Dear Drew Starkey’s mother at R55, you’re delirious.
Queer is going to get completely ignored at the Oscars, even Daniel Craig’s hope of getting the 5th Best Actor slot is looking more likely to go to Jesse Eisenberg in A Real Pain, a much loved film that will likely score a Best Picture nomination, Best Supporting Actor for Kieran Culkin and Best Original Screenplay. Queer is so off-putting and has no traction at all. Starkey isn’t even in the conversation for a nomination; the critical response to Starkey’s performance is that, of course, he has potential but the film doesn’t give him anything to do other than be an opaque object of Craig’s affection. Gudagnino has taken Burrough’s spare novel about grief and addiction and turned it into a ludicrous fashion show on a runway of Edward Hopper-inspired sets and made it all about his usual theme of unrequited love with an impenetrable third act that, of course, his Challengers fanboys profess is beautiful and profound but resulted in walkouts at film festivals due to the sheer boredom and incomprehensibility of it. Otherwise, high points include the usual slow-mo entrances and exits (nobody actually has swagger in a Gudagnino film in real time). Burroughs wrote of pederasty not romantic love. Gudagnino would’ve done better to not associate his film at all with Burroughs - which seems to have restricted him and exposed his limitations - and just do the fashionable period thing he wanted to do with some age gap romance. Probably would’ve done better at the box office and would’ve met the small expectations of his fans.
But I agree, Drew Starkey has benefitted the most from this and has come out the best. (Better than even Craig, who the industry wants so badly to honour but not for this. Similarly to Sebastian Stan, he needs to make a film people actually want to see.) However, Starkey needs to get cast in something prestigious ASAP - and not some more Luca Gudagnino shit but a proper A-list director like Nolan or Spielberg. Otherwise, this attention will amount to nothing. And the film he’s making now - with Dan Stevens and a bunch of nobodies is straight to Netflix B-level crap, if it gets distributed at all.
Because yeah, Starkey looks nice if a bit bland, but what he’s failed to do this far is assert much of a personality. He’s nice looking but is still being eclipsed by Luca and Craig - that’s all his interviews are about. Since nobody is actually going to see Queer, without a lifeline from an A-list director, he is very much in danger of being an also-ran, completely forgotten.
The reason you’re seeing him now, briefly, is because of who you’re not seeing: where is Daniel Craig? A24 has nothing to lose with Queer which has still failed to secure any international distribution beyond the UK (which A24 probably included for BAFTA consideration, Craig’s likely only hope outside of a GG nomination for Queer - but given the film’s title, not a dead cert with a British awards body). But it was CAA that negotiated the distribution just days before the world premiere at Venice where they faced a $50M film with one of their star clients finishing the festival without a distribution deal - the A24 imprimatur was set to counter the overall reception but was likely negotiated without any risk to the U.S. distributor. It’s Fremantle Europe that funded the film and they can’t find any distributors and no one wants to buy it. A24 has done little more than provide their logo and what little attention they’ve given it will quickly shift away to The Brutalist in a week or two, which is their real Oscar player. Craig’s only hope now is the very slim possibility of a critics group awarding him Best Actor - maybe National Society of Film Critics? Critics groups will start announcing their selections probably the end of next week. Queer will likely be streaming on VOD within weeks.
Good luck to Starkey, as much as anyone else, but the best thing he could do is book a prestige film project with a mainstream director, not a shallow stylist like Gudagnino.
