184 GQ.COM.AU SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017
IT’S HARD
TO KNOW WHICH
JAMES FRANCO TO
EXPECT, BUT IT’S
FAIR TO SAY THIS
IS NOT THE ONE
WE HAD IN MIND.
It’s just gone 4pm in Los Angeles and the 39-year-old is
doing what he does these days, which is getting a smoothie.
Something with cacao. Earlier today he was playing tennis
and before that, he hit the gym. We’re here to talk work, but
when we speak to him, Franco hasn’t acted in more than six
months. “To somebody like Daniel Day-Lewis, that sounds
like nothing,” he laughs. “But for me, that’s an eternity.”
Weird. But weird is what Franco does. It’s his
stock-in-trade. For the best part of two decades, he has built
an image as one of Hollywood’s most baffling, complex
figures. Few actors have redefined success, rebuffed
stereotypes and frankly, made us wonder just what the fuck
they’re up to, quite like Franco.
He’s a chameleon. An artist in a movie star’s body. An
intellectual or faux intellectual or maybe a genius. A guy
who juggles teaching at two different universities with
studying a PhD of his own. The straight guy who responded
to gay rumours by trying to appear as gay as humanly
possible. A walking, talking performance artwork.
The heart-throb who would be worth his Hollywood pay
cheque if all he did was turn up on set and deliver that
trademark smile. Small wonder he was chosen as the face
of new ‘Coach Man’ fragrance.
But more than anything else, the thing most people know
about Franco is that he’s tirelessly, relentlessly productive.
A whirlwind of creative energy, whose output is so extensive,
it makes you feel exhausted just trying to keep track of it all- much less actually attempting any of it.
Franco has some 17 projects scheduled for this year alone.
These include a film adaptation of a novel that he also wrote
himself, Actors Anonymous, which follows the highs and lows
of young actors in Hollywood, and HBO TV series
The Deuce, about the ’70s porn industry in New York, in
which he plays two characters – a pair of twins. He also
directs two of the eight episodes.
“I felt like now was my chance to do all these weird
projects I had been thinking about, so I might as well strike
while the iron’s hot,” he says. “I was shooting The Deuce in
New York. The sun’s shining, I’d just got off work and I was
walking across town to go teach. And I remember thinking
‘Wow, my life is great. And it’s great because I’m working so
much and I’m doing everything that I want to do’.”
On our shoot, Franco is everything you’d want from
a Hollywood star. Funny, engaging, charming. He’s also
seriously ripped; his body showing barely even a hint of any
fat. But in truth, this is our second attempt at this interview.
The first one did not go according to plan – Franco and the
interviewer did not exactly hit it off.
“I was not trying to be difficult at all,” he explains. “There
was just some weird energy going on. I really wanted to have
a great interview and I was just trying to be really honest.”
Shit happens. But it will later become clear why this is so
important. Franco does not want this to be a typical
interview. He’s not interested in talking about how he
prepared for an upcoming role or what his co-stars were like
to work with. He has a confession to make. Because in
November last year, everything we thought we knew about
James Franco changed. The guy we were so used to seeing
with a million projects on the go, began to realise he couldn’t
do it anymore. He’d had enough.
“I really had a moment of crisis,” he says. “I hit a wall.”
And this new Franco, that’s who we’re here to meet.