There were audible gasps when James Franco walked the red carpet at the 71st Annual Venice Film Festival this afternoon for his upcoming film The Sound and the Fury. Check out his nutty new look (as well as other red carpet standouts) after the jump.
James Franco arrives for the The Sound and the Fury premiere during the 71st Venice Film Festival, bald, mustachioed, and with his shirt Simon Cowellized. Apparently, he’s dressed in character for another movie he’s shooting, Zeroville – but I think he should dress like this ALL THE TIME. It’s dark and menacing and hot as fuck.
Says Variety:
The James Franco-directed film “Zeroville” used the Venice Film Festival’s red carpet and Sala Grande theatre which doubled as a set on Friday. Franco, with a shaved skull sporting tattoos of “A Place In The Sun” stars Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, pranced in front of real frenzied fans and received both faux and real awards from fest topper Alberto Barbera, who put in a cameo.
Here’s cutie Jacob Loeb, who plays Quentin Compson in the Sound and the Fury. His next movie is another James Franco flick, Bukowski, in which he portrays legendary American poet Charles Bukowski as a teenager struggling with an abusive father, disfiguring acne, alcoholism, and his first attempts at writing. (Wait… What? They’re disfiguring THAT FACE with acne? Well, that’s a shame. And I was all excited to see it now I lost my boner.)
And here’s James’ pretend lover Scott Haze, who plays Jason Compson IV – “the bitter, racist third child who is troubled by monetary debt and sexual frustration.” Which sounds like every hate fuck I’ve ever had. Hot. I’m still having a little trouble with the idea of James Franco – !!!! – as Benjy, the developmentally disabled source of so much shame for the Compson family, who narrates the first part of The Sound and the Fury. And the promo shot below isn’t helping. It looks like a Mad magazine cartoon. Or like he’s doing Renfield in a Dracula sketch on SNL.
Sometimes James just needs to calm the fuck down and realize he’s not right for every role. Some characters, in fact, might benefit from not being played by James Franco. Benjy is definitely one of those. You should have let Jonah Hill get this one, James. Or that kid from The Goldbergs.
I think indiewire says it best, in their review of The Sound and the Fury:
Perhaps it’s time to reiterate our belief that Franco undoubtedly has talent in many arenas. But do we really believe he is such an unprecedentedly gifted polymath that he can create multiple projects simultaneously and turn in something truly great in any/all of them? For all his energy, like ‘Dying’ before it, ‘The Sound and the Fury” feels like it just didn’t have enough care taken over it, like Franco has mistaken his enthusiasm for Faulkner’s novel for time spent actually working out the best, most inventive way to bring it to the screen, and it’s a novel that deserves at least that respect. Of course, Franco probably has eight other things on the go at the moment (among them no fewer than three upcoming directorial features) which could account for why his “The Sound and the Fury” feels like maybe an eighth of a film.
(Photos: Pacific Coast News)
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