Daniel Radcliffe, the talented star of the popular Harry Potter movie series, has been in the media as of late for his roll as Allen Ginsberg in the movie "Kill Your Darlings" which features a gay love scene. The movie is about beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1944 and a murder that brings together other writers of the beat generation in in his college class at Columbia University, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Burroughs is played by Ben Foster and Kerouac played by Jack Huston.
E! News reports that there are multiple sex scenes in the movie but the man-on-man sex scene in the movie is particularly steamy. The acclaimed movie that premiered at Sundance Film Festival was directed by John Krokidas. Radcliffe said to E! News about the scene that "It was something new. But you know what, we shot that whole scene in maybe an hour and a half so it was incredibly fast-paced. I didn't really have time to stop to think and worry about it."
He added "John was very helpful in furnishing me with a lot of graphic detail of what I would be experiencing at the various stages."
E! News said a friend of the director played the sailor that Allen Ginsberg sleeps with in the scene. "We were able to hang out a little bit on set and get to know each other a little bit, which I think is important when you're doing a scene so intimate," Radcliffe said to E! News. "You have to feel like you're both in it together."
The Telegraph reports that much of the film's focus is on Ginsberg's lifestyle which included experimentation with alcohol and drugs as well as sexual relationships with men.
Radcliffe said to MTV "it's interesting that the ['gay scenes'] are deemed shocking. For me, there's something very strange about that because we see straight sex scenes all the time. We've seen gay sex scenes before. I don't know what a gay sex scene should be any more shocking than a straight sex scene."
Radcliffe mentioned to MTV that he thinks the barrage of questions about the sex scene and the attention put on it has been strange.
"What weirded me out the most last night was people were asking me all these questions about gay sex scenes. I was like, "You know I did "Equus?" Some people are asking me questions like this is a more shocking subject, which is so strange."
"Equus" was a play that Radcliffe starred in that was about a man sexually attracted to horses and he performed nude on stage.
Allen Ginsberg is one of the most famous and most awarded American poets in history."Howl" was another movie made about him played by James Franco.
"I was daunted by taking on such a great figure," Radcliffe said to The BBC, "but we're not copying anything that's gone before.
"This actually centres on a true story that happened before the Beat poets were even famous. So we're catching up with them when they're 18 or so and at college together."
The BBC reported that Radcliffe auditioned for the roll nearly four years ago. Krokidas said that Radcliffe did a great job because "Ginsberg is this shy seventeen year old kid who has to please everybody, but there was so much more to him inside. He was a poet, and he was a radical, and he felt he had something to prove. Somehow I just thought that would speak to Dan."
