James Franco returns with a movie which spent a few years on the back burner before it could debut on this year’s San Sebastián Film Festival. The idiosyncratic Zeroville, anadaptation of Steve Erickson’s novel, was produced even before cult classic A Disaster Artist, a hit on the 8th AFF. Zeroville is Franco’s another surprising film about an obsessive cinephillia, which strongly resembles the paranoid and absurd style of Inherent Vice. The director plays a role of enigmatic, slightly autistic boy who comes to Hollywood in the late 60s. His mind is obsessed with the great American classics, his head is decorated with a tattoo which portrays Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift from George Stevens’s A Place in the Sun, and he smiles like Buster Keaton. He enters the irrational world of the Dream Factory with a pure affection for cinema and a large amount of naivety. One can sense the changing of the guard and forthcoming of the New—a new, different era emerges with a new generation of filmmakers, while the cultural revolution and political chaos burst nearby. Zeroville is an energetic, cinephillic trip, funny and multi-dimensional, which at times resembles Tarantino’s latest film.
Jack of all trades among filmmakers: He is a film and stage director, screenwriter, producer, writer, visual artist, musician, activist and an academic teacher. Perhaps the most hardworking person in show business, involved in countless projects, both artistic and commercial. He was nominated to Academy Award for Best Actor in Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours and won two Golden Globe awards, as well as many other film awards. According to American Film Festival audiences he is the most important person in American independent cinema.
2005 The Ape
2005 Fool’s Gold
2007 Good Time Max
2011 The Broken Tower
2011 Sal
2013 Kiedy umieram / As I Lay Dying
2013 Bukowski
2013 Dziecię boże / Child of God
2014 Wściekłość i wrzask / The Sound and the Fury
2016 W niepewnym boju / In Dubious Battle
2017 Tenn
2017 Instytut / The Institute
2017 The Disaster Artist
2018 Future World
2018 Pretenders / The Pretenders
2019 Zeroville
2019 The Long Home