Zurich, December 17th, 2024
James Franco in conversation with Jérôme Sans
You were born in 1978 in Palo Alto, California. Your mother is an author, your father ran a Silicon Valley business, and your grandmother was the director of the Verne Art Gallery in Cleveland. What was your cultural environment like growing up? Did your family introduce you to the artistic world?
JF My parents met at Stanford University. They were both painters, but my father had a breakdown in college and stopped painting. He went into mathematics, and then to Business school. My mother went over to children’s book writing. There was a lot of creativity around. When I was a teenager, I was already interested in my three subjects – acting, writing and visual art. I started to get into a lot of trouble at an early age. When I got into enough trouble, I knew I had to make a change. I stopped partying, and started going to art classes after school from three until ten p.m. every day. I thought I was doing the right thing, but when my father found out how much art I was taking, he got upset and said it was too much. I realised in hindsight that maybe he was being triggered because he had given it up and had had this breakdown. In one way, I had a very great upbringing. In another way, I felt a lot of resistance to creativity because he was so sensitive about it.
And he knew what it meant. Maybe he was doing that in order to protect you?
JF On one level, I think so yes. He was afraid for me, of the life of an artist. He had to make that choice himself and thought that looked crazy for me.
“I think it’s both Heaven and Hell. The title is not a literal critique of Hollywood. It’s like in Kenneth Anger’s book Hollywood Babylon, where he takes all these old cinema stars, all these tragedies and dramas, and even though he exaggerates, he transforms it into almost a religion. Hollywood becomes a signifier for something bigger. That’s what I’m trying to do.I want it to represent a whole kind of mystical ethos.”
Amongst all this, when and how did you decide that you would become a visual artist?
JF I find in life that you take action, and then the universe tells you where to go. I was doing all that visual art in high school, but my parents wouldn’t let me go to art school. They wouldn’t pay for it. I was set on going to RISD – the Rhode Island School of Design – but they said no. They would only pay for a regular liberal arts education. So I went to UCLA and moved to Los Angeles to study literature as an undergraduate. Everybody there was in the movie industry, which was also my other interest. Eventually, I decided to drop out of UCLA and go to acting school. My father was upset. He said I was being a fool because he thought down the road, I wouldn’t be able to take care of myself. My acting teacher said “sometimes you have to just bet on yourself”. So I did that, and my professional life started as an actor, even though I really started with visual art before then. When I was about 26, I had a career as an actor but felt a little unsatisfied. There were things about acting that were really great, but there were other creative outlets that I wanted. I went back to UCLA, then to graduate school, to film school and writing school, and then finally to RISD, which I paid for myself. That’s around the time my professional art career started, which was about 15 years ago.
How would you describe your artistic practice?
JF I went to a lot of these MFA (Master of Fine Arts) programs. One of the things that they do there is to help you find your voice. As I was doing this and taking these classes, I was thinking about what my unique place was. Being in all these different worlds – directing, acting, writing, making art – I found that a lot of what I was creating was riding the line of all these different disciplines. Some of the subject matter, material that I was working with, had to do with having been in one sphere – the movie business – and then taking that material and moving it over into another sphere. This was what a lot of my favorite visual artists were doing. When I was in my 20s, I got introduced to the work of artists such as Paul McCarthy in Los Angeles, the Scottish artist Douglas Gordon, the French artist Pierre Huyghe, Cindy Sherman, the underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger. All these artists were taking movies as a source material, and then transforming it and making art out of it. I love this because it was a way to engage with Hollywood in cinema, to use all the material and signifiers, but not in a commercial cinema output, for another purpose. While all these artists are outside of Hollywood, reaching into Hollywood for material, I’m somebody that’s in Hollywood. I may step to the side at times and then reach back and make something new. In that way, I’m inside and outside at the same time. That’s my unique position.
Maybe it’s the position of any one of us. We are all always inside and outside. I feel like I’m outside in my own world. It’s a good position to be always creative, because if you’re just inside, you’re too comfortable. That takes me to my question about the exhibition you are opening at the Gmurzynska Gallery entitled Hollywood is Hell. Why this title? Is it really Hell?
JF I think it’s both Heaven and Hell. The title is not a literal critique of Hollywood. It’s like in Kenneth Anger’s book Hollywood Babylon, where he takes all these old cinema stars, all these tragedies and dramas, and even though he exaggerates, he transforms it into almost a religion. Hollywood becomes a signifier for something bigger. That’s what I’m trying to do. Hollywood is not just about people working in the business literally making movies, with agents etc. I want it to represent a whole kind of mystical ethos.
For this exhibition, you show for the first time a series of works deconstructing a certain glamorous mythology of Hollywood, with figures from Bruce Willis to John Travolta. What does this series mean to you?
JF They become signifiers. It’s not about Bruce Willis necessarily. In Hollywood, the performer or the star becomes an icon, a signifier. People take that image and they reuse it for all kinds of things, sometimes with the person’s permission for an advertisement. Like the piece with Bruce Willis, when I saw this advertisement on a bus stop in Athens, I thought it was perfect. It’s an advertisement for some soft or energy drink (made in Greece because the drink Hell doesn’t exist in the United States as far as I know). I understand that he did that, I’m not judging him for it. It’s called Hell and it just clicked for me. I started making this series during the pandemic. While walking around Los Angeles at the time, it was empty, post-apocalyptic. I would take photos of things around me, like crumbling posters. It was a wasteland, but also the heart of Hollywood, the dream factory, where all magic is made. I got really interested in this dichotomy, which goes back to this notion of Heaven and Hell. I juxtaposed and collaged these different sides of Hollywood where it’s about our collective dreams, where everybody, especially during the pandemic, was just watching and watching because that’s all we could do. And at the same time, the real place was just an empty wasteland.
“I really believe in the idea of just doing the practice every day. I had done a bunch of art shows years ago, then I had stopped. During the pandemic, I read the critic Jerry Saltz’s book called How to Be an Artist. There were suggestions about creativity. One of them was to just draw every day. That’s how it all restarted, and I started drawing every day. Then that grew and grew, and I still follow that idea of doing the practice every day.”
What role does art play in your life? Do you consider your work as auto-biographical, as a form of self-portrait?
JF I think so. I keep circling back to the inside/outside imagery. When I step on the outside, there’s still an icon, a figure, that is “James Franco”. So it’s hard for me as an artist to escape that. I guess I embrace it. I understand that one of my unique places is that I’m an actor and director going into the art world. Of course, there are a lot of actors I know that paint, but it’s a rare thing to go into a real commercial art world.
You could say you are an artist going to the film world.
JF I would prefer to go for this.
I’ve read that you always surround yourself with a studio, even at times creating a mobile studio when you’re travelling or on set. What is your creative process?
JF Yes, it’s true. I really believe in the idea of just doing the practice every day. I had done a bunch of art shows years ago, then I had stopped. During the pandemic, I read the critic Jerry Saltz’s book called How to Be an Artist. There were suggestions about creativity. One of them was to just draw every day. That’s how it all restarted, and I started drawing every day. Then that grew and grew, and I still follow that idea of doing the practice every day. As I travel a lot, I don’t have my studio all the time. But I like adapting to what’s at hand. If I only have a sketchbook, I’ll use different pens or start to collage. When I have a studio, then I can do bigger things.
Read the full interview on Muse February Issue 65.
