“Nomadland” Oscar-winning producer Peter Spears is winning 2024 with two films: Daniel Minahan’s “On Swift Horses” and Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.” For Guadagnino, Spears has also produced “Call Me By Your Name,” and made a cameo in it, as well as “Bones and All.”
“Well, I think that the more you work with someone, the more you just get a sort of muscle memory with somebody,” Spears tells IndieWire about his creative partnership with Guadagnino at the TIFF premiere of “On Swift Horses,” which he also produced. “The trust in each other goes deeper. “One of my favorite things I’ve done in my professional career is getting to work with [Guadagnino]. I say we’re brothers, we’re sisters. I feel really fortunate to have had the experience.”
Spears revealed that he is currently working on two new projects with Guadagnino. He confirmed that one of the projects, which was previously announced, is an adaptation on the book “Leading Men” about Tennessee Williams and his partner. While he remained tight lipped about the other project, he confirmed that he isn’t producing “After the Hunt.”
On the heels of “Queer” making its North American premiere in Toronto, we asked Spears about the difference in sex scenes in this film versus “Call Me by Your Name.” In his review for “Queer,” Ryan Lattanzio wrote that the film has some of “the most explicit gay sex scenes I can remember in any mainstream movie.”
“I mean, a story about and written by William Burroughs, ‘Queer,’ basically a memoir of a time in his life, is a very different story than a young 17-year-old boy just discovering his sexuality. It requires a different approach,” Spears said.
“My job as a producer is always supporting the filmmaker and making sure that their vision is actualized,” he continued. “I think they’re both incredibly special movies in their own ways and they both stand as really beautiful compliments to the source material that they both come from.”
Spears also reflected on becoming involved with “On Swift Horses.” “It was a book that both Daniel [Minahan] and I had read separately. We’ve been dear friends for a while and we were both looking for something to do together. So we decided to option it together and began the process during COVID, adapting it and turning it into a screenplay. Bryce Kass wrote a beautiful script for us.”
