Gregg Araki on sex, film and queer resistance: ‘All the terrible shit in the world is because of sexual repression’
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- "I Want Your Sex" opens on 700 US screens, described as Araki's widest-ever release and a "stunning figure for an independent film," wider than recent films by indie veterans Nicolas Winding Refn and Jim Jarmusch.
- Cooper Hoffman stars as Elliot opposite Olivia Wilde as the sexually carnivorous artist Erika, with Charli xcx, Johnny Knoxville, Margaret Cho, and Mason Gooding in supporting roles.
- Araki reworked the script after its original "comic 50 Shades of Grey" concept sat on ice post-2014; he flipped a female-sub/male-dom dynamic to a male-sub/female-dom one after feeling uncomfortable with the original imagery in the wake of #MeToo.
- Araki argues American sexual attitudes are "worse than they've ever been," citing "puritanical tyranny, repression and cancelling of trans people," and blames much of "the terrible shit in the world" on "this weird sexual repression."
- Araki calls Babygirl not actually sex-positive — saying Nicole Kidman's character "gets punished for exploring her own desires" — while defending Heated Rivalry's sex scenes as "well-handled and not really watered down."
- A GLAAD report found LGBTQ+ inclusion at a three-year low in films from the 10 largest distributors, though Araki counters that Cannes 2025 was "a bonanza of queer movies" and that younger cinephiles remain hungry for auteur-driven work.
- The film doubles as a satire of the commercial art world: Erika's gallery is full of garish pop-feminist sculptures that Araki describes as bought by "a finance bro trying to impress his co-workers with his hip bona fides."
Why it matters: For a 40-year veteran of New Queer Cinema, hitting 700 screens is a commercial breakthrough for explicitly queer, sexually frank independent film — yet Araki's celebration is shadowed by a GLAAD finding that LGBTQ+ inclusion at the 10 largest studios has fallen to a three-year low. The contrast underlines where provocative queer storytelling is actually scaling: outside the studio system, on Letterboxd-driven indie screens.
