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Earlier this week, Franco sat down with Entertainment Weekly’s Tim Stack to preview the first four episodes in front of a live audience and answer fan questions via Twitter. “This is so weird,” he said right before sitting down. Though Franco appeared rather uncomfortable with the whole endeavor, never making eye contact with Stack or the audience and visibly squirming at many of the questions, he managed to answer a majority of them with a touch of humor. Here are six wacky things we learned about James Franco at the event.
“It’s actually a pretty good movie,” Franco said after the the screening of the “Dirty Dancing Dogs” episode, the mash up of the famous ’80s dance drama with “Reservoir Dogs.” “I haven’t watched it in a long time but, I like that movie. I guess I really like that idea of a camp that adults go to. Not that I really liked camp when I was young. And Swayze’s such a bad ass in it. It’s a nice combo of families and conservative things mixing with the rebel. But he’s a rebel but he’s a dancer.”
“If I do this and I do other comedies, in a weird way it financially supports me so that I can pay the people that work for me. But it creates a space for me to do something that contrasts with this. Comedy creates good will. If I do things like this then it’s sort of like one for them and then I get to do maybe a Faulkner adaptation or something else for me.”
“The one where De Niro is standing in front of the mirror saying, ‘You talking to me?’ I guess it stands out for me because, as far as I know, it was a thing that was sort of discovered on set in front of the camera. For me, it’s a pure moment where the character is looking at an image of himself and we’re looking at the character, and it tells the story of the character’s insanity or his drive to become this independent militaristic force. So I guess to me that’s sort of pure cinema, or pure behavior that’s so well contextualized.”
For the episode titled “Batjuice,” a mash-up of “Batman” and “Beetlejuice,” Franco took on the iconic role. He was then asked if he’d ever consider playing a character in a real superhero movie. “It felt pretty good to put on the Batman suit. I did play the Green Goblin, you know. The first ‘Batman’ movie was pretty great. As far as the best person to play Batman? I mean, they’re all kind of the same I think.”
When Franco was asked which of his characters most resembled his own personality, he replied, “I did this movie called ‘Spring Breakers.’ Harmony Korine was just like, ‘Don’t act, just be yourself,’ I was like thank you! I’ve actually worked with Kevin Federline. He was a really really nice guy. He doesn’t have any corn rows.” Whether or not he was serious, we’re still not sure.
“Oh yeah, I’ve seen all the ‘Twilight’s’. Team Edward! I saw the last one in Rome. It was in Italian. There were no subtitles. But I have seen them all.”
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