“In Paranoid Park there is this Punk girl that keeps looking straight into The camera when she speaks, It’s like she’s speaking to us.”
― James Franco, Directing Herbert White

“You are successful if you are able to work on the kind of material that you want to - if your life conforms to your dreams, regardless of outside acceptance or acclaim.”
― James Franco

“Read Frank’s poem, “Advice to the Players.” It talks about all of this, about the human need to create.”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“In the movie of your entire life, do you want drama and conflict or a straight shot to the top, unencumbered?”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“It had happened. I had brought the dream out into reality and it had dissolved. It was just a dream and had found no purchase in the real world where it was dependent on other people for its realization. I wished that I could have sucked my words back inside where they had lived a colorful life of promise, had been nurtured by hope, and had never been tested”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous

“All is good. Don't worry, the pain will help you. You'll get into some trouble, but it will work out in the end.”
― James Franco

“I was a black center in the middle of all the nature. I was nothing, but I could do anything.”
― James Franco

“Make your characters interested in something. Striving for something. In need of something. Good at something. This will make them likeable and interesting.”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“They're just peanut butter and jealous! Haters gonna hate, and ain't-ers gonna ain't.”
― James Franco

“You want to be interesting? Be interested.”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“You also need love. Your characters need to love something, otherwise they will be unlovable.”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“Always have one artistic thing that is pure, at least one thing, where you don’t compromise. You can do other things to make money, but have one pure area.”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“Create your world around your work. Create your work around your life. Let other people help you shape it.”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“I always see nice images like that but I don't know what to do with them. I guess you share them with someone. Or you write them down in a poem. I had so many of those little images, but I never shared them or wrote any of them down.”
― James Franco

“If this is the only life, then why I’m not just doing everything I want to do.”
― James Franco

“I don't even like to sleep - I feel as if there's too much to do.”
― James Franco

“They say living well is the best revenge but sometimes writing well is even better.”
― James Franco

“Everyone pretends to be normal and be your best friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don't know about, and if only we had a camera on us at all times, we could go and watch each other's tapes and find out what each of us was really like.”
― James Franco, Palo Alto

“I also found that sexual energy was a great engine for performance:”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“She was working the desk in the student exhibition hall, reading Kafka. She had a cool demeanor, but it was more like she couldn’t get her words out so easily, so she covered everything with an icy smile.”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“Kurt Cobain is my god. He is the most beautiful man that ever lived.”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“Gay James: Well, why don’t you stop playing games and give us a little of your private self?

Straight James: Kind of impossible, don’t you think? As soon as I share it, it becomes public.”
― James Franco

“It had happened. I had brought the dream out into reality and it had dissolved. It was just a dream and had found no purchase in the real world where it was dependent on other people for its realization.”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“You were an artist.
For a moment.
Was it too much?
Was it the drugs that helped you?

The drugs that killed you?
Was it the acting?
Was it all of us,
Outside the screen,
Just watching?

— Ledger”
― James Franco, Directing Herbert White: Poems

“Sometimes my mother is annoying and I get bratty in return, but I still love her so much. I just don’t want to become her.”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“I AM THE ACTOR. I am alive in 2013 and I was alive in 1913. I am an actor, so I can play everything. Everyone is in me, and I am a part of everyone.”
― James Franco, Actors Anonymous: A Novel

“The masks are just as important as the reality. The masks are our reality. Everyone’s reality. Life is a performance. When an actor gives a good performance, often people say, “What good choices.” So if life is your grand performance, have you made good choices?”
― James Franco, Bungalow 89

“There is a fake version of me
And he's the one that writes
These poems.
He has an attitude and swagger

That I don't have.
But on this page, this fake me
Is the me that speaks.
And this fake me is louder

Than the real me, and he
Is the one that everyone knows.
He's become the real me
Because everyone treats me

Like I'm the fake me.”
― James Franco, Directing Herbert White: Poems

“The man is angry, the man
Is destructive, the man wants more.
The woman is more, the woman is all.”
― James Franco, Straight James/Gay James

“There was a moon and it was on the water. A miniature moon rocking on the little waves. I always see nice images like that but I don't know what to do with them. I guess you share them with someone. Or you write them down in a poem. I had so many of those little images, but I never shared them or wrote any of them down.”
― James Franco

This interview was originally broadcast on October 5, 2010. James Franco is nominated for an Academy Award for his role in 127 Hours. He will also be co-hosting the Academy Awards Ceremony with actress Anne Hathaway.

It's hard to categorize James Franco.

The star of such films as Spider-Man and Milk is also an accomplished painter and writer — and a graduate student currently enrolled in both Yale University and the Rhode Island School of Design.

The frenetic pace suits Franco, who tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he has an "addictive personality."

"If there's something I like," he explains, "it's hard for me to not engage with it fully."

Franco's acting career started in the late 1990s, when he played Daniel Desario on the short-lived but critically acclaimed TV series Freaks and Geeks. Shortly thereafter, he played Peter Parker's buddy Harry Osborn in the first film of the Spider-Man trilogy alongside his real-life friend Tobey Maguire, only to transform into one of the hero's nemeses in the blockbuster's two sequels.

Then there were roles in films including Tristan & Isolde, Pineapple Express and Milk, where he portrayed Scott Smith, the boyfriend of San Francisco politician and activist Harvey Milk, who was murdered in 1978.

In his latest film Howl, Franco again portrays a real-life person — this time the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The non-linear film traces Ginsberg's life during the 1940s and 1950s and reenacts Ginberg's 1955 debut performance of his famous poem Howl. Franco says that he was excited to immerse himself in the beatnik culture of the 1950s.

"I loved the Beats and I had been reading them since I was about 15, and ever since I got into acting I always dreamed about doing a movie about the Beats," he explains. "But I never thought that I would play Allen. I always thought I would play [Jack] Kerouac or [Neal] Cassady."


/
Even after he was offered the part of Ginsberg, Franco says, he still had lingering doubts about the role.

"I thought 'Hmm. Will I be of service to this movie playing Allen? Can I really do that?'" he says. "So I went back and looked at some of the photographs of young Allen and then watched Robert Frank's Pull My Daisy, which was made in 1959. ... Most people, when they think of Ginsberg, they think of the older Ginsberg, the heavier and balder and bearded Ginsberg. And that would have been a stretch. But the younger Ginsberg is actually close to my build and we have similar coloring. And he had hair."

Franco scheduled his time on Howl's set around his class schedule. In the past few years, he's attended graduate school at Columbia University, New York University, Brooklyn College and Warren Wilson College — and currently takes classes at Yale University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Several of the stories he wrote in fiction classes at Columbia and Brooklyn College will be released in his upcoming collection Palo Alto: Stories.

Franco has also appeared on the sitcom 30 Rock and regularly appears in short features on the website Funny or Die. In late 2009, he joined the cast of General Hospital, playing an artist named Franco.

"I had to do even more material than they do in a single day because they would do all of my material on one day a week," he says. "I'd fly in from New York, land in L.A. about 10:30 and then we'd work about 12 or 14 hours, until about 2 a.m. And I would do about 70 to 80 pages of material a day. Usually, if they get it, they'll only do one take. ... It's kind of exhilarating if you get into the pace of it."

Interview Highlights

On Allen Ginsberg's voice

"He has a bit of a New Jersey accent or kind of an East Coast thing. And there is an alternation between great exuberance and this kind of sympathetic tone, depending on what section [of "Howl"] he's reading. So I tried to find out how he'd be responding to each section and deliver it accordingly."

On the movie Howl

"I guess there was a lost interview that [Ginsberg] gave to Time magazine I think back in the 60s. 'Ginsberg had been in Tangiers and they flew him out to Rome and he gave this interview, and it was lost; it was too racy and they never published it. So there's this lost interview and no transcripts exist but [the filmmakers] decided they were going to use that idea for this interview [in this film.] But the way that they created this interview was they compiled bits from interviews that Ginsberg had given his entire life. So everything that I say in that interview, everything that I say in the courtroom, is based on things people actually said."

On acting while taking classes

"I have an addictive personality, so if there's something I like, it's hard for me to not engage with it fully, and to the point of doing physical harm to myself or mental harm. But on the other hand, I loved it. And by going to all of those [universities] I got to work with all of my favorite writers, and I got to work with great filmmakers and do projects that I'm very, very proud of."

On his time on General Hospital

"I'd been discussing the idea [of doing a soap] with this artist named Carter. He's a friend of mine, and I collaborate on different projects with him. We were going to do a movie called Maladies that he was going to direct and I was going to star in, and I was going to play a character who was formerly on a soap opera. And that got us talking about, what if I actually was on a soap opera? Wouldn't that be interesting? People would be surprised. Nobody would expect it. And also, it's a different kind of entertainment and acting and yeah, people often look down on soap operas as kind of inferior entertainment. But I was thinking in a different way at that point.

I had just read this book by Carl Wilson ... about Celine Dion. And he wasn't a fan of Celine but he decided he was going to investigate why. Why does he feel superior to Celine's music? And he didn't come to any definite conclusions, but he figured out that Celine's music means something to some people and gives a lot of people strength, hope — whatever you get from music. So he decided to suspend his judgment and stop looking down on Celine just because she doesn't speak to him. So that's kind of the mindset I was in at that time."

Mr. Franco, you study a ton of different things, teach a course at NYU, act in films, direct some, do exhibitions, write books. When do you even find the time to sleep?

Despite how it might seem, I have been acting in fewer movies than I did before. It seems like I haven’t, but I have. A lot of the work I do is in the summer and for most of the year I am just in school. So that’s where I put my energy in and that results in books, short films – stuff like that.

How is university treating you these days?

It’s great.

Is it different than when you went to study the first time?

Yes. When I graduated from high school I went to UCLA and I went there for one year. When I was eighteen I was a literature major but I was more interested in acting at the time. So I wasn’t very focused on university, I was more focused on my acting school. When I went back to school I was going back because I wanted to go back, I didn’t need to. I didn’t need the degree for any kind of job or anything like that. I was just there because I wanted to be. That can really change the school experience. I was just taking things I was interested in rather than what might lead to better employment.

“When there is a lot of money involved and people want me to promote their movie, they don’t want to hear about school.”
Is it possible to have a normal student’s experience when you are well known actor?

The work is the work – so I do all my homework, and that’s probably the same. I have good relationships with my professors, I imagine that’s somewhat similar, I don’t know. Yes, I’ve had some odd experiences with some students, not many, but…

Like what?

I got a weird e-mail from a student who wanted to confess that she had been upset that I was in the writing program at Columbia and that she didn’t understand why I was there at first and was resentful. And then was especially resentful when she – these were her words – was taking a shit and had to look at my face in a magazine. She threw the magazine away. But after being in class with me she realized that I was serious about the program and didn’t want to hate me anymore.

Amazing…

So sure, I wouldn’t have had that experience if I hadn’t been an actor. But then on the other hand I have made very good friends at school and made friendships at film school. I am sure we will continue into the professional world, they’re people that I really enjoy working with.

Has Hollywood tried to keep you away from school in order to squeeze more money out of you?

There are certain conflicts. When I went back to UCLA we had to do the press tour for Spiderman around the world and Sony doesn’t want to hear that I don’t want to go to Japan for the premiere because I have my Jacobean literature class. They just don’t want to hear that. Or I had people say, “Do you want to be an actor or do you want to be a student?” When there is a lot of money involved and people want me to promote their movie they don’t want to hear about school.

How did your school react to those requests?

A lot of the schools don’t understand me missing class because I have to go and do those kinds of things for a movie. So it’s difficult and it’s on my shoulders to navigate that and make it work for both sides of my life. But yes, in a lot of ways, they don’t mix.

“Whatever attention I get, I would say that about 80% of it is not generated by me.”
It seems like you are quite restless for your age, getting involved in all these different artistic activities. Sure you’re not doing it for the attention?

No, I am just pursuing the stuff that I am interested in. I know that if I do these other things it is impossible to detach the fact that it is James Franco that has done them from the projects themselves. So in some ways I do embrace that and it becomes a part of these pieces. Whatever attention I get, I would say that about 80% of it is not generated by me. I’m not trying to find the spotlight.

But there are some people who feel like you’re turning your whole life into an art performance in a way.

I take writing and art very seriously and have spent the last years going to school for these things, so I wouldn’t say that I am turning my life into a performance. It is just that I know that when I do other things that people will review it. At the moment people are still talking about the fact that the actor James Franco has written a book or whatever. But I hope as time goes on people will move beyond that.

How do you take criticism?

I guess all I can hope for that when people do criticize, even though they have mentioned that I am an actor, at least that they have looked at it as an art piece and not just a side project.

Do you feel misjudged?

I want to be looked at as an artist and a writer. Really that is all I can ask for and in fact what they have done is they have actually helped usher me into this world so that the next time I will do it will be more accepted. As anybody that talks about criticism knows on a lot of levels it is just people talking. So I don’t mind it.

Will you give up acting all together once you are done with all the intellectual education?

I have experience in both of these worlds now and that’s a perspective that most of my fellow students don’t have and most of my fellow actors don’t have this graduate school academic perspective. So I like that; that is one thing I can contribute that’s unique. I like that they can kind of work off each other. And when I do write my dissertation, I’m working towards something that will involve that crossover – crossover of different kinds of media and disciplines and how they interact with each other. So, no, I don’t like the idea of giving up acting completely.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, James Franco, has written and directed a new movie called "The Disaster Artist." That's about the making of the 2003 film "The Room." "The Room" is a movie that's been called the "Citizen Kane" of bad movies. "The Disaster Artist" is based in part on a book of the same name about the making of "The Room." The co-author, Tom Bissell, describes "The Room" as a movie made by an alien who has never seen a movie but has had movies thoroughly explained to him.

"The Room" has developed a cult following through midnight screenings around the country. People laugh at how ineptly made it is and how strange the leading man's performance is. That actor, Tommy Wiseau, also wrote, directed, produced and financed "The Room." James Franco plays Wiseau and befriended him during the making of "The Disaster Artist." But Wiseau remains a mystery man with an unplaceable accent, which he says is from New Orleans but is clearly not.

Earlier this year, James Franco starred in season 1 of the HBO series "The Deuce" playing two roles, identical twins. We'll talk about that later. Let's start with the scene from the 2003 film "The Room." Tommy Wiseau plays Johnny whose girlfriend, Lisa, has been cheating on him with his best friend. In this scene, Johnny is upset and deeply wounded because Lisa has accused him of hitting her. He's walking through the door to the roof of his building where he meets his friend Mark.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE ROOM")

TOMMY WISEAU: (As Johnny) I did not hit her. It's not true. It's bull [expletive]. I did not her. I did not. Oh, hi, Mark.

GREG SESTERO: (As Mark) Oh, hey, Johnny, what's up?

WISEAU: (As Johnny) I have a problem with Lisa. She says that I hit her.

SESTERO: (As Mark) What? Well, did you?

WISEAU: (As Johnny) No, it's not true. Don't even ask. What's new with you?

SESTERO: (As Mark) Well, I'm just sitting up here thinking, you know? I got a question for you.

WISEAU: (As Johnny) Yeah?

SESTERO: (As Mark) You think girls like to cheat like guys do?

WISEAU: (As Johnny) What makes you say that?

SESTERO: (As Mark) I don't know. I don't know. I'm just - I'm just thinking.

WISEAU: (As Johnny) I don't have to worry about that because Lisa's loyal to me.

SESTERO: (As Mark) Yeah, man, you never know. People are very strange these days.

GROSS: Now that you've heard that scene from "The Room." Listen to this scene from "The Disaster Artist" about shooting that scene. Seth Rogen plays the script supervisor who's directing the scene and has to keep giving Tommy Wiseau his lines because Wiseau can't remember them.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE DISASTER ARTIST")

SETH ROGEN: (As Sandy) Action.

JAMES FRANCO: (As Tommy Wiseau) What line? What (unintelligible) line?

ROGEN: (As Sandy) I did not hit her. It's not true. It's bull [expletive]. I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi, Mark.

FRANCO: (As Tommy Wiseau) OK.

ROGEN: (As Sandy) Action.

FRANCO: (As Tommy Wiseau) What is the line?

ROGEN: (As Sandy) I did not hit her. It's not true. It's bull [expletive]. I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi, Mark. Scene 112, take 13, mark it, action.

FRANCO: (As Tommy Wiseau) I did not hit her. I - OK, OK. Line?

SETH ROGEN AND UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters in unison) I did not her. It's not true. It's bull [expletive]. I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi, Mark.

ROGEN: (As Sandy) Take 17. Action.

FRANCO: (As Tommy Wiseau) I hit her.

ROGEN: (As Sandy) No. Do you want to change the line?

FRANCO: (As Tommy Wiseau) Script is script. Script stays the same.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) You're doing great, man. We'll get there.

ROGEN: (As Sandy) Action, action, action, action.

FRANCO: (As Tommy Wiseau) You have to say it loud. I can't hear in here. Say action so I can hear.

ROGEN: (As Sandy) OK.

GROSS: So that was a scene from "The Room" and a scene from the new film "The Disaster Artist." James Franco, welcome back to FRESH AIR.

FRANCO: Thank you so much, Terry.

GROSS: So I know...

FRANCO: This is my third time.

GROSS: It is.

FRANCO: I don't know if you remember, but this is my third time.

GROSS: But who's counting? (Laughter) Oh, I'm so glad you remember. So I think a lot of our listeners know "The Room," but a lot of our listeners don't. So I'm going to ask you to describe "The Room" for people who haven't seen it. Like, what's your short version of the description?

FRANCO: Right. OK, well, first of all, just to say, my movie "The Disaster Artist" is about the making of "The Room," which is an actual movie. It is not the Brie Larson, Oscar-winning movie, "Room." It's...

GROSS: (Laughter) That's right.

FRANCO: ...Something else that was written and directed by and stars this man named Tommy Wiseau, who also financed it at the tune of $6 million. Now, it does not look like it was made for $6 million - looks like it was made for about $60. It came out in 2003. And Tommy intended it to be a great drama. He wrote on the original poster that it was a Tennessee-Williams-level drama. It's a very simple story. If I told you the plot, it's basically - you know, Tommy casts himself as this guy Johnny.

Maybe I should say, first, the kind of magic behind "The Room," you know, is due to Tommy Wiseau. There are three mysteries to Tommy - where he's from 'cause he sound - he sounds like this, you know, which would suggest like Eastern Europe by way of France and trying - I don't know - maybe dialect coaches and failing at that. But he say he from New Orleans - he all-American guy.

The second mystery is his age. He was at least in his late 40s when he made "The Room" but claimed that he was in his 20s. And then - where he got the money - the $6 million dollars, which is the darkest mystery. I mean, the other two, you just sort of see through this thin - the thin facade.

But the money - he claims that he made it, you know, selling denim at his own little shop. And every time I've questioned him about that, he's - he, you know, adamantly insists that he made it through selling Levi's jeans. And I'd be, like, Tommy, come on, you know how many jeans that is? He's like, James, you embarrass yourself. You don't know anything about retail. And I'm like, OK. I don't (laughter) - all right, fine.

So, anyway, the - real quick, the plot of "The Room" is this guy who - oh, by the way, you can look him up online, but he looks sort of like the mix between, like, a vampire and a pirate and Michael Jackson or something like that.

(LAUGHTER)

FRANCO: And he has, like, long black hair that looks like it's dyed with magic marker and...

GROSS: And has never been washed (laughter).

FRANCO: Yes. And so he casts himself as Johnny, this - you know, the great guy, all-American guy. And basically, the plot of the movie is his girlfriend and his best friend have an affair and betray him. And - spoiler alert - he commits suicide at the end. And that's kind of it.

But that says nothing about all the bizarre, you know, creative decisions - the weird side plots about drug dealers that have - that never show up again, mothers-in-law who say they have breast cancer and then never mention it again - you know, just bizarreness. And almost as if - some people have described this movie as the best worst movie ever made or the "Citizen Kane" of bad movies.

GROSS: So to make your movie about the making of "The Room," you had to basically study everything that makes "The Room" weird and unintentionally funny - the writing...

FRANCO: In a way.

GROSS: ...Acting, the edits, the use of music - because you had to reproduce some of it in addition to telling the behind-the-scenes story.

FRANCO: Yes. But here's the thing - yes, yes. But if all we had was "The Room" and we were just sort of like, let's make a movie on that, it would - we would, at best, probably, be able to make a spoof. In fact, what we had was this book, "The Disaster Artist," that was written by Greg Sestero, who was the other actor in "The Room" and Tommy Wiseau's best friend, and also written by this great journalist, Tom Bissell...

GROSS: Tom Bissell, yeah

FRANCO: Yeah - who was incredible - an incredible writer. And so I think one of the, you know, the smartest things Greg Sestero ever did was to get Tom to co-write this book with him because it's an incredible book. And that's actually how I came to this whole project. I read the book right when it came out about four years ago. I saw it on the New York Times Book Review. And it's a Hollywood story, but it's unusual and unlike any other. And I love Hollywood stories. And so as - like before I was halfway done, I was like, oh, this is for me. So that's all to say we had more than just "The Room." We had...

GROSS: Well, you had even more than that. You had tapes.

FRANCO: (Laughter) Yes.

GROSS: You had tapes that Tommy Wiseau made like his - like audio journals.

FRANCO: Yes.

GROSS: Tell us about those tapes.

FRANCO: OK, well, so Tommy knows I have them. OK, so let's just say that up front like...

GROSS: Did he give them to you? Or did...

FRANCO: No. Tommy did not - Tommy did not give them to me...

GROSS: How did you get them?

FRANCO: Greg gave them to me. So Tommy calls them now (imitating Tommy Wiseau) the secret tape. I know you have secret tape.

GROSS: Can I just stop right there? For people just tuning in, James Franco keeps lapsing in and out of Tommy's accent. So if he occasionally sounds odd to you, that is why. He's lapsing - he's going in and out...

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: ...Of Tommy Wiseau's accent.

FRANCO: Not only am I lapsing into the accent. I almost can't help it. I just - it's sort of like a virus. It's just in me now. But (laughter) - so it'll come out every once in a while. So 20 years ago, five or six years before he made his magnum opus, "The Room," he was in LA trying to make it as an actor, going to acting school. And so he would drive around in his car and talk to himself on a mini tape recorder. And it's amazing material. As an actor, you couldn't ask for anything more. It was - it's as if I had the running inner monologue of the guy I was playing.

And in fact, it was even more valuable in this case because Tommy Wiseau is the master rewriter of history because when he was making "The Room," I think he was completely sincere. He was aiming for Brando and James Dean and came out with something completely different. But when he realized that people were laughing at his film, he then rewrote the whole - you know, his whole script and claimed...

GROSS: The script of his life, not the script of the movie.

FRANCO: Yes.

GROSS: Yeah.

FRANCO: Yes, yes, meaning - yeah, meaning he came out and said, oh, I intended it to be comedy, whereas in fact he had kept it in theaters on his own dime for two weeks to qualify for the Oscars. So he had been aiming for this great dramatic movie. He had said, you know, before, yeah, people will see my movie, and they will not be able to sleep for two week; they'd be so disturbed. And - but then people laughed at it. And so he then said, yeah, I intended to be comedy. And now what he says about "The Room" is, you know, "The Room" is a safe place. You can laugh; you can cry. Do whatever you like. Express yourself. Just don't hurt yourself.

So I couldn't very well go to Tommy now and say, what were you like when you were making "The Room"? 'cause he wouldn't give me anything real, you know? He'd just be like, yeah, I intended it to be comedy. So these tapes became even more valuable. They were sort of the truth. And it was a - like, a time capsule of the man from the time that he was making "The Room."

Even though "The Room" resulted in - you know, it was such a kind of wacky bat, you know, conventionally bad thing, we're showing that the passion behind it is no different than the passion of, you know, Francis Ford Coppola or of James Dean or me, James Franco. Like, everybody has the same level of passion. It's just that I guess Tommy had zero self-awareness, you know, when he was making it.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is James Franco. He stars in and directed the new movie "The Disaster Artist," which is about - behind the scenes of the making of "The Room." And it's about the person who made "The Room." "The Room" is a 2003, like, midnight cult-classic film. And he also stars in the HBO series "The Deuce." We'll be back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF VIJAY IYER'S "BLACK AND TAN FANTASY")

GROSS: My guest is James Franco and his latest project is starring in and directing the new film "The Disaster Artist" and he's also in the HBO series "The Deuce." The first season is over, but it's still on demand on HBO.

OK, so I just want to play another short scene from "The Room." So this isn't James Franco's movie about the making of "The Room." This is from "The Room" itself. And so we're going to hear Tommy Wiseau as Johnny finding out that his girlfriend doesn't want to be with him anymore.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE ROOM")

WISEAU: (As Johnny) You shouldn't have any secrets from me. I'm your future husband.

JULIETTE DANIELLE: (As Lisa) You sure about that? Maybe I'll change my mind.

WISEAU: (As Johnny) Don't talk like that. What do you mean?

DANIELLE: (As Lisa) What do you think? Women change their minds all the time.

WISEAU: (As Johnny, laughter) You must be kidding, aren't you?

DANIELLE: (As Lisa) Look; I don't want to talk about it. I'm going to go upstairs and wash up and go to bed.

WISEAU: (As Johnny) How dare you talk to me like that. You should tell me everything.

DANIELLE: (As Lisa) I can't talk right now.

WISEAU: (As Johnny) Why, Lisa? Why, Lisa? Please talk to me, please. You're part of my life. You are everything. I could not go on without you, Lisa.

DANIELLE: (As Lisa) You're scaring me.

WISEAU: (As Johnny) You're lying. I never hit you. You are tearing me apart, Lisa.

DANIELLE: (As Lisa) Why are you so hysterical?

WISEAU: (As Johnny) Do you understand life? Do you?

GROSS: I don't know it's...

FRANCO: (Laughter).

GROSS: You can tell somebody is, like - that Wiseau's trying somehow to just channel some kind of emotion, but it's all just so out of sync. He doesn't seem to really understand human emotion either as a person, judging from how you portray his story, or as an actor. Tommy just seems, like, delusional.

FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: Do you think he has, like, a psychological or cognitive disorder? Is that a weird question? Is that OK to ask that?

FRANCO: (Laughter) Yeah, it's OK to ask me. I - it sort of, like, gets a little tricky because if I thought he was sort of, like, suffering - you know what I mean? - if I thought like, oh, man, he needs to be locked away and - 'cause he needs serious help, I - that's something I take very seriously. And I don't think that. I think, you know, he's living his life. He's got a community. And he's not hurting anyone, and he's not hurting himself. I think - you know, I think he's fine.

But yeah, I think he's got a disorder that's sort of on the spectrum that maybe a lot of actors have, that I have to a certain extent, of like, thinking - you know, there's this weird thing that happens in Hollywood and probably happens everywhere where it's like, if I make it into the movies, I will be saved; I will be happy. And I think in Tommy's case - 'cause I do think he was a very lonely guy - that one of the things he was seeking with this movie and also making it with his best friend, Greg, was friendship, a community, love. And I think in a weird way, he got that. When he shows up to these screenings, he does have a community. People are chanting his name.

I know what you're going to say (laughter). Like, yeah, but it's not genuine or whatever. Yeah, he has to do a certain amount of mental gymnastics to translate the laughing and the applause that he gets at those screenings into, like, just pure applause or, you know - but it's still something.

What happened with my movie - at the first screening - the first public screening at South by Southwest, which was also the first time that Tommy ever saw the movie 'cause he didn't want to watch it in private for whatever reason, is we showed it there. It turned out to be an incredible screening, standing ovation. I kept looking down the row at Tommy to see how he was going to react. He was wearing his (laughter) shades in - you know, while watching the movie. I couldn't tell what he thought of the movie. We went up on stage to do a Q&A after - me, my brother and Seth Rogen. We were hesitant to bring Tommy up because we didn't know what he was going to think. He famously said, of the book that our movie's based on, the book only 40 percent true. And we're like, well, he could very well not like our movie because we based the movie on the book. And, you know, we don't want to have an awesome screening and then have Tommy come up and say, well, you know, that movie not true and, you know, whatever. And so we didn't bring him up.

And then this guy came up from the audience and asked a question. Then he said, oh, by the way, I play the real Chris R in "The Room," which is this just side character - this drug dealer named Chris R. (Laughter) They ask Tommy like, why is his name Chris R? Can't we just call him Chris? He's like, no, his name Chris R. He drug dealer - Chris R. (Laughter) And I'm like OK. So he's like I played the real Chris R. Can I have a picture? And Seth Rogen's like, yeah, dude, come on up here. So Chris R came up on stage. And I look out in the audience at Tommy. And he's like 15 rows back, but I can see like this darkness - this dark cloud descending on him. And I don't - and I still haven't talked to him. I don't know if it's because he's jealous that Chris R is up there or that he just hated the movie.

And so I just - I was like, Tommy, come up. Tommy, come up on stage. And he won't come up. And so then the audience in Austin all stood up and started chanting his name - Tommy, Tommy. And - just like in our movie. And he - you know, that's basically what he wanted. So he comes up. And we still didn't give him the mic because I still didn't know what he was going to say. And it's my biggest regret. And I step off stage finally, and I'm like, all right, Tommy, what do you think? And he goes, well, yeah, I approve 99.9 percent. And I'm like wow. And would you - what's the .1 percent? And you think he's going to say, well, you know, I have - that - I never said that - or whatever. And he goes - director to director, he goes, yeah, James, I think you should look at lighting in beginning of movie.

(LAUGHTER)

FRANCO: And I'm like, oh, man. Yeah, I'll tell my cinematographer to watch "The Room" for pointers. But then we realize only later that he had been wearing his shades through the whole movie.

(LAUGHTER)

FRANCO: So it's like, yeah, of course, the lighting's off. But here's my big point - is I realized in that screen - I only realized later. When they were cheering for him, that - they were cheering his story. You know, they were cheering him on and, you know, the will it took to get his movie made because we made Tommy sympathetic. That was our aim in the movie - in my movie, "The Disaster Artist." And that was the first time in Tommy's entire life that he heard unadulterated, unironic applause for his story. And that - just thinking about that, it moves me right now to say that. Like, he got it. He finally got what he wanted.

GROSS: My guest is James Franco. He directed and stars in the new movie "The Disaster Artist." We'll talk more after a break. And linguist Geoff Nunberg will tell us his word of the year. I'm Terry Gross. And this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is James Franco. He directed and stars in the new movie "The Disaster Artist." And if you watched "The Deuce," you know he played two characters in that HBO series, which is set in Times Square on 42nd Street in the early '70s, just at the very beginning when the mob is moving in and opening up massage parlors and when porn is starting to become a little aboveground and just not underground and starting to be shown in porn theaters. And you play two characters. One of them is a bartender who gets involved with the mobsters and kind of against his will gets involved with the massage parlors. He doesn't want to be involved in - you know, working in a sex trade industry. But he's kind of getting, you know, pushed into it. And you also play his brother...

FRANCO: Frankie.

GROSS: ...His twin brother - identical twin brother who is kind of happy to get involved with the mobsters because that's where the money is.

FRANCO: (Laughter).

GROSS: And he's just a real professional troublemaker. He's a gambler who's always in debt and always in trouble and always looking to his brother, Vince, to kind of bail him out.

FRANCO: Wow, you really are a fan of the show.

GROSS: Oh, it's a great series.

FRANCO: You watched it? (Laughter).

GROSS: Yeah, I really like it (laughter). So I want to talk to first a little bit about playing two twin brothers.

FRANCO: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: Like, you had to figure out - you and the director had to figure out some distinguishing characteristics so that I, watching it, could tell which character I was watching. Part of it was the clothing because they dressed a little bit differently. What else did you do as an actor?

FRANCO: Yeah, so when a single actor plays twins, there's a lot of ways you can go. Like, you can make them - their look distinct - you know, like one could have a mustache, and one doesn't. You know, you can - you know, one has like long hair. And one, you know, is bald or whatever. You know, there's things you could do just physically to differentiate them and - which is, you know, completely legitimate way to go. I think we settled on making them sort of similar, like real twins, although we knew from the start that their personalities were very distinct.

And the mustache, that sort of was just a practical thing because I hate - there's one thing that I hate. And I'm sure most actors hate - is like glued-on facial hair. It's even worse than just like facial prosthetics, like I wore in "The Disaster Artists" - like I had two-and-a-half hours of prosthetics in "The Disaster Artist." That was not nearly as bad as just a fake mustache. And so we decided that they would both have mustaches so that I could just grow a mustache. And they would both have it.

And then we just decided, you know, you'll be able to just tell the characters apart by their personalities. And as an actor, it was like - and maybe as a slight egomaniac or whatever (laughter), like it was a dream come true. And I thought of it almost as getting to play the Harvey Keitel and the De Niro roles from "Mean Streets," you know.

GROSS: No, absolutely. I thought of the De Niro character in "Mean Streets" right away when I saw...

FRANCO: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: ...Your character.

FRANCO: For sure.

GROSS: And then you have a great shot in the first episode. It's a totally "Taxi Driver" shot where you're walking down the street. And all these like marquees are behind you. Like that's the poster for "Taxi Driver."

FRANCO: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: So you directed two episodes of "The Deuce." And in one of the episodes, there's a scene in which the Maggie Gyllenhaal character, she plays a sex worker or prostitute who's trying to transition into actually making pornography because it's seems like safer and more lucrative and way more interesting and comfortable. And so...

FRANCO: Yeah, I mean - yeah, go ahead.

GROSS: The question is as part of your research did you have to go back and watch a lot of period porn - just to get a sense of like, what is it these characters are making? What is it they're watching? What's like the sex environment of the time?

FRANCO: Yeah, it's the early days of American porn. "Deep Throat" was, you know, obviously the big hit and kind of was the birth of the American porn industry. In the early days, compared to now, it was sort of innocent. There was a bubbliness to it. There was - you know, and they were trying to tell stories. And something like "Deep Throat" did play in more mainstream cinemas. And so, you know, they learn things. Like, you know, it's mostly a male audience. Cut the guy's head out. Don't show the guy's face - you know, and all these things. And cut out the story. People don't want this story. Just cut to the - you know, the juice - sorry for that, (laughter) no pun intended - and that kind of thing. But, yeah, at the time, you know, the early '70s - and, oh, there's a lot of hair - a lot of pubic hair.

GROSS: Oh, and chest hair really.

FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: Right, different times (laughter).

FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: So anything else with your filmmaker's take on the porn of the period - just like from a filmmaker's point of view? How it looked to you?

FRANCO: I mean, it's shot on film. There's...

GROSS: As opposed to video.

FRANCO: Yeah, there's no - there's hardly any fake breasts. But, you know, the moves...

(LAUGHTER)

FRANCO: The moves are basically the same. It's sort of kind of how it's always been.

GROSS: Was it kind of confusing when you were directing yourself in two different parts in "The Deuce"?

FRANCO: That, yes, was a little bit of a - it spun my head a little bit. Like basically, you know, playing twins and then directing yourself as twins is - you know, it's just sort of an extension of directing. And the way, you know, Bryan Cranston described it - I worked with him. He's such a great guy. And he said on "Breaking Bad," when he did it, like as a director, you're already doing the work. You're breaking down the scenes. You're talking to your cinematographer about how you want to capture it. You understand what you want to get out of each scene so that by the time you're shooting, and you step in front of the camera as an actor, you already are really clear on what you want to get from the scene as a director. And so being the actor is just an extension of that.

So then playing twins, you just sort of do that twice over where, you know - surprise, surprise - you know, I'm not actually playing both twins at once. So like I go in, block it out as the director, then act it as one twin and then, you know, make the move to change over from Vincent to Frankie, at this time, so that the cinematographer is now turning the lights around. And they'll be spending enough time so that I can quickly change over to Frankie and not waste any set time and come back and then do the scene from the other side.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is James Franco, and he stars in the HBO series "The Deuce." Season one is over, but you can watch it on demand. And also he directed and stars in the new film "The Disaster Artist." We'll be back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF CLAUDIA ANN SODARO'S "PASSION")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is James Franco. He starred as two characters in the HBO series "The Deuce." And now he stars in and directed the new movie "The Disaster Artist," which was basically the behind-the-scenes story of the midnight cult film "The Room."

So I want to ask you about your movie from a few years ago, "The Interview," 'cause it seems very timely, sadly, right now. In "The Interview," you played a celebrity journalist. And you host a program. And as it turns out...

FRANCO: I was playing one of you.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: That's right.

FRANCO: I was like, - that character Dave Skylark in "The Interview" was sort of like the Tommy Wiseau, like...

GROSS: (Laughter).

FRANCO: Me to Tommy Wiseau is you to Dave Skylark.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: That's really funny. So it turns out Kim Jong Un is a fan or so he says.

FRANCO: Yes. Yes.

GROSS: And so he invites your character Dave Skylark...

FRANCO: (Laughter).

GROSS: ...To interview him. And so Dave Skylark thinks, like, this is my ticket to, like, big time...

FRANCO: Yes.

GROSS: ...Journalism. I'm going to do it.

FRANCO: Yes.

GROSS: And Seth Rogen is his producer. He's a little skeptical of, you know - but they go, and they do it. And meanwhile, the CIA says, and while you're there, assassinate Kim Jong Un.

FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: Here's some ricin. You could just slip it when...

FRANCO: (Laughter).

GROSS: ...When you shake his hand and...

FRANCO: Yes.

GROSS: ...Assassinate him with that 'cause it's that...

FRANCO: Yes.

GROSS: ...It's that poisonous.

FRANCO: Yes.

GROSS: And so what happens instead is that your character has this kind of, like, bromance with Kim Jong Un. They spend the day together, and they play basketball.

FRANCO: (Laughter).

GROSS: And they drink margaritas, and they hang out with attractive women.

FRANCO: Yes.

GROSS: And they...

FRANCO: They sing Katy Perry together.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: They sing a Katy Perry song and have a great time together. So your character doesn't want to assassinate Kim Jong Un because he's so kind of smitten with him.

FRANCO: (Laughter) So silly.

GROSS: But in the end, he realizes that the whole thing is a facade. And Kim Jong Un is a bad man.

FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: And...

FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...The assassination happens. We see his head or his whole body explode. I forget which.

FRANCO: Yeah. (Laughter) Both I think.

GROSS: Meanwhile, North Korea's reaction to this - Kim Jong Un's actual reaction to the release of the movie is, do not release it or there will be trouble.

FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: And they threatened - there were threats against theaters. There were threats to Sony.

FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: Sony...

FRANCO: Sony was hacked.

GROSS: Sony was hacked.

FRANCO: We don't know - I guess we don't know officially if it was...

GROSS: We don't know if officially...

FRANCO: ....North Korea or not.

GROSS: Exactly.

FRANCO: But Sony was hacked. Yeah.

GROSS: Exactly. But I think we were basically told it was pretty much North Korea.

FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: And Sony basically released it as an on demand - a video on-demand thing so that people wouldn't have to, you know, feel like...

FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...They were risking their lives to see it in a theater. This whole time - throughout that whole period, I was thinking, what is going through James Franco and Seth Rogen's minds? So I can ask you now, what was going through your mind during that period when all this really bad stuff was happening attached to the movie? It's a comedy. You know, it's just a - it's funny. It's a comedy.

FRANCO: It's bizarre. Yeah. It was so bizarre. And I think, you know, we'll go down in Hollywood history. I mean - and so in being in the middle of that was - as you can imagine - confusing. Seth and I were sort of in the dark for a while. Like, nobody was telling us what decisions they were going to make. We were sort of learning things as they came out in headlines. And then, you know, so we learned, oh, they're pulling the movie from the theaters and, you know, all this stuff. And so I was sort of in the dark.

And then I went home for the holidays. I was staying in a hotel with my grandma. And every morning, we'd have breakfast together and there - and there's a TV in the hotel. And inevitably, you know, something about "The Interview" would come up. And then one day, it was, like, Obama came out and made a statement. And he said, you know, they should play it in the theaters. Don't be, you know, back down. We don't back down to threats like this. And he said - and it was my big moment - he said, and I love Seth Rogen. I love James Flacco.

(LAUGHTER)

FRANCO: I was like, no. It's Franco. No. And I keep hoping I'm - maybe this is the interview with Terry - the great Terry Gross - that Obama will actually hear and come out and say, OK, it's James Franco. I made a mistake.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: But were you feeling, oh, my God, is this my fault? Is the hack my fault - like, if people are hurt?

FRANCO: Well, it's a - it was such a tricky thing. And that's what people were, you know, like - I think even, like, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney came out and said, you need to watch this. They - I don't think they had seen "The Interview" at this point. Maybe they wouldn't have said this, but they were like, you need to watch this movie as a - your patriotic duty.

GROSS: (Laughter).

FRANCO: And, you know, so it was a really confusing - and Clooney - a lot of people were coming out and saying, you know, this, you know, keep it in theaters. This is - you know, we don't back down. And it became a really strange thing. And, you know, when we - there was a point before we made the movie where we were, you know, saying, like, OK, should we make it the real guy? Should we use the name Kim Jong Un or should we just make - should we just sort of suggest it's the guy?

And the strange and crazy thing - it's almost like, you know, "The Disaster Artist" in this sense where we weren't really making things up when we were kind of making jokes about North Korea or just showing how it was. Like, that was strangely all based on things we read or things that had come out of reportage that had come out of North Korea. And then, you know, the idea that maybe he's not a great guy - like, I don't think we were going out on a limb there, you know. Like, these threats of nuclear war - like, I don't - you know, I don't know if we were going out on a limb. It was sort of like, yeah, maybe somebody should sort of make a comment on this. Like, and...

GROSS: So...

FRANCO: ...In making no comparison in, like, moviemaking, you know, skill or anything like that, but, you know, "Dr. Strangelove" is a comedy about nuclear war - like, atomic war. Like, I felt like, yeah, we were falling in that tradition. I thought - what I thought was, oh, we're doing what comedy does best. We are slipping you a pill coated in candy except that then it became this much bigger thing. It was supposed to be, you know, this sort of comedy that had political, you know, underpinnings. Instead, it just became completely political. And I think that prevented people from really actually seeing the movie for what it was because I still - I think it's a great comedy.

GROSS: I think it's really funny. The only question I'd have about where should the line be is at the end when we see Kim Jong Un actually kind of blow up, like, get blown up, blown apart. And I was just wondering like...

FRANCO: Maybe that was (unintelligible) bridge too far.

GROSS: Yeah. I was wondering if you ever had any second thoughts about that.

FRANCO: I mean, there were second thoughts. You can read about all of it in the Sony hack. Like, the original cut had his face exploding in a much more gruesome explicit way. And then the one concession was - and this is long before the Sony hack. But you can just read about it in the emails of the Sony hack that we had - they had to cover his face exploding with like flames so that it wasn't as gruesome.

But - you know what, Terry? Maybe you're right. Maybe that was the step too far. I don't know. I kind of doubt that anything would have happened differently with this hack if we - if he didn't get killed. I kind of doubt that. But maybe that was too far. I don't know.

GROSS: So here's my other question. Like, did it make you feel kind of like the power of movies - the unintended power of movies that make you think about movies in any different way than you'd ever thought about them before just in terms of like...

FRANCO: For sure. I mean, I always believe in the power of movies and in, a basic sense, like, what I think they can do. And what I always try to do, because I don't normally make political movies - I mean, not that I'm against them. Like, one of my favorite movies is "All The President's Men." But they show us to ourselves. You know, like Shakespeare said it. You're holding up a mirror to life. It's - that's my favorite thing about movies.

But then, you know, something like "Brokeback Mountain" or, you know, a movie I was a part of, "Milk" - like it starts to turn the consciousness of the country. You know, what art does the best, like, understand another - understand somebody who's different than us. When it does that, that's, you know, also so beautiful. And that's what literature does. That's what all great art does. And then, in the case of the interview, that's, you know, it was crazy. It's unprecedented in the history of movies like that.

GROSS: (Laughter) Yes, it is.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: James Franco, it's just been wonderful to talk with you again. Thank you so much.

FRANCO: I love it so much. And I remember all of our interviews, and I hope we can do more.

GROSS: James Franco directed and stars in the new movie "The Disaster Artist." After we take a short break, linguist Geoff Nunberg will tell us his word of the year. This is FRESH AIR.

James Franco seems to be everywhere these day in all kinds of different guises. He is a movie star, soap-opera actor, author, director, Yale PhD student, drag model, performance artist, 2011 Best Actor Oscar nominee. Yet even with this eclecticism, the 32-year-old's casting as Allen Ginsberg - the gay Jewish Beat poet who helped lay the foundation for '60s counterculture in America - appears at first glance to be somewhat counter-intuitive.

Franco, who broke through internationally playing Harry Osborn in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, admits that he was surprised when the director Gus Van Sant handed him a screenplay for the film Howl, by writer/directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (makers of The Celluloid Closet, an acclaimed documentary about Hollywood's treatment of homosexuality on film).

He had actually been a fan of the Beat generation ever since friends at his high school in Palo Alto, California, turned him on to them at age 15. "When I started acting, I thought it would be great to do a movie about them," he says.

However, Franco always imagined himself playing one of the hipper Beats, like Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road, or his womanising buddy, Neal Cassady. "I never, ever thought I would play Allen Ginsberg . . . I was very, very surprised. And very interested. But I think I had a moment where I just had to consider, 'Okay, I'm very honoured. But can I do it? Am I really the right person?'"

Franco had good reason to wonder. Photographs of Ginsberg from around the mid-'50s period during which Howl is set, reveal a nerdy-looking figure in thick-rimmed glasses, while the actor has the kind of matinee idol looks that have recently seen him cast as Julia Roberts' love interest in Eat Pray Love, and as the face of Gucci men's fragrance line. You could, arguably, imagine the young Woody Allen as Ginsberg, but Franco?

Snapshot
Born: April 19, 1978
Early life: Franco grew up in California with his parents Douclas and Betsy. He dropped out of UCLA to pursue acting.
Career: His first major film was the romantic comedy Whatever It Takes in 2000 and he won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of James Dean in 2001. He has been nominated for an Oscar for 127 Hours
Personal life: Franco has been in a relationship with actress Ahna O’Reilly since 2006
Coincidentally, at the same time as he received the script, Franco was hosting Saturday Night Live for the first time. Their make-up department had just won an Emmy, he says, "so I brought in a picture of Allen Ginsberg and I said, 'If I were going to do a sketch about Ginsberg on your show, how would you make me look like this?' And they said, 'Well, it wouldn't be that hard. We would just comb your hair in a certain way and give you the right glasses. Your colouring is very similar, it's just the nose is a little different and his ears stick out a little more than your ears. So we'd push that a little bit, maybe.' And they were right." He told Epstein and Friedman. "They liked the ears idea. At first we just used putty and then they made some prosthetics" and the process started.

The film revolves around the obscenity trial in America that resulted from the publication of Ginsberg's groundbreaking epic poem, Howl - a celebration of the Beats and an anguished, rebellious fusillade of frankness in the face of repressive attitudes towards homosexuality, among other things, and the forces that alienate people from themselves. The film gives us versions of the poet before and after the poem was written, as well as recreating its first reading at Six Gallery on Fillmore Street, San Francisco, in 1955. Beautifully drawn animated sequences visualise Franco/Ginsberg's words in sequences which, the film's makers acknowledge, offer just one version of the poem's meaning.

Writing Howl was an act of liberation for Ginsberg, who growing up was, as Forward.com's Jay Michaelson put it, "the Jewish Every-teen, a middle-class boy in New Jersey indistinguishable from thousands of others like him". His plan upon enrolling at New York's Columbia University was to become a lawyer. The Ginsberg of the pre-Howl flashbacks in the film is therefore different to the one giving the reading, and the one being interviewed by a journalist in 1957.

"After doing research about his young life," says Franco, who listened to every reading of Howl he could find, "and everything he went through up until the publication of Howl, he was a very confused and insecure young man.

"He was growing up in the '40s and '50s. He was gay, there were no real public role models around for that kind of lifestyle, and in addition to that there were extreme societal pressures; people were being treated in institutions for being gay. He was expelled from Columbia in part for being gay [he slept with Kerouac], and it must have been very, very hard for him."

By eliding the line between the public and the private self in Howl, Ginsberg freed himself; he became more comfortable in his own skin and more confident.

If the poet's Jewishness set him slightly apart from the other Beats, who occasionally mentioned it, Ginsberg himself did not really address the topic in his work until later, in poems such as Yiddishe Kopf and Kaddish, the latter written for his mother, Naomi, who died in a mental institution and was denied a reading of the Kaddish at her funeral for want of a minyan. As for Franco, though his mother, Betsy, was Jewish, his upbringing was largely secular.

"I do feel like I missed out on the Jewish experience," he told Amy Raphael in 2009. "My Jewish friends tell me not to worry… but I like the idea of religion as a source of community."

That same year, Franco experienced a spoof barmitzvah when he was voted Man of the Year by Harvard University's venerable Hasty Pudding theatrical company (think a kind of American Cambridge Footlights). The fake ceremony reportedly featured a Rabbi Spider-Man and Yentl Express dancers who danced in drag to Havah Nagila.

"I don't know if this counts in rabbinical law," Franco quipped, "but if it doesn't, I do plan to have a barmitzvah."

In the meantime, he has another ceremony to think about: on February 27, he will co-host the Oscars with Anne Hathaway, putting him in the unusual position of being both a compère and a nominee for his performance as Aron Ralston, the outdoorsman who escaped from a canyon by cutting his arm off, in 127 Hours.

Whether he will also add Oscar winner to his other roles that night, only time will tell.

Howl opens today.

February 2003—At this point Franco’s still seems like a pretty normal guy. Sure, he’s mid-way through a very successful superhero franchise and is being interviewed by people like Nicolas Cage for Interview, but he hasn’t yet gone back to UCLA to complete his BA. He’s just another run-of-the-mill really, really good looking, college dropout actor.

NICOLAS CAGE: When did you first discover James Dean?

FRANCO: I was aware of him in high school. He still seemed so alive. He was so relevant to us, as teenagers. Then, when I started taking acting seriously, I looked at him more from a student’s perspective.

NICOLAS CAGE: Describe a scenario where you wake up in the morning and you decide you’re not going to act, paint, or anything. You’re just going to relax. How would you do it?

JAMES FRANCO: Never. It’s impossibility. I don’t even like to sleep—I feel as if there’s too much to do.

February 2006—Franco will soon be back at UCLA. For now, he’s trying his hand at big-budget leading men such as Tristan in Tristan & Isolde. Here Franco talks to his former on-screen father, Willem Dafoe, about acting:

WILLAM DAFOE: You seem to inhabit roles really well. What do you find you need to get started?

JAMES FRANCO: I want to make the performance as realistic as possible, unless there’s some strange requirement. Now most of the time that means research, because it’s something like boxing or sword-fighting or doing an accent or playing a pilot.

DAFOE: The cool part of being an actor, right?

FRANCO: Yeah, I got my pilots license, and I got to see what boxing is like and all that stuff. Taking those steps is what gives me the confidence to say, “Okay. I can play this role,” as well as the confidence to fall on my face. But I also feel like there are some roles that don’t need that.

DAFOE: Baby you are my son! [both laugh] I’m agreeing with you.

FRANCO: When I was starting out, doing guest spots on TV, and even commercials, I would go in with a whole crazy wardrobe and some terrible accent. Obviously I was doing too much. If you bring to much flavor to it, it’s absurd. There’s something to just being spontaneous.

October 2008—Francophrenia (the phenomenon, not the film) is spreading and James is beginning to diversify his film and educational pursuits. Step one—landing himself a plum part in a Gus Van Sant’s Milk. Franco and his director discuss other iconic figure pop-culture figures River Phoenix, Andy Warhol and Zac Efron; and improvisation:

JAMES FRANCO: You were going to do a movie with River [Phoenix] about Andy Warhol, right?

GUS VAN SANT: Yeah. River kind of looked like Andy in his younger days. But that project never really went forward. I wanted to set it at Serendipity, the restaurant where all of the art directors and advertising guys and gallery people went.

JAMES FRANCO: The first piece of art I ever bought—when I could afford it—was a Warhol sketch from the period when he was just getting out of doing commercial work and more into art. It’s a sketch of a young guy’s face. I guess the gallery that I bought it from thought I would like it because the young guy kind of looked like James Dean. I don’t know. But I liked it because it was unusual for Warhol. It was kind of before the silk screens or anything that is really recognizable—it’s almost like a fashion drawing, but it’s a portrait.

FRANCO: I just played a stoner in Pineapple Express, and I don’t really smoke weed anymore, so everyone says, “Oh, you looked really high in the movie. How did you do that?” And I say, “Oh, I just pretend the wind is in my eyes.”

VAN SANT: So we haven’t talked about Zac yet.

FRANCO: What is Zac?

VAN SANT: Zac Efron.

FRANCO: Oh. Well, yeah, we can talk about Zac.

VAN SANT: Where did you see him?

FRANCO: I met him for the first time backstage at the MTV Movie Awards. Lucas Grabeel, who is in Milk, is also in High School Musical [2006] with Zac Efron, and so we had been talking about High School Musical a lot. I hadn’t seen it, but my girlfriend was a big fan of the movie—I don’t know why. She was like, “You’ve got to watch it.” And I was like, “All right, I’ll watch it because Lucas is in it.” So I watched it, and I guess I could kind of see the appeal. Some of the songs are kind of catchy. There’s one where Zac is playing basketball, but it’s also like a musical number . . . I don’t know. [laughs] I remember we were all sitting around on the set of Milk and I said, “I saw High School Musical.” I said it like I had never sounded so interested in anything before. Then I think you said that you had tried to get Zac for a small role in Milk.

VAN SANT: Yeah. The pizza guy. He never had time.

FRANCO: Right. So then when I saw him at the MTV Movie Awards, I was like, “Hey, man. Good to meet you, Zac. I really like the movie, and I just worked with Gus, and he tried to get you in his movie.” And Zac was like, “Yeah, yeah. It just didn’t work out.” And I was like, “Well, you should really do a movie with Gus. I think it would be a good contrast to your other stuff.” He’s like, “Yeah, maybe.” And then I was walking away to go back to my seat, and he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “We should do it together, man.” And he, like, gave me a high five. He was really the nicest guy.

VAN SANT: Yeah. He is really nice. We should all do a Judd Apatow movie. You and Zac and me.

FRANCO: Yeah. You should do a movie that Judd produces, and we’ll do it with Zac. What do you think?

VAN SANT: Keep your eyes open for it.

FRANCO: What kind of movie do you think it could be?

VAN SANT: I’ll have to think about that one.

FRANCO: If you have an idea and it’s like me and Zac playing basketball or delivering pizzas or whatever, I’m in.

VAN SANT: So the lines that were written in the script for Pineapple Express-were they basically what we were seeing on the screen?

FRANCO: Oh, no.

GUS VAN SANT: So in that movie, you’re improvising a stoner as well as just pretending there’s wind in your eyes.

FRANCO : Yeah, well, I don’t actually use the wind in my eyes—I just rub my eyes a bit and talk slowly or something. When Seth [Rogan] and me were doing interviews for the movie, everybody would ask us if we were smoking real weed when we were filming. And basically we’d say, “Did you ever see Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke? That’s what happens if you really smoke weed and make a movie. You get two guys and no plot and it’s basically like, ‘Yeah! Let’s drive a van made of weed!’ ” And that’s pretty much the movie.

FRANCO: Freaks and Geeks was TV, so there were lines you had to say. There was a little improvisation, but nothing like what Judd [Apatow] and those guys do in their movies now. I think I would try and improvise more than anybody on that show. When we were doing Freaks and Geeks, I didn’t quite understand how movies and TV worked, and I would improvise even if the camera wasn’t on me. I thought I was helping the other actors by keeping them on their toes, but nobody appreciated it when I would trip them up. So I was improvising a little bit back then, but not in a productive way. [laughs]

April 2012—the present day. The apex of Francophrenia? We have no idea. It’s hard to imagine Franco becoming more intriguing to the public. Here, we ask Franco about his most recent experiment, Francophrenia

MICHELLE LHOOQ: People might say that you’re pulling a Joaquin Phoenix with this, except Joaquin took his performative madness even further by bringing it on Letterman. Did you ever think about extending your act beyond General Hospital?

JAMES FRANCO: I think the impulses that have pushed me to do the projects I’ve done for the last five years are maybe similar to what inspired Joaquin to make that mockumentary. In the early part of that movie, he has this little speech, “I hate being an actor, they dress you and put on your makeup and you just feel like a little baby.” And I think that’s something a lot of actors feel. You work really hard to make it, and maybe you get some acclaim, but then you realize there are certain limitations as an actor. Generally you don’t initiate the projects—they’re designed and you’re inserted. Your material is edited by somebody. You feel a lack of power over your work.

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, James Franco has been very busy. He has two new films, "Howl," in which he plays the young Allen Ginsberg; and "127 Hours," which opens in November and is based on the true story of a hiker who had to amputate his own arm after it was caught under a boulder.

Franco's also attending two schools: Yale University and Rhode Island School of Design. In the past few years, he's been studying art, film and writing. He has a new collection of short stories that will be published later this month.

Franco got his start on the TV series "Freaks and Geeks," he co-starred in Spiderman, starred with Seth Rogen in the comedy "Pineapple Express," and in the movie "Milk," he played Harvey Milk's boyfriend. While making "Milk," he met the directors of a documentary about Harvey Milk. Those directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, directed "Howl."

The film centers around Ginsberg's first published poem, Howl, a ground-breaking work that evoked Walt Whitman, but with the stories, language and rhythms of what became known as beat poetry. Here's Franco from the opening of the film, playing Ginsberg reading the first lines of "Howl" in his first public reading at the Six Gallery.

(Soundbite of film, "Howl")

Mr. JAMES FRANCO (Actor): (As Allen Ginsberg) I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix, angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high, sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities...

GROSS: After the poem "Howl" was published in 1957, it became the subject of an obscenity case. The poem's publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was charged with selling obscene material.

The film "Howl" revolves around the reading of the poem, the courtroom trial and an extended interview with Ginsberg in which he talks about the experiences that led to the poem. Here's another section of the poem about being in Rockland, a psychiatric institution Ginsberg was sent to after he was arrested as an accessory to crimes committed by friends who were junkies and had stored stolen goods in Ginsbergs apartment. As a condition of his release, he pleaded psychiatric disability and agreed to be treated for homosexuality.

During his eight months in the hospital, he met Carl Solomon, who was being treated for depression and who is the person Ginsberg is addressing in this section of "Howl." Here's James Franco.

(Soundbite of film, "Howl")

Mr. FRANCO: (As Ginsberg) Im with you in Rockland, where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb. Im with you in Rockland, where there are 25,000 mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale.

Im with you in Rockland, where we hug and kiss the United States under our bed sheets, the United States that coughs all night and wont let us sleep. Im with you in Rockland, where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls airplanes roaring over the roof. Theyve come to drop angelic bombs. The hospital illuminates itself, imaginary walls collapse. O skinny legions run outside. O starry-spangled shock of mercy, the eternal war is here. O victory forget your underwear, were free.

GROSS: That's James Franco, portraying Allen Ginsberg in the new film "Howl," and in that scene, he's reading an excerpt of "Howl." Well done.

Mr. FRANCO: Thank you.

GROSS: I mean, there's no film here unless you can convincingly get Allen Ginsberg's cadences because so much of the film revolves around you reading the poem "Howl."

So, what was it about Allen Ginsberg's voice that really stuck out to you, that made you think, okay, this is what the voice is, this is what I built the voice around?

Mr. FRANCO: I guess, you know, he has a bit of a New Jersey accent. I guess that's what it is, or, you know, it's kind of an East Coast thing. And there is a alternation he alternates between kind of great exuberance and I guess, you know, this kind of sympathetic tone, you know, depending on what section he's reading. And so I tried to find out how he'd be responding to each section and then, you know, deliver it accordingly.

GROSS: How familiar were you with Allen Ginsberg's poems before preparing to make the movie?

Mr. FRANCO: I was pretty familiar. I'd read a fair amount of them when I was younger. It seems that people of a certain age, you know, young people, especially young men, usually come across the Beats. And me and my friends, I and my friends certainly did, and so...

GROSS: What did it mean to you when you read them?

Mr. FRANCO: Well, it's funny. I'm actually in a class right now at Yale where we're - it's about the Beats and about, it's about literary coteries. So, its about the Beats and about McSweeney's and Dave Eggers. So I'm re-reading all of those books that I read for the first time when I was in high school.

And I think what really struck me was how, you know, there were these young guys and they were, you know, looking for a new way of writing. Most of them had gone to Columbia or some other Ivy Leagues. And they had great teachers, but they were trying to break away from what they had learned in school and were looking for new ways.

And they really had no models. So they were just supporting each other and encouraging each other and thats how they made it, or thats how they found these new ideas. And so, I think that was really inspiring for me as a young man and that idea of just the search and having, you know, artistic friends around that could support me, and maybe that would be enough.

GROSS: So your part in the movie alternates between reading the poem "Howl" and being interviewed, and we don't see your interviewer. You're there alone on screen, talking alone into a reel-to-reel tape machine as the interview is being recorded.

So, is this gathered from different transcripts of interviews, or is this based on one interview with Ginsberg?

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, so I guess there was a lost interview that he gave to Time, I think back in the '60s. And Ginsberg had been in Tangiers, and they flew him out to Rome, and he gave this interview, and it was lost. They didn't I guess it was too racy, and they didn't - they never published it.

And no transcripts exist but Epstein and Friedman decided that they were going to use that idea for this interview, and it would be the lost interview. But the way that they created this interview was they compiled, you know, bits from interviews that Ginsberg had given his entire life. Everything that I say in those interviews, you know, everything that is said in the courtroom scenes, all of those are based on, you know, things that people actually said.

GROSS: Okay, so I want to play an excerpt of the interview. And this is him talking about something that happened between him and his therapist that changed his life. So, heres my guest James Franco, in a scene from "Howl," in which he's being interviewed.

(Soundbite of film, "Howl")

Mr. FRANCO: (As Ginsberg) In San Francisco, I had a year of psychotherapy with Dr. Hicks(ph). I was blocked, I couldnt write. I was still trying to act normal. I was afraid I was crazy. I was sure that I was supposed to be heterosexual and that something was wrong with me.

And Dr. Hicks kept saying, what do you want to do? What is your heart's desire? So, finally I said, well, what I'd really like to do is to just quit all this and get a small room with Peter and devote myself to my writing and contemplation and (BEEP) and smoking pot and doing whatever I wanted.

He said: Why don't you do it, then? I mean, what'll happen if I grow old and I have pee stains in my underwear, and I'm living in some furnished room, and nobody loves me, and I'm white-haired and I have no money and bread crumbs are falling on the floor? And he said, ah, don't worry about that. You're very charming and lovable, and people will always love you.

What a relief to hear that. I very soon realized that it was all a fear trap, just illusory.

GROSS: James Franco as Allen Ginsberg in an excerpt of the new film "Howl." So we've talked a little bit about getting the voice for Allen Ginsberg. What did you to do try to look like him because you're not the first person who comes to mind when you think of what Allen Ginsberg looked like. And most of us, when we think of what Allen Ginsberg looked like, think of him in his later years, as opposed to when he was in his 20s, because he wasn't as visible then.

I mean, you got the glasses. You got his trademark glasses from the period.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, that was key. Well...

GROSS: Did that help, having the glasses?

Mr. FRANCO: It certainly helped. Well, I had a similar reaction when they asked me to do it. Actually, Gus Van Sant was the first person to bring the project to my attention.

I was in the middle of filming "Milk" with Gus. And Gus is an executive producer on "Howl," and he said, you know I knew Rob and Jeff because they had, you know, worked on the documentary, "The Times of Harvey Milk," which, you know, we all watched to prepare for "Milk."

And so I knew who they were, and Gus said, you know, they have a movie about Allen Ginsberg and they want you to play Allen. And I thought, really? Because, you know, like I said, I loved the Beats. I had been reading them since I was about 15. And I - ever since I got into acting I always dreamed about, you know, doing a movie about the Beats. But I never thought that I would play Allen. I always thought, well, sure, I'll be Kerouac or Cassady. And - but I was being offered Allen.

And so I thought, well, will I be of service to this movie playing Allen? I mean, can I really do that? And so I did, you know, I went back and looked at some of the photographs of young Allen and then I thought, well, it's not that far. You know, young Allen, most people think, you know, when they think of Ginsberg, they think of the older Ginsberg, the heavier and balder and bearded Ginsberg. And that wouldve been a stretch. But the younger Ginsberg is actually kind of close to my build. We have similar, you know, coloring. And he had hair.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: And so, and by coincidence, I was hosting "Saturday Night Live" at the time, and they had just won an Emmy for makeup. So I brought in a picture of young Ginsberg. I brought it to the makeup department, and I said, hey, you guys, you know, make people look like other people all the time. How would you, if I was going to do a sketch on SNL about Ginsberg, how would you make me look like this?

And they said, well, actually, it's not that hard. You just kind of comb your hair over, and you definitely need the glasses. His ears stick out a little bit more than yours. So they kind of pushed my ears out. And it was like, oh, voila. It was almost enough.

And so I told Rob and Jeff about the ear thing. And so for half of the movie, we didn't have any prosthetic built at that time. So we just put, like, some weird Play-Dough behind my ears and stuck them out.

And that was kind of it. I mean, I had to get the mannerisms down, but the look was pretty good.

GROSS: My guest is James Franco. He's starring in the new film "Howl." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is James Franco, and he stars as Allen Ginsberg in the new film "Howl."

Now, "Howl" is I think the fourth movie that you've made that is based on real people. You have the James Dean made-for-TV movie that you did, playing Harvey Milk's boyfriend in "Milk," playing Allen Ginsberg in "Howl," and now you're also in the forthcoming film, "127 Hours," playing Aron Ralston, a hiker in a canyon in Utah who is pinned by a boulder that has fallen on his arm and he can't get his arm out, and so he has to amputate his arm. It's a true story and, God, a really gruesome one.

This is directed by Danny Boyle, who directed "Trainspotting" and "Slumdog Millionaire." And I'll tell you, if somebody came to me and said, we want you to star as this guy who is, like, pinned down by this boulder, he has to, you know, cut off his arm, I'd say I'll pass, thank you very much for thinking of me.

Mr. FRANCO: Why, Terry?

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: You know, I don't even want to imagine enduring that.

Mr. FRANCO: Well, what role would you want to play?

GROSS: Oh, I'd play Ginsberg.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: Okay, all right.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: So why did you want to put yourself through the kind of agony, mental agony, that you'd have to experience acting this role?

Mr. FRANCO: You know, I actually was very attracted to the challenge of doing a movie that, you know, involved being isolated for all that time. And it's, it was unique not only because I don't work with you know, for most of the movie, I'm not working opposite other actors.

But I'm in one spot. And so it's not even like "Castaway," where he had that whole island to walk around on. Like, I'm in, I'm just in this canyon and I can't, you know, I can't move.

And on paper, and especially, you know, working on a project like this with Danny Boyle, it all sounds, you know, really great and, like, exciting, kind of new kind of filmmaking. But that doesn't necessarily translate into a movie that people want to go and watch.

And so - and I was aware of that, and Danny was certainly aware of that. And that was kind of the challenge that he wanted to take on, you know, and if you know his films, theyre not slow films. They all have pace, they all have great energy. And hes very interested in making movies that are full of life.

I guess, you know, the making of the movie was really, you know, a case of Danny and I and the DPs and the writer and everyone, you know, really working together to make this very static situation into something incredibly dynamic. And I...

GROSS: Yeah, I've read reviews that say yes, it's hes pinned by this boulder but its really very entertaining. I havent seen the movie yet, Ive seen Howl. But I havent seen 127 Hours.

Mr. FRANCO: I have to say, it's a very unique film experience. I mean, I...

GROSS: So here's what I want to know. Like, what is it like to wake up every morning when you're shooting the film and say, whats ahead of me today - oh yes, pain? I endure a lot more pain.

Mr. FRANCO: Well, I didnt think I would go crazy. Danny kept warning me before we did it, he's like, yeah, James, you're going to go crazy. I think he wanted to prepare me. But yeah, he'd say yeah, James, I think you're going to go a little crazy in this canyon.

And he prepared for that in some ways. You know, we had a it was an incredibly fast shoot. I worked six-day weeks. Danny worked seven-day weeks for two months because there were two DPs. And so Danny would just, you know, switch between the crews. And I think Danny designed it that way because he knew not only would I go a little crazy, the whole crew would go a little crazy just working under those conditions.

But on one hand, I had an incredible experience cause I was working with Danny Boyle and then these two incredible DPs, Anthony Don Mantle(ph) and Keekey Chadiak(ph). And so I was working with, you know, all these guys that I loved and I had a great relationship with all of them.

But yeah, I was stuck in you know, we shot a lot of it on a set, but the set was not like a normal set. You know, usually if you shoot on a stage, you build a set so that it can be taken apart so, you know, cameras can move in for different angles that, you know, you normally wouldn't get at a real location.

But they didnt build the set this way. They built it so that it couldnt come apart. And so, really, I was isolated every day in this set, and the way that it kind of worked, a lot of times it was easier to just stay in the set while they, you know, would change the camera setups.

And so, for the first month of shooting, I actually didn't even, I didn't see half of the crew. I just saw, like, I really just saw the DPs because they operated the cameras and then heard Danny's voice over this little speaker that they'd built into the wall of the canyon.

And it kind of did drive me a little crazy. I think one of the things that saved me was I was still in school at the time. And so I had all this reading I had to do for school. So I'd bring my books and stash them under the boulder.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: And between setups, I would read my books, and I think that helped me a little bit.

GROSS: So what's the difference between what you saw when you were cutting off your arm in the film and what is actually in the film, what you see when you see yourself in the film?

Mr. FRANCO: What do mean, like...

GROSS: When you were doing the shoot, and you were amputating your arm, what's difference between what you saw on the set and what we see in the film?

Mr. FRANCO: Well, obviously I didn't really cut my arm off. Although, there were some scenes where, you know, the character tries, he makes many attempts to cut his arm off and do various things to get out.

And in some of the takes, Danny asked me to just kind of saw at my arm with a dull blade, like, you know, because the that was the thing is, you know, Aron had a knife, but it was a dull because he had never used a knife before. He had never needed it before, and so he never even thought to sharpen it.

And so there were times when he attempted to saw his arm off with a dull blade. And Danny said, well, why don't you just try and do it?

And so there were times when I was doing it on my own arm, and that led to, you know, some minor permanent damage because, you know, they built, you know, these great effects guys, they built this arm that had all the, you know, musculature inside and veins, you know, all the veins were in place and nerves. And so I really could just go at it.

And the way we shot it is, you know, we did like these 20-minute takes for you know, and we did that throughout the movie. You know, we'd do these very, very long takes. And so and we did that for the amputation scene.

And so I was just cutting away, and, you know, the arm was going through. And I actually, Danny told me afterwards that the effects guy was saying to him, you know, whispering in Danny's ear, like, you know, hes not going to be able to make it all the way through. You know, there's certain things in there that are, you know, going to prevent him from cutting all the way through.

So but I actually did. I went all the way through, and I surprised him and everyone. And actually, the first time I went through the arm, I fell back and, you know, fell on my back, or my butt. And so I actually made it through. And I think part of that take is in the film.

GROSS: James Franco will be back in the second half of the show. His new films are "127 Hours," which opens next month, and "Howl," which is in select theaters.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Im Terry Gross back with James Franco (technical difficulty) in the TV series "Freaks and Geeks," then co-starred in the films "Spiderman," "Pineapple Express" and "Milk." He's starring in two new movies, "Howl," in which he plays (technical difficulty) Allen Ginsberg and "127 Hours," in which he plays a hiker who has his (technical difficulty) after it is pinned under a boulder.

GROSS: Youve been making these movies while studying at Columbia, NYU, Brooklyn College, now youre studying in two places, the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale. It's like the college version of extreme sports or something. Do you know what I mean...

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: ...doing like so many different colleges. How come so many?

Mr. FRANCO: Well, now I, you know, I kind of narrowed it down. It's not - the schedule isn't quite like that right now. But, yeah, the past two years I was at a lot of places. And I guess I just thought, you know, yeah, I am a little, I have an addictive personality and when...

GROSS: Do you? Do you?

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah. I think I do. So if there's something I like its hard for me to, you know, say, to not engage with it fully and to the - I guess to the point of doing, you know, physical harm to myself or whatever or mental harm. But, on the other hand, I loved it and I was, you know, by going to all those places, I got to work with, you know, all of my favorite writers and, you know, I got to work with great filmmakers and, you know, do projects that I'm very, very, very proud of.

GROSS: Now you have a new book of short stories that's going to be published in mid-October.

Mr. FRANCO: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Are these stories from writing that you did basically for writing assignments in your various college writing courses?

Mr. FRANCO: Yes. I started writing that book way back in, I dont know, about five years ago when I was at UCLA and I was working with Mona Simpson.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. FRANCO: And I started writing some pieces that would eventually form, you know, that book in her classes and then I did a creative thesis with Mona and my thesis was a very early draft of this book. And then I went to New York and studied with people like Amy Hemphill and Michael Cunningham and Jonathan Lethem and Gary Shteyngart, and Ben Marcus, and I brought in other pieces that would go into the book in, you know, into their classes and I then worked on them also on a one-on-one basis on this book. And so eventually, yeah, all those pieces came together and I put the book together.

GROSS: So there is a short passage I'd like you to read from the book. And this is a section in which a girl, whose father kind of wants her to be a mathematician like he is, gets a job that she finds boring, so she starts just getting paper from the trash and drawing. Would you read that?

Mr. FRANCO: Yes. (Reading) I drew rainbows, and people, and cities, and guns, and people getting shot and bleeding, and people having sex. When I got tired I just drew doodles. I tried to draw portraits of people that I knew. My family always looked ridiculous, but funny because the pictures resembled them, but not enough. Then I drew all these things from my childhood, like Hello Kitty and Rainbow Brite and My Little Pony. I drew my brother's G.I. Joes. I made the My Little Ponys kill the G.I. Joes.

I drew hundreds of pictures and they were all bad. I wasn't good at drawing. It was also a little sad to draw so much because I could see everything that was inside me. I had drawn everything I could think of. All that was inside me was a bunch of toys, and TV shows, and my family. My life was boring. I only had one kiss, and it was with my gay cousin, Jamie.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: That's James Franco, reading from his new collection of short stories, "Palo Alto Stories."

I thought that was a really interesting passage because I think every young writer or painter actually goes through that, of kind of putting out everything that's inside them but there isn't much inside them yet.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Because they're young and unformed.

Mr. FRANCO: Right.

GROSS: And I'm wondering if as a writer you experienced what this person experience when they were trying to draw.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: Yes, in more ways than one. I actually did work at Lockheed.

GROSS: Oh, really, because your father is a mathematician.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah. And so I did work there, although this is a female character who is a young woman who has very different, you know, life circumstances than I did, but I let her work at Lockheed like I did. And, but I did do a lot of drawing when I was young and a lot of, you know, I tried to write and, you know, I tried to do a lot of things.

And actually, when I first started writing this book, before even I started working with Mona, I'd write a lot of things about - that were kind of based on myself and who I was when I was a young person. And, I dont know, it was - I just hated it. It was just so full of like self-pity and it was just way too sensitive and, you know, who wants to read that? And so, yeah, what I did is I just - I think maybe one thing that I learned from acting is you can go out and explore other people and there's a way to get to know other people intimately. And hopefully, you know, you can take on their voice and their worldview and their life circumstances and then, you know, turn it into something else, turn it into a performance or turn it into a piece of writing. And so that's kind of how I worked on a lot of these stories.

GROSS: There's another - I'm sure there's many parallels nevertheless between the stories and your life. And many of the stories are about kids in trouble for drinking for getting into car accidents while drunk, for - a few things along those lines. And one of the kids in one of your stories is arrested after a drunk driving accident and becomes a ward of the court for a while.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: And the judge makes him a ward of the court and threatens him with juvenile hall if he so much as jaywalks. And then he has to make a supervised apology and then do 60 hours of community service. Now the last time you were on FRESH AIR, you mentioned that because I forget of which thing that got you in trouble, you had briefly become a ward of the state. So I'm sure there's some parallels between this story and your life.

Mr. FRANCO: Yes. Well, I'm sure you or whoever else is interested can go through and pick out a lot of...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: ...a lot of similarities between, you know, these character's experiences and my own. And that's, you know, that's one thing that you do as a writer or an artist of any sort, you use pieces of your own life.

GROSS: My guest is James Franco. His collection of short stories, "Palo Alto," will be published later this month. He plays Allen Ginsberg in the new film "Howl."

Coming up, we'll talk about a surprising chapter in Franco's acting career, playing the artist and serial killer Franco on ABC's soap opera "General Hospital."

(Soundbite of ABC's "General Hospital")

Mr. FRANCO: (as Franco) You cut your hair. You hurt yourself. Are you okay?

Unidentified Actress: (as character) What are you doing here?

Mr. FRANCO: (as Franco) Well, I just came to deliver the last six roses. I see you put the other 60 in a vase. Nice display, very artistic.

Unidentified Actress: (as character) What do you want?

Mr. FRANCO: (as Franco) I'm very fond of the number 66. I just like saying it, 66, sounds dirty.

Unidentified Actress: (as character) Why would you send these flowers to me?

Mr. FRANCO: (as Franco) You and I spent some very special time together. I hope you haven't forgotten.

Unidentified Actress: (as character) No. Of course, not.

Mr. FRANCO: I told you, I think about you. I have. And I know that you want to be loyal to your boyfriend and I respect that. Loyalty is hard to come by these days. I just hope that our performance didnt damage your relationship.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is James Franco. He plays Allen Ginsberg in the new film "Howl."

So I'm afraid we're going to run out of time soon and I want to be able to ask you about the time that you spent acting on "General Hospital..."

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...which was such a surprise to everybody. You are such a good actor and I think a very serious actor, even though youve done comedies, youve done them really well...

Mr. FRANCO: Thank you.

GROSS: ...so I consider that part of serious acting.

Mr. FRANCO: Right.

GROSS: And not to cast dispersions on soap operas, but it's just a different style, you know?

Mr. FRANCO: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: So why did you want to do an afternoon soap, and was it their idea or your idea to do this?

Mr. FRANCO: Oh, it was my idea.

GROSS: What did you want out of it?

Mr. FRANCO: Well, at first I wasnt quite sure. All I knew was that it would be interesting. I had been discussing the idea with this artist named Carter, he's a friend of mine and I collaborate on different projects with him. And we were going to do a movie called "Maladies," that he was going to direct and I was going to act in. I was going to play a character that was formerly a soap opera. And that just got us talking about oh, what if I actually was on a soap opera? Wouldnt that be interesting? People would be surprised, nobody would expect it, and it's also kind of - it's, you know, it's a different kind of entertainment and acting and not necessarily and, you know, I mean yeah, people can look, you know, often look down on soap operas as inferior kind of entertainment, but I was thinking in a different way at that point.

I had just read this book by this guy name Carl Wilson, who has since become a friend of mine and he wrote this book about Celine Dion. And he, you know, wasnt a fan of Celine's, but he decided that he was going to investigate why. Why does he feel superior to Celine's music? And he didnt come to any definite conclusions but he figured out that well, Celine's music means something to some people and gives a lot of people, I dont know, strength, hope or whatever you get from music. But it's working for some people.

And so he decided to suspend his judgment and stop looking down on Celine just because she doesnt speak to him. And so that's kind of the mindset I was in at that time and I thought well, why not? Ill just try being on a soap opera.

And so my manager represents Steve Burton, who is one of the stars of "General Hospital." And so he had some connections to "General Hospital" and he called them up and said that I wanted to be on the show. And they were very excited to say the least and they called me up and they said, James, its so great that you want to be on this soap opera. What do you want to do? You can do whatever you like. So I said I wanted the character to be an artist and I wanted him to be crazy and that's what I told them.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: And I wanted their version of that. And they gave me the best - I mean they gave me more than I could've asked for. And...

GROSS: And they named the character Franco.

Mr. FRANCO: And that was their idea, yeah. They asked if they could name the character Franco. And I guess that sounds, to some people that could sound just like lazy, you know, like they were being lazy, but actually I thought it was incredible because it just - it worked with the fact that nobody understood why I was on that show.

And so already I think people going and seeing me on that show are asking themselves, why is he there? What is he doing there? And it was as if I was a little bit of an imposter. But then if you add the, you know, the fact that people are addressing me by my name, Franco, it just pulls you kind of it pulls you out of it, you know, even further. And so it was all - it was building this weird relationship to the show where it was almost commenting on itself. And then...

GROSS: A kind of performance art for you almost.

Mr. FRANCO: Well, yeah, and then it kind of developed into that. But then the writers, you know, I love working with them. They - and because soap operas, you know, have to do a show a day, they generate so much material. And so because of that, they were able to start writing things that spoke to this performance art aspect of it in this very strange way. And so it's as if the character Franco almost knows that he's on a soap opera and so they were writing to that. And then I started filming all of the whole process. And then they would have - and then they'd respond to that and have the character Franco on the show start filming himself and so we just got into this crazy kind of vortex of, I dont know, this weird meta-world of commentary.

GROSS: So tell me something that you learned from acting on an afternoon soap opera?

Mr. FRANCO: So yeah, so then there was just the pure experience of acting on a soap opera that was also extremely interesting. They have to, you know, you go through material a lot quicker on a soap opera, but not only that, I was still in school and so I had to act - I had to do even more material than they normally do in a single day because they would do all my material on one day a week. I guess they, it was on a Fridays and I guess they started calling it Franco Fridays because I'd fly in from New York.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: I'd get on, I'd wake up at like 4:30, go to the airport, land in L.A. at about 10:30, go to the studio and then we'd work for like 12 to 14 hours until, you know, about two in the morning. And I would do about I guess 70 to 80 pages of material a day. And usually they only, if they get it, theyll only do one take. But that's not just - it's not just one take per setup. They have four cameras going. So that means one take per scene. So you just learn the lines, do it, boom, on to the next scene. So its a really, its kind of exhilarating if you get into the pace of it.

GROSS: Kind of like theater almost.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: Like youre on live. Yeah.

Mr. FRANCO: It's very close to how they would do the old like "Playhouse 90" or "Kraft Theatre"...

GROSS: Right. Right.

Mr. FRANCO: ...you know, television shows in a way.

GROSS: Well, I'd love to keep talking, but youre going to be late for class and...

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: And then I'm afraid you'd be accused of being a celebrity because you were doing media instead of being in class, so semi-apologies if youre a couple of minutes late.

Mr. FRANCO: I will. I will.

GROSS: And, so just one more thing, do you have insomnia and do you use those hours to just keep working?

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Is your day longer than mine?

Mr. FRANCO: I dont have insomnia.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. FRANCO: As you can see on TMZ, I can sleep anywhere and...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: I really can sleep anywhere. Although now I'm much more wary about sleeping in public because I'm sure another picture of me will bring a lot of -of sleeping will bring a lot of money.

GROSS: It was a picture of you sleeping class, which is, I think, youre referring to?

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah. It's actually not class. It's a late night lecture - an optional lecture at the art school that I was not required to be at, so I wasnt, you know, sleeping in class or wasting my opportunity in class. I was at an optional thing, so I think I had every right to sleep in if I wanted to.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: But I, yeah, I can sleep anywhere. I just have a lot to do so I tend not to sleep.

GROSS: James Franco, it's been great to talk with you again. Thanks so much.

Mr. FRANCO: Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: James Franco plays Allen Ginsberg in the new movie "Howl," which is playing in select cities and is available on video on demand. His film "127 Hours" opens next month. Franco's selection of short stories "Palo Alto," will be published later this month. You can find clips from "Howl" and read an excerpt of his new book on our website, freshair.npr.org.

Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new translation of "Madame Bovary."

This is FRESH AIR.

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, James Franco, stars with Sean Penn in the new movie "Milk." Penn plays Harvey Milk, who became the first gay man elected to public office in the U.S. when he won a seat on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1977. Before completing his first year in office, he was assassinated by fellow supervisor Dan White.

James Franco plays Milk's lover, Scott Smith. Together, they moved to San Francisco, set up a camera shop in the Castro, and helped transform the neighborhood into the gay capital of the city. Franco co-starred in the short lived but terrific TV series "Freaks and Geeks." After playing the rebellious high-school heartthrob in that series, he played the ultimate rebellious heartthrob, James Dean, in a telemovie about the iconic actor. In "Spiderman," Franco played Peter Parker's best friend and the son of Spiderman's enemy, Green Goblin. Franco starred with Seth Rogen in last summer's comedy "Pineapple Express," a stoner film meets action film. In a cameo in the film "Knocked Up," and a series for the website Funny or Die, Franco has mocked his own image. We started our interview talking about "Milk."

James Franco, welcome to Fresh Air. The characters in the movie, for the most part, are real people that existed. And for some of the characters, like Harvey Milk, there's a lot of archival footage and documentation so that Sean Penn could base his performance on that. But as far as I know, the person you play, Scott Smith, wasn't nearly as well documented. I mean, the screenwriter of the movie said that there was very little in terms of film footage and things like that for you to base your performance on. So, what did you do to create the character? Did you talk with people who knew him?

Mr. JAMES FRANCO (Actor): Yeah. When I heard that Gus was doing the movie, I didn't really know anything about Harvey Milk, which I found shocking and sad because I grew up in the Bay Area, in Palo Alto, 45 minutes away from San Francisco. And I heard Gus was doing the movie, and I started doing some research and found out what, you know, an important story this was.

And as far as, like, the research, you know, there's some great sources on Harvey Milk in the time, Randy Shilts' book "The Mayor of Castro Street" and the Oscar-winning documentary "The Times of Harvey Milk." And like you said, Scott isn't - doesn't play a huge part in either of those. In the documentary, you know, he shows up for about five seconds. I think Harvey and Scott are at the Gay Pride Parade, and they kiss, and that's it. So, I, you know, I couldn't build a character on that either.

And so, it was really a matter of just talking to a lot of people that had worked with Harvey and Scott and were friends with Scott. And I went to Rob Epstein, the director of "The Times of Harvey Milk," and I asked him if he had any extra footage that didn't make it into his documentary. And so, he had a pre-interview with Scott Smith from 30, like, 28 years ago on a film reel, and he found that in some old vault for me and transferred it to DVD. And so, I could finally really hear what Scott sounded like and, you know, see how he moved and everything. So, I had the - and then, I had the outside and the inside.

GROSS: Are we past the point where I have to ask if it's risky to play a gay character and if that could adversely affect your career?

Mr. FRANCO: I don't know. I mean, yeah, it certainly seems like, you know, times have changed. I think as far as straight actors playing gay roles, "Brokeback Mountain" was a big breakthrough. I'm pretty sure when they were casting that movie that I think the story is, like, you know, 10 to 15 other actors turned it down. I don't know if that's true or not. But after that movie, I think some of the hesitancy of straight actors to, you know, play gay roles has been dissipated.

But you know, that's not even the reason I took it on. I just, you know, I've been the biggest fan of Gus Van Sant forever, you know, even before I started acting. I would just watch "My Own Private Idaho," you know, repeatedly just in high school. And then when I did start acting, you know, sometimes people ask you, like, what's the one role that you wish you could have played? And I think it would probably have been River Phoenix's role in that movie. And so to play, you know, a gay character in a Gus Van Sant movie sounded like, you know, a fantastic thing to me. So, I had no fear of playing this role.

GROSS: Did Gus Van Sant want to get assurances from you that you'd be OK kissing Sean Penn in scenes?

Mr. FRANCO: Well, I read the script, so I knew it was coming. So, I guess one thing that happened was that after I agreed to do the script, there was a rewrite, and I read the rewrite, and one of the changes were that there were more kissing scenes, and there was like, you know, a big love scene on, like, page five. And you know, I was all prepared for the other scenes, the kissing scenes, but I said, well, Gus, well, you're adding more, what's going on? And he was very smart, and he said, you know, Sean Penn is going to be playing a gay character, and you're playing - you know, you're both straight actors playing gay characters. And in the back of people's minds, they're probably going to be thinking like, all right, when is Sean going to kiss a dude? And so...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: You might as well just get it out of the way, so people can get beyond it and, you know, really engage with the story. And I think he was right.

GROSS: Yes, this is sort of interesting...

Mr. FRANCO: I could tell you a little bit more about the kissing if you want...

GROSS: Yeah, go ahead, yeah, yeah.

Mr. FRANCO: The funny thing is right before we started filming in San Francisco, there was a show at the SF MoMA of this artist, Douglas Gordon, a great artist. He does everything, but some of his best pieces are his video pieces, and this was - it was called, like, Everything Up Until Now. And it was all of his video pieces in one room. And so, Gus went his DP, Harris Savides, and there was one piece where this couple is kissing, a young man and a young woman were kissing on the street, and I think it lasted about three minutes.

And Gus told me the story later. He turned to Harris, and he said, wow, look at that kiss. It's so natural. It looks so real. You know, that's what we need for the movie, you know? We don't want movie kisses; we want our actors to look real when they're kissing. How do you think Douglas did that? And Harris said, like, well, you know, they're probably really kissing. It's just a couple that he saw kissing and shot them. And that night, Gus had dinner with Douglas Gordon. They both - I guess they knew each other. They both had done "Psycho" pieces, you know? Gus remade the movie, and Douglas has this piece called "24 Hour Psycho" where he slowed "Psycho" down...

GROSS: Oh, right, right. I read about it. Yeah.

Mr. FRANCO: So, it would last 24 hours.

GROSS: Mm-hm.

Mr. FRANCO: And so, he asked Douglas, you know, how did you get that kiss to look so real? It must have been just a couple you shot, right? And then Douglas said no, no. I hired two actors who didn't know each other, and I had them kiss for 12 hours. And then, I took the best three minutes to put in there.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: So, Gus told me the story, and he said, so, yeah, you and Sean, huh? And I - and I knew he was kind of kidding, but not exactly, because the Douglas Gordon piece actually, like, inspired this shot in the movie that hadn't been in the script where Sean and I are just on the sidewalk like kissing for, like, at least a full minute. The shot - I don't think it's a minute in the film, but we - the takes were, like, at least a minute, if not longer. And that - I don't think I've ever kissed anybody on camera for that long.

In addition to that, there were, like, 300 people out on Castro Street behind the camera just watching. And it was, you know, the first kiss that was filmed in the movie. So, it felt like there is a lot of pressure on that kiss, and I think - you know, you can kind of just make your mind blank for about 30 seconds. But you know, after that, I really think I thought, well, here I am kissing Spicoli. I was just thinking - that's really what I thought.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: Like, wow - I was thinking of Sean Penn in the beach, you know, in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." And just like, hey, dude, you know, I saved Brooke Shields or whatever. And that's what I was thinking, and like, I cannot believe that I went from a kid watching that to this. And...

GROSS: Well, Sean Penn is such, like, the method actor. Did you both, like, talk through the scene before doing it? And did he prepare for it differently than you prepared for it?

Mr. FRANCO: Well, I mean, you don't really prepare for a kissing scene. I don't - I mean, I've never - I've been asked that a lot, like, did you and Sean do preparation? Like, and I'm thinking, if you think about it, like, if I said to one of my female co-stars in another movie, like, hey, why don't we go rehearse this love scene in my hotel room a bit?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: I don't think it would fly. And so, you just don't really rehearse kissing scenes whether it's male or the female. And there's not really much to talk about, you know? You kind of both know how to kiss, you assume, and you just do it. I guess if - I think Sean took some breath mints, and you just do it.

GROSS: My guest is James Franco. He stars opposite Sean Penn in the new movie "Milk." We'll talk more after a break. This is Fresh Air.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is James Franco, and he co-stars in the new movie, "Milk," in which Sean Penn plays Harvey Milk, the first out-of-the-closet gay man to be elected to public office in the United States. Now, you're going to college now in addition to making movies. You're getting your graduate degree...

Mr. FRANCO: Yes...

GROSS: From Columbia, in what? Writing, is it?

Mr. FRANCO: Well, I'm going to several schools. So, yes, I am going to Columbia for the MFA Fiction Writing Program, and then, I'm studying directing at the NYU Tisch Grad School. And then - I'm also taking fiction writing at Brooklyn College.

GROSS: Wow. That's a lot of work. You know, I think a lot of people who have reached your stature as an actor would say, well, I don't have to go to graduate school. I'm already doing it, so why should I go to school? So, let me ask you why you are going to school since you already have a very successful career. A lot of people drop out when they've reached, you know, the point you're at as opposed to going to school, three schools no less.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah. I did leave school when I started acting. I mean, I wasn't successful, but I moved to L.A. from Palo Alto to go to UCLA, and I left after a year because I was not in the theater program. My parents didn't let me apply. And once I got to L.A., I wanted to act, and they wouldn't let me audition for the theater program until I was a junior. And I just, you know, that seemed like a lifetime away. And so, I left school and went to acting school in North Hollywood, and I acted for eight years. And then after awhile, you know, for a lot of reasons acting wasn't completely satisfying. I was very grateful, you know, that I had a career and I could support myself as an actor, but I just needed something more.

I went back to school to write, and I guess, based on my experiences with acting, you know, I went to acting school for like eight years, and for me, hard work just seemed to pay off. And so I thought, I - if I wanted to be serious about writing, then I should be around other writers. And you know, some people - like, there's a romantic notion, like, well, if you want to be a writer, just write. But I don't know - I don't know if this is true, but I had a professor at UCLA who just wrote a book on this very thing, and I think it turns out that, like - I could be wrong, but I think something like 90 percent of authors that are fiction authors that are being published today went through MFA programs. So, I don't know, but it certainly does a lot for me to be in school.

GROSS: On "Saturday Night Live," when you hosted, you did an opening monologue about how your dream - just like any other student at Columbia - anyway, it was very funny because of course, you're not. But I'm thinking...

Mr. FRANCO: Well, I said I was living in the dorms. I don't live in the dorm.

GROSS: No. I couldn't imagine you living in the dorms. But I'm thinking how self-conscious I would be if I were in your shoes, because once you're famous and you're sitting in a class with a bunch of other people, I would imagine people are either waiting for you to be incredibly brilliant or to make a fool of yourself and show, well, you're not all that.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: So, like, what kind of, like, peculiar pressures do you feel are on you as a student now?

Mr. FRANCO: Well, for the most part, it's actually pretty great. I - you know, the writing programs, and to a certain extent, the film program, they're run in a workshop fashion. And so, the group becomes pretty intimate, and people get to know me, and I like to think that they forget about me as an actor. I don't know. They certainly don't really bring it up. And I get the feeling, like, at the film school if I - if I ever bring up any movie that I've acted in, like, don't - you know, nobody wants to hear about it really.

And I guess when I was at UCLA, I felt a lot of pressure to work hard because I, you know, I was going back to undergrad, and so I was older than most of the people there. And so, I didn't want anybody to think that I was like sliding by. And so, I took a lot of extra courses. I mean, I was taking classes that I was very interested in with professors that I was very interested in working with, but I - like, the cap on the number of units that a student can take in a quarter is 19 and in that last quarter, I took 62 units.

GROSS: Oh, geez.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: And you know, most - it was mostly because it was just, like, my last quarter and there were so many teachers I wanted to be in class with. But I'm sure part of it was just, like...

GROSS: Showing off.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: I didn't want anybody - I didn't want - no, I know I'm showing off now. It's kind of ridiculous.

GROSS: No, no, no. I'm kidding.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: OK. I did break the record. I'm a little proud of that. I broke the record for the number of units in a class. But I didn't want anyone to think that I was, like - you know, I had it easy or something.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is actor James Franco, and he's now co-starring in the new movie "Milk." This summer, you starred in "Pineapple Express," which I just thought was a wonderful film. And you starred in it with Seth Rogen, and you're, like, the real stoner in the movie. Well, you both are, but you're the person who, like, sells the marijuana.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, I'm the dealer, yes.

GROSS: You're the dealer, and you're selling, like, potent stuff, called Pineapple Express. And let's just start with a clip.

Mr. FRANCO: That was a good voice right there.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Yeah.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Yeah. Let's just start with a clip from the film. And this is from early in the movie. Seth Rogen is a process server; his job is to hand-deliver legal papers to people.

Mr. FRANCO: Right.

GROSS: And, you're the dealer. So, he shows up at your door one day to buy some marijuana from you, and he's on his way to, like, serving a subpoena. So, he's wearing a suit, and you're surprised to see him that dressed up. Here's the scene.

(Soundbite of movie "Pineapple Express")

Mr. JAMES FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) What's up with the suit?

Mr. SETH ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) Well, I'm a process server, so I have to wear a suit.

Mr. FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) Wow. You're a servant, like a butler, a chauffeur?

Mr. ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) No. No. What? No. I'm not, like - no, I'm a...

Mr. FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) Shine shoes?

Mr. ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) I'm a process server. I like...

Mr. FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) In process.

Mr. ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) I work for a company that's, like, hired by lawyers to, like, hand out legal documents, like subpoenas to people who don't want them. So, I've got to wear...

Mr. FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) Subpoenas.

Mr. ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) Like, disguises sometimes just to make them admit that they're themselves so I can served them the papers.

Mr. FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) Disguise?

Mr. ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) Kind of, I guess. It's a hell of a job.

Mr. FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) That's cool, man.

Mr. ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) Like, a day-to-day basis, it's fine...

Mr. FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) Got a great job where you don't do anything.

Mr. ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) That's what I say.

Mr. FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) I wish I had that.

Mr. ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) Are you kidding? You - you do have the easiest job on Earth.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) Yeah, yeah, that's true.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) You didn't think of that, huh?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) I do have a good job.

Mr. ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) Yeah, you do nothing.

Mr. FRANCO: (As Saul Silver) Thanks, man.

Mr. ROGEN: (As Dale Denton) No problem.

GROSS: You are so funny in this film. I mean, you're so - you're so kind of, like, sweet and dumb at the same time. And there's some incredible...

Mr. FRANCO: But I have high aspirations. I want to be a - I want to be an architect.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. FRANCO: Of some sort and build off-ramps, highway off-ramps and septic tanks.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: And you have some great moments of physical comedy in it. You take a lot of physical abuse in this movie.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, yeah. As far as the physical abuse, you know, I had a feeling going into the movie that there would be some injuries just because, you know, I've been on, like, the "Spiderman" movies that, you know, have very big budgets. I think "Spiderman 3" had one of the biggest budgets ever, and you take a lot of time to do those action scenes. Like, you know, we take a month or more to do one action scene in "Spiderman." On "Pineapple Express," you know, I'm reading the script and there's like a lot of - a lot of action for a comedy. I mean, they call it an action-comedy. But there's, you know, there wasn't a lot of - there wasn't a huge budget, and there wasn't a lot of time to do them.

And I just knew in the back of my mind, I was thinking, oh, man, we are going to get hurt. And the actors ended up doing - you know, we ended doing a lot of our own stunts. And you know, I - I don't know - ran into a tree. There's that scene where we're running through the woods and I ran into a tree. Well, I actually ran into the tree. But not only that, there was a pad on the tree that I guess was supposed to protect me, but it was screwed in with exposed washers in each corner. And so, I not only hit the tree, I hit, like, a washer. So, I had, like, a - and the reason I knew I hit the washer is that the cut was crescent-shaped.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: And so - and you know, it was kind of I guess my fault, but you know, the guy - ah, whatever. But - and then Seth, like, I think he sprained his finger. He had to go to the hospital for his finger. There's a scene where I hit Danny over the head with a bong, and yeah, it was a breakaway bong. But by that point - I mean, I even warned Danny McBride. I was like, look, Violet(ph), you know, just based on the way things have been going, I - you know, I'm going to hit you in the right spot, but I think you're going to get hurt. And he was like, do it, do it!

And I guess because it was, you know, weighted with water or something, sure enough, like, as soon as I hit him, you look at him in the scene because it's - it's the take that he actually got hit, and his eyes are like, dude, look like really dilated or something. But I think it was worth it just because we're not - one thing you - that can happen with stuntmen is they're very, you know, they're well-trained at - you know, with fighting and movie fighting, and so they look very slick when they're fighting. We don't necessarily look that sleek, you know? And so, the fights become comedic.

GROSS: James Franco will be back in the second half of the show. He's now starring opposite Sean Penn in the new movie "Milk," about Harvey Milk. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Coming up, our book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Toni Morrison's new novel, "A Mercy," and we continue our conversation with actor James Franco and talk about his role on "Freaks and Geeks" and his own adventures in high school.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross back with James Franco. He stars opposite Sean Penn in the new movie "Milk," about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the U.S. Franco also starred in the TV high-school series "Freaks and Geeks," played James Dean in the telemovie about the iconic actor, played the son of Spiderman's enemy Green Goblin, and was the stoner drug dealer in last summer's comedy, "Pineapple Express."

Seth Rogen, who you starred with in "Pineapple Express," is someone you met in your first big role, which was in the series "Freaks and Geeks," the sadly short-lived series "Freaks and Geeks," which was set in high school. And that's where you also met Paul Feig and Judd Apatow. How did you get the part in "Freaks and Geeks"? Were you still in high school or just out of high school?

Mr. FRANCO: No. Seth, I think, was still in high school. I don't think - I don't think...

GROSS: Yeah, he was.

Mr. FRANCO: He finished high school.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: It - right. Exactly, he dropped out, I think.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, he's one of the smartest dropouts I've ever met. I was a little older. I was I think 20 when I auditioned, and I - you know, I'd done little things here and there. I think I did, like, "Pacific Blue," which was like "Baywatch" on, like, bikes and roller blades and stuff like that.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: And you know, little bits here and there. And they just did a huge casting call. I think they met a lot of young actors, and they were really smart. They, you know, they had a script for the pilot, but I think that they just looked for actors that they really liked and not really people that would fit their script exactly. So, my character in this script didn't have a last name, just Daniel. And the description - I still have it, the original draft - it says Daniel - he's Latino with Peter Frampton hair.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: And so, I'm not exactly that, and - but they just liked me. And so, they put me in that role and when the show got picked up, they changed the name to Daniel Desario, so I guess I became Italian. And then they, you know, they kind of wrote the characters around the actors, although I wasn't exactly like Daniel in high school, but I guess they thought I could play that very well.

GROSS: Were the scripts in the storylines at all like your high-school experiences growing up in Palo Alto?

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, to a certain extent. I got in a lot of trouble; I mean, it was silly trouble, guess as much as trouble as you can get in, in Palo Alto.

GROSS: For what?

Mr. FRANCO: I got arrested for graffiti. I got arrested - a lot of, like, underage drinking, drunk in public, shoplifting, you know, your various, like, suburban arrests, I guess. And...

GROSS: Let's stop for a moment. What did you shoplift?

Mr. FRANCO: Oh, gosh, that was ridiculous. I don't know - for some reason when I was in junior high school, my friends and I had, like, a cologne-stealing ring.

GROSS: Cologne?

Mr. FRANCO: Well, yeah, I guess - I didn't even really wear it, but it's kind of, I guess, it's ironic. I just did the Gucci cologne ad, and I was the cologne thief in junior high. We would go around to all the department stores and they have, like, the tester bottles out on a counter, so it was, like, really easy to steal. And then we'd take them to the school and keep them in our gym locker and sell them to people. And for a while, it was really hip to wear, like, Drakkar Noir and stuff like that. We could sell it.

GROSS: It was a cologne-smuggling ring.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, and then one day, the assistant principal found out about it and then, like, went into the locker room and busted our lockers open with a crowbar, and we were caught. And actually, I think I was on vacation or something. I don't know why I was gone from school, but I was in Hawaii. And he had called the police, and they thought I had, like, jumped the city or whatever and bailed out of town to get away from, you know, my cologne stealing.

GROSS: So, you were telling us you were getting in trouble, and these are some examples of the things that got you in trouble.

Mr. FRANCO: Oh, yeah, yeah.

GROSS: What kind of circle were you in, in high school?

Mr. FRANCO: I tried to be an athlete. I played a lot of soccer when I was younger, but as soon as I got to high school I was on the football team for about a minute, and it just was not my thing and I quit. So, I got into, like - I don't know what we were, I guess, just the troublemaking crowd. But I guess, you know, a couple of my friends were really into literature. That's when I really started reading seriously. So, that's when I started reading "On the Road" and Ginsberg and Burroughs and all the Beats. And then, when I got into a certain amount of trouble, I knew I had to stop.

I mean, I was, like, a ward of the court after a while. You know, it was past probation. It was like I didn't belong to my parents. So, I guess if I jaywalked I would go to a juvenile hall or something. So, I had to change my ways, and I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to play sports or anything. I had to occupy my time with something, so that's when I really started painting. So, every day after school, I'd go to this art league and either do portraiture or draw naked models from, like, 3:30 to 10 everyday.

GROSS: Well, I want to play a scene from "Freaks and Geeks." The series is set in a high school. And there's a girl in "Freaks and Geeks" who has a real crush on you, and she's very smart, and you're not a good student. And in this episode, she's tutoring you for a math test.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: And what you do is that you steal a copy of the test so that you have the answers in advance.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: And then you want her to help you cover up. And so, you're kind of explaining to her how she has to help you do this, and she kind of realizes that you're playing her and we'll pick it up from there.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah.

(Soundbite of TV show "Freaks and Geeks")

Ms. LINDA CARDELLINI: (As Lindsay Weir) You're manipulating me.

Mr. FRANCO: (As Daniel Desario) What?

Ms. CARDELLINI: (As Lindsay Weir) You're manipulating me.

Mr. FRANCO: (As Daniel Desario) No, I'm not.

Ms. CARDELLINI: (As Lindsay Weir) Yes, you are. And you know, it's really hard to say no to you, but I have to. I'm sorry. I can't go in there and lie. I'm not going to.

Mr. FRANCO: (As Daniel Desario) OK, fine. Don't lie.

Ms. CARDELLINI: (As Lindsay Weir) What?

Mr. FRANCO: (As Daniel Desario) No, let's go in there, we'll tell them what we did. What's the difference? You'll get a nice slap on the wrist, and I'll get, what, suspended, expelled?

Ms. CARDELLINI: (As Lindsay Weir) That is not fair, Daniel.

Mr. FRANCO: (As Daniel Desario) What do you think, I want to be terrible at school? Do you think I like it? I wish I was as smart as you. I wish it all came easy to me, but it doesn't. You know, when I was in 6th grade, they told us when we got to junior high it would be either track one, track two or track three. Track one is the smart kids. Track two is the normal kids. Track three is the dumb kids. And what do you think I got? How do you think it feels to be told you're dumb when you're 11 years old?

Ms. CARDELLINI: (As Lindsay Weir) You are not dumb.

Mr. FRANCO: (As Daniel Desario) I just wanted them to prove them wrong, just once.

GROSS: That's actually a really funny scene, because we learn later that this is, like, the speech you give to people...

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: When you're trying to get their sympathy and get off the hook and not take responsibility for your actions.

Mr. FRANCO: Right, right. It's all acting, yeah.

GROSS: It's all acting. And really, I thought that that scene was, like, your character kind of borrowing from James Dean, who you later played in a made-for-TV movie, and Marlon Brando in the "I coulda been a contender" scene.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: Right, right, right, right.

GROSS: Did you think of it that way when you were playing this?

Mr. FRANCO: Not really. I guess, I - even before I played James Dean, I, you know, I did love his work, and you know, I'd study it and Brando, certainly, and Cliff, those were like the big three. So, maybe they were kind of influencing it, or I'd certainly seen all the Dean movies, like "On the Waterfront," probably 50 times each by that point. But I don't know. I think I was just, I don't know, drawing on my inner dumb guy. It's weird. I play a lot of dumb guys.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: And what's funny is in high school, my, you know, my dad works in Silicon Valley, and is, like, a math freak, so he actually, like, rammed math down my throat. So, I tested out of math. I didn't have to take it in college because of all the work my dad did, and thank God, I haven't studied it since high school.

GROSS: My guest is James Franco. He's now starring opposite Sean Penn in the new movie "Milk." We'll talk more after our break. This is Fresh Air.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is James Franco. He stars opposite Sean Penn in the new movie "Milk." He also starred in the TV series "Freaks and Geeks," played James Dean in a telemovie about the actor, played the son of Spiderman's enemy, Green Goblin, and was the stoner and dealer in the comedy "Pineapple Express." One of the things you've done over the years is a lot of really funny sketches and scenes in other people's movies in which you mock yourself or you mock serious acting, and you've done a series for the Funny or Die website...

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: Of sketches called "Acting with James Franco," in which you give acting tips to your younger brother.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah.

GROSS: And it's kind of like a send-up of acting classes and of the Method. And one of them is all about, like, James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause," and you go through a scene with your brother that's a reenactment of a scene from "Rebel Without a Cause." Describe the scene that you're reenacting in this.

Mr. FRANCO: Oh, yeah. There's a scene in "Rebel" where James Dean gives Sal Mineo his jacket, and you know, back in the '50s, I guess, you couldn't be explicit about gay characters. And so, it's not that subtle, but I think Sal's character is kind of in love with Dean's character. And so, when Sal takes the jacket, I guess he kind of, like, sniffs it or, like, rubs it on his face or something, like, adoringly. And so, the joke was that I was going to, you know, make my brother perform that exact action.

GROSS: You're bullying him...

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: Into adoring you. And so, I just want to hear - play that scene from your Funny or Die video.

(Soundbite of "Funny or Die" online video)

Mr. J. FRANCO: Just rub the jacket against your face and smell it.

Mr. DAVY FRANCO: Why would I want to smell the jacket and rub it against my face?

Mr. J. FRANCO: Because that's what he did, because he's in love with James Dean.

Mr. D. FRANCO: That's, I mean, it's typical, man. You give me the worst characters again, and you get to be James Dean, of course. Of course, you get to be James Dean.

Mr. J. FRANCO: Of course, of course, I get to be James Dean. Who else is going to be James Dean?

Mr. D. FRANCO: You're such a good actor you can play him, and I'll play James Dean.

Mr. J. FRANCO: You can't play James Dean. I'm James Dean. Actors sniff jackets.

Mr. D. FRANCO: OK. Go on.

Mr. J. FRANCO: Actors act. Actors sniff jackets if they need to sniff jackets. Marlon Brando sniffed jackets.

Mr. D. FRANCO: OK.

Mr. J. FRANCO: He sniffed pants. He did.

Mr. D. FRANCO: OK.

Mr. J. FRANCO: You're a "Rebel Without a Cause"? What's your cause? Not sniffing jackets? Sniff it.

Mr. D. FRANCO: You sniff it.

Mr. J. FRANCO: You sniff it.

Mr. D. FRANCO: No.

Mr. J. FRANCO: Just what I thought.

Mr. D. FRANCO: OK.

Mr. J. FRANCO: You don't know how to act.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: I think that's so funny. Is he really your younger brother, the person who's doing the...

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Davy, my younger brother. We were - I went to UCLA. He went to USC, and he started acting a couple of years ago, and he's been doing pretty well. If I ever taught acting, I like to think I'd be a little bit nicer of a teacher.

GROSS: I think you're also, in the Funny or Die videos, "James Franco on Acting," you're kind of sending up acting school and acting pretensions. Like, there's one in which you're teaching your brother how to cry and how to, like, use an emotion from within. And every time he comes up with an emotion, you're telling him, no, that's too trivial. You can't use that.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: It's so, kind of, clueless and insulting. It's really funny. Were there a lot of acting pretensions that bothered you when you were in acting school?

Mr. FRANCO: I learned a lot of good things in my school. I've audited at a lot of other schools, and I guess, after awhile, I got a little tired of the acting school atmosphere, where it's really tricky, because as an actor in the classroom, you know, you're revealing so much. And teachers are - you know, they're not just critiquing like a painting or a piece of work. It's, like - it's you and it's your emotions that they're working with. And so, it becomes a very weird kind of intimate space.

And there's some, like, acting schools - thank goodness, not the one I was at - but you know, they'll ask things, like, in front of the whole class, like, have you ever had an abortion? And it's just, like, what? Wow! And so it becomes so strange and almost - even despite themselves sometimes, teachers become these gurus just because actors have revealed so much to them, and I'd like - you know, I used to think, like, oh, you know, it's not going to happen to me. I've got my own life. But you go in there and you work, you know, year after year with these people, and you can't help but become really engrossed in that world. And so, I got a little scared of that after awhile. I just - I wanted to be out. I learned a lot of good things but after awhile, it was too much.

GROSS: Did you study the Method?

Mr. FRANCO: Not exactly. The Method, I guess, according to Strasberg, is something kind of different than what we learned, but it seems like when people say, do you - are you a Method actor? They are implying, do you behave as your character when the camera is not rolling? And I guess I did, kind of, on James Dean or something, but it doesn't really help me if people, like, would come up to me and say, hey, James Dean. You know, it doesn't do anything for me to, like, talk about my life as if I'm James Dean to other people when we're not rolling. I more just kind of keep to myself if it's a serious role and just try and kind of, I don't know, stay focused, but not really display that I'm, you know, the character all the time.

GROSS: You were talking like you're not the kind of Method actor who has to stay in character even when you're not on camera. In fact, you know, I've heard that when you're on the set, you sometimes are reading a novel. And I'm wondering if that kind of is a voyage into a completely different story and emotional space that can be distracting, like, if it's sometimes good and sometimes bad to immerse yourself in another story like that.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, I do read a lot on the set. In the last couple of years, a lot of it was just homework.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. FRANCO: I mean, I shot "Spiderman 3" and "Pineapple" and "Milk" all while I was at UCLA. So, that was just homework I needed to get done. I mean, if it's a very intense scene or, you know, demands a lot of focus, I mean, I'm not going to sit down and read a book. But you know, movies have long setup periods, and some longer than others. I mean, I would go to "Spiderman 3" and, you know, be there 12 hours, and probably work, like, be actually on camera for, like, a minute, you know, total, you know, in a day. And so, that's just a lot of time for - to do whatever, so rather than, you know, catch up on watching "The Hills" or whatever you could do on your trailer, I just read.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Now, I read that you do so much research for films, that, for instance, for the movie "Flyboys," you earned your pilot's license; for the movie "Annapolis," you did eight months of boxing training; and for the movie, "Tristan and Isolde," you studied sword fighting for eight months. And all these movies were flops.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: So, what's the moral of the story in terms of, like, committing to incredible research for a film? Yeah, go ahead.

Mr. FRANCO: Oh, the moral, well, you know, I went into "Annapolis" as a young actor hoping that it would be "Raging Bull."

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FRANCO: Now, that sounds kind of ridiculous, but that's how I tried to apply myself.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. FRANCO: You know, I'd box every day for eight months. I would, you know, spar with pros. I mean, you know, they went very, very easy on me and actually like, you know, hurt me sometimes when they weren't going so easy. But you know, I worked as hard as I could with the intention of making, you know, a movie with, you know - and the best is that, oh, yeah, I'd be like a young "Raging Bull." But it wasn't. I mean, that wasn't the movie. I was ridiculous in thinking that it would be something like that. It was a completely different kind of story.

And, so, no matter how hard I worked, I could have boxed for five years, it was never going to be that. And so I guess now, it's just - it's a matter of being really clear about what kind of movie I'm getting into. And you know, I still work really hard, but I like to think I'm a little smarter about at least the type of movie I'm getting into. And if, you know, if it turns out to be a failure, at least, you know, a box-office failure, at least I start movies with people that I believe in, and people with visions, you know, that I believe in. And so, if it doesn't, kind of, come together in the right way, at least I was doing it because I believed in the person and in the movie.

GROSS: James Franco, it's really been great to talk with you. Thank you so much.

Mr. FRANCO: Yeah, it was great.

GROSS: James Franco stars opposite Sean Penn in the new movie "Milk." Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews Toni Morrison's new novel, "A Mercy." This is Fresh Air.