The Howl-ing
James Franco's Allen Ginsberg Biopic Packs Them In
James Franco has been many things lately: NYU student, artist, soap opera star. So it's not entirely surprising that the hunky actor managed to transform himself, with a pair of black-frame glasses and an adopted haute-Jersey accent, into outspoken twentieth-century poet Allen Ginsberg. Franco's latest film, Howl, draws on actual interviews and smoky back-room readings and partly reenacts Ginsberg's 1957 obscenity court case to paint a portrait of the Beat-era bard.
Last night at the Crosby Street Hotel, a Cinema Society audience got an early look at the new movie and at Franco, who stood in the packed theater throughout the whole thing. Clearly, he's got a thing for poets on screen: Among his recent projects is a short film based on the work of Anthony Hecht, and, in a few days, one inspired by Frank Bidart's uncompromising poetry will (like Howl) play at Utah's Sundance Film Festival.
"I think poems work very well as films," Franco insisted, adding that he'd had Ginsberg's voice (and Howl, Ginsberg's best-known work) in his head since he was about 16. "I've listened to dozens and dozens of recordings of him, over the years, reading that poem," he said. "I'd listen to them in my headphones walking around New York." Franco wasn't the only one feeling the Beat. Björk and Matthew Barney lingered well into the after-party, and Alicia Silverstone revealed that free verse also plays a regular role in her life: "My husband has me read Charles Bukowski poems to him," she said. "It amuses him."
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