Howl, Jimmy, Howl

.

James Franco's got some sort of mid-last-century fetish, doesn't he? He's played James Dean, he's always being thrown in those styles for magazine shoots... I suppose he does look best that way, so it makes sense. He's got that look. Anyway, he's all set to play poet Allen Ginsberg next, apparently:

"The actor gave the news exclusively to MTV News, revealing that he’ll be tackling the writer for a new movie called, appropriately enough, “Howl,” after Ginsberg’s famous poem written at the height of the Beat Generation.

“It’s by a two time Oscar Award winner named Rob Epstein, he’s actually a documentary film director,” Franco said of the project. “So I’m gonna play the young Allen Ginsberg, the days before he went bald and gained weight. The early Howl days.”

Since the film is a documentary, Franco will presumably re-enact several moments from Ginsberg’s early life, a la the recent “Chicago Ten.” Is Franco himself up on the era?

“Oh certainly,” the man formerly known as Harry Osborne insisted. “I’ve certainly read ‘Howl.’ I was very into the beatniks when I was in high school, and I still am. So I certainly have read Howl many times.”"

Think any of these scenes that Franco will be "reenacting" will be of the gay kind? Since Ginsberg was one of the queerest poets of all time (and in a field with fellas like Rimbaud and Whitman, that's a feat). Going straight from playing Harvey Milk's boyfriend to this... I think somebody's courting a specific audience!

I also love how Franco makes it clear that he's not gonna be doing any of that "fat, bald" nonsense though. Phew! Bullet dodged there. Doesn't he know weight gain and uglying one's self up is how you gett an Oscar nomination? Pull it together, Franco.
.