Once upon a time, James Franco played the Wizard of Oz.
He also directed himself in a number of projects which suggested he was gay, which he was not.
Franco is now notorious for settling a $2.2 million lawsuit from former female acting students he slept with, and from having acting exercises in which the women were naked. Two students alleged in their class action suit that they and others were coerced into filming overt sexual acts by Franco and his partners. In interviews Franco admitted to sleeping with students.
Now, to polish up his image, Franco has written and directs himself in a piece of “experimental theater” in which he plays the late actor Robert Blake. Blake, who starred in “Baretta” on TV, became a pariah much like Franco when he was acquitted in 2005 of murdering his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, in 2001.
In “Desert Films,” Franco plays Blake who’s playing his character from David Lynch’s “Lost Highway.” He seems to be booking very small theaters in towns where no one knows his recent history. It’s a far cry from his halcyon days more than a decade ago when he co-hosted the Oscars (and got hostile reviews) the same year he was nominated for “127 Hours.”
The last time Franco was on stage was on Broadway, in the very short lived, and panned, adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”
According to the Santa Barbara Independent, the play involves Franco taping another (male) actor, playing a kidnap victim, to a chair. The paper called the production “an unexpected tarantella of offbeat intensity and peculiar comedy.”
Franco’s Instagram page indicates he’s still plying that $2 million lawsuit smile with clueless ladies at autograph sessions. He also keeps adding odd videos he’s being chased by someone. Maybe it’s the ghost of Bonny Bakley.
PS Don’t think there’s no reward for all this: Franco was just honored at the lesser known Sardinia, Italy festival with a prize for his career. You can’t make this stuff up.
