Who else but James Franco would cobble together his ongoing higher education, books of poetry, NYU graduate students, independent financing and fellow A-list actors to create not one, but two new feature films?

That’s just what the multihyphenate has done with “Tar” and “Black Dog, Red Dog,” two standalone narrative pics based on separate collections of poetry that were adapted by students in Franco’s filmmaking class. Each student directed a short based on an individual poem; their entries were later woven into a cohesive, feature-length narrative.

“Tar,” based on the 1983 book of poems by Pulitzer Prize winner C.K. Williams, has been fully financed by Victorino Noval and Franco’s Rabbit Bandini Productions. Ten NYU student directors helmed segments along with Franco, who also stars as Williams. Mila Kunis and Jessica Chastain also took roles.

“I went out to people that I knew, or who I thought would be open to this kind of thing,” Franco told Variety. “They all told me that they were so happy they did it … the students are still at a place where they’re pure, and they’re not jaded.”

Franco used a similar formula for “Black Dog, Red Dog,” a book of poems by Stephen Dobyns that was published in 1984. Still in post-production, “Black Dog” stars Franco, Olivia Wilde, Chloe Sevigny and Whoopi Goldberg.

Franco, who selected the 10 directors via a competition at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and Noval plan to take “Tar” to festivals in search of distribution, and will use any proceeds to fund future student endeavors. Producers include Miles Levy, Vince Jolivette and Edward Bass; Noval serves as an exec producer.

Jolivett said “Tar” has wrapped and could preem as soon as the Toronto Film Fest, while “Black Dog” was still being edited.

“After I graduated from NYU I proposed teaching a class,” Franco told Variety. “I wanted it to do a few things I hadn’t seen before — to work at a professional level, meaning we would get financing, we would find great actors, and even though it didn’t have a very big budget, we would make it so the production levels were really good.”

“When you start with poetry I think you start thinking about the shape of a film in a different way, and it opens up new approaches,” Franco said. “Our final film has a unique feel. It does tell a story and it does give you a look at a poet’s life.”

Source: Variety

Yes, this is all true. I didn’t write about the president’s stance on gay rights — I figured there was enough talk about that already. (Plus, who wants to hear an actor’s take on it anyway?) I didn’t write about Marina, but only because we are doing an episode of Iconoclasts for the Sundance Channel together and I figured everything one would want to know about her would come out then. And yes, I am working on an album with my art school band, but I wouldn’t want to write an article for HuffPost that promotes my own work. Instead, I wrote about New Orleans and ghost tours because I think there is something interesting about the way we are repelled by violence, on one hand, and attracted to it for its entertainment value, on the other. Maybe the great journalists at the New York Observer should stop wondering why I am not covering Obama or Abramovic — and start asking themselves why, instead of covering pressing world issues, they are covering my writing, which they claim to consider petty.

Which leads me to my next topic: commencement speeches. I figure people don’t really want to hear what I have to say about politics, or sports, or geography. But I do feel entitled to write about film and performance, the way that our lives are shaped by these things, and how I personally am engaged with them. Most people have never given a commencement speech — there just aren’t a ton of those offers going around. So because I just gave a commencement speech at UT Arlington — which is in Texas, if you didn’t know — I want to write about it to shine a little light on what the experience was like.

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I’ve been in and out of New Orleans for a few weeks now, working on Seth Rogen’s directorial debut, a comedy about the end of the world. Our film is one of about 20 now shooting in New Orleans, which has become a new center for Hollywood productions — partly because of the Louisiana tax incentive but partly, I assume, because the city is still pretty damn fun. Quentin Tarantino, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford are all said to be in working in New Orleans at the moment. Our driver told us that there are more restaurants in New Orleans now than before Katrina. I don’t know what that means exactly, but I guess some business is coming back.

My brother Dave did two consecutive movies in New Orleans, so he’s a bit of a specialist on the area. Strangely, he doesn’t like staying in the French Quarter, even though he’s one of the biggest partiers I know. I ignored his suggestion to stay in the Garden District and found a small apartment complex with an enclosed courtyard off Charters Street for my posse and me. I had great memories of living in the Quarter a decade ago, when I acted in Nicolas Cage’s directorial debut, Sonny. I guess New Orleans is the place actors go to direct their first films. We were shooting Sonny when Mardi Gras came around, and Nic was crowned King of Bacchus in the Krewe of Bacchus parade. I was on a different float, but I threw plenty of beads.

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Our guy finally turns 34 today! From Finding Franco, I’d like to wish James a very happy birthday! And if you participated in the birthday project this year, do not forget to check it out now!

http://jamesfrancobirthday.tumblr.com
http://jamesfrancobirthday.tumblr.com
http://jamesfrancobirthday.tumblr.com

James Franco is as meta as it gets, the ultimate in creative cross-pollination. He’s an actor-turned-artist-turned-author-turned-actor-playing-an-artist-named-Franco in the soap opera “General Hospital.” His new self-referential filmic offshoot, “Francophrenia” documents that experience. He’s also been cast in the upcoming Seth Rogen movie, in which he plays — who else — the actor-artist-author James Franco.

Drawing on all those areas of interest, Franco appeared at MOCA on Saturday in conversation with art theorist and Rhode Island School of Design digital culture lecturer Francisco Ricardo. The sold-out event –- which drew an appropriately young, hip-looking crowd of roughly 200 — marked the release of Franco’s new book, “The Dangerous Book Four Boys.” The book is a companion to the 2010 New York exhibition of the same name and collects interviews, photographs and multimedia artworks around the themes of childhood and media, among other things.

Not surprisingly, however, Saturday’s conversation defied compartmentalization and strayed much farther afield. After a somewhat heady and hilarious dissection of Franco’s short film “Dicknose in Paris” (a clip was shown), the conversation ricocheted among topics, including Franco’s love of Faulkner; insider stories about director Nicholas Ray; Natalie Wood and Dennis Hopper during the filming of “Rebel Without a Cause”; and the upcoming MOCA show called “Rebel.” The latter, a high-concept group show that Franco conceived, is inspired by the iconic James Dean film and opens in May. It’s brimming with art world star power with works by Ed Ruscha, Harmony Korine, Damon McCarthy, Paul McCarthy, Douglas Gordon, Terry Richardson, Aaron Young and Franco.

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Actor James Franco will not attend the University of Houston‘s creative writing program in the fall.

James Kastely, director of UH’s creative writing program, got an email from Franco in mid-February saying he would not be coming.

“His plans do not permit him to enroll in the doctoral program this fall,” Kastely said. “The problem is, he’s just very busy, so the future is uncertain.”

The actor – who published “Palo Alto,” a collection of short stories, in 2010 – was accepted into the UH doctoral program last April, for fall 2011.

At the time, Kastely said 20 people are admitted to the graduate program each year from a pool of about 400 applicants.

Franco, 33, deferred his acceptance for one year. And now that he has pulled out for this year, it’s up to UH faculty to decide if he’ll have to reapply should he decide to attend later.

Read more at the source

And you thought James Franco was just appearing on General Hospital for the fun of it?

With an Oscar nomination and a series of big budget successes under his belt, Franco could be one of Hollywood’s most dominant leading men. If he wanted. Instead, he has worked to invert and subvert his celebrity and the greater perception of fame, and while playing a serial killer on an ABC soap opera would be a massive antithetical career move for most stars, he took it one step further.

Francophrenia is the result of Franco’s collaboration with filmmaker Ian Olds on the set of General Hospital, based on dry footage of the star wandering the small backstage area, talking to cast members and crew. Franco, however, narrates with an increasingly psychotic tone, soon creating a sort of meta-thriller that offers three layers of the actor: the character, the man and the confusion of the two.

The film debuted at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and will next play at the Tribeca Film Festival in April.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

James Franco’s directorial debut as an ad man will break on YouTube on Feb. 15, when Seven For All Mankind launches its dedicated channel for its spring campaign. Video vignettes lensed by Franco will go up weekly through the spring, with each about two to three minutes in length and culled from hours of footage shot by the actor-director-artist-Yale Ph.D. student. In total, 10 episodes will go up at Youtube.com/7forallmankindjeans.

 
“The videos have a vintage feel to them. They feel like they are from a different era, which I think really fits with the new line that Seven had in the shoot — a lot of cool denim tops and jeans,” said Franco in a phone interview from West Virginia, where he was behind the camera on his latest project, a film version of “Child of God,” based on the Cormac McCarthy novel.

“The look of the film and the clothes feels very Seventies,” added Franco of the Seven shoot. “We shot right on the beach and drove up the PCH [Pacific Coast Highway], so I guess you could say it’s a vintage 1970’s California dreamy feel. The movies that I cut together have a lot of weird double exposures and super- imposed images over other images, so it’s a real, I guess you could say, trip.”

 
Franco has cut together several versions of the film, titled “The Death of Natalie Wood,” including one that clocks in at over three hours. He plans to screen the extended version in May at an art installation called “Rebel,” which he is cocurating at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The show is centered on works inspired by the Fifties movie “Rebel Without a Cause”— which starred Natalie Wood and James Dean — and features contributions from Ed Ruscha, Paul McCarthy, Damon McCarthy, Aaron Young and Harmony Korine.

Read more about the campaign here.