Advertisement

James Franco Is an Experimental Artist, in Case You Forgot

It's Wednesday, and we haven't had a single reminder yet that James Franco is more than your typical movie star leading man, that he has more on his mind than that, that he is a unique artist working in fields of gender and identity and "lurid monologues about rape and murder and diarrhea with close-up shots of a urinating penis and a defecating anus." (To quote from Sam Anderson's immortal New York magazine cover story from last year.) So we suppose we were all due. A simple press release about the "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" sequel just wouldn't have cut it.

Thus, word that Franco's next film will be a bank robber comedy-drama written and directed by Harmony Korine called "Spring Break." Korine is of course most famous for writing "Kids" and writing and directing "Gummo" and "Julien Donkey-Boy," incomprehensible art-shock fests that put him right in Franco's wheelhouse. Korine's last film was the lunatic "Trash Humpers." Here is what "Trash Humpers" was:

Uh, yeah. Harmony Korine is an artist, bro. You and your bourgeoisie notions of normalcy just can't handle it.

The surprise is not that Franco is going to work with Korine. The surprise is not even that it's taken this long for the two of them to work together. The surprise is that one of them is not a postmodern joke creation of the other one; are we sure Franco hasn't been Harmony Korine this whole time, or vice versa?

Also: Franco will play "a rapping drug and arms dealer." Got it.

FRANCO LOOKING TO 'SPRING BREAK' WITH GOMEZ, ROBERTS OR HUDGENS [Showblitz]