‘Call Me By Your Name’ Director & Cast Talk The Organic Process Of Adapting A Celebrated Novel

As Call Me By Your Name becomes a juggernaut during awards season raking in accolades from early award ceremonies and critics associations, director Luca Guadagnino and actors Timothee Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Armie Hammer took some time out to talk to the audience at an Awardsline screening last week about making the sunkissed, Italy-based film about first love as natural as possible.

During the post-screening Q&A moderated by Deadline’s Dominic Patton, it was revealed that the film was shot mostly in chronological order — for a good reason.

“[It] gives the performances a possibility to grow and makes the movie more connected with the personality of the actors playing their role,” said Guadagnino. “It’s something that makes everything more organic.”

The cast gushed about their experience making the film and each other’s performance — particularly Stuhlbarg’s character who can easily be dubbed as “on-screen father of 2017.” Even so, with all the praise it has been getting, Call Me By Your Name is a book-to-movie adaptation with a diehard fan base. That said, the lingering question is: have fans of the celebrated novel by André Aciman been satisfied?

“What’s been cool about people who are fans of the book is when they’ll say, ‘Oh my God, I was so relieved watching the movie because I had such anxiety’,” said Chalamet. “[They were scared] we were going to butcher this book that holds a special place in so many people’s hearts.”