A limited-edition Japanese deluxe brochure, released alongside the local home media editions of Call Me by Your Name, offers an unusually intimate look at the production. The booklet brings together hundreds of behind-the-scenes photographs taken during the shoot and offer rare glimpses from the set, often accompanied by brief comments from the cast or the director.
Before filming properly began, Luca Guadagnino spent two days sitting down with the cast to read through the script together.
Michael Stuhlbarg later spoke about being taken with Luca’s idea of how he wanted to tell the story, with a strong sense of lightness, humour, and buoyancy.
“Luca’s idea of how he wanted to tell his story, with a great spirit of lightness and humor and buoyancy and fun… If you look at the text on the page, it could be taken as onerous, heavy, or sullen in places. I loved his ideas about it being one of those utopian versions of one of those summers you had when, if you were lucky in life, you meet somebody special or fall in love for the first time, or discover something about yourself that is pivotal and true to yourself. That’s where it started, this great sense of laughter and light and love and an immediate affinity with the people I got to play with. Luca knew what he was looking for.”
That sense of ease and trust would carry through the entire shoot.
1. Disco scene
Armie Hammer later described the disco scene as one of the most uncomfortable days of filming:
“I hated that day. That’s one of the hardest days I’ve ever had of filming because there’s no music… so it will start and it will be like [hums the beginning of Love My Way] and then they’ll turn off all the volume and I’m just like dancing… and then there’s like 75 background artists all just like watching… and all the crew is watching and I’m dancing to like nothing and silently and in my head I’m just like screaming ‘I hate this, I hate this so much’… I look over at Timmy and he’d be off camera dancing like having his own good time and I was like ‘now I hate him.’ It was terrible.”
Watching the finished scene, it’s almost impossible to imagine how awkward it felt in the moment.
2. Excavations in Sirmione
For Timothée Chalamet, the archaeological scenes in Sirmione were among the most memorable moments of the shoot:
“This was one of my favorite moments of the shoot. […] I remember Armie and I found that moment as Armie picked it (the arm) up and Luca said ‘That’s great, let’s keep it and just say tregua’ — which means truce.”
Another memory from the same location stayed with him:
“We got boated out to the distance first before they got to bring the camera, so it was really a lovely moment when we just spent an hour on the water, in that boat, just rocking back and forth with Armie.”
3. Is it better to speak or to die?
This quiet scene carried a very personal resonance for Timothée:
“I remember shooting the scene and Amira running her hand through my hair and thinking that’s exactly what a mother would do, that’s exactly what my mom would do.”
Small gestures like this helped ground the emotional reality of the film.
4. the Pool
The seemingly natural pool where Elio and Oliver bathe was, in fact, entirely constructed for the film. Production designer Samuel Deshors explained:
“The fountain/trough in which Elio and Oliver bathe was entirely built — it’s a concrete structure finished with recovered stone. We selected some granite trays, some very big flat stones, some bricks and carved stone with a materials specialist. It was a big site, our biggest intervention in the natural world.”
5. Il duce!
One of the film’s most memorable background moments involved a local woman who owned the house used in the scene. When Luca Guadagnino approached her to ask permission to film there, he found her so compelling that he invited her to appear in the movie.
Armie Hammer later summed up the moment in his own way:
“She said no fuckboi’s.”
Sometimes the most unforgettable details come from the people already there.
Image source: Call Me by Your Name Japanese deluxe brochure / photo book
Read the follow-up: 5 More Behind-the-Scenes Moments from Call Me by Your Name