My name is André Aciman. I'm the author of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME.
One of the reason why some people don't like to see a film of a book they've liked –
it's that the characters and the faces of the characters
sort of become indelible. You can no longer recollect what it was that you had imagined them as.
"Elio, Oliver. Oliver, Elio." "How you doing?"
"Nice to meet you, Elio." "You must be exhausted!"
"A little bit..." "Come! Come! Come!"
"May I bring your things up to your room?" "Uh... sure! Yeah!"
"My room..."
I have the same issue, too. Now when I think of Elio and Oliver, I see Armie Hammer...
and I see Timothée Chalamet. And you can't go back to what it is that you imagined before,
but I think that the characters are perfect!
"She seems to like you a lot."
"She's more beautiful than she was last year..."
"I saw her naked on a night swim once."
"Great body."
"Are you trying to get me to like her?"
"What would be the harm in that?"
"No harm, I just typically like to grow those things on my own, if you don't mind."
The book and the film are different, in that
the book traces the history of these two young men for 20 more years...
and so you would imagine that a film that does not do that, that truncates the ending
would essentially sort of cheat the story... but I don't think it does!
The book goes on, but you don't need that really for the movie to work
because he's already achieved the same effect.
Luca and I discussed, over breakfast one day, possibilities of how to
take this to the next step and have a sequel and maybe more than one sequel
because he wants to trace the growth of these two young men, the way Truffaut did with Antoine Doinel, that character.
People constantly tell me "Please tell us what's going to happen next!"
"What else do you have in store?" and one of the things I'm nervous about
is that I don't want to have GODFATHER part 3...
but there is more that has to happen between the two young men,
and they seek each other again and again and again
without necessarily realizing that they're going to concretize anything,
and I think that's the beauty of the story. So that remains to be explored.