Bones and All, originally a novel by Camille DeAngelis, tells the story of two cannibals falling in love and traveling America. The movie is adapted by screenwriter David Kajganich, who's also a producer on Director Luca Guadagnino's latest project. Like the novel of the same name, the Bones and All movie chronicles Maren (Taylor Russell) going on a road trip cross-country in search of answers about herself, her family, and her cannibalistic desires. Along the way, she learns she is not alone, meeting her love interest Lee (Timothée Chalamet), another cannibal.
Set in '80s rural America, Bones and All is a film actively distant from major distractions, forcing its young characters to tackle introspective issues. During an interview with CBR, Kajganich described intentionally wanted Bones and All to focus on the characters unpacking these complex issues in a natural, subdued sort of way, regardless of the horror elements the film pulls from. He also dove into what appealed to him about adapting DeAngelis' book.
CBR: When it came to adapting this book, what originally hooked you about the original premise of Bones and All?
David Kajganich: It was sent to me, I think, in the context of my having written horror projects before, so I was prepared for the horrific elements of the story, but what I wasn't prepared for was that it was a love story, which is something I haven't really written sort of dead on before in my career. It's also a story of first love, which has a lot of pathos to it. For me, the idea of writing a love story that sort of behaves inside the grammar of a horror film was too delicious to pass up.
I would love to focus on that relationship a bit. When it came to Maren and Lee's dynamic, what were you most excited to unpack when it came to writing the screenplay?
I think there's a very important element to the story, which is that it would be impossible to tell if you were judging the characters, and I love the idea of characters that are this complex and morally complex. What they do -- what you watch them do in the film -- is really upsetting because one's reflexive kind of morality is to damn them for what they do, but I think there is an element here of non-judgment. That is certainly something I worked hard to make sure was in the script, that I was neither protecting them nor judging them. It carried through how Luca [Guadagnino] directed it, carried through the performances, carried through how the film was scored, how it was designed. You are not encouraged to make those binary choices. I think that leaves an audience in an interesting place of wondering, "How do I feel about this? How do I feel about these characters? Am I getting closer to them? Am I getting further from them?" It's just a more interactive kind of experience.
What about the film medium do you think lends itself to this story, especially since we're taking it from prose fiction to the big screen?
I think anytime you have characters on the road, you have an interesting relationship between the figures in the landscape and the landscape. It was interesting to write a road film that was naturalistic in the sense that it seemed to behave like a road trip behaves, which is that there are people you meet once. There are dead ends. There are false starts. There's wasted momentum. There's boredom. All of those things are a really important part of a road trip. I think having them in the film means that the film is, first of all, not structured in a conventional way... When people say it roams and meanders, that was by design, so you would feel like there wasn't a clear ending to this journey. They were just unpacking one another throughout their travels. For me, that [was] the part of writing this that came the most. That was the most surprising to me. There are times when the road film aspect of it really steps in front of everything else. I wasn't expecting that given the notoriousness of the other things that happened in the film, but when I watch it, it does feel to me like a road trip feels.
Bones and All premieres in theaters on Nov. 23.