James Franco’s Short Student Film Features Michael Shannon Playing a Necrophile (NSFW)

It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble that James Fran­co has a dop­pel­ganger. Or maybe access to some alien space/time bend­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Oth­er­wise, I real­ly can’t fig­ure out how Fran­co man­ages to do all the things he does. On top of star­ring in movies like Milk, Spring Break­ers and Pineap­ple Express and get­ting nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award for 127 Hours, Fran­co is also a pub­lished nov­el­ist and poet, an artist and, as an odd per­for­mance art rou­tine, a guest on Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. He received an MFA in writ­ing from Colum­bia, and is cur­rent­ly a PhD stu­dent in Eng­lish at Yale.

And, of course, he’s a film direc­tor. His first fea­ture was an adap­ta­tion of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and his sec­ond direc­to­r­i­al effort, which comes out next month, is based on Cor­mac McCarthy’s nov­el Child of God. Clear­ly, Fran­co is not inter­est­ed in mak­ing light-heart­ed fam­i­ly fare. Yet per­haps his dark­est, most dis­turb­ing movie is Her­bert White, a short he did while a film stu­dent at NYU. (Oh yeah, he went there too.) You can watch it above. Warn­ing: while not graph­ic, it prob­a­bly is NSFW.

Based on a poem by Frank Bidart, Her­bert White is a glimpse into the life of a ded­i­cat­ed fam­i­ly man and secret necrophile. The film stars Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed actor Michael Shan­non, and Fran­co lets him do what he does best – look pen­sive, haunt­ed and like he’s on the brink of com­mit­ting an unspeak­able act. If you’ve seen his pow­er­house per­for­mance in Jeff Nichol’s Take Shel­ter, you know what I mean. The movie is shot in an under­stat­ed, ellip­ti­cal sort of way that slow­ly gets under your skin. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly the case in the film’s cli­mat­ic scene, shot in one sin­gle take, where Shan­non cir­cles his intend­ed vic­tim while he argues with him­self over whether or not to suc­cumb to his dark urges. It is deeply unnerv­ing.

In an inter­view with Vice — he finds the time to be a reg­u­lar cor­re­spon­dent for that uber-cool pub­li­ca­tion too, by the way – he talks about that scene.

I thought Herbert’s strug­gle with him­self would be best cap­tured if we didn’t cut away from him. The rac­ing around the block along with Michael’s screech­es and curs­es (ad-libbed) adds to the depic­tion of the inner strug­gle. We shot it three times, rac­ing around the block. I was in the back with my DP. We were both pinch­ing each oth­er because the scene was so intense.

Fran­co was so moved by the expe­ri­ence of direct­ing the movie that he pub­lished a book of poems about the expe­ri­ence (of course) called Direct­ing Her­bert White. You can watch him read some of those poems below.

You can find Her­bert White added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via NoFilm­School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Fran­co Reads a Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

James Fran­co Reads Short Sto­ry in Bed for The Paris Review

Lis­ten to James Fran­co Read from Jack Kerouac’s Influ­en­tial Beat Nov­el, On the Road

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

 


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Comments (3)
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  • Shaun says:

    Wow, that was intense. Real­ly nihilis­tic though, in that there’s no redemp­tion, no moral­i­ty. But it’s a valid aspect of the dark­est parts of man. I can’t wait for his Child Of God.

  • Shaun says:

    Also Michael Shan­non scares the shit out of me.

  • The voice of reason says:

    James Fran­co is an odi­ous lit­tle char­la­tan who needs to be slapped upside the head until he agrees to live out the rest of his life in motion­less silence.

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