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The James Franco Project Continues:What It’s Like To Be James Franco’s Professor

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serious crayons:
This is both an interesting second-person first-person piece about how an actor prepares, and a study in how to suggest truths beyond the scope of a text.

AN ACTOR PREPARES
Finding the Beat
Capturing the young Allen Ginsberg, as the author did for this month’s biopic Howl, means tweaked ears, a New Jersey accent, and a thorough understanding of what fueled the Beat poet’s masterpiece—and a landmark 1957 obscenity trial.
By James Franco
September 2010

Allen Ginsberg was a struggling artist until Lawrence Ferlinghetti published his Howl and Other Poems, in 1956. Ginsberg was 30. An obscenity trial in San Francisco, following fast on the heels of publication, served only to bring Ginsberg and his work to wide attention. Fame never made Ginsberg rich, but it did make him a public figure. He read his poetry around the world with his fellow Beats. He became a political activist. Unlike his friend Jack Kerouac, who responded badly to fame and died in his 40s, Ginsberg lived into his 70s, finding a place in the counterculture of the 60s and the punk scene of the 80s. He taught college students until the last year of his life.

But you don’t really need to know most of this to play the young Ginsberg. Young Ginsberg—the Ginsberg who went to Columbia, whose work was read by Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren, who was kicked out of college (and institutionalized) in part because he was gay—is not a familiar character. Everyone has an image of the large-bellied, bearded, balding Buddha figure that Ginsberg became. But to play the young Ginsberg, you, the actor, must be slim and clean-shaven and must dye your hair black—your full head of hair. You must wear thick-framed glasses. You must apply prostheses to your ears to make them stick out.

To play the young Ginsberg you will be required to read his poems in character—and will want to catch the distinctive New Jersey accent (he was from Paterson), and the determined lilt that varies in tone from ironic-tragic to wryly comic. So you will need to listen to recordings, and listen to them a lot. There is little film footage of Ginsberg from this time, but there are plenty of audio recordings. Notice how on the earliest ones his delivery is staid and serious—he even tells hecklers to shut up. On the later recordings, 35 years on, he is loose and funny, a practiced performer. If you are going to play the young Ginsberg, you will want to meld a variety of these readings. If you are completely faithful to the early ones, your performance could be flat. Use the early readings as a model for the scenes where Ginsberg is just starting out. Use the later ones to provide a sense of Ginsberg’s evolution. Regardless, listen to all of the recordings, every day, for months. Walk around New York doing this. Put the recordings on your iPod and walk. Get your voice in tune with his. Don’t worry about people looking at you. In New York, this is not weird.

There are 8-mm. home movies of Ginsberg taken on the Jersey Shore, but they show a boy too young for your needs. The closest thing to the period you want will be the film Pull My Daisy, by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie. It came out in 1959, only three years after Howl. There is no sync sound on the film, only a voice-over by Kerouac, so you won’t hear Ginsberg speak. But you’ll see how he sits. You’ll see his jaunty movements when he walks, dances, moves his arms. The other valuable piece of footage for your purposes is an interview with Ginsberg, filmed at the City Lights Bookstore, in 1965. Granted, this material is more than 10 years after the period you wish to depict. But the gesticulations are the same. Ginsberg loved to talk with his hands.

All of this is the external work on the character. You will also need to know the inner Ginsberg, the developing-artist Ginsberg, the Ginsberg who was earnest, confused, and insecure. His father was a high-school teacher and a poet, though a fairly traditional one in style and content. His mother faced severe mental illness and was lobotomized. It was Ginsberg who authorized the procedure, and the ensuing guilt and sorrow never left him. You can read about all this in “Kaddish,” a poem so personal and deeply sad that Robert Lowell, it is said, once had to excuse himself from a reading, because he would have broken down if he hadn’t. You will need to know that when Ginsberg entered Columbia, in 1943, he was inexperienced, intellectually naïve, and a virgin. His friends Lucien Carr and Jack Kerouac taught him about drinking, about French Symbolist poetry, about culture more generally. An older William Burroughs helped Ginsberg find his way as a gay man in the 1950s, when public models were few. You will also need to know that, while these friendships were at their most intense, Lucien Carr, in a sociopathic haze, murdered his hometown friend and gym teacher, David Kammerer, and threw his body into the Hudson. (Kerouac helped Carr bury the victim’s eyeglasses in Morningside Park.) Later, Burroughs shot his wife in the head, killing her, reportedly while pretending to be William Tell. Events like these will have an effect on a young man—perhaps prompting fears for his own sanity. They will find their way into “Howl,” so if you are going to play the young Ginsberg, above all you will need to know that poem.

You should probably know it anyway.

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2010/09/james-franco-on-howl-201009?printable=true#ixzz0xrMCZfpN

Aloysius J. Gleek:



--- Quote from: serious crayons on August 27, 2010, 09:29:04 pm ---This is both an interesting second-person first-person piece about how an actor prepares, and a study in how to suggest truths beyond the scope of a text.

AN ACTOR PREPARES
Finding the Beat
Capturing the young Allen Ginsberg, as the author did for this month’s biopic Howl, means tweaked ears, a New Jersey accent, and a thorough understanding of what fueled the Beat poet’s masterpiece—and a landmark 1957 obscenity trial.
By James Franco
September 2010

--- End quote ---


Great article--thank you so much, Katherine!
Again, I have to say--young Mr. Franco is not  the average bear (that's as in YOGI Bear, not, you know, bear--

 ;) ::) :laugh:

Aloysius J. Gleek:




--- Quote from: serious crayons on August 27, 2010, 09:29:04 pm ---Unlike his friend Jack Kerouac, who responded badly to fame and died in his 40s, Ginsberg lived into his 70s, finding a place in the counterculture of the 60s and the punk scene of the 80s. He taught college students until the last year of his life.

(....)

Everyone has an image of the large-bellied, bearded, balding Buddha figure that Ginsberg became. But to play the young Ginsberg, you, the actor, must be slim and clean-shaven and must dye your hair black—your full head of hair. You must wear thick-framed glasses. You must apply prostheses to your ears to make them stick out.

--- End quote ---


      


   


   

Aloysius J. Gleek:
 8)


[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIZeJmGpKeg&feature[/youtube]


[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvRxkH8NDUs&feature=channel[/youtube]

Aloysius J. Gleek:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/movies/12ryzik.html?hpw




The New Season Film
The (Extremely) Creative Ferment
of James Franco

James Franco as Allen Ginsberg in “Howl,” which is set for release on Sept. 24.

By MELENA RYZIK
Published: September 8, 2010

VANCOUVER, British Columbia

JAMES FRANCO has prepared for this interview. Overprepared, perhaps, but that wouldn’t be anything new; he loves research. Sitting in his hotel room here last month, where he’s filming the prequel to “Planet of the Apes,” he’d read my Twitter feed and watched some videos I’ve done about music and movies.

“It’s almost as if we’re in a relationship,” Mr. Franco said, crinkling his eyebrows, “where, like, I’m the actor and you’re the director.” He paused, uncrinkled. “And it’s weird because usually when I pick the film or a television show or whatever, I know who the director is going to be, I know what they’ve done in the past, and I choose if I want to work with them. But in this situation I don’t really choose, so I guess the least I can do is find out who you are.” He quoted my Twitter posts back to me for the rest of the day, even though he said he doesn’t use the site himself.

Which is also weird, because Mr. Franco, 32, loves referential commentary and the confluence of media. Lately he has embarked on a quest to be an artist rather than a celebrity, exhibiting his paintings and video installations at galleries and studying for advanced degrees at various colleges, writing short stories and composing poetry, appearing as a menacing artiste named Franco on ABC’s “General Hospital” while still flirting in big-budget movies like “Eat Pray Love.” His cross-cultural meandering has sparked water-cooler chatter on blogs and in print, sometimes with the help of Mr. Franco himself, who has written about it, adding another layer to the post-modern riddle of his shifting persona.

Meta? Or does he, like most Hollywood heartthrobs, just like talking about himself? “I used to not like it,” he said. But a few years ago, at the premiere for “Spider-Man 3” in London — around the time Mr. Franco was having second thoughts about the direction of his career — he discussed interviews with the young British painter Nigel Cooke. “He said, ‘I love it, I can talk about my work all day,’ ” Mr. Franco recalled. “And then it kind of clicked.



James Franco as an agitated Harry Osborn in "Spider-Man 3."


“There’s a certain kind of thought and preparation that goes into his work. I envied that. And so now that I’m engaged with a lot of other things that I’m interested in, I don’t mind talking. It also feels less like I’m just selling a studio’s product and more like I can just have discussions about things that I enjoy.”

Good thing too. In “Howl,” the next movie he is discussing, not selling, Mr. Franco plays the young Allen Ginsberg; for most of his screen time he is giving an interview to an unseen interlocutor. The film, the first feature from the documentarians Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein (“The Celluloid Closet”), is less a biopic than a triptych, moving among the Ginsberg interview, the 1957 obscenity trial that followed the publication of “Howl,” and the reading of the poem in a smoky cafe, interspersed with bright, fanciful animation. It opened this year’s Sundance Film Festival and will be released on Sept. 24.

Mr. Franco met the two filmmakers on the set of “Milk” — its director, Gus Van Sant, is an executive producer of “Howl” — and signed up even before it was financed. “It was a huge boost and gave us a lot of credibility,” Mr. Friedman said of enlisting Mr. Franco.

As the filmmakers raised money, Mr. Franco was able to prepare with his usual gusto: watching interviews, reading biographies, talking to experts, wearing the nerdy Ginsberg glasses (still available at Moscot in New York). His take — that the young poet was an eager communicator even as he was just discovering what he wanted to say — applies to his own path. And it’s clear on screen, where Mr. Franco vibrates with intellectual energy while recognizably laconic in his delivery. “I have joked that he’s a 21st-century beatnik,” Mr. Epstein said of Mr. Franco, “but he really does have that sensibility. He’s really interested and excited about experimentation and exploring the possibilities of how one can be an artist.”

While preparing for “Howl” Mr. Franco was enrolled in master’s programs at New York University (for film) and Columbia University and Brooklyn College (for writing). For months he would walk to class listening to Ginsberg read “Howl” on his iPod. “I’d have the little book with me, and I’d listen to him, and I’d just read along with him to just ingrain that voice in my head,” he said. Mr. Franco has made three short films about poems for school and is at work on a feature about Hart Crane that he will adapt (from Paul L. Mariani’s biography), direct and star in. And he is in his fifth semester in yet another graduate program, for poetry, at Warren Wilson College near Asheville, N.C.



As hard as I work in film," Mr. Franco said, "it's my day job."


Debra Allbery, the director of that program, where students work remotely except for 10 days on campus each semester, declined to talk about Mr. Franco’s writing specifically. “This is a place where he can come be an apprentice like everybody else,” she said. “We worked very hard to protect him here.” But she allowed that he managed to fit in. “As far as the commitment, the focus, the dedication, the skill, he’s right in line,” she said.

Academic overload is not what actors are known for, but Mr. Franco has gone beyond that as well; he is creatively outstretched. His New York gallery debut, “The Dangerous Book Four Boys,” is on view at the Clocktower Gallery in Lower Manhattan. His first book, “Palo Alto,” a story collection set in his California hometown, will be out in October from Scribner.

After that comes “127 Hours,” Danny Boyle’s dramatization of the true story of Aron Ralston, the hiker forced to amputate his own arm after being trapped in a Utah canyon; Mr. Franco again spends much of his screen time alone. This month he begins a Ph.D. program at Yale, for English.

“I shouldn’t say I’m doing so many things, because it starts to sound ridiculous after a while,” Mr. Franco said, rightly. Then he described a few other projects.

In the weeks this summer he spent in Vancouver filming “Caesar: Rise of the Apes” — a title whose campiness drove him to an eye roll — he spent his off time holed up in the hotel, shooting short videos for Sundance or editing those and his other projects with an assistant. He sneaked out only to see “Inception” and “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.” “I like how they get away with making everything about sex, but not having it,” he said of the “Twilight” series. Romantic coyness suits him.

In person Mr. Franco is casual but intense, sharply charismatic. He closes his eyes in thought and grins at his ideas as he describes them, as if he’s in the midst of a particularly fulfilling internal dialogue. The poetry projects and his book are the least influenced by his celebrity, he said, though he knows people will view them through that prism. “As hard as I work in film, it’s my day job,” he said. “Those are, I don’t know, pure expression.”

Some of his hyperproductivity is no doubt the result of his upbringing. His parents’ interests included painting, software development, educational reform and children’s books. “I guess you could say that we have a very strange, artsy family,” said Dave Franco, the youngest of the three Franco siblings, and also an actor. (Tom, the middle brother, is a sculptor.) And James has always been industrious.

“I would write scenes for ‘Freaks and Geeks,’ and Franco would come over and help work on them and read them,’ said Seth Rogen, his co-star on that cult TV show and later in the pot comedy “Pineapple Express.” “I remember at the time thinking it was crazy that he would do that.” Early on, Mr. Franco made a painting for Mr. Rogen — a really dark one, Mr. Rogen recalled. “It had the words ‘cancer’ and ‘death’ written on it. He was going through a phase, it was kind of reminiscent of Basquiat.” Mr. Rogen requested a “happier, more colorful” painting, and Mr. Franco obliged. (“I realized later that was maybe a really insulting thing to ask an artist,” Mr. Rogen said.)



Mr. Franco with Seth Rogen playing lazy stoners in "Pineapple Express."


Mr. Franco’s transition from leading man to intellectual does not surprise Mr. Rogen. “If anything, it was really weird that he was ever pursuing the straight-ahead movie star path,” he said. “Knowing him, it just seemed like the last thing in the world that he would be happy doing.”

By his own admission Mr. Franco is happier as an artist now, even if his efforts so far have not been wholly critically successful. A short story published in Esquire  received withering responses; his art show also drew uneven reviews. In The New York Times,  Roberta Smith called it “a confusing mix of the clueless and the halfway promising,” though she added that it made her rethink her own art biases.

Mr. Franco was pleased with this critique. He is open about still developing his ideas, even if they sometimes appear before a skeptical public. “All I can do,” he said, “is put the work in.” He’s an ambitious student, not a superhuman.

“Any movie that I’ve ever seen with him, I can’t remember him staying awake through,” Dave Franco said.

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