ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Did you read the book or the script first?SUFJAN STEVENS:The book.
So I wrote the two new songs based on the book.
Had you been approached about this before?
Everett Collection
I feel like the music often feels almost manipulative in a way.
I don’t know how he gets away with it.
You said you feel like many film soundtracks are manipulative.
It’s a difficult task.
I think I approached it without even thinking about how it would be used in the film.
And I hadn’t seen anything.
I hadn’t seen any of the film at all when I wrote it.
I wrote it really quickly.
I wrote both of the songs in a day.
Let’s go back to when you first read the book and you decided you wanted to do this.
It was a real, beautiful, sublime romance.
I wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t a Luca Guadagnino film.
I really trusted him and had such great respect for his work.
So much of the movie is about first love and the excitement of that and young romance in itself.
Did you bring your own experiences to the surface to write these songs?Oh yeah.
Those experiences never leave us.
I was just conjuring my own experiences of summer camp and love and attraction.
I’m always fascinated with the sublime nature of love in every kind of manifestation.
It comes in all these forms.
Their attraction, it encompasses all of that.
It’s so beautiful.
These things, they all trigger many different things within us.
It’s really cool.
Did Luca give you specific assignments, like what kind of scenes he wanted you to write songs for?
I had nothing to say about how they were used.
What about it do you think works?I think it works because Timothee Chalamet is incredible.
He’s so immersed in that role.
I think that’s why it works.
I don’t even know if he needs the song.
[Laughs] I was really moved.
It’s such an incredible scene.
Luca came to you with “Futile Devices” and said he wanted to use it in the movie.
That’s a good question.
But I think it’s going to be a long time before I have another record.
I just don’t feel any pressure right now to make a new record yet.
I need to take some time and finish a lot of these side projects and hobby projects.
