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"Call Me By Your Name" Director: I Intentionally Didn't Include Any Gay Sex Scenes

"The tone would’ve been very different from what I was looking for."

Luca Guadagnino, the director of the highly anticipated gay romance, Call Me By Your Name, spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about adapting the beloved book for the screen, including how he actually wasn't "interested at all" in including sex scenes in the film.

George Pimentel/Getty Images for Sundance Film Festival

PARK CITY, UT - JANUARY 22: Luca Guadagnino, Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Walter Fasano attend the "Call Me By Your Name" Premiere on day 4 of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival at Eccles Center Theatre on January 22, 2017 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by George Pimentel/Getty Images for Sundance Film Festival)

"The tone would’ve been very different from what I was looking for. I wanted the audience to completely rely on the emotional travel of these people and feel first love," he explained.

"I didn’t want the audience to find any difference or discrimination toward these characters. It was important to me to create this powerful universality, because the whole idea of the movie is that the other person makes you beautiful — enlightens you, elevates you. The other is often confronted with rejection, fear or a sense of dread, but the welcoming of the other is a fantastic thing to do, particularly in this historical moment."

Fans of the book might be worried about the removal of the memorable peach scene from the novel. Even though Guadagnino called the scene "legendary" in the book, he was unsure if it would fit in the adaptation.

"[It] struck me so much as un-filmable, but also, I hate to be defined as coy," he said. "I don't want to be coy, shy or coward. So it was like, let's take the bull by the horns and shoot it. They went for it "on a day that was endless because we were running late, [after we] shot 13 or 14 hours."

Sony Pictures Classics

Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer appear in Call Me by Your Name by Luca Guadagnino, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. © 2016 Sundance Institute.

Call Me By Your Name premiered at Sundance earlier this year to wide critical acclaim, and now it is was recently announced as part of the main lineup at this year's New York Film Festival. Could it be this year's Moonlight? Sony Pictures Classics is placing its bets on it with a prime awards season wide release date of Nov. 24.

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