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" PARK CITY, Utah \u2014 Murder, history, gay sex, and literary royality: Kill Your Darlings is practically a search-optimized killer app at the Sundance Film Festival, and one of the most successful premieres of the opening weekend here. The film is essentially the origin story of the Beats: the story of how a very young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), and William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) all came to know each other through the beguiling, rich-kid connector Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan). Luckily, John Krokidas&amp;#039;s debut film is low on pretension and, instead, bridles the wild, immature energy of these college-aged kids and rides it into a taut tale of murder, based on the real-life, little-told story of Carr and an obsessive admirer. To say the least, it&amp;#039;s a major departure for the artist formerly known as Harry Potter, who plays a young Ginsberg finding his voice, and his sexual mojo. We chatted with Daniel Radcliffe about his life post-Potter and, as he says, &amp;quot;the boy wizard having had his knees pinned behind his ears.&amp;quot; ESQUIRE.COM: So, Sundance is very different from the Harry Potter universe. What&amp;#039;s surprised you the most? DANIEL RADCLIFFE: I suppose the sort of gifting-suite things, which are just bizarre. Where people want to give you scarves and stuff. Yesterday, I brushed up against a phone, and a woman appeared to tell me everything I wanted to know. I mean, I have a phone. I&amp;#039;m not looking for a new one no matter how glamorous it may be. And there are a lot of paparazzi. But it&amp;#039;s been a wonderful weekend. It&amp;#039;s lovely to have a film that everyone&amp;#039;s really excited about.  ESQ: I was crazy about the Beats as a teen. And since I work in magazines, I&amp;#039;m sometimes haunted by that Ginsberg line, &amp;quot;Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time magazine? I&amp;#039;m obsessed by Time. I read it every week.&amp;quot; Do you have a favorite line?  DR: Ben Foster was a massive William S. Burroughs fan, but I was just aware of and enjoyed his poetry to a degree. I don&amp;#039;t have a favorite line, but I have a favorite poem: &amp;quot;Kaddish,&amp;quot; because of the way your knowledge of his life and his mother informs the way you read his poetry. It&amp;#039;s a real heartbreaker.  ESQ: In this film, a young Ginsberg shakes off his more conservative life and embraces a wild new identity. Are you having a similar experience, leaving Harry Potter?  DR: You know, I didn&amp;#039;t think of that at first, but John [Krokidas], the director, he thought of that long before I did, and it&amp;#039;s one of the reasons he thought I was suited to this part \u2014 because he thought I was living through a real-life arc of this journey. Someone asked me if it was intimidating to play the Beats, and it is intimidating, but it&amp;#039;s not daunting if you stop thinking of them as the Beats, and think of them as people going on a very universal journey of self-discovery and joy and then responsibility. You need to experience both to find out who you are. When you&amp;#039;re seventeen to early twenties, that&amp;#039;s the time you&amp;#039;re trying to work out who you are. If you&amp;#039;re trying to make some kind of artistic or creative impact, that&amp;#039;s the age when you start to figure out how to do that. As much as it can be a source of great frustration, from that frustration you can build ambition. ESQ: Are you feeling any sort of ambition you didn&amp;#039;t feel, say, five years ago?  DR: Yes. Not everyone has to run around New York City and do drugs and be involved with a murderer. But, yes, leaving Potter, working on new things \u2014 more than anything what it&amp;#039;s confirmed is how much I want to direct. I want to write, too, but that&amp;#039;s what I know now I didn&amp;#039;t know five years ago.  ESQ: When you direct a film, would it be more likely to be big commercial thriller, or the kind of film that ends up here at Sundance? DR: I think Sundance is probably the most likely option. My taste in the films I&amp;#039;ve taken as an actor is similar to what I&amp;#039;d do a director or writer: all quite odd, challenging stuff, slightly off-the-wall. ESQ: I&amp;#039;m imagining you reading Ginsberg on the set of Harry Potter. Did you feel like you were outgrowing that world toward the end? DR: Not particularly \u2014 we were not made to feel like kids when we were 19, 20, 21. If I was reading Ginsberg, cool. But certainly I know what you&amp;#039;re saying. It&amp;#039;s almost like I wouldn&amp;#039;t say I outgrew Potter while I was there, but your capacity to learn and grow after a while when you&amp;#039;ve been in one environment for a very long time and very comfortable there, decreases. What I&amp;#039;ve learned is there has to be an element of fear, or anxiety that it might not turn out okay.  ESQ: Everyone&amp;#039;s talking about your gay sex scene with Dane DeHaan. But you seem very cool about it. You&amp;#039;ve already gotten naked onstage in Equus. You don&amp;#039;t seem squeamish about sex. DR: I&amp;#039;m of the opinion: You take the job, you read the script. I was on set once for a nude scene with an actress who knew what was going on and then had a panic about the sex scene. I remember thinking, You knew this was coming and now you&amp;#039;re slowing down the shoot. It&amp;#039;s as if I&amp;#039;d read this script, then said, on set, &amp;quot;Oh, actually can we just kiss and cuddle?&amp;quot; like an idiot. &amp;quot;Can I keep my trousers on for the sex scene?&amp;quot; I mean, it&amp;#039;s in the script. It&amp;#039;s in the script, you take the job. I&amp;#039;m not massively squeamish about sex at all. It happens. ESQ: And yet people are still shocked by Harry Potter doing it. DR: It&amp;#039;s shocking by the sheer fact that it&amp;#039;s me. Otherwise, it&amp;#039;s entirely unshocking that I&amp;#039;m playing Allen Ginsberg in a film about self and sexual discovery, and there&amp;#039;s a sex scene. As my costar Dane DeHaan said, people are often attracted to each other and people who are attracted to each other often want to have sex. I&amp;#039;m just happy that it&amp;#039;s a well-done scene. John had never seen the version of that scene that he wanted: gay sex in a film that felt very real. He wanted to achieve that and he did. It&amp;#039;s also led to friends texting me amusing lines from reviews, which have really made me laugh. ESQ: Like what? DR: One very cool one said something like, &amp;quot;The sex scene will probably be called graphic because it&amp;#039;s between two men, but it isn&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; Then there was one about the boy wizard having had his knees pinned behind his ears. ESQ: I&amp;#039;ve heard some jokes about your &amp;quot;magic wand.&amp;quot; DR: Yes, John Krokidas made that joke at the Q&amp;amp;amp;A, and I told Dane, &amp;quot;Oh, no, we&amp;#039;re going to hear that line to the end of the word.&amp;quot; ESQ: I heard that there was full-frontal footage, but it was left on the cutting-room floor. DR: The amount of nudity in the film could vary quite a lot. But it&amp;#039;s important to have more people see the film. And we&amp;#039;d have different ratings with more penises in this film. Excuse the pun, but it&amp;#039;s not the point of the thing. The close-ups of my face, that&amp;#039;s where the story is being told. There&amp;#039;s no full-frontal nudity in the end, but we did our jobs. ESQ: You&amp;#039;re not the only franchise star transitioning to more artsy films. Do you feel a rivalry there? Ever see Robert Pattinson getting great roles and think, He was once the kid in the background of my scenes at Hogwarts? DR: With Rob, I look at people and I think it&amp;#039;s easy to spot the ones who are in it for the right reasons, who want careers with longevity. What&amp;#039;s interesting about mine and Rob&amp;#039;s scenario is that Potter and Twilight are what made us, but Jennifer Lawrence had an Oscar nomination before Hunger Games. Mentally, we&amp;#039;re rooting for each other. Franchises aren&amp;#039;t to be avoided. They can be exciting and they give you opportunities to do other films. And it&amp;#039;s always pleasing to see it&amp;#039;s possible to come out of a franchise, have a career, and be respected, when you see these other actors. ESQ: And your costar Dane DeHaan is about to play Harry Osborne in the Spider-Man franchise. DR: People ask me if I have advice \u2014 he doesn&amp;#039;t need any advice. This idea that starring in a franchise is more intimidating and an independent film actor will just shit his bricks on a big set is just ridiculous.  SUNDANCE 2013: Read More on The Culture Blog Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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