Gregg Araki

NK

Does this feel like a renaissance moment for you?

GA

Magnolia is taking it very wide this summer, like 700 screens. Usually I only open in LA and New York. But the movie’s super pop and super fun. It’s definitely one of my movies, in that it’s transgressive and subversive and has a lot on its mind, but you know, it’s a pop, fun movie too. Given the hellish society that we’re living in right now, and what’s going on politically just in general in America and in the whole world, I really wanted to put something out that was not super bleak, super dark, or dystopian. I just wanted to give people some ray of hope.

NK

I Want Your Sex takes place in a more stylized reality than the world we live in, but at the same time it does deal with the aftermath of #MeToo, in terms of workplace culture and consent and boundaries in the era we live in. It seems to take up those themes with the acknowledgement that none of that has really changed how people behave at their core.

GA

Erika Tracey, Olivia Wilde’s character, is so inappropriate, but I love her. She’s kind of a sociopath, and definitely a narcissist, and for me, honestly, she crosses the line a lot, and I want her behavior to be discussed. But it’s presented for it to be discussed, not for it to be like ‘This is how it should be.’ I want the movie to kind of open this conversation and then let’s actually have a conversation about it. But yeah, the movie’s got a lot on its mind. It’s fun, but there’s a lot of thought that went into it.

NK

One of my favorite things about it is that lines are definitely crossed, but it’s up to each individual viewer to decide exactly when or where. A lot of movies today are so didactic about what is right or wrong when depicting sex. You present your narrative with a much greater respect for ambiguity.

GA

I think of the movie as being sex positive because I’m very sex positive. I certainly think some of Erika Tracey’s behavior is sometimes morally questionable, like she definitely pushes a line. But I think that’s sort of where the drama of the movie comes from.

NK

I’ve always been struck by the fact that, of the New Queer Cinema directors, you show the least amount reverence for the past. You don’t do period pieces.

GA

White Bird in a Blizzard was set in the ’80s, but you’re right, I’ve never done like a costume drama. Mysterious Skin was kind of a period piece too, because it was made in the ’00s but set in the ‘90s, since the book came out in the ‘90s. But I do try and stick with my era.

NK

Do you feel nostalgia for the ’90s today, as the era when you first began making movies? If your political impulse was toward apocalypse then, it’s hard not to feel like things have only gotten worse.

GA

Oh, God yeah. I think it was ’92 when The Living End, [Todd Haynes’s film] Poison, all those movies were coming out. The Isaac Julien movie [Young Soul Rebels]. And those was the fucking Bush years. The reaction to AIDS and all that, that’s kind of where those movies came from, but then shortly thereafter it was the Clinton years and things were somewhat more hospitable. I mean, you’re young, but I’m sure when you think back to the fucking Obama years it’s like, ‘Oh my God, that was fucking utopia!’ Or even, I was talking to my friend the other day, thinking back to the Biden years, I was like those were like the best years of my life! It was so amazing to have four years where the world wasn’t fucking falling apart like every fucking second. Sure it was boring, sure it had its problems, but it was just like calm and peaceful and you could wake up in the morning and know that the world’s still gonna be here tomorrow. I was able to do my job and get on with my next thing without this feeling of, like, are we even going to be here in July when the movie comes out? It’s literally this level of fucking insanity and chaos and madness I just can’t even—again, I wanted to make a movie that’s not about that.

NK

Revisiting some of your early films, like The Living End and Totally F****d Up, I was struck by the persistent strain of angst. There’s a real animosity to the American government over its lack of response to the AIDS crisis, but it’s also ‘90s kids looking back in anger at previous generations, for getting to live through the sexual revolution without fear.

GA

Yeah, and you look back at that now and it’s like ‘Oh, that’s actually sort of the good old days.’ I mean compared to what’s going on now, compared to people like getting fucking kidnapped off the streets, it’s like the ‘90s were nothing. But yeah, those movies definitely came out of a place of outsiderness, and that remains a big part of my sensibility. I was a young man at the time, in my early 30s. Our generation, I mean New Queer Cinema directors, we were in a very unique position I think, and that kind of shapes you as a person. For me, I can only speak of myself, but coming of age at that moment, living through that era and being into punk rock music, it really set my place in the culture as that of the outsider, not the mainstream voice of the hegemony, but that of the other, Which, as an artist, I feel like is so much, it’s like a superpower, you know what I mean? Being queer, being of color, everything that sets me apart is what gives me my voice.

NK

How do you feel about the mainstreaming of queerness in our media today?

GA

Honestly, you know, the proliferation of queer art, queer voices—there were a bunch of queer movies at Cannes this year—I think it’s fucking fantastic. Especially in the world we live in, in the culture we live in, like the misogyny and the homophobia and the bigotry and the racism and all of it, it’s more important now than ever that these queer voices get heard and get seen. When we did The Living End in the early ‘90s it was really…I remember when I remastered that movie in 2008, because I hadn’t seen it in years, I was like, ‘This movie is so innocent, almost naïve.’ But when it came out in the early ‘90s it was shocking. People were outraged by it, because there was so little queer visibility, it was before Ellen came out, before Will and Grace, so even just seeing two guys kissing was crazy. So I really feel like the idea of Heated Rivalry and all of this stuff becoming so much a part of the mainstream is fantastic, it’s really, really important.

NK

And it’s still so new. Like looking back at my upbringing, as far as Hollywood options to see queer desire onscreen, the options were few and far between.

GA

It’s definitely not a Hollywood mainstream thing. I don’t just mean in terms of queer stuff, but even sex in general. You think of all of these mainstream movies like Star Wars, the superhero nonsense of it all, and there’s never any level of sex or sensuality. All of it is this weird, sanitized, ‘I don’t wanna offend anybody’ sensibility. Everything’s just so middle of the road.

NK

You’ve spent the past few years restoring your old films.

GA

Yeah, I feel like I’m constantly restoring old movies. In between making new movies I’m restoring old movies.

NK

It’s hard to overstate how important that is for people my age, given the lack of alternatives from the movies of that era. It’s so special to be able to revisit these movies as they were meant to be seen.

GA

Yeah, and on a good fucking copy, right? Especially Doom [Generation] and Nowhere, it was just that the available copies of those movies were so fucking horrible, just technically so horrible, that it was hard for me to even think of people even watching it.

NK

Do you enjoy revisiting your work from that period?

GA

It’s really fun, and it’s fun to make it like technically what I wanted it to be, because you have so much more control just with modern technology. The movie’s the same movie, I’m not reediting it, but it is just technically much better. I really believe that every movie you make, you become a better filmmaker, and I am a much better filmmaker in 2026 than I was in 1992, so whenever you’re able to go back and apply your current level of expertise to an old movie it’s just really nice, it makes me feel better.

NK

Does it work the other way as well? Does being in perpetual postproduction on your old movies help you think about how you want to shoot the new ones?

GA

It actually does. I remember specifically for I Want Your Sex, when I was still working on the script, it was right around the time we were restoring Nowhere.and I remember thinking, ‘This movie should be more like Nowhere. It should have more of a go-for-it kind of aesthetic sensibility, it doesn’t have to be so bound to reality.’ Like, [for Cooper Hoffman’s character,] is this how a 24-year-old kid would really live? It’s like no, it can be fucking anything. Revisiting that movie at that particular time really had an impact on I Want Your Sex—the sets and the costumes, all of it. One of the things I’ve always hated is when movies are all about being ‘super real,’ like mumblecore. Like, ‘Oh, this is just like real life! It doesn’t have anything going on, there’s no real dialogue. It’s just people mumbling at each other!’ That’s not cinema to me. That’s a home movie. It’s boring. I don’t go to the movies to watch normal people doing normal shit, that’s already how fucking life is.

NK

You have to add a little style.

GA

Yeah, or in my case, a lot of style. Just cause I’ve always been so into the idea of film being like a world. I love the idea of a whole world that you can just escape into for 90 minutes.

NK

Since White Bird in a Blizzard, you’ve spent a fair amount of time working in television. Did returning to film feel different this time, in terms of your access to actors and capital?

GA

No, not at all. [Laughs] Every time I try to make a new movie it’s the same. I’m trying to make one right now, I have a new movie that I’m trying to get financed, and it’s always just starting from ground zero. Like going out with your tin cup and asking people if they can give you some money. It’s always challenging to make an indie movie. But for me ,doing Now Apocalypse and doing the episodic stuff I did, it really made me so much of a better director, just so much more technically skilled in terms of figuring out what is possible. I’ve always been very resourceful and I work very fast, but working in TV is just like…working on Now Apocalypse, we shot all ten episode in 40 days. It was nuts, and it really required my technical skills and my directorial and producorial skills to be at a very high level the whole time. And that really made the difference for I Want Your Sex, because we shot I Want Your Sex in 17 days, which is really, really fast. It requires you to be very specific and very organized and really know what you want.

NK

I had this theory that your work coming back out in restoration is making a difference in terms of what you’re able to make now, but maybe it’s just expanded your audience.

GA

I honestly think that my work is a little ahead of the curve. There is a level on which, okay, I’m finally getting that acknowledgement from old projects. But at the same time, as a filmmaker I’m just excited to do I Want Your Sex, excited to do the next thing. I really think each new movie is its own challenge.

NK

You’ve given breakouts to some amazing actors over the years, but you’ve also described working with big actors as feeling like they’re doing it for charity, or for the love of the game.

GA

None of us do it for the money. That’s the thing about my movies, and that’s actually a fucking cool thing about indie movies. I mean it sucks because it’s harder to pull it all together, but nobody has ever done a movie of mine for the money. When you’re with the studios it’s like, sometimes, the people don’t even want to be there. It’s a paycheck for them. It’s never a paycheck when they’re working for me, so they’re really there for the right reasons. And like, for this movie, Olivia was just so into the character and the script and she was just so ready to get down and dirty and just go for it. Which is want you want. I remember I said this when I met her for the first time, I was like ‘Whoever does this movie, they just have to not give a fuck. They can’t be like “Oh, I’m worried about my image, or there’s this one scene where I’m kind of unsympathetic.” They just have to go for it,’ and, I mean, she did.

NK

She’s fantastic in I Want Your Sex. I think Olive Wilde has given you a career-best performance. I actually wanted to ask you about working with her because she was so dedicated to the role and she’s also someone who’s at a moment in her career where she has a lot of roads to take. It’s beautiful that she went all in with you.

GA

The thing about Olivia, was, like, for this role we didn’t make lists or anything. She just got a hold of the script through my manager or her agent, and my manager was like ‘Oh, Olivia Wilde read this and really responded to it, she wants to meet.’ I said, ‘Olivia Wilde?!’ I had been a fan of hers since—she used to be on The OC, she used to play the character of the bisexual girl, like I have known her—but she’s one of those actors that, to me, she’s like an old-time movie star. She has that face, that bone structure, and she has so much presence. She’s like Ingrid Bergman or Greta Garbo. But I feel like Hollywood has never known what to do with her. In modern Hollywood, you know, especially mainstream Hollywood, it’s like: The Girlfriend. The Wife. The Mistress. So she really responded to the Erika Tracey character, because it was a really fun role that she could sink her teeth into, and the idea of her doing it was so exciting to me. It was really fun, I remember when we were meeting with costume designers, because Olivia has that movie star quality. She can wear anything and pull it off, in the way that like old Madonna can just wear fucking anything. It’s so fun to work with people like that, that just always look good.

NK

She has some amazing outfits in that movie.

GA

Ariana Phillips did the costumes, and she’s actually a friend of Olivia’s. So Olivia goes ‘What about Ari Phillips?’ and I said, ‘Ari Phillips is never gonna do this fucking movie, she does Oscar-nominated movies, she’s never gonna do this movie,’ and then Ari’s just like ‘Oh yeah, I would love it, I wanna do it!’ So I just said okay. But yes, she did a fantastic job. She’s so good.

NK

I just turned in a piece on The Devil Wears Prada 2 right before watching your film.

GA

I haven’t seen it yet.

NK

I mean it’s pretty forgettable, but the costumes are really heinous because they’re just so boring.

GA

Really?

NK

They’re just so forgettable, but I remember watching your movie and thinking this is what they were missing.

GA

Ah, that sucks, because on the red carpet they’ve been wearing crazy shit! The movie’s not like that?

NK

No it’s got a quiet luxury thing going on. I mean Meryl Streep, Miranda Priestly, is holding on to her glamour and her old ways and so she has some great outfits, but otherwise it’s terrible.

GA

That’s crazy. Because the red carpets have been looking fantastic. Like all of them.

NK

It’s better off screen than on.

GA

Aw, that makes me not want to see it. I was looking forward to it.

NK

Oh, you should still see it, maybe you’ll like it more than me.

GA

Well, it’s like—gay culture—I love red carpets. Like to me, Zendaya is just the pinnacle and it’s like, she never looks like that in fucking anything! That’s why I hate Euphoria. Don’t put Zendaya in a fucking sweatshirt! She kills every red carpet like crazy, and then she’s in Euphoria wearing a fucking sweatshirt or in fucking Dune she’s wearing a fucking bag, it’s like why? She never gets to wear anything! In Challengers she’s wearing an ugly tennis outfit, it’s like put her in the shit she wears on the red carpet because that’s what I want to see. And she wears it like nobody else. She’s fantastic. I want to put her in a movie where she’s fighting crime wearing crazy outfits. Because that’s what you want to see, right? It’s like when they did that movie, that A24 movie Warfare or whatever with all those hot guys in it—nobody wants to see those guys in fatigues shooting people! They should be in bathing suits giving each other massages. That’s what people want to see. I don’t understand why people don’t get it.

NK

Speaking of glamour, and back when Hollywood used to use stars correctly, I felt like I got some Sunset Blvd. in I Want Your Sex.

GA

Oh yeah, absolutely. All that’s intentional. The Sunset Blvd. framework is something that I added in one of the more recent passes of the script, along with that whole Se7en thing with the interrogation room narration. I call it preposterous film noir. There’s like this convoluted mystery film noir thing going on that feels very, to me, like ‘80s Almodovar. I love those early Almodovar movies, like Law of Desire and Matador, because they don’t really make sense. Like the way that the mystery unfolds has like a kind of illogical logic to it and that’s what I wanted for this. It’s like a kind of camp film noir that’s la nod to old Almodovar.

NK

What made you want to set I Want Your Sex in the art world?

GA

I just think the art world is so full of characters and imagery, like everything is larger than life, and that was just so much a part of the sensibility of the movie. It was just like a fun world to set it in.

NK

Compared to some of the protagonists of your early films, I was struck by how earnest Cooper Hoffman’s character is. He’s such a hard worker, who doesn’t have much in common with the dropout deadbeats of the Teen Apocalypse trilogy. Is that indicative of a generational shift for you?

GA

He is hardworking. I think yes and no, like he is a bit different because of the Gen Z aspect of him, but at the same time I feel like there’s a throughline from the characters that Jimmy [Duval] plays in the Teen Apocalypse trilogy and Avan Jogia in Now Apocalypse and Cooper in this movie, in the sense that they’re all these kind of young, sincere people searching for something—searching for love or searching for meaning. There’s this yearning on their part that’s very much a part of all of my movies, going back to my very first movie that I made when I was their age, in my early 20s, and very much like that. But it’s funny because the Olivia Wilde character in this movie, a lot of things she says when she’s talking about art or sex or sexuality is very much things that I’ve said in interviews. Her character is my mouthpiece in a lot of ways, and when she’s talking about Gen Z like ‘What is wrong with you? You’re like the FOMO generation, missing out on the sexual prime of your life,” like that’s literally me talking. But Cooper’s character is literally like a young version of me, before I was like this. Like Cooper got his ear pierced because I have my ear pierced, and I gave him tattoos on his hands similar to mine. A lot of his character is based on aspects of me when I was that age, just being a young artist and trying to figure out who you are, what you want to do. Being a little intimidated by the world but everything’s still exciting to you.

NK

You have been ahead of the curve in your filmmaking for a while now. Are lessons you feel Hollywood still has to learn from your work?

GA

I don’t know if it’s lessons so much as the idea that like—you know Hollywood, like mainstream Hollywood, you have to please all the people all the time, and that’s going to be boring no matter what, because 90 percent of people are boring. But there is a level where there’s a convergence or an overlap, and I hope that I Want Your Sex will hit that, where like, sex sells. There is a level of conventionality and mainstream appeal to certain sensibilities, and I feel like, one of the things about this movie for me, that kind of makes it for this age to me is just the commerciality of the concept. It’s as simple as like the title and the image—there’s a poster we’re about to release soon that we call “Whip,” and it’s got Olivia Wilde with the whip, and another that’s got Cooper with the blindfold on. And it’s like, in this age of algorithms, the image of them in this sort of compromised position, and the title I Want Your Sex, it’s like you’ll click on that. You just would! We live in this age of tiles. Now everything is a tile and and you go through this grid of tiles and land on like, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ Even for people who don’t know who’s Gregg Araki? What’s Sundance? Who’s Cooper Hoffman? You know what I mean? It’s like, Olivia’s hot and it’s called I Want Your Sex and sometimes it’s that simple. And then they’ll click on it and go ‘Well, that was wild. This movie took me some place I never imagined going before.’

NK

You’ve optimized it for the age of streaming.

GA

Let’s hope. We’re hopeful.