Star, blockbuster actor, audience favorite. Nonconformist, prose writer, author of artistic concepts, film adaptation of Faulkner. An intellectual and a participant in ordinary comedies. Cash register guarantor and experimenter. The face of menswear brands and counterpart Marina Abramovic. James Dean and the Wizard of Oz. Meeting with James Franco, who goes on several roads at once, but stands firmly on his feet.
Terrible weather in Berlin. During the Berlinale, in February, it always blows, blows, blows out, you want to cry and your own tears are mixed with drops of cold rain. In any case, the wind is such that the eyes water. And when I enter the Tesiro Lounge, the jewelry brand’s Berlin Festival VIP Lounge, I still can’t blink. And he does blow his nose — an actor-star who is waiting for me, because he came before the appointed time. He blows his nose and winces, and he doesn’t look at all like that brilliant young man who seems to be made to play wizards and storytellers. He is smaller, slightly above average. He is not romantically serious, but smiling, although his eyes rarely smile. He does not gesticulate, there is no artistic excitement in him at all …
He is the most calm and balanced person in the world, this James Franco. And this black short coat with a long collar, imitation of old-fashioned astrakhan fur suits him … I tell him that I saw such collars in my childhood on respectable communist functionaries and did not expect to see him at all on a movie star and trendsetter. And Franco explains that he wears this coat just because of his obligations to the clothing brand, of which he is the face. But no longer honors any obligations. Or rather, he does not take them upon himself … So from now on it will be in our conversation: Franco does not so much answer questions as questions them. This, apparently, is one of the main features of his personality — to question everything. Which comes out quite naturally. After all, he is not only an actor, but also a prominent figure in contemporary art.
Psychologies: You are called a man of the Renaissance: you wrote four books of prose, directed 27 films, including four full-length ones. You have done about 30 film projects as a producer. Graduated from the University of Southern California as a linguist, from the New York University Film School, and now you are writing your dissertation at Yale and teaching at two universities. You are into contemporary art. And finally, you are a movie star with a huge list of roles and an Oscar nomination. How can all this be done by the age of 36?
James Franco: Also, don’t forget, I was in the eighth season of The X-Files episode «Test Shot» as «Officer #2».
Your humor is known on Twitter, but in this case it looks like an attempt to avoid the answer.
JF: Yes, because there is no question. In fact, your question should be: why do you live like this? Am I counting my films, projects, dinners with friends, and books read? Do you count how many movies you have watched or how many cups you have washed in your life? Do you keep such personal statistics? Well, I don’t. I live every day and do not miss the days of my life. I just live and do something in the course of my life. It so happened that my «cups» just became noticeable. By my age, two of my friends have already raised two children, which is a much more obvious result. I managed more than I could, because I only do what interests me. Sometimes I shoot so that I have money to produce something. So I played in The Last Frontier a terrible villain named Alligator, who confronts the beautiful Jason Statham, and put everything I earned on the film adaptation of my Palo Alto book, and invited Gia Coppola to direct. Just because I liked this idea — the film debut of a young photographer with the genes of the Coppola family, and a film about teenagers, about those for whom there are also many things for the first time … I live no more intensively than others, I assure you. But unlike the others, I knew long ago that I was going to die. Accurately and irrevocably. Even before film school, I made a short film about it. About a boy whose goldfish died and so he realized that he was also mortal. He tells his parents: I don’t want to die. He is reassured: don’t worry, you have a lot of time ahead of you. But they fail to calm him completely. And he comes to the conclusion that he must do everything now. Postpone nothing. And comes to life. It’s about me. At some point, I just started life and do not put off anything.
- Rachel McAdams: “I insist on freedom. And within the family too.”
Is life a business? Are they doing it?
JF: Yes, if you understand that walking through the eucalyptus grove and rustling with hard fallen eucalyptus leaves is also a very important thing. To live for me is not to do something, but to have desires and realize what is desired. Don’t wait for a chance, for an opportunity, for the circumstances. Starting the realization of your desires now is what it is to live. It always seemed strange to me how people complicate their path by incorrectly formulating the goal. For example: «I want to become a director.» So what kind of movie do you want to make? Or do you just want to be a director? This is an inaccurate target! I didn’t become a director because I wanted to be a director. I wanted to make a film. And for this I did not need to go to film school. Now I’m not talking about the result — I made a film, maybe a poor one — I’m talking about my desire, which I realized. But I did not want to play a certain role, I wanted to become an actor — to have this profession, to earn a living from it, specific roles did not matter. And so he once left the university and began to go to auditions.
But, having already become an actor, you began to study writing. Which is not a very common occurrence. Actors sometimes, of course, become directors, but seriously graduating from film school, like you, and then directing The Sound and the Fury … This is also infrequent. How did all this happen to you?
JF: Yes, I just always wanted to become everything — an actor, an artist, a marine zoologist, a writer. Don’t laugh, I’m serious. At school I wanted to become an actor, but I understood that this profession is associated with constant failures, and I was not ready for them. The second desire was to become an artist. But my parents, both artists by education — they even met in the art class at Stanford — categorically refused to pay for «this adventure.» They just said that: any university, any department except this one, because «it» is simply short-sighted. You see, all my relatives are connected with art. My grandmother, as long as I can remember, had a gallery, she specialized in the art of the East, especially Japan. Mom is a children’s writer, but she is still engaged in graphics and painting. Father, although he works in business, still looks at life and the world around him as an artist. And so they believed that there was some predestination in my decision — in the sense that I grew up in such an environment and simply cannot imagine a different life. And my abilities, from their point of view, were not outstanding. Average ability. Mom still thinks so — that I’m a good actor, and an average artist. Indeed, I had a special aptitude for mathematics, I went to math school in high school, I even got an internship at one of the leading high-tech companies — Lockheed Martin. Now, as an adult, I understand parental fears: the guy is already problematic, but he also aims at bohemia.
Problem? Were you a troubled teenager?
JF: And that’s putting it mildly. In my last year at school, to be honest, I almost sat down. Well, first graffiti and arrests for them, then they started stealing. With classmates. One distracted the saleswoman, while the other dragged perfume testers. Well, they drove them. At the preliminary hearing, I was saved by the fact that I was an excellent student. In the characteristic from the school they wrote: uncontrollable, but brilliant! Well, something like that. Not that I was brilliant — on the contrary, I was terribly shy, I was uncomfortable in my own life and my own skin. But, oddly enough, I really was a straight A student. And not because of extraordinary talents, but simply did all the lessons, took his studies seriously. When you feel bad in your body, you want to be the first in something. Studying is the easiest way. In general, the judge decided to give me a chance to improve. Thanks her. I then took up my mind. And he entered the philological faculty. But a year later he quit: he decided to become an actor after all. My parents refused to support this adventure either, so I worked at McDonald’s at night and took acting classes during the day. By the way, McDonald’s is good for actors. You hear different accents, different ways of speaking, you see different ways to express yourself … Well, then I started acting. And at some point I began to explain to the director who my hero is, what he is. He got into his own business, drove the whole group crazy, became completely unbearable. Until I realized that I needed to become a director. So I ended up in film school.
Where is the writing from?
JF: Nowhere. I guess I just like to disagree with a given trajectory. But there is, apparently, in me some kind of fundamentality. So I returned to the university. By the way, my favorite teacher was Gary Steingart, one of the most famous contemporary writers in the States. I helped him make a book trailer for his latest novel. And we shot a very funny, in my opinion, short film, where I am the husband of the writer Steingart … So, Gary told me that he took acting lessons and realized that the main and most beautiful thing in acting is spontaneity, instantaneousness — that’s how it is now played, you won’t repeat it, you won’t feel it again. And it’s very accurate, that’s what annoyed me. You give out an instant emotion, and then it is put into context, edited … and you disappear. That’s why I wanted to express myself more — in directing, in writing, in installations. Don’t disappear. Now I may be a lot, but it’s much easier to endure.
Aren’t you afraid that there are already too many of you? Only here, at the Berlinale, you have three films…
JF: You know what … If I’m afraid of anything, then boredom. And it just does not threaten me in the current circumstances.
But now it seems that your whole life is a “life in art”, that you don’t have a personal life. Or is the personal carefully hidden?
JF: Is it possible to do this separately — personal and professional? Do you really believe in it? I lived in a serious, stable relationship for five years. She is also an actress. Everything was amazing. We lived together in Los Angeles. And then I went to New York for two years to film school and decided to stay in New York for the university for another two years. And this, apparently, was the end of the relationship for her. She no longer came to see me and avoided meetings when I ended up in Los Angeles. It is impossible for her to be together without being together physically… But for me it is not so. Together means together. No matter where. The same goes for professional and personal. Everything is personal, only distributed over different life zones. There is no separation in life — this is me at work, but this is me with the one I love. I am always me.
But the temptation to consider that these are two different people is very great — the actor who played in the cartoon blockbuster «Oz the Great and Powerful», and the experimental cinematographer who in the film «Skin. Interior. The Bar supposedly restores a lost episode of hardcore gay sex from William Friedkin’s Scouting…
JF: And yet it is one person. Here are colleagues from the so-called «A-list» actors, a list of big stars, who say that they act in independent films out of a sense of protest against the Hollywood movie attraction. And for me, the action movie Pineapple Express is more like a protest. Because street vulgarity is better than what pretends to be significant, better than the false significance of contemporary art and «serious» cinema. I try to exist between, I love this zone — «between». Because in life I am a reader. Like my generation in America, I have not experienced anything dramatic, and we are not likely to have serious achievements. Everything I know about life, I know from books. And don’t take me too seriously.