Ira Sachs on Peter Hujar’s Day and Creativity as a Human Act

Peter Hogar Day It began, as many great works of art do, with a direct message. Director: Ira Sachs (Corridors, Delta) had just finished reading a recently discovered interview between the late portrait photographer Peter Hujar and writer Linda Rosencrantz that took place in 1974. This dialogue—a conversation about creative concerns, complete with the mundanity of everyday life—has been published as a book in 2022.

So Sachs decided to message Rosencrantz on Instagram about what would eventually become a film adaptation starring Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall as Peter and Linda. Deceptively simple and surprisingly poignant, Peter Hogar Day He recreates the interview over the course of one day, in one beautiful West Village apartment.

Edge I spoke with Sachs about the challenges of making such a small idea feel expansive and cinematic.

Edge: You’ve mentioned that the genesis of the film started with you DMing Linda Rosenkrantz on Instagram. What does that look like?

Ira Sachs: I didn’t do any research, so the thing that was really surprising was maybe a month later when I realized she was 89 and then I was DMing her. But it was a casual back and forth. She’s great at it, and we’ve become very close in a very touching way – in a way that I think reflects something about her relationship with Peter, actually. Not only do we share this work, but also in a way – I mean, I don’t think I remind her of Peter, but I feel like she reminds me, as the film does, of the special nature of straight women and gay men, and their friendships. Like, it’s a certain type of friendship that I know well. And I cherish it.

Is this how projects usually start? You just, like, direct messaged a cool guy?

I start projects with an idea that I feel confident following through. So, in a way, yes.

At what point did you know this interview would make a good movie?

On the last page. Because I was so moved by the images and feeling that Peter conveyed through his description of three o’clock in the morning, on the corner of Second Avenue and Twelfth Street, looking out over the city and listening to the prostitutes on the street below. I felt like that was a cinematic image and a cinematic moment.

And so, the challenge all along was like, “Oh, I need to make that last minute really count.” I think all films are made at the last minute. And to realize that that final moment of the film, for me, was a 1974 moment but also full of loss and melancholy and beauty.

When you say loss, loss of what?

I can say simply lose that time. But I think, more specifically, I thought and tried not to think too much about Peter’s death 17 years later from AIDS, and that the candle had gone out.

This is probably top of mind, because we’re in biopic season, but what drives you to take such an embedded, embedded approach to Peter’s life?

Well, I never thought about doing anything else. I wasn’t interested in making a biopic about Peter Hujar. I was interested in making a film inspired by this private conversation between Peter and Linda. What the text had for me was all the intimacy and authenticity that I always look for. For example, in all my work, I only hope to achieve one moment as intimate as Linda and Peter’s conversation.

Because the text is verbatim, it really feels like spending a long afternoon with a close friend. He also conveys the details of that time and his life very viscerally – you know, he’s like Proust, really. It’s really intensely authentic.

The thing that no one notices about Hogar is that he is an exceptional storyteller. There is something very extraordinary about his use of language and imagery that I think is unique.

The film takes place in one apartment over the course of one day. But I was really impressed that he never felt claustrophobic. It never feels like a play either. Peter Hogar Day It looks like a movie. But were you worried about feeling too small?

I was. The limits, the concept at one point — about a month before we started shooting — seemed like they were insurmountable, to be honest. “Oh, that was a mistake,” I thought.

But it was really helpful to free myself from reality, and also from the physical reality of the conversation itself, which means two people at the table talking for an hour and a half. I’ve just decided that my version will be completely different and will instead consist of 23 scenes over 12 hours.

When you create this script, you already have all the dialogue. What was it like putting the rest together?

I spent a few weeks with two backup actors and my cinematographer, Alex Ashe, in an apartment at Westbeth in the West Village, which had been donated. So we had access to this space, and I spent time photographing these models at different times of the day, in different locations. Ultimately, the sequence of those images became a guide for how to shoot the film. Really, there was something completely random about what people talked about at certain moments in the film. It wasn’t like I think, “Oh, they’re talking about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.” They should do it on the bed. It was literally, now there has to be a cut, because the film needs to conserve energy.

I took a lot of things from the movie about creativity. But earlier, you said it’s a little bit about the things that we’ve lost, like this era that we’ve lost. To what extent do you think about the setting of this film in the modern era or what it is like to watch it today?

I find, as an audience member, that there is this surprising and unexpected content in the film, which is the window it provides into how difficult it is to make art. That, to me, is something I’m happy to hear any day of the week. I feel like it’s kind of a circular conversation that I have as an artist on a regular basis, which is between trust and doubt. I oscillate very quickly between the two in the same way that Peter wonders whether he took a good photo of Allen Ginsberg, or whether he took a bad photo of Allen Ginsberg? And I love that even Peter Hujar – who we now revere and revere as this great photographer – even Peter Hujar lived under constant doubt at that time.

And for me, this is very convenient. It’s really the impact of the movie right now. That’s how it’s received now. This is not a film that looks back with nostalgia.

Constant doubt and also worry about how to make ends meet.

Yes yes. I think the issue of sustainability is one that every one of us faces with horror and hope at times.

Peter Hugar’s Day is in theaters from Friday, November 7.