Stefano Baisi on Crafting the World of Luca Guadagnino’s Queer: Making Love Into a Film Set

Miniatures, millipedes, and Mexico City – Queer’s production designer Stefano Baisi discusses turning William S. Burroughs’ life into a world inside the screen

Stefano Baisi, Production Designer of Queer, in conversation with Lampoon

Right before a pre-screening of Queer at Milan’s MUBI Fest 2024, a giant video recording of Luca Guadagnino apologizes for not being able to be at the event. As he waxes poetica about his experience on the film, he mentions that his valued collaborator, production designer Stefano Baisi, is in the audience that evening. 

A few days later, in a bustling café in Milan’s Chinatown, Lampoon sat down to chat with Baisi about his contribution to the film. In reference to the screening, he laughed and said, “I didn’t even know it was happening. When I came across the event, I had to send Luca a message to ask if I could go.” As he recounts his scouting trips to William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac’s homes in Mexico City, encounters with the Burroughsian universe, and collaborations with Wes Anderson’s miniature artist, Baisi reveals the inner workings of the world behind the screen

Love: a lens for both William S. Burroughs and Luca Guadagnino

In his most recent stab at a literary adaptation – Queer – Luca Guadagnino takes William Lee’s rough, sweaty, and heroin-fueled story and does something unexpected. The director behind Challengers and Call Me by Your Name, chooses not to focus on the hedonistic allure of the Beat generation, but on a yearning for love that drives the characters. 

Talking about the initial stages of production, production designer Stefano Baisi remarks, “Luca was more interested in the relationship between these two people and how he viewed Burroughs’ life at large. Our head of research, Ben Panzeca, helped us to discover the diaries Burroughs had created at the end of his life. Three days before the author died, his final writing ends with the word ‘love’.” Baisi goes on to say, “from those last words, we understood that Burroughs was a man who loved. All of the imaginary worlds he made, which initially seemed very cold, in reality, were also filled with strong emotions. This pushed us to reflect in the set design the moments where Burroughs looked to explore the feelings between Allerton [Drew Starkey] and William Lee [Daniel Craig].”

As Lee has come to be understood as a fictional Burroughs, it could also be said that Queer is not just a novel, but a snippet of Burroughs’ actual life as recounted through the semi-autobiographical voice of the author. Knowing this, it becomes clear the film is not looking to just recount the book itself, but to create a work that speaks more broadly to the life and career of William S. Burroughs.  

Baisi, Guadagnino, and the director’s interior architecture studio

Although Queer is Baisi’s first time working as a production designer for a film, his relationship with Guadagnino goes back to the director’s eponymous interior design studio. 

“I met Luca in 2017,” says Baisi, “because a friend of mine, a photographer and architect, introduced us. I first met Luca on an afternoon in Crema, where he was living at the time. It’s the city where he filmed Call Me By Your Name. We discussed a staircase for a store he was working on, and after a while, I eventually joined the team at his studio [as an architect and designer]. 

At some point, Luca asked me to design Queer. It was out of the blue. I would never have accepted such a role, having no experience, from someone other than Luca. Considering how well we know and trust each other; I thought it was worth trying. This experience was a kind of accelerated master class of cinema and its techniques. I had come to understand a lot of things by doing and learning on set.”

A rough, raw text turned euphoric, dreamy

When reading Burroughs’ 1985 text, it opens with a discussion of whorehouses, fleeing drug possession charges in the United States, and cock fights. It’s a story that’s rough and dirty and sets the tone for a less dreamy world than the one that Baisi and Guadagnino bring to the big screen. When asked about this discrepancy between text and film, Baisi laughs a bit, saying, “when I read the book, I imagined something different: dark environments and this sort of Mexico City that was more a version of Hell. After my conversations with Luca, I understood that the film comes more from the interpretation that we give to the reading itself. Even though it’s a masterpiece, he also felt that he needed to escape from what Cronenberg did for Naked Lunch.”

“We looked to reflect in the set design the moments where we imagine Burroughs had the urge to explore the feelings between people. We decided to use neon colors for the moments that didn’t exist in the historical, real world. The colors mark moments that arose due to the alteration from the drugs Lee was using. This gave the production design a sort of dreamlike landscape.”

Looking for Burroughs in Latin America and the photos left behind

Through his experience on the film, Baisi ended up in different corners of the world, searching for Burroughs’ literary references in the countries that served as the background of the author’s life. In constructing Queer’s Mexico City on the Cinecittà soundstage in Rome, he says, “we know for sure that The Rathskeller Bar has never actually existed in Mexico City. In the book there are a lot of references to Burrough’s past life: it’s descriptions like that of Mexico City alongside remnants of his past in places like Vienna, St. Louis, and New York.”

“The Rathskeller Bar is described as one in South Tyrol [between Austria and Northern Italy] with this worm-eaten wood and very particular decorations like taxidermy deer. Beyond the book and the script, I had the opportunity to research Burroughs’ previous lives before he fled the States to take refuge in Mexico.”

Baisi explores Burrough’s Mexico City

In Burroughs’ escape from America, he found himself in Mexico City alongside a host of other Beatnik writers, similarly looking for respite in the bars and debauchery. When the audience first sees Lee’s apartment, bathed in an uneasy yellow light, it’s not difficult to see the distinctly methodical but chaotic environment of a writer struggling with addiction.

“I think that everyone has a sort of ‘ordine nel disordine’,” comments Baisi of Lee’s piles of books, drug paraphernalia, and trinkets strewn around his home. “We were working with the incredible prop master, Matt Marks, to create the space. Like the process for the rest of the movie, it involved a lot of maniacal research on ‘Who was Burroughs?’ And unpacking the meaning behind his historical photos.”

“We have a photograph of Burroughs’ entrance, so we replicated it. The rest was inspired by what I saw on a scouting trip to Mexico City. We went to his address and found out that the building where Burroughs lived collapsed during the 1985 earthquake. Nevertheless, we managed to enter the house on the other side of the street, knowing that Kerouac had lived there. We managed to go inside and, thus, the windows of the house on set are inspired by that place.  

The set was an analysis of the depth of Burroughs’ universe. The apartment is a creation of a fantasy. Some parts are extremely accurate from the point of view of Burroughs’ history. But some aren’t because the movie is not meant to be an exact reconstruction of the author’s reality.”  

Puyo, Quito, and the logo hidden in Ecuador

On another research trip to Ecuador, Baisi followed Lee and Allerton’s journey through Puyo, Shell Mera, and Quito. He spoke about finding very little about Shell’s oil extraction legacy, remarking “we found some photos of the settlements, but not much else. What was left of the Shell developments in Puyo was turned into an airport. It was then acquired by the state, but it was unsurprisingly a disaster.” 

Speaking of oil company’s history in the region during the mid 20^th century, he says “they cut down the trees. They looked for oil. They had conflict with the local communities. But after discovering there would be little economic return from the land, they quickly fled. 

So, basically, the idea was to leave a mark on this passage. We didn’t mention Shell specifically, because it wasn’t the focus of the movie. The idea then was to turn the Shell logo into the “Annexia” company.” 

The fictional Annexia company, created for the film, references the spondylus shell that was used as a type of currency exchanged in pre-Colombian civilizations in Latin America. Baisi quips, “it’s an absurd, slightly alien shell that we employed in the place of the Shell logo. One afternoon, on a weekend where I was trying to get some rest, I was researching the original Shell logo from the forties, fifties, and sixties and created Annexia’s.” 

For astute viewers, the logo can be spotted in Dr. Cotter’s laboratory and on a wall in the town of Quito. 

The temporally shifting Ship Ahoy 

Not only does each bar create a particular vibe that establishes Lee’s interactions with the world, they encapsulate the fraught post war period in which Lee, a fresh veteran from combat, was living. Baisi reflects saying, “people have mentioned Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, but in actuality, it wasn’t ever a reference for Ship Ahoy. That being said, I think that we have some unconscious references in our minds for Americana and the time period.” 

Baisi describes the early days of feverishly designing the sets alongside Guadagnino. Much of the film is visually informed by the work of contemporary Flemish painter, Michaël Borremans who makes an appearance as Lee’s doctor in Quito. The film also references the Golden Age of Hollywood (spanning the 1920s-60s), cinematic auteurs, and ephemera from the period. 

“In my study of Burroughs’ life, I came across this post WW2 image of the transatlantic ship, the SS Normandie, which has been overturned on its side on a New York pier. During the war, it had been converted for military purposes. During its conversion work and restoration from a fire, someone took this poetic image of the ship on its side. This became the inspiration for the Ship Ahoy.”

“Also, at the end of the film, there is a conversation between Joe Guidry and William Lee, where they reflect on the people who have moved away from Mexico City. We changed some of the colors and decorations in the set to mark this passage of time. We added a pool table, changed the colors of the pillows in the booths the color of the walls, but not their yellow lines.” 

Simon Weisse and the texture of a miniature world 

In the film, as the sun sets and rises across the scenes of William Lee’s life, one might notice a stylistic shift in the film. The viewer goes from watching the actors perform across a stage to looking down on the world that they exist in. This particular visual effect is due in part to Simon Weisse, the miniature maker best known for his work on Wes Anderson’s films. Working from a vision developed by Guadagnino and Baisi, Weisse’s skill for the craft became fundamental in realizing Queer’s world within a world. 

To create a fluidity between the sets and the miniatures, Baisi says that the production “invited Weisse to Cinecittà during filming to make sure that every texture and material that we gave to the sets was translated into the miniatures. I hope that, despite the fact they were fake, the audience feels the continuity. Nevertheless, this fakeness was something we wanted audiences to notice. We wanted them to perceive the fiction.”  

Baisi goes on to talk about approaching Weisse’s distinctive style. “Seeing the works he did for Wes Anderson and comparing them to those of Queer, I think that, despite recognizing the hand who built it, it ended up being unique to the film.  

For me, it was simply exciting to work with such a great artisan. He’s very kind and has a curiosity for this world. We realized many more miniatures for the movie that are, unfortunately, not in the final cut. I hope that an extended version is eventually released with those scenes.” 

Thanks to his background in architecture, where making scale models was a core part of his training, Baisi ended up having a kind of nostalgic relationship with the tiny towns and apartment buildings. With a grin, he quips, “Oh my gosh, model making was the first thing I thought of [when I saw Weisse’s contributions] … so I ended up being pretty good at making them too.”

Through a tiny hotel window, Lee looks back on his life

The film concludes with Daniel Craig peering into one of Weisse’s miniatures: a version of the cheap hotel where Lee brings his lovers. In this moment, when Daniel Craig towers over the small glowing building propped up on a table, the final scene breaks the divide between what is real and what is just a construction of a raw, sometimes even cruel, reality.  

“We’re in a dream world,” says Baisi of the greater film, “and this miniature hotel would be a dream within a dream. Luca came to call it a ‘mise-en-abîme’ (a reference to the French notion of mise-en-scène), or a looking into the void of the characters’ subconcious. We say that a dream is the unconscious place where all the implications of our real lives come to surface.  

Lee looking into the hotel comes from the idea that Burroughs is returning to look on his life see himself through the eyes of the world. Although he starts in the corridor of the hotel in Mexico City, he ends up in a room that’s actually Burroughs’ apartment in New York where he had his first romantic experiences and where he had his first delusions of love. He faces the meaning behind the tragedies and crucial moments that lead up to this point.  

So this is generally the idea: It’s the reflection on the passage of one’s life. At least that’s what I think. For the rest: that’s a question you’ll have to ask Luca to get the whole picture.”

Stefano Baisi

Stefano Baisi is an architect and designer based in Milan, Italy. Before working as a production designer on Queer, he worked with the director at his interior architecture firm, Studio Luca Guadagnino. 

Queer

Directed by Luca Guadagnino, Queer was released by A24, November 2024. Production design is by Stefano Baisi and costumes are by Jonathan W. Anderson. Staring Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig, the film is an adaptation of William S. Burrough’s 1985 novel of the same title. The film is set for a wide release in Italy, February 2025. 

Annalise June Kamegawa