James Franco admitted nobody believed in “127 Hours.” The film, directed by Danny Boyle, is a biographical drama about Aron Ralston, who became trapped by a boulder in a Utah canyon.
“Danny wanted to make it but nobody else on his team did. Everyone said it would be a disaster,” he said at Italy’s Torino Film Festival where he also received the Stella della Mole award.
“Then they realized the real guy had his own video camera with him – he was talking to it. That opened up another way of telling the story. He wasn’t just sitting there quietly. He could externalize his inner thoughts.”
Desperate to escape, Ralston ultimately made the shocking decision to amputate his own arm.
“Just to state the obvious, but normally, when you’re making a movie, you have multiple characters. But here, because he’s trapped in a canyon, there’s no one to interact with. It was different to anything else I’ve ever done as an actor.”
It was a first for everyone, Franco noted.
“Danny Boyle has never done anything like it and neither has [cinematographer] Anthony Dod Mantle. Nobody’s made a movie like that! But despite it being about just one guy, all alone, it’s still very dynamic. It feels like an action film,” he added.
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“The interplay is now between the character and the environment, the character and himself, the character and death, and, on a technical level, the actor and the camera. It was there [in front of my face] the whole time. It was a whole different dance.”
His first meeting with Boyle didn’t go that well – “Maybe he thought I wasn’t as excited as I should have been” – but his stint on the soap opera “General Hospital,” which he has since described as a piece of performance art, proved useful.
“There’s not much dialogue in [‘127 Hours’] but there’s one big speech. I’m basically saying goodbye to my family. Before that, on ‘General Hospital,’ we would shoot 80-90 pages in one day. I became very good at memorizing my lines, fast. We did it and Danny said: ‘You’re the guy.’ And he gave me a hug.”
Once filming had begun, Boyle wanted him to recreate Ralston’s horrific predicament.
“He said: ‘Look, you’ve just been trapped. Your natural reaction would be to force your way out, so I want you to do everything you can to try to get out. Don’t stop.’ So I kept going and going, and going. When he finally said ‘cut!’ I think it has been 25 minutes. I was really tired and sweaty. It became very realistic, because we did everything that Aron would have done – except for cutting my arm off.”
Franco ended up scoring his only Academy Award nomination for his committed performance, an event he described as “so impactful.” “At that time, it was almost too much to take in.”
The star, who has been mired in controversy over the last few years, still has a multitude of projects coming up, including Vincent Gallo’s “Golden State Killer.” He has also completed “The Long Home” as a director. However, he is trying to improve his workload management.
“Let’s just say I was a little crazy for a while,” he said.
“I love movies so much and there were so many stories I wanted to tell. I went back to film school to learn how to direct [and realized]: ‘I’m no longer the person who has to wait for them to call me to be in their movie. I can make my own films!’ This started a whole other chapter.”
He added: “I still have that: that obsession. Let’s call it that, because I’m the kind of person who can become really obsessive. But I’ve also learnt it’s good to have balance. I had to learn its importance.”
From Variety US