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January 16, 2012<\/em><\/p>\n Dear Harvey:<\/p>\n As you know, I\u2019ve been looking for a signature role in a career-defining picture for a number of years now. As I do so many things at a high level (actor, academic, teacher, artist, sex symbol, philanthropist, Oscar host, film maker, serious writer, etcetera\u2026) the public is having a difficult time framing \u201cJames Franco\u201d in their minds. Although I don\u2019t want to be immodest, I\u2019m just too complicated, too much of a Renaissance man for the Average Joe to process. It\u2019s so hard for them to be just one thing (personal trainer, limo driver, for example), that it must be pretty near impossible for one of them to imagine a person of greater talent, courage, looks and intellect, being so many of their dreams all at once, as I do.<\/p>\n It can be a bit of a burden, Harvey, which is why I need to burn myself into their minds in a singular, defining cinematic experience.<\/p>\n The movie we need to make, which will sweep the awards, earn us a fortune and be written by me, starring me and directed by me, is to be titled:\u00a0It\u2019s Dark And You Want to Go Home<\/em>.<\/p>\n Do you know this quote?<\/p>\n It\u2019s attributed to an Italian Coast Guard officer who was rebuking the Captain of the sinking luxury cruise liner the Costa Concordia. (It sank on Friday the 13th, which is another brilliant texture to include in my treatment.) I sometimes forget that not everybody is as well informed as I am. It\u2019s a European story, one involving Italians, so it might not have penetrated the American consciousness, although there were US tourists involved, as there always are.<\/p>\n Short form: Cruise liner runs aground, 11 people killed, 21 missing. The Captain, (who I will play) Francesco Schettino, is reported to have been negligent, causing the disaster and abandoning the ship in a cowardly manner. He said he accidentally tripped and fell into a lifeboat. I would like to grow a mustache to play this role.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The public loves James Franco in a mustache, and by doing so I am displaying my range, letting the public know that I am a physical and not just an intellectual actor.<\/p>\n My parents met as Stanford you know, and my mother was a poet.<\/p>\n I would like to make the captain a great, yet undiscovered poet.<\/p>\n You should envision this picture as\u00a0Dances With Wolves<\/em>\u00a0meets\u00a0Titanic<\/em>\u00a0meets\u00a0Avatar<\/em>.<\/p>\n Only in 3-Fucking-D.<\/p>\n With poetry.<\/p>\n The movie will be an extravaganza recalling the disaster films of the 1970\u2019s!<\/p>\n [youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CP0wV7IvSiI] The script will be densely packed with literary allusions, but not so much that it will be too talky and fly over the heads of our target audience, which is everybody. There will be multiple narrative threads, all sexy and dangerous and smart, with unexpected plot twists and moments of heart-breaking tenderness as well as white-knuckled adventure, terror and action. I will have my shirt off for many of the water scenes.<\/p>\n Let me give you a couple of hits:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n We are making a prestige film with broad commercial appeal, here.<\/p>\n The movie will cost $400 million to make.<\/p>\n In the end, the misunderstood Captain will, by escaping into the lifeboat, actually be behaving heroically, absorbing all the responsibility for the disaster that was actually caused by the stuck-up poet character played by Anne Hathaway. It will be revealed at the end that she is a plagiarist who has been stealing the poetry of the Captain. More importantly, as the Captain \u2014 with great sorrow \u2014 gets into the lifeboat, we see that he has something in his hands. It looks like a map, maybe a poem.<\/p>\n The sequel will involve this, as the Captain achieves redemption by leading a heroic salvage mission in order to secure some green technology that one of the brilliant, young Occupy Luxury Liners protestors had and was secretly transporting to market away from a rapacious oil company before the ship sank under the weight of the system.* Only the Captain knew this at the time, and that was why he, as much as it pained him, had to flee the ship.<\/p>\n The fate of the world rested on his sturdy shoulders.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s make this happen!<\/p>\n Sum ego meum opus maximum,<\/p>\n JF<\/p>\n * Fassbender will play evil competing salvage Captain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 16, 2012 Dear Harvey: As you know, I\u2019ve been looking for a signature role in a career-defining picture for a number of years now. As I do so many things at a high level (actor, academic, teacher, artist, sex symbol, philanthropist, Oscar host, film maker, serious writer, etcetera\u2026) the public is having a difficult […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/743"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThere will also be nudity. Harvey, there will be enough tits and ass to keep the average drone interested while I work the emotional and intellectual levers that they didn\u2019t even know existed within them.<\/p>\n\n
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