Rediscovering Peter Hujar: Ira Sachs and Ben Whishaw illuminate a lost conversation at Sundance
At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, queer cinema took a deeply introspective turn with the premiere of Peter Hujar’s Day, a new film from director Ira Sachs. A quiet yet captivating meditation on memory, art, and queer friendship, the film stars Ben Whishaw as the celebrated photographer Peter Hujar, offering audiences a rare and intimate glimpse into his world.
The film is based on a word-for-word transcript of a 1974 conversation between Hujar and his close friend, writer Linda Rosenkrantz (played by Rebecca Hall). Originally meant for a book project that never came to fruition, the conversation — where Rosenkrantz asks Hujar to recall every detail of his previous day — was believed lost until it resurfaced in New York’s Morgan Library in 2019. Pieces of the dialogue were later published in a 2021 book, catching the attention of Sachs, who saw in it a cinematic opportunity unlike any other.
“It felt like a great window into a time and a friendship,” Sachs shared during a post-screening Q&A in Park City. “Ben [Whishaw] and I share an interest in a lot of things, including this history, Peter’s work, and people who are trying things differently. So I thought we could take a risk together on this.”
And a risk it was. With 55 pages of dialogue to deliver, Whishaw undertook what he called one of the most challenging performances of his career. “It was really difficult to learn,” he admitted. “It’s like trying to memorize someone else’s improvisation—because it wasn’t originally written as a script but captured as real speech, full of its own rhythms and hesitations.” Hall, meanwhile, had only three pages of dialogue, serving primarily as an attentive listener—a crucial counterbalance to Whishaw’s extensive monologue. “Their tasks were very different,” Sachs noted. “Listening is as much an art as speaking.”
For Sachs, bringing Peter Hujar’s Day to life was not just about recreating a moment in time, but about preserving the legacy of an artist who remains pivotal to queer history. Hujar, known for his striking black-and-white portraits of LGBTQ+ icons, drag performers, and downtown New York’s underground scene, captured the vulnerability and defiant beauty of a generation. Though his work would later gain the recognition it deserved, he passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1987, before seeing his full impact realized.
The film’s minimalistic approach — almost theatrical in its execution — allows Whishaw to fully embody Hujar’s essence, not just through his words but through the pauses, gestures, and silences in between. “Ben makes every word valuable,” Sachs said in a post-screening discussion. “Every word counts, and he conveys that.”
For Utah’s LGBTQ+ filmgoers and artists, Peter Hujar’s Day resonates as more than a historical curiosity. It speaks to the enduring importance of queer voices, the power of remembering, and the necessity of preserving our stories before they fade.
