Almost all the movies I’ve directed are adaptations. And I think what I found when I went to film school, where they try to push you to find your voice or your thing, is that I got a lot of things out of adaptations.
I always see nice images like that but I don’t know what to do with them. I guess you share them with someone. Or you write them down in a poem. I had so many of those little images, but I never shared them or wrote any of them down.
The new critique you’re gonna start hearing about James Franco, is ‘He’s spreading himself too thin.’
I start movies with people that I believe in and people with visions, you know, that I believe in. And so if it doesn’t kind of come together in the right way, at least I was doing it because I believed in the person and the movie.
I think as far as straight actors playing gay roles, “Brokeback Mountain” was a big breakthrough. I’m pretty sure when they were casting that movie that – I think the story is, like you know, 10 to 15 other actors turned it down.
I still work really hard, but I like to think I’m a little smarter about at least the type of movie I’m getting into.
As an actor in the classroom, you’re revealing so much, and teachers are, you know, they’re just critiquing like a painting or a piece of work; it’s like, it’s you, and it’s your emotions that they’re working with.
I got arrested for graffiti. I got arrested – a lot of, like, underage drinking, drunk in public, shoplifting, you know, your various, like, suburban arrests, I guess.
I have high aspirations. I want to be an architect.
I learned a lot of good things in my school. I’ve audited a lot of other schools, and I guess after a while I got a little tired of the acting school atmosphere.
For some reason, when I was in junior high school, my friends and I had, like, a cologne-stealing ring.
You just don’t really rehearse kissing scenes, whether it’s male or female.
There’s a long tradition of teen comedies where the kids are getting drunk on beer and whatever else, so smoking a joint to me is no worse than having a beer. So, if someone has a problem with it, I’ll just tell them to relax.
We all age. You shouldn’t discount it as a subject for a film. Just because the characters are dealing with issues that you might not deal with for another 45 years doesn’t mean you won’t like it.
There’s this phenomenon where people do like to announce movies that they think I’m doing that I’m not.
I’ve come to a point where I just want to do movies that I just believe in. I have come to an understanding of filmmaking, a new understanding where I believe it’s a director’s medium. That means working with people that I believe in.
I loved the world of Oz. I guess as a young man, I was just drawn to fantasy worlds. I liked being transported to alternative realms where a lot of my early imagination was sparked.
Fight scenes are really more like dances than they are fights, because you’re depending on your partner to do the right move at the right time. Yes, a tough person or somebody who knows what they’re doing will look better in a fight scene, but it also has a lot to do with the other person.
If you have a profession that depends on what you look like, you can’t blame somebody for caring about that. It’s part of their job. So it’s vanity but it’s also not in a lot of cases. It’s being professional.
I think it helps the writers to sell their books if they announce my attachment. But it doesn’t mean that I’m going to make the movies in the next year or two or three.
A director on a film really sets the tone of how people go about things, so everybody is happy to be at work and everybody does their best.