James Franco has had an unusual career in Hollywood, starting off in bit parts for PACIFIC BLUE and NEVER BEEN KISSED before the cult success of FREAKS AND GEEKS propelling him to the big screen before all his, now famous, fellow cast members. Even taking a break from films for a short spell in the American soap GENERAL HOSPITAL. Now he is eyeing up the Director’s chair.
Franco has been on a film rights buying frenzying recently looking to groom various projects for actor/producing/directing roles. It has just been announced that he has finally settled on THE BLACK TOWER, the biography of poet HART CRANE who committed suicide from jumping off a steamship in 1932. Below is the synopsis from Publisher’s Weekly:
“The first account of Crane to embrace his homosexuality and to assess its place in his poetry, [Paul] Mariani’s biography illuminates previously shadowy corners of the writer’s life. Mariani [does not have the] advantage of having interviewed many who knew Crane. But he compensates by quoting more extensively, and tellingly, from Crane’s correspondence, one of the most revealing and insightful of the literary 20th century. Mariani also has a better grasp on Crane’s complex relationship with his parents, especially in his sensitive portrayal of Crane’s father (the inventor of Life Savers candy), who heretofore has been treated as a stereotypical philistine. Mariani also clears up many misconceptions about Crane’s final despairing months in Mexico and his sole tormented heterosexual affair… His occasionally florid style notwithstanding, Mariani does the necessary work of throwing sympathetic light on Crane’s sexuality, and makes a convincing case for Crane as one of the greatest American poets of the century.”
Apparently Franco will begin shooting in two weeks after completing the script, and looks to possibly hire actor, Michael Shannon last since in MY SON, MY SON WHAT HAVE YE DONE.
