When David Kajganich was first presented with Camille DeAngelis’ novel “Bones and All,” the screenwriter didn’t initially realize the cannibal romance was intended for YA readers. Instead, the “Blood Creek” and “A Bigger Splash” writer was taken with the book’s fairytale quality, the wonderful romance at its heart, and its ability to interrogate “other”-ness in an entirely new way. It was also, of course, fairly juicy — literally and figuratively — and ripe for the screenwriter to apply his own ideas. It helped that Kajganich’s frequent collaborator, director Luca Guadagnino, came on board to direct the film, bringing along stars Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet to play the love-crossed young cannibals at its center. After debuting at Venice, earning accolades on the festival circuit, and enjoying a very tasty opening weekend in limited release, “Bones and All” arrives in wide release this week. And what a cinematic treat Kajganich and company have crafted for viewers. Ahead, the screenwriter shares with IndieWire a feast of insights into his script, from changes and cuts to DeAngelis’ novel and his own personal connection to the material, plus some thoughts on an ending well worth savoring. Enjoy! “Bones and All” is now in theaters. Guadagnino is a notoriously busy filmmaker, and when he couldn’t commit to the project, “Christine” and “The Devil All the Time” director Campos signed on. (Kajganich said he and Campos had a productive meeting early in the process, during which he was already unpacking some of the changes he wanted to make to DeAngelis’ book.) After Campos took on HBO series “The Staircase,” he had to leave the production, opening up space for Guadagnino to step in. “But when Antonio dropped off, I sent my actual script to Luca and asked him to take a look and he read it and he really thought he knew how to do the film, so he was back on board,” Kajganich said. “It was always my original plan, it just took a while to come to fruition.” Yannis Drakoulidis/Courtesy of MGM “I’m a very practical person and I tend to really appreciate when genre films take a practical approach,” he said. “When I read the book, I thought many times as I was reading it, I understand the fairy tale conceit of consuming an entire other person, but if we’re really trying to ground the world of the film, it’s going to be impossible for an audience to believe that’s doable. Just, simply, the amount of person weighs, regardless of what the components are [is too much]. If you’ve ever tangled with the bones of a Thanksgiving turkey, it’s not something you would ever really be able to ingest.” But Kajganich didn’t want to lose the title, so he set about using it as a metaphor for the consuming power of Maren and Lee’s relationship. “I loved the idea of turning the title of the film to mean something different, so that when Michael Stuhlbarg’s character talks about this concept of ‘bones and all,’ it’s almost this mystical thing,” he said. “People talk about first love or undying love or enduring love, this thing that you suspect can’t be possible in the way that it’s being described. … That was part of why I tried to flip the title to mean this thing that may be an abstraction or it may be literal, but you’re not in a position to know until you get there.”
His Take on the Metaphor of Being a Cannibal Is Very Personal
Kajganich said he tends to be drawn to material that “allows a Trojan horse approach to storytelling.” DeAngelis’ book really fit that bill as a genre outing that’s also a coming-of-age tale, a deep romance, and an exploration of what it means to accept yourself in a world hellbent on rejecting you. MGM “Everybody’s gone through experiences where we’ve been pushed to the side, particularly people who have the monikers of being ‘other’ in our society, whatever that means, and that’s a long list of things that could mean,” the writer said. “What I really loved about the book was that it seemed to speak to all of them under the metaphoric heading of ‘cannibalism.’” For many, Maren and Lee’s cannibalism — a part of their biology they can’t change, something that terrifies their families, an aspect of their lives that becomes more pronounced during puberty — sounds like a sterling stand-in for sexual orientation or gender identity. Kajganich gets that, but he was eager to make “Bones and All” even more inclusive of that kind of “other”-ness. But that doesn’t mean Kajganich rejects that sexual orientation or gender identity reading that many can apply to his script. After all, that’s why he connected to when he first read the book. “I grew up gay in a very rural part of the country and in the ’80s, and it felt dangerous,” he said. “It felt like I might end up really hurt or killed or might have come to the decision to end my own life because of all of the ways that, if [my identity was] known by the wrong people with the wrong intentions, it could really destroy your life. That was how I responded to it.” Still, he’s eager for many sorts of people to see their own struggles reflected in, yes, Maren and Lee’s own desires, no matter how outlandish they might sound at first blush. “There are probably a lot of people in a lot of categories of pain or personal fear and anxiety, that could unpack that metaphor in a different way,” he said. “I didn’t want to be too prescriptive about it, because I do think it could have to do with gender, it could have to do with orientation, it could have to do with race, it could have to do with where you sit on the economic spectrum. It could have to do with where you sit on any number of spectrums or continuum. And I just thought, ‘Why push it into any one or several literal directions when it really stands up on its own?’” ©MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection
Why He Changed Maren and Sully’s Relationship
Snipping Rachel from the script is hardly the biggest change Kajganich opted to embrace: In DeAngelis’ book, Sully is eventually revealed to be not just a fellow cannibal, but actually Maren’s long-lost grandfather. For Kajganich, that was a bit too much. So much of both DeAngelis’ book and Kajganich’s script centers on the desire, from both Maren and Lee, to be given guidance from the adults in their lives. Maren in particular is obsessed with the idea that her cannibal parent will somehow be able to explain her existence, set her on a path that makes sense, be able to heal her outsider status. For Kajganich, having the ultimate disappointment come from her mother was even more striking. “I thought that the betrayal that Maren might feel of knowing that there was a parent who could have spoken directly to her experience, not across the line of gender, but within her own gender, that seemed more crushing to me, that seemed more emotional to me,” he said. MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection Making Lee into a one-woman man also removed some of the usual beats of a romance, which made it feel even richer to Kajganich. It’s a miracle these two even find each other, he thought, so why make things even more complicated with another woman? “I think two cannibals meeting on the road and being able to look at one another with real curiosity and see real integrity on the other side of that gaze [is rich material],” he said. “I didn’t want to interrupt it with the hallmarks of a typical romance story, which is that there’s always a moment of doubt, always a moment of jealousy, always a moment of competition. They didn’t want that in their relationship, because I thought they’d come so far already. It seemed unnecessary and a little manipulative to then push them around inside a continuum of jealousy or security. I didn’t think we needed that.” And when Kajganich was on set with stars Russell and Chalamet, he knew he had made the right choice. Yannis Drakoulidis
How He Wants People to Interpret That Changed Ending
While Guadagnino’s film features a final act that follows Maren and Lee as they enjoy a relatively calm (and quite short-lived) existence in a college town, before it’s upended by Sully’s final appearance, DeAngelis’ book only takes Maren into that seemingly idyllic space. And turning Sully into a relative stranger who also happened to be a cannibal helped loosen up a wealth of other possibilities for the film. Suddenly, it wasn’t all about this big! crazy! reveal! “When I started to think of Sully not being Maren’s grandfather, it opened up all possibilities about how he might relate to her in very, let’s call them disorganized ways. … I like the idea of Sully being a real agent of disorganization in the film, as opposed to an organizing principle.” MGM/United Artists When DeAngelis’ book concludes, Maren has not only killed and eaten both Sully and Lee, but she’s also moved on from those relationships quite quickly, and she’s living alone in a cute small town, auditing classes, and working in the school library. She’s also hunting new prey, including a potential new paramour she charms, only to kill and eat him in the library’s basement. While DeAngelis’ ending sets up a new chapter in Maren’s life, it might leave fans of Maren and Lee feeling pretty cold. Kajganich opted to change that, ending the film shortly after Sully and Lee’s death, with Maren still dreaming of her bond with her cannibal lover. Even that required its own edits. Still, for Kajganich, the desire to show the audience a believable, somewhat bright future for Maren was of essential importance. How else could a coming-of-age tale end, after all? “[We] had to convince the audience in those two hours that Maren, she’s going to be OK,” he said. “She has the ability to have connections with other people, but also a real connection with herself, she will be a friend to herself in some capacity for the rest of her life. We see her navigate all of this with a real sense of grace, but also a sense of self-love. She has respect and love for herself, despite the trauma that she’s carrying around. If you didn’t know that by the ending, that ending would’ve concerned me, but I think you do feel it by the ending, you don’t need to see that Maren’s literally OK out in the world.” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
