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Amanda Seyfried and James Franco don’t have a love scene in “Lovelace” — but maybe they should have.

A source on the set of the movie — which stars Seyfried as pioneering porn star Linda Lovelace and Franco as Playboy owner Hugh Hefner — tells us the actors were totally into each other during a 12-hour shoot in Los Angeles on Thursday. “I thought it was for the movie,” says the source, “but every time there was a break, they kept talking to each other and flirting back and forth.”

The eyewitness adds that, at one point, the two actors continued their conversation oblivious to the hair and makeup people who were primping them for the next scene.

When the cast and crew broke for dinner, the insider also notes that Franco and Seyfried did not join their co-stars, who included Chris Noth and Peter Sarsgaard in the VIP chow truck.

According to the source, Franco was available for only one day of shooting and the producers shot all of his scenes from Thursday at 1 p.m. to Friday morning at 1 a.m.

Although the scenes arent particularly provocative, they do depict Hefner flirting with Lovelace. The source explains that they center around Hef’s screening of Lovelace’s infamous porn movie, “Deep Throat,” at the Playboy Mansion. Hefner, who’s flanked by two Playmates, greets Lovelace on the red carpet by kissing her hand and asks her pornographer husband, Chuck Traynor, if he can trade the two blonds on his arms for his wife. He then escorts Lovelace into the theater.

James Franco as Hugh Hefner?

The actor, who last starred in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, is in talks with Millenium/Nu Image to appear in a cameo as the iconic founder of Playboy, in Lovelace, the biopic of Linda Lovelace.

Franco, who was at one point in talks to play Traynor before stepping aside, would appear in the Hef cameo only if dates work out. The actor and his reps have been dancing with producers around the timing of a one-day shoot, but so far a consummation remains elusive.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

James Franco signed with Amazon to publish a novel “Actor’s Anonymous,” which is reported to be a fictionalized telling of his life as an actor. No publication date was announced.

The novel will be Franco’s thrid book but his first novel. He published Palo Alto, a book of short stories, in October 2010. In April Rizzoli will publish James Franco: Dangerous Book Four Boys, a collection of material drawn from 2010 art show Franco helped curate that played in New York and other cities.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Franchophrenia, a film co-directed by James Franco and Ian Olds using footage from Franco’s stint on TV soap General Hospital, will have its world premiere at this year’s Rotterdam International Film Festival (Jan. 25-Feb. 5).

The feature, alternatively titled Don’t Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is, is described as a “humorous psycho-thriller.” Franco and Olds made it by writing a new script for existing footage shot by Franco on General Hospital, where the Oscar-nominated actor has a recurring role as an avant-guarde artist called Franco. Franchophrenia will screen in Rotterdam’s main Spectrum Section.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

James Franco is in negotiations to star in The Game, MGM’s adaptation of the best-selling book about picking up women.

Brian Koppelman and David Levien are writing and directing the adaptation. Part memoir, part how-to guide, The Game details author Neil Strauss’s effort to learn the tricks to becoming a successful pick-up artist, even moving into a Sunset Strip mansion filled with other competing players to find love.

Franco would star as Mystery, a man who serves as Strauss’ teacher in the book. Mystery later starred in a VH1 reality series called The Pick-Up Artist.

Franco, repped by CAA, James/Levy Management and Loeb & Loeb, will play himself in The Apocalypse, the directorial debut of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg which shoots this spring. He last starred in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

You can add ad man to James Franco’s rapidly expanding résumé.

Seven For All Mankind and its advertising agency, Lipman, have tapped the actor to direct and photograph the jeans brand’s upcoming multimedia spring campaign. This is the first time Franco will helm an advertising shoot, with the print results set to break in March magazines and filmed segments to go up online around the same time.

“For me, it’s an excuse to be creative. They’re giving me a lot of freedom,” said Franco on the phone from Detroit, where he is filming the title role of Disney’s “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” a big-budget prequel to “The Wizard of Oz.” “It’s about having the opportunity to be creative in a new way and they are going to provide all the toys and the cast and everything else.”

Franco, 33, is slated to shoot the campaign on Dec. 11 in Los Angeles and a second date in January. The as-yet-unannounced cast will include celebrities and models.

“I’m not supposed to say too much, but we don’t want to do something that feels very fashion-heavy,” explained Franco. “It’s a more natural kind of approach. It’s not a heavy-handed fashion world sell-job. It’s really about bringing the natural essence out of the performers and models.”

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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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On Sunday afternoon, Oscar-nominated actor James Franco strode onto the stage of Irvine Auditorium as over a thousand Penn students greeted him with enthusiastic cheers.

The Social Planning and Events Committee brought the prominent film star to Penn as this year’s annual Connaissance fall speaker, with Cinema Studies lecturer Meta Mazaj moderating the talk. Franco, who has starred in movies such as Spiderman, Pineapple Express and 127 Hours, spoke about his devotion to both the acting craft and his enthusiasm for learning.

“I have a lot of interests,” Franco explained as he revealed his passions for not just acting, but also for writing, literature, painting and filmmaking.

After taking a hiatus from his acting career, Franco graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles as an English major. He went on to simultaneously study at Columbia and New York universities and Brooklyn College. Currently, Franco is also earning his Ph.D. in English at Yale University and teaching a course at NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts.

“I wanted to go back and really give my other interests as much consideration as the acting,” he said about his decision to return to academia.

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Harmony Korine has set his next project with “Spring Breakers,” the story of four college girls who rob a restaurant to afford their trip to the beach with James Franco attached and Emma Roberts, Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez in talks to star.

Should Hudgens’ and Gomez’s deals close, the risque, avant garde material for which Korine is known would be a change of pace from the safe Disney Channel fare that launched them to stardom. It’ll also be a dark turn for Franco, who’s coming off Disney’s “Oz: The Great and Powerful.”

Korine, whose last film was “Trash Humpers,” is best known for scripting Larry Clark’s “Kids,” as well as both writing and directing “Gummo” and “Mister Lonely.” He’ll both write and direct “Spring Breakers.”

Roberts would play a Southern brunette who feeds off danger, while Gomez would play a religious girl who isn’t a thrill-seeker like the rest of the group, which includes Hudgens. Franco will co-star as Alien, a rapping drug and arms dealer who bails them out of jail and entices them to kill his arch-rival.

Franco, who most recently toplined “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” will soon be seen in a trio of indies — “Maladies” with Catherine Keener, “The Stare” with Winona Ryder and “Cherry” with Heather Graham. Franco, who’s currently prepping several passion projects as a multi-hyphenate, is also expected to co-star in Seth Rogen’s directorial debut “The Apocalypse.”

Source: Variety