In the end, as Franco describes it, it's all an extension of his job to "serve the director's vision" -- a mission accomplished with aplomb in Danny Boyle's 127 Hours. The 32-year-old actor stars as Aron Ralston, the mountain climber who famously severed his right arm to escape a boulder that pinned him in a Utah canyon for five days in 2003. It's 100 percent Franco's movie, from his monologues into a portable video recorder -- filing everything from his goodbyes to loved ones to recording an impromptu (and fictional) talk show segment compete with a laugh track -- to his ready compliance with Boyle's imagery and style. The result is work that has Franco's name on the shortlist for Oscar gold come February.
Movieline spoke with Franco about the audience reactions to 127 Hours, why his personal life is definitely not performance art (I think?) and why, in the end, he's perfectly fine that there's a picture circulating of him sleeping in a lecture.
This part is always weird, the initial "Hello, my name is Mike. Now I'm going to ask you personal questions."
Yeah, it's weird, right? Is it weird for you?
It is, but I would assume more so for you.
Danny [Boyle] has taught me a lot. He's got a good approach to all of this. And it helps when you're talking about a movie that you're really proud of.
As opposed to Hope's Promise. [Franco's non-existent movie that he told an SNL audience he was promoting in a monologue last year]
[Leans back and laughs] I couldn't understand what that was. It's no Hope's Promise. Oh, I forgot! Now I remember. [Laughs] Yeah, yeah, I'm sure... whatever Hope's Promise would have been.
In 127 Hours there's a scene where Aron is recording a goodbye of sorts because he's accepted that he's going to die. He thinks he hears someone above and screams maniacally for help. Later, he watches himself scream back on the video and says to himself, "Don't lose it." Did you mean, "Don't lose your sanity," or, "Don't lose your will to live" during that scene?
I guess a bit of both. You know, you might say that they kind of go hand-in-hand. I would imagine if I was in that situation there is a real pull to just get desperate. There are moments when he's first trapped and he tries to pull his hand out with brute strength -- you would try and do that! And it leads to some foolish acts. He drinks too much water. Or even when he basically says, "Screw it" and drinks the rest of the water. I can relate to moments like that. I was just -- Ugh, I don't care, just do it. And then you have to face the consequences. So I think in the moment where he says, "Don't lose it, Aron," he has another side of himself that was an engineer [and] has been in dangerous situations. And so I think he's calling on that side of himself to help him think his way out.
Another surprise were the amount of genuinely funny moments. There are a lot of tension-breakers -- like the talk show scene. You had fun during that scene, didn't you?
I like when that scene comes on. And that was a late addition because Danny wrote the original script, and then he brought Simon [Beaufoy] on and I think that was Simon's idea. Because I saw the original videos, and Aron does not do that. Some of the videos in our film are verbatim, but that one is not. But Aron, you can also say, can be a very goofy guy and likes to have fun. Just the humor in general, I knew and Danny knew, [was] essential to this movie. You needed that balance and you needed it early on. You know, you get a lot of it at the top because humor is so powerful, and it really brings the audience toward the character, and it gets the audience on the character's side. And you really need a little bit of that goofiness because it's just disarming. But, most people who come in to see this movie know what's going to happen? Right?
I'd say that's true.
So as funny as you get, it's also always tempered by this knowledge. So it's great! We actually get our cake and eat it, too! You can be goofy, but it's almost like, in inverse proportions, the goofier you are the weightier it gets. So in the false video, the faux talk show, the goofier that I am, the more poignant it's going to be. Because it's a guy using humor to face himself and to also try and escape a situation but also face a situation.
The arm scene obviously gets quite a huge reaction from viewers, but the reaction that really surprised me was the scene of you removing, moistening, and replacing your contact lens. It's amazing how many people winced during that scene.
Really? I did [the scene], but I don't think it was in that shot. There was a different part where -- and I don't even know if it ended up in the movie, it might be there for a second -- where they shot another guy because I don't have contacts. And I tried and I tried, and you don't want it to be ruined because somebody is saying, "Looks like somebody doesn't really have contacts." So I think he got an extreme close-up with somebody's eye doing it -- but I did it as well.
And there's all of this bizarre imagery, too. You have no idea what's going to pop up next. There's Scooby-Doo, the beverage scene... .
That's all right, because that's part of Danny's taste. I actually always laugh when it's the Bill Withers song playing and it cuts to these old commercials of [laughing] people on the beach with the waves hitting them. It's Aron's thirst, but that's Danny's style bringing in that kind of thing. I think one of the things that Danny wants to do is challenge himself. He wants to use stories and material that hasn't been tackled or use old genres -- let's just say 28 Days Later, the old zombie genre -- and make it fresh. And he wants to entertain. He'd challenge himself by saying, "Here's something that maybe can't be done: A guy alone, but how do I make that entertaining? He wants to challenge audience but he also wants to entertain audiences.
I'm fascinated by your image in the media, and before I came in here, I thought twice about getting close to the reality. Do you think the media are fair to you? I mean, between the General Hospital discussions and the pictures of you on TMZ or Gawker sleeping at a lecture, is that fair?
[Long pause] Ummm... Well, here's the thing. [Takes a deep breath and exhales] I think a lot of things about this. I got to a point with my career -- we're talking five or six years ago now -- where I was doing projects that I didn't want to be doing and I didn't have faith in myself that I could do stuff that I'm interested in. Work with people that I admire. I take full responsibility, but I looked for advice from people and I listened to advice too much. Instead of listening to my own taste and looking for things that just interested me. So now that's what I do. And a big part of that is understanding... I'm sorry, this is such a big answer. As an actor, I know understand my part, my role, in a movie is to serve a director's vision. That's what I believe. [To the publicist attempting to end the interview] I'm going to extend this a little bit because he's so nice.
Ha, sure, that's very nice of you to say.
[Laughs] So I think it's my job to serve a director's vision. I didn't understand that before, as an actor. So I, in a way, was trying to direct movies from an actor's standpoint -- and that's just craziness. It can't be done and it makes the process really unpleasant and it doesn't lead to the best work. So because I have that understanding now, I only want to work with people who I look up to or whose work I respect.
Or! Or if it's a situation that interests me for some reason or another. Seth Rogen taught me, "don't do any movie that you wouldn't go and watch if you weren't in it." That's what he believes. That's really good advice -- I follow that to an extent. But there will be some movies that I'll do where I may get something else out of it. Like Eat Pray Love. You know what? If I get to work with Julia Roberts in a romantic kind of movie that's based on a book that a bunch of women readers have just loved, that's kind of like the pinnacle of that kind of thing. I just want to experience that, and if I only have to work a week on it... Why not? You know? Why not? Just go and do that.
But, also, because I've come to the understanding that my roles as an actor is to serves somebody else's vision, I want to have other outlets. I want to have situations where it can be my vision. It's just another way of being involved in films or writing or whatever, it's just a different kind of orientations. I'm collaborative. I love collaborating. It's just taking a different position in the collaboration. I can't even remember what your question was...
Is the media fair to you?
So, things like a picture of me sleeping in class? What am I going to do? It actually wasn't class; William Kentridge was giving a talk that I didn't need to be at. It's kind of OK with me because I think it's very hard for people. People don't want the guy from Pineapple Express to be going to Yale and getting a Ph. D. They don't like it. I think people just want to... If they can't get pictures of me drunk coming out of a club, the worst they can get of me is sleeping in a 10 p.m. lecture. OK. If they want to paint the picture of the stoner going to school, it's kind of OK with me because it actually takes a lot of pressure off. If that's the way they want to depict me, it's fine. Because my schoolwork isn't a performance. I'm going there because I'm getting so much out of it and I'm getting to work with all of my favorite writers or professors. So if that's how they want to depict it, it's not taking away from why I'm there. And it takes pressure off. So you kind of have to roll with it.
[Top photo: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images]