James Franco is possibly the most enigmatic figure in Hollywood. But yet, a decade ago, he felt unfulfilled as a rising movie star to such an extent that he decided to go back to university and earn his master’s degree in fine arts and literature at Columbia, and then a Ph.D. at Yale. He had already lost interest in working in mainstream studio films such as Spider-Man and shifted his focus to indie productions. Explains Franco: “I wasn’t happy with the films I was making and I had to change a lot of things in my life. I also didn’t have any faith in my ability to get to a point where I could be making interesting films. So I needed to create a much more interesting and artistically stimulating world for myself.” It seems that phase of his life is clearly behind him now. The 41-year-old actor, director and writer has switched back to the mainstream and is thriving once again on maintaining a frantic pace, famous, perhaps even renowned for his multiple artistic pursuits.
No one works to the level of Franco—try 12 movies (and a TV series) in 2015, seven in 2016, 10 the year after and four more last year. In 2019 he has the animated adventure Arctic Dogs, Kill the Czar, and Zeroville, the story of a young seminarian who arrives in Hollywood in 1969, embracing a transitional time in the history of the industry. The movie feels like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for the deep thinking among us. It co-stars Megan Fox and Seth Rogen and also features Will Ferrell, Jacki Weaver and his brother Dave Franco.
Franco divides his time between homes in New York City and Los Angeles is in a long-term relationship with L.A.-based publicist Isabel Pakzad.
STRIPLV: Zeroville has taken around eight years to get to this stage. Is it easy to still feel connected to something that has had so many hold-ups? FRANCO: Sure, because it’s enjoyable still, almost always; and if something’s enjoyable you can reconnect with it. We had trouble with distributors and the finances behind it, but the story was always the presentation of a wonderful piece of literature, and the story never changes, even while all around you is chaos. When you step behind the mechanics of film-making, you realize the machine is big, ugly, unrelenting, and it’s about power and greed, and can sometimes feel totally determined by marketing. That takes away a lot of the gloss from what, at the heart of it, is art. It’s a shame, but it’s inevitable. In a perfect scenario, a film reconstructs itself when it hits the cinema screen and all the rather unpoetic, unfathomable awfulness of trying to get a movie to that final place is forgotten and never spoken about again. STRIPLV: How would you appraise Zeroville? FRANCO: Well, this is a guy who watched A Place in the Sun and fell so in love with films that he shaved his head and had Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor tattooed on the back of his head. It’s a journey through understanding film but also understanding the people in the industry. Much like we were saying, it celebrates on the one hand and destroys on the other. STRIPLV: Most of the actors who are in this film you have worked with before—Seth Rogen notably, from This is the End and The Interview. What’s the appeal in going back to familiarity in that sense? FRANCO: Well, I consider Seth to be one of my closest friends. We’ve known each other for 20 years or so since we did Freaks and Geeks. I would do just about anything with Seth and having done the Kim and Kanye video (spoof) I can say we almost have! I know most people don’t think of me as a funny guy, but I actually do have a good sense of humor, and I love doing comedies. Seth is much better at than I am, and he probably makes me laugh more than anyone else. He has incredible comic instincts, and he’s a very gifted writer. STRIPLV: What is it like working with your brother Dave? FRANCO: My brother and I haven’t had the chance to work much together before, but we had a lot of fun doing the Funny or Die videos and The Disaster Artist, of course, and I thought we would work well together in this movie too. STRIPLV: How would you sum up the film? FRANCO: I love movies, they are my life, and this is a real tribute to movies, simple as that. STRIPLV: You continue to work seemingly non-stop on multiple projects. Should we even stop wondering why you work as much as you do? FRANCO: I wouldn’t work so much if I didn’t enjoy it. I love being as creative and imaginative in my work as much as I do in my personal life. I don’t even see the distinction. My work is such a deep and passionate thing for me, and every day I like being able to either work on a set or be by myself writing or reading or thinking about new projects. I don’t even see my artistic interests as work in the ordinary sense. I have to manage my schedule when it comes to working on different film projects where I have to be in a certain city for a certain length of time, but otherwise, it’s a seamless process for me. My life was much more stressful several years ago when I was studying in different graduate programs and then teaching at NYU and in Los Angeles. I was constantly flying back and forth from the east coast to the west, and getting enough sleep was probably my biggest concern. STRIPLV: You’re one of only a very few celebrities who has tried to reflect on fame and performance in your work and in the way you present yourself in public. Does it all connect for you? FRANCO: I see all my work as having a symbiotic connection. It’s all related to each other. When I act in a film, it’s part of a reality where you want to be believed as that character in that, particularly fictional reality. I don’t want to draw attention to my actual acting. But in my other work, I’m often trying to draw attention to the fact that I’m a performer in the act of a performance which makes you think about the process itself. STRIPLV: Is that also because you have so many more interests aside from acting now? FRANCO: Yes. I have so much more going on that I don’t equate my identity with my life as an actor. I feel more deeply connected to art and creativity in general, and I’ve been trying to express myself in exhibitions, writing, and now feature films as a director. This is the kind of life I want to have, and I’m trying to make the most of it. STRIPLV: Have you felt that the critical community has tried to disparage you because of your multi-hyphenate artistic pursuits? FRANCO: I’m an easy target, but I’m also interested in playing with the notion of what it is to be an artist and the engagement with the public and the media and how that affects the perception of your work. I’m not going to complain about that because that’s one of the interesting things about the last several years. I think that people are now coming to the conclusion that I take my work very seriously and my image much less seriously. I can direct films, act, write, and do many different things and I think things have reached a point where my acting doesn’t necessarily overshadow everything else I’m trying to accomplish and what the response to that will be. I’m pretty happy about things. STRIPLV: But you have slowed down. FRANCO: A little while ago, I began to re-evaluate what I was doing and began rethinking my life in a lot of ways. Working so hard and working on a lot of different projects was my way of escaping from myself and having the time to really think about who I was or what I was trying to accomplish. I have a very addictive nature I wanted to try to do as much as I could handle and also make movies that the studios had no interest in making. Staying busy was also my way of not dealing with criticism because I would already be working on the next project. Now I want to try to slow down a bit and work only on projects that are really meaningful to me and that I really love. I want to do fewer projects now and spend more time going deeper into stories I’m trying to tell. STRIPLV: Do you think the public understands you? FRANCO: I think people wonder if I’m out of control. (Laughs) But the truth is that I’m very dedicated to each project I work on. I also try to lend my name and support as producer and actor to a lot of emerging directors because it’s easier for them to receive attention and funding if there’s someone with more recognition behind them. It’s important to me to be able to do that. STRIPLV: How would you explain the strange process by which a genuinely terrible movie like The Room became a cult sensation? FRANCO: That’s part of the mystique and curiosity surrounding it. For some reason, the bad acting, horrible writing, ridiculous lighting, and stupid dialogue all make it incredibly entertaining in its own way. People have a kind of twisted fascination people for The Room. You feel a perverse attraction to something so odd and bizarre that you can watch it over and over again. And if it’s so bad, why do we like watching it? STRIPLV: Is it an example of something so bad that it’s good and deserves recognition as a camp classic? FRANCO: For a long time, I’ve been interested in art and what qualifies as art. When Seth and I were talking about making that movie, our biggest question was what exactly made producer Tommy Wiseau’s movie so unique in its own way. We wanted to show how earnest he was in making it and how passionate and personal it was for him. Even though it was ridiculed, there’s a subtext to it that makes us enjoy it. It’s become a success in spite of itself. STRIPLV: Has your career been influenced by who you were as a teenager? FRANCO: Perhaps. As a teenager, I was very unsettled and I was constantly getting into trouble as part of not really being focused or understanding what I wanted to do with my life and not having any sense of place or perspective. But all of that personal frenzy was part of my path to figuring things out. I didn’t know that at the time, and we probably never do, but it was my way of getting rid of a lot of chaotic thinking and wild behavior. Even when I started acting and becoming successful, I was still suffering from a lot of doubt about whether this was how I wanted to live my life and whether doing certain kinds of movies was what I wanted to do with my artistic life. STRIPLV: What’s been the most challenging role you have taken on? FRANCO: Undoubtedly Christian Longo in True Story. This guy is a real-life killer who assumes on the identity of former New York Times journalist Mike Finkel (Jonah Hill) while on the run as a fugitive. This guy was such a creepy and terrible person that I really couldn’t engage with the character the way I normally do when I’m working, I come from a very loving and caring family and having to play a man who committed such horrific acts was very disturbing. Normally as an actor, you try not to judge your characters and find some way to align yourself with them. But in this case, I couldn’t wait to stop thinking about him, and I wanted to leave the set each day as quickly as possible to clear my head. That’s never happened to me before. STRIPLV: It was exhausting playing him? FRANCO: Yes, it was emotionally painful to play someone like that. I had absolutely no connection to him because I couldn’t escape the fact that he was a man who had killed his wife and children. Family is something very important and deeply personal to me, and it was disturbing to play someone who comes across as very normal, very cool, yet he’s hiding this sick act he committed. It’s scary to imagine that people like this can be walking around and you would never, never know that they were capable or had carried out those murders. STRIPLV: What made you want to do the film then? FRANCO: The thing that fascinated me was the cat and mouse game that goes on between Longo and Finkel. These two men, who come together under very bizarre circumstances, eventually become soul mates and develop a real friendship despite how bleak and dark the underlying reality. Those moments between them are what enables audiences to engage with the film and find something they can take away from the experience of watching the relationship between these two characters. STRIPLV: Did you have an opportunity to meet the real-life killer Longo himself? FRANCO: Yes, but I chose not to do that. I’ve played real-life characters, maybe six or seven times in my career, and I generally like to be able to research them beyond what you read in the script. But in this case, he was such a creepy figure that I had no interest in getting to know him better and from what I knew he was someone who would probably enjoy the attention. There was no need for me to meet him, and I wasn’t anxious to give him any validation beyond my work in the film.