and have other interests. I wanted to pursue them and found that out when I went back to school.’ This year he put out a collection of short stories, Palo Alto, each set in the eponymous northern Californian university town where he grew up. He gets to combine his love of literature and acting in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Howl, which takes its title from Allen Ginsberg’s controversial poem – the cause of an obscenity trial in San Francisco in 1957. The film mixes scenes of the trial with an interview with Ginsberg discussing his art and life. Also in the mix, illustrated with animation, is the first reading of the poem that Ginsberg gave to his eclectic group of friends. ‘The interesting thing about this script is that it was all based on transcripts of interviews that Ginsberg actually gave,’ says Franco. ‘The court scenes are all based on transcripts from the court trial. As far as I know everything that is said in the film was actually said by either Ginsberg or someone else.’
This detail was important to the actor. ‘I didn’t want to improvise, because Rob and Jeffrey come from the documentary world and I felt that even though we were recreating events in this film, that the film still had the soul of a documentary. I felt that if I was going to be part of the film I had to be loyal to those words. Because these words are spoken in an interview, the trick is to look like I’m coming up with the answers to the questions on the spot, like I am now.’ Franco is also one of the movie’s producers – the directors say that without his involvement the film may not have been made – and the depth
‘THE TRICK IS TO LOOK LIKE I’M COMING UP WITH THE ANSWERS ON THE SPOT’
of his involvement reflects his fascination with Ginsberg’s impact on the American public consciousness. ‘The fact that Ginsberg became such a public figure is an anomaly,’ he says. ‘He’s a poet, it just doesn’t happen that often that a poet becomes that big. That’s just the nature of poetry.’
It is equally unusual for a short film director (another profession that Franco works in) to get such exposure. Only last year Franco presented experimental art films – conceived primarily for galleries rather than cinemas – at Berlin and Cannes. ‘I used to paint a lot when I was in high school,’ he says. ‘I did a lot of training in painting and then continued it, but I haven’t been painting for a while. I’ve been working on different kinds of art, more video and film-based collaborations with an artist named Carter. We did a film [Erased James Franco] that showed in Paris, New York, London and San Francisco.’
It was thanks to a project that Carter and Franco are making together called Maladies that the actor made the surprising choice to appear in the US soap General Hospital: ‘I will play a character that was formerly on a soap opera. So that has nothing to do with General Hospital other than it started out as a conversation between Carter and me about, “Oh, what if you actually did a soap opera, wouldn’t that be funny, because nobody would expect it?” It started to become a very interesting idea.’ The actor will next be seen this summer in Planet of the Apes prequel, Rise of the Apes and is directing The Broken Tower about the poet Hart Crane who committed suicide aged 32. Could this feature debut establish him as a leading director? Right now, you wouldn’t it past him.
Howl, GFT, 12 Rose Street, 332 6535, Fri 18 Feb, 1.30pm & Sat 19 Feb, 9.15pm.
GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL
ISLAND LIFE
The actors slept on set and the scripti was more like a short story. Joanna Hoggi
explains how she made Archipelagoi
to Gail Tolleyi
Joanna Hogg’s debut feature Unrelated was lauded as one of the most distinctive British films of recent years. She returns with Archipelago, a highly perceptive account of an upper-middle class family on holiday in the Scilly Isles. Patricia and her two grown-up children, Edward and Cynthia, are spending time together before Edward heads to Africa for a year. In this context, Hogg captures the minutiae of social interactions with raw realism that gradually draws in its audience, creating an absorbing picture of the complexities of family life. Unsurprisingly, given Hogg’s distinctive style, her inspirations are far-reaching. ‘I’ve been influenced quite a bit by filmmaking from South Korea, Taiwan, lots of different places that wouldn’t seem like obvious ports of call for a British filmmaker,’ she says. ‘I find myself drawing on other art forms too, I might go and see an art exhibition and that sparks off an idea. I also find literature very inspiring. Jane Austen is an obvious one: she’s a fantastic observer of everyday life.’
For Archipelago the director, rather unusually, filmed scenes in the order in which they unfold in the story. The actors also slept in the house that they filmed in. Hogg even abandoned the rigidity of working from a script. ‘I decided not to write a conventional screenplay and wrote what was more like a short story. Within that story I found I could be very precise in terms of how people are feeling and the observations I wanted to pick.’ She also took an alternative approach to casting,
using both professional and non-professional actors. Amy Lloyd, who plays Rose, is a cook in real life, the same as her character, while the son is played by rising star Tom Hiddleston, who has recently been cast in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris and Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea.
As Archipelago progresses there are certain characters who appear far more likeable than others, yet Hogg maintains she is not taking a critical approach to her subject matter. ‘I try to not judge them and in a way I’m not interested in their background in terms of class,’ she says. ‘For me, it’s just about observing something and portraying it in as honest a way as possible. Some people will interpret a character as someone they are sympathetic to or not sympathetic to, it depends, in a way, on what the audience is bringing to the party.’ ■ GFT, Sun 20 Feb, 6.15pm, followed by a Q&A with Hogg.
17 Feb–3 Mar 2011 THE LIST 13