James Franco TV - Funny Or Die

The Art of Elysium, a non-profit 501(c) (3) organization founded in 1997, encourages working actors, artists and musicians to voluntarily dedicate their time and talent to children who are battling serious medical conditions. We provide artistic workshops in the following disciplines: acting, art, comedy, fashion, music, radio, songwriting and creative writing.

Palo Alto is the debut of a surprising and powerful new literary voice. Written with an immediate sense of place--claustrophobic and ominous--James Franco's collection traces the lives of an extended group of teenagers as they experiment with vices of all kinds, struggle with their families and one another, and succumb to self-destructive, often heartless nihilism.

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James Franco is an actor-turned-artist-turned-author-turned-actor-playing-an-artist-named-Franco in the soap opera “General Hospital” — who has made a movie, “Francophrenia,” that documents the experience. He’s about as “meta” as it gets.

Now Franco has brought his knack for melding pop culture and fine art in unorthodox ways to a new exhibition for Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art. “Rebel,” which opens Tuesday, is a high-concept group show that is a loose, interpretive ode to the 1955 James Dean film “Rebel Without a Cause.”

It brings together paintings, sculpture and multimedia works by Ed Ruscha, Harmony Korine, Paul McCarthy, Damon McCarthy, Douglas Gordon, Terry Richardson, Aaron Young and, of course, Franco, who organized the show and is feverishly present throughout it, both directing and appearing in multiple pieces.

He calls “Rebel Without a Cause” “the first mainstream American movie that dealt with teenagers on their own terms.”

“And it still, in a lot of ways, is the prototype for the teen films we see today,” Franco says. “[The exhibition] is an extension of the film. It’s not about being loyal to it, as much as it is using the film as a source for inspiration and building off that to create new work.”

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Also spotted was the face of Gucci’s Made to Measure ad campaign and jack-of-all-trades James Franco, who looked pretty sharp himself in one of the brand’s peak lapel “Marseille” suits. We chatted him up about his brother’s big GQ moment, his go-to cardigan, and of course, this look.

GQ Eye: We’re at a Gucci event, you’ve been the face of the brand, and you obviously wear a lot of Gucci on and off the red carpet. Do you have a favorite look or piece you’ve worn over the years?
James Franco: I’m a big cardigan sweater guy.

GQ Eye: We’ve seen you rock a particular navy one a few times, even boldly over a suit.
James Franco: I love that one. Although I’m wearing a lighter blue one in this new movie directed by Seth Rogen. We all play ourselves, so I’m of course wearing Gucci. I’m wearing a sweater I’ve worn before, but it’s a thicker and light blue.

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Chances are good that if you have an Internet connection, you’re already aware of how Harmony Korine spent his spring break. Photos from the Florida set of Korine’s latest film, Spring Breakers—some taken by paparazzi, many shot by the cast and crew themselves—began appearing online in March, quickly invading Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and virtually every other image-sharing social-media channel, and instantly generating the kind of viral buzz that ought to be the envy of every big studio marketing department in the country. In fact, Spring Breakers hadn’t even wrapped shooting (and won’t be in theaters until later this year at the earliest) when images of the film’s principals—Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and Ashley Benson clad in neon bikinis, and James Franco done up as a gun-toting vision of Kevin Federline by way of The Dude—passed into pop culture’s visual lexicon. “I liked the idea of the film as a social experiment,” says Korine. “It was like there were two movies—the actual movie, and then the one that the media, paparazzi, and the people tweeting photos were also creating.”

Spring Breakers stars Gomez, Hudgens, Benson, and Korine’s wife, Rachel Korine, as a quartet of college students who land in jail after robbing a restaurant to fund their spring break trip. The foursome is bailed out by Alien (Franco), a drug-dealer and gunrunner, who seduces the girls into his world. Drugs, sex, and violence ensue. (Gucci Mane, Glee’s Heather Morris, and skateboarding weirdoes the ATL Twins also feature.) “When I wrote the script, I started thinking about girls in bikinis with guns, wearing ski masks,” Korine recalls. “I was like, ‘Where would you see that?’ And the idea of spring break came to me. I just started imagining girls on spring break robbing places.”

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Being a face of Gucci, James Franco gets a lot of nice swag. “Every event, they give me a new suit,” he explained at a cocktail party hosted by GQ and, yes, Gucci. “I’ve been working with them for years, so I have more suits than a person could ever wear in, like, five lifetimes. Sometimes I give them back.” Does he wear them all? “Sometimes we use them in art videos we make. And some of my friends are my size, so they wear them.” More on his modeling side gig, below.

So, are you one of those actors who rolls your eyes when you have to do fashion shoots?
When you pose for a photo shoot, a lot of actors will say, “I haaate it.” But now that I’ve shot campaigns, I see that it’s just like a performance. I think what actors don’t like about it is that there’s no mask that they’re wearing — no role, like there is in a movie. But it’s kind of the same thing as making a movie: You’re trying to bring people into that character and tell a story. It’s the same thing in fashion.

Photo shoots can be really awkward.
If you have a bad director, you don’t want to open up to him or her. And if you have a bad photographer on a photo shoot, you just feel cheesy. But if you have a good director or photographer, it’s like just playing a role.

Do you do anything on shoots to feel comfortable?
I just tell them to play music and I go with the groove, and then it’s over.

Source: NYMag

We sat down with Franco and Olds to talk about the inspiration for the project, how they think it will be received, and whether it’s hard for Franco to be taken seriously as an artist when the blogosphere is “sniffing each and every one of his farts,” as one commenter so boldly put it.

James, why did you bring your own film crew to the General Hospital shoot?
Franco: There was a big response to me being on a soap opera, and at a gala for MOCA right after I started on General Hospital, these artists were coming up to me saying, “Oh, I wish I had a forum like that. I wish I could be on network television doing weird stuff.” It made me think about having a little more ownership over this weird insertion of myself into this soap opera. So I got permission to bring my own film crew.

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The only thing more curious than the announcement that Sam Raimi would be directing a new Wizard of Oz adventure was the film’s casting.

Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz signed on as two wicked witches in Oz: The Great and Powerful (which serves as a prequel to the classic 1939 adventure). Michelle Williams is set to play Glinda the Good Witch, and James Franco replaced Robert Downey Jr. as Oscar Diggs — a.k.a. Oz.

Little is known about the film, but at yesterday’s CinemaCon Convention in Las Vegas, James opened up for the first time about what attracted him to the role. He said, “I get to play all sides of Americana – the idea of American heroes. It’s like he’s part cowboy, part weird magician, part con man, part romantic man. I really got to play everything from classic American cinema.”

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James Franco recently made headlines when he posted a video of himself singing Rihanna’s Dr. Luke joint “You Da One” on the Internet. The clip was short, sweet and a bit out of nowhere.

But if you think that Franco was in one of his performance-art moments when he created the viral video, think again. It turns out he’s just a fan of the colorful singer. “[It] didn’t take a lot of work [to lip-synch to her song],” he confessed to MTV News at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Tuesday. “But I do like Rihanna.”

In fact, his biggest confession about his connection to the singer came next. It seems the two were thisclose to working together on her 2011 “We Found Love” video. As the story goes, before male model Dudley O’Shaughnessy landed the role as Ri’s troubled leading man, Franco had the opportunity to be cast as one-half of that rocky romance.

“She actually asked me to be in that video, the one with the relationship that gets crazy,” he dished. “I couldn’t do it. But, I guess, I hope that that means there’s mutual love between us.”

Well, apparently these two are getting a second chance to work together, and this time it’s on the big screen. Franco teased that Rihanna may appear in pal Seth Rogen’s flick “The Apocalypse,” which follows a slew of celebs playing themselves. They’re partying at Franco’s house when they learn the apocalypse is coming.

“I think she’s gonna be in the new movie that I’m doing, Seth Rogen’s directorial debut,” he shared. “I think she has a little part in that.”

Source: MTV News

Typically swaggered, slightly squinted (a la Oscars), and donning a quilted Gucci leather jacket, Mr. Franco beamed around the room, shaking hands, kissing babies and then, finally, speaking with The Observer.

JF: Hey man, have we met before? You look familiar.

NYO: I don’t believe so, but that’s not terribly important. Mind if I ask you what it was like to obliterate an apartment with a sledgehammer on film for Wholphin films?

JF: You saw that! Haha! I love those guys, we had a ton of fun. I really fucked that room up didn’t I? Funny you mention Wholphin actually, it’s a bit under wraps but I’m doing a whole new project with them, basically focusing on all of my short films from film school. It’s gonna be fun.

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Last night, actor-cum-director James Franco nervously introduced “My Own Private River” to a full house at the Film Society at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater. The 9pm screening of Franco’s film, a companion piece composed of never-before-seen outtakes from Gus Van Sant’s milestone drama “My Own Private Idaho” starring River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves as young, gay street hustlers, was part of the Film Society’s annual “Film Comment Selects” program. “Film Comment Selects” highlights films curated by the writers of Film Comment Magazine, a periodical produced by Lincoln Center and edited by Gavin Smith.

“I didn’t want to compete with Gus’ film,” Franco explained during a post-screening Q&A moderated by Smith. Still, the complicated story behind the production of Franco’s film rivals Van Sant’s own seminal film.”My Own Private River” was originally a 12-hour art project called “Endless Idaho.” Franco got Gucci to help pay for the cost of digitizing the old film stock Van Sant gifted to him and turned into ‘Endless,”‘ which was screened as an art installation at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles. According to Franco, Van Sant offered to give him a tour of the Idaho locations where he shot “My Own Private Idaho” provided Franco accompanied him during press junkets for “Milk.” Since Franco is such a big fan of the film, he readily assented, calling the opportunity “a dream come true.” Soon after that, Van Sant and Franco reviewed unused footage from ‘Idaho,’ which gave Franco the idea to reassemble the footage with a new focus on the late River Phoenix’s character, Mike.

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THE BELIEVER: I was talking to one of the bellboys about people’s experiences with hauntings in this hotel, and he told me about all this footage he’d seen from cameras here. Things moving on their own.

JAMES FRANCO: Oh, right. Yeah.

CARTER: Surveillance cameras?

BLVR: Surveillance cameras.

JF: Well, I have to say, I stayed here when we were doing press for Pineapple Express, and I was feeling fine, and then I got into the room, and—didn’t you visit? That was that night!

C: Yeah. We were up at the corner…

JF: I just felt so depressed that night. Everything was good, going well—

C: And then I showed up. [Laughs]

JF: No, but after you left, I felt so bad—to the point where I was calling Seth Rogen, and I never call him. He wasn’t answering, and I was calling him to get some support or something because I was feeling so bad about myself. And I was like, What is going on? And then I went down in the morning and was like, “Does anyone ever complain about this place being haunted?” And I don’t even think that way, but I woke up in the morning thinking I was just haunted. And they were like, “Yeah, there’s that graveyard in the back.” This is built on the one of the oldest graveyards in Manhattan.

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