For decades, Gregg Araki has been a trailblazing queer artist. He’s the filmmaker behind LGBTQ+ movies like “The Living End,” “The Doom Generation,” and the classic “Mysterious Skin.” His new feature, “I Want Your Sex,” opens July 31.
While it’s not as overtly gay as some of his other work, “I Want Your Sex” is still a naughty sex romp with gay characters and actors, including a lead character in Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde) who is pansexual and – as Araki calls her – a sex superhero. Cooper Hoffman stars as twenty-something Elliot, who lands a job in Erika’s art gallery as her assistant. Before long, the two enter into a BDSM relationship, with Erika as the dom and Elliot as the sub.
The supporting cast includes Margaret Cho, Johnny Knoxville, Daveed Diggs, Mason Gooding and Charli XCX.
Araki has been working on this project for 12 years. When he originally read the spec script, the story was very different.
“It had a female intern and a male boss, and through the years, after MeToo, I sort of changed it to a male sub and a female dom,” he said. “I added the Almodóvar-esque film noir part with the cops and the murder mystery.”
The biggest change came at the tail end of development when Araki read an article about how Gen Z doesn’t have sex anymore. As the Erika character developed, she became a mouthpiece for the director.
“A lot of the things she says about sex and about art are things I have said in interviews because my work is very much like hers,” Araki said. “It’s about sex, sexuality and receiving provocation. I read the article and my reaction was basically what Erika says – ‘What are you talking about?’ Sex is such an important part of life, particularly for me as a queer person.”
Araki said his sexual experiences have helped form the type of person he is.
“When I think back to being 19 or 20 years old and sneaking out to the gay bar, that was really, like, the first steps of my journey as a person, venturing out of the nest,” he said. “All of those experiences – and Erika says this in the movie – that is who I am. Those are the formative experiences of my life.”
However, Araki admits that the affair that Elliot and Erika have is not healthy.
“It’s chaotic. It’s confusing. It’s probably a mistake, but it is an important mistake that Elliot needs to make,” he said. “I feel when Elliot’s 45 years old and looks back on that affair he’ll be like ‘I can’t believe that happened; that is so f*cking crazy. But I am so glad it happened, because in retrospect it’s a very important part of my life and trajectory as a person.’”
Wilde came onto the project in an unorthodox way. According to Araki, his manager slipped the script to Wilde’s agent without Araki knowing. He found out later that Wilde wanted to meet and thought that she could be inspired casting.
“I hadn’t even thought of it. I met Olivia, and she was fantastic and so smart and she really got it,” he said. “I think for her also – why she started directing is because I think a lot of the parts she was getting were the beautiful girlfriend, the beautiful wife, beautiful mistress. Those parts are what Hollywood has for women. And … Erika Tracy was a flawed character, but such a cool character, so interesting, so multi-faceted, larger than life.”
Wilde understood the character and was down to be completely fearless. Araki patterned Erika after Madonna and Robert Mapplethorpe, artistic figures with big personalities. Their work is almost secondary to their own stardom.
“It was by chance that it happened and one of those miraculous things that sometimes happen with movies,” Araki said. “A lot of times, miraculous things do not happen.”
From there, Hoffman came aboard and others followed. Araki ran into Knoxville at a dinner party for John Waters and asked him to join. The director wrote Cho’s part for her, and then sent the out actress the script.
Araki said that he’s proud that he’s been working as long as he has and has been able to make the films he wants.
“When I was Cooper’s [Hoffman] age – a wannabe filmmaker, an undergraduate college kid that wanted to be creative, be an artist – I would never have dreamed that I could have done all the things I have done,” he said. “I’m so grateful and I feel so privileged to be able to do it. I feel like my career and my oeuvre is super unique.”
Araki said he loves the fact that he and his filmmaker peers have been able to have successful, yet varied careers.
“I have my contemporaries, like Gus Van Sant, Richard Linklater, Whit Stillman, Todd Haynes, all these people who are my filmmaker friends and we all have been able to make a body of work that’s incredible,” he said. “But they are all different and I think that’s because we all sort of came up under the auteur theory. These directors, they all want to have their own voice.”
Araki said he is very excited about the upcoming remastered version of “Mysterious Skin,” which is set to debut early this fall. But for now, he’s focused on promoting “I Want Your Sex.” According to Araki, the film has a relatively wide release, opening on 700 screens.
“My movies usually open on only two screens,” he laughed.
