James Ivory Talks Winning the Oscar, His Cool Shirt & That Peach Scene

When James Ivory won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay last month for "Call Me By Your Name," he thanked his "life partners who are gone": the screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and the producer Ismail Merchant. It was a fitting tribute to the trio who, with Ivory directing, had collaborated on some of the best-received literary adaptations of the past forty years, including "A Room With a View," "The Remains of the Day," "The Europeans," "Howards End," and "Maurice." Just the mention of "Merchant/Ivory" brings to mind smart, well-acted, meticulously detailed filmmaking that seems to have vanished from the current scene.

This was Ivory's fourth nomination - he had three previous noms for Best Director - which made his win at the age of 89 so gratifying. (He is the oldest winner of a competitive Oscar.) He had been the front-runner in the Adapted Screenplay category since "Call Me By Your Name" first turned heads at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2017. During award season Ivory's adaptation of André Aciman's novel won a slew of awards, including a BAFTA and one from the Writers Guild.

Set in Italy during the summer of 1983, his screenplay follows the romance between Elio, a precocious 17-year old (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer), a somewhat older American studying with the younger man's father. Directed by Luca Guadagnino, "Call Me By Your Name" became the first breakout gay film since "Brokeback Mountain" more than a decade ago, scoring Oscar nominations for Ivory, actor Timothée Chalamet, music score and Picture. Ivory was the sole winner.

Previously Ivory had made one film with gay themes - "Maurice," his 1987 adaptation of E.M. Forster's posthumous novel. Though an art house success, it was coolly received by critics and is considered ahead of its time in its matter-of-fact depiction of its titular character's struggle with his sexuality in Edwardian England. The film was the closest that Ivory, who is gay and was in a relationship with Merchant from the 1960s until his death in 2005, came to addressing gay issues on film. The pair never publicly acknowledged their relationship (it was revealed after Merchant's death). When asked recently by the Guardian about this, Ivory said Merchant's family life - he was an Indian Muslim from a conservative family - kept them from discussing their personal life publicly. "It's not the sort of thing he was going to broadcast. Since we were so close and lived most of our lives together, I wasn't about to undermine him," Ivory explained.

With "Call Me By Your Name" now out on DVD and streaming, EDGE spoke with Ivory from his home in upstate New York about how he got involved in the film, its lack of nudity and how he came to write the film's famous peach scene.

EDGE: Congratulations on your win. When it did happen were you surprised at all?

James Ivory: In some ways, yes. Initially when everybody started talking about the fact that it seemed likely I would win, I began to be a little bit surprised because it was the first screenplay I had written entirely on my own. The fact that I started to get other prizes for it from other sources, such as the Writers Guild, I was somewhat very surprised and pleased obviously. Then as time went on and more and more newspaper critics came out and said it is their favorite screenplay and predicted I would win (the Oscar). So it wasn't really a surprise, though things can go terribly wrong at the Oscars as we know; and I was very happy. But I don't think I was surprised as some people.

EDGE: Where did you put it?

James Ivory: I brought it back to New York and it is in my apartment on a windowsill. Anybody looking across from another apartment building and the sun is shining they will see it and say, gosh. Is that an Oscar over there? They won't know who lived there but they certainly know it is an Oscar. It is the most famous statue in the world. And it is heavy. If I had two of them they would be exactly perfect for working out. They are exactly the right weight.

EDGE: You unquestionably pulled a fashion coup James Ivory: That came about through Xavier Saloman who is the main curator at the Frick Collection in New York. And he has a friend in England who is an artist who has done drawings on shirts. And so he got together with a friend, an artist named Andrew Mania, and he said he would do it. I was in London for the BAFTAs and he came with a sample. We tried it on and decided what we needed to do, like where to put the studs and those kind of things. Then he went off and came back with the final one, and that" s="" what="" I="" wore.="" I="" gave="" it="" to="" Timothée.="" It="" is="" not="" going="" to="" fit="" him,="" but="" maybe="" he'll="" grow="" into="" it.

EDGE: In an earlier interview you said that one reason you wanted to do the screenplay was that when you read the novel you were very impressed by the character of Elio Perlman, the teenager from the novel?

James Ivory: I did. But I liked the character of Oliver as well. I liked them both very much. I just generally liked the story and the scenes - there are very good scenes in the novel. That is what draws you to any novel. Are there scenes that you would like to direct and would they be fun to do? And would you get something from doing them? I felt that I would from that book. There was a great resemblance to "A Room With a View" about it. Again there was a love affair that might come okay, but it might not. And it was set in Italy during the summer and featured two young people. And "A Room With a View" had a similar destiny as a film because it was extremely popular, and played everywhere in the world, and so on, as this one has.

So I just thought it would be a good thing to do. But I was not brought into it at first to direct or anything. I was brought in because the owners of the film rights to that book are my neighbors in upstate New York. And one of them is the agent for Timothée Chalamet. So they came to me fairly early on and asked me if I would be an executive producer on the film if they could get it together. If I could be an executive producer that might help them raise the money. Quite a lot of time passed before they came back to me when they asked if I would co-direct with Luca Guadagnino. They had trouble finding a director for it but finally they got together with Luca, I think because of Tilda Swinton, who had worked with him. And he wanted to do it, but was uncertain about doing it alone - I don't know, I never knew what his motives were; but in any case we were co-directors. And so when that happened I said I wanted to write the screenplay for it. That's what I did. Ultimately I didn't co-direct it, but it was my screenplay they used.

EDGE: Putting your producer hat on, were you surprised the movie was made at all?

James Ivory: Not really. I figured it would. I wasn't counting on it - you just don't on anything really that is special or personal. But it didn't require an enormous budget and it didn't have to be loaded down with huge stars with great fees. I knew that the main part was going to be played by Timothée who is just starting out. I wasn't all that surprised that they got it together.

EDGE: In an interview, Armie Hammer said he was nervous with nudity in original script? How much nudity was there?

James Ivory: Really the same that was in "Maurice." That is to say, if you are going to do love scenes, whether heterosexual or homosexual or whatever, and people are just about to make love or just have made love, I think it looks phony to cover them up and have sheets be cleverly arranged and all that kind of thing. I always believe just let people walk around and what needs to be seen, let it be seen, as in "A Room With a View" when the guys are running around the park. That was my feeling about it. And that was the kind of nudity it would have had. There was never going to be any shots of actual sex. There was never anything planned like that. And Luca was happy to go along with that. We sat in the very room I am sitting in now and talked about how we would do it. Later on he made it sound like an aesthetic decision not to do it, which was not the case. Then it turned out the two guys had in their contract that they would not have to do any frontal nudity and that's a common thing in this country. Not so in Europe, men are constantly naked in movies in Europe and nobody cares. But here it is a big deal and it was in their contract, so that was that.

EDGE: The scene in the book that must have been difficult to find a way to put on the screen was the one with Elio and the peach. Was it difficult for you to conceive of it for the screen?

James Ivory: Well, you had to imagine how it would be. I had to think it out. It was more or less described in the novel so it wasn't so strange. It's funny because when I told people I was adapting the novel, they would say, I hope you have that peach scene; then other people said, I hope you are not going to have the peach scene. I thought, well let's have it. It all depended completely on the size of the peach. It had to be fairly large. It couldn't be a little peach. Then I saw some extraordinary peaches in Oregon which would have been perfect. So that was about the time I was writing the scene - I use to live in Oregon where I go every summer and where there are these extraordinarily large peaches, so it wasn't hard to imagine.

EDGE: Also, did you expand on the role Elio's parents had from the novel? I read where you wrote a scene where they talk about their son's relationship...

James Ivory: I wrote two scenes for the parents. One is early on and the other later on in the film where they talk about the affair without being judgmental. The mother was a little bit worried because there were all these terrible stories about this new disease that has happened and her husband told her not to worry. Then she asked what do they do, and he said, "just use your imagination." But when André Aciman read the script he said that he didn't want the mother to know, so I went along with it. That was reasonable. He was the author of the book. The scenes to some extent did exist, were shot, but not quite as I had written them and with the mother probably not knowing.

EDGE: Watching the film I wondered why there wasn't a mention of the AIDS crisis. Oliver was from New York where it was happening...

James Ivory: Well, it was suppose to be 1983, isn't it? It wasn't this terrible thing yet in 1983. In fact it is obliquely referred to because when the two boys are about to have sex one of them - I am not sure who says it - asks are you "okay?" Referring to that, obviously. That's in the novel, but I didn't put it in the screenplay.

EDGE: Why after the success of "A Room With a View" did you choose to do "Maurice?" You likely could have done anything, yet chose another Forster novel, this one not published during his lifetime that dealt with its titular character's sexual conflict. Was this a passion project for you?

James Ivory: It wasn't that much of a passion project. It came right after "A Room With a View" and I was reading all of Forster's books. I reread "Maurice" and thought this is the other side of the coin of "A Room With a View." It is also about young people who are leading muddled lives and ready to live a lie, to allow a lie to form their lives and not go with their emotions. I thought that was as true today as it was then. And I put it to Ismail Merchant and he read it and we decided to make it. It was at the point when we could make anything we wanted just about because we had just had an enormous success with "A Room with a View." So we made it. And nobody said we shouldn't. Nobody came forward and said with the subject matter, you ought to think twice. Nothing like that happened. The executors of Forster's estate at Kings College in Cambridge were surprised we wanted to make it. They thought it wasn't his best book; and in fact is the least considered of all his books. Not because of the subject matter, but because of its literary value, (they felt) it might harm his reputation as an author. But then they also agreed because they were happy with what we did with "A Room With a View" and they knew we weren't going to mess it up. But I wouldn't quite call it a passion project. I mean all of my films are passion projects when you come right down to it.

EDGE: You have been working on an adaptation of a Shakespeare play, "Richard II." How is that going?

James Ivory: That's a passion project if there ever there was. I just hope to get it made. People keep reading the script with renewed interest these days so let's hope something happens with it.

"Call Me By Your Name" is now available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital.
For more information, visit the film's website.