30

Kuritskis is the writer of Challengers. The

28:32

film is in theaters now. Thank

28:35

you so much for talking to us today. Thank

28:37

you. I really appreciate it. And

28:39

that's the business. Joshua Farnham produced and

28:41

edited today's program with help this week

28:43

from Phil Richards and Nick Lamponi, who

28:45

mixed the show. You can stream

28:47

the business as well as other great

28:49

KCRW shows on

28:52

kcrw.com or wherever you

28:54

get your podcasts. I'm Kim Masters.

28:56

We'll see you next week on The Business.