JAMES FRANCO: “LIVING IS A KIND OF PERFORMANCE” The Adventurous Actor Pens A Daring Novel, “Actors Anonymous” By Paul Freeman [October 2013 Interview] James Franco’s creations flower far from anonymity. Yet he understands the layers of acting - conscious, subconscious and unconscious - that unfold in the darkest, most hidden corners of our souls. His first novel, “Actors Anonymous,” funny and gut-wrenching at turns, has been published. It’s fascinating, smart, and thought-provoking. Audacious author Franco vividly paints his often sordid characters across the page. The rejection they suffer is offset by the chance for acceptance and even the tease of celebrity. The cast includes a seedy fast-food worker who takes drama classes, a fallen former child star, a scream queen, hospital volunteers and River Phoenix’s ghost. Franco’s seemingly unlimited skills include adaptation. He is earning glowing reviews for his film version of William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying.” It unspooled at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and opened in New York on Oct. 11. The work had previously been considered unfilmable. Franco wrote the screenplay, directed and acts in the film. For the film adaptation of his own book of short stories about troubled Northern California teens, “Palo Alto,” Franco selected Gia Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter) to write and direct. It played the Toronto Film Festival in September. Franco has several films in production, pre-production and post-production. A Broadway role is in his future, as is a TV project. As he goes from project to project, medium to medium, Franco takes artistic risks. We appreciated Franco taking time to talk with Pop Culture Classics again. POP CULTURE CLASSICS: Congratulations on the book, it’s a fascinating read. I understand that David Markson’s “This Is Not A Novel” was an influence, in terms of structural approach. JAMES FRANCO: Yes, certainly. If you know David Markson’s book, you can see where it has the biggest influence. The chapters that are kind of statements and musings, they were the last chapters to go into it. I started writing some of the material as early as four or five years ago, but the last things to go in there were those chapters of epigrammatic statements or musings. And that came directly from having been introduced to David Markson’s book ‘This Is Not A Novel’ by one of my teachers, named David Shields. PCC: Using that form, does it root the book in reality in a different sort of way, mixing the musings with the fictional stories? FRANCO: Yeah, I think that’s what it’s playing with. I consider the whole book a work of fiction. But it does ground it in a different kind of writing, a different kind of engagement with the reader. It’s not based in narrative, at least in a traditional way. PCC: The connection to the 12-step format, you’ve said that it’s not a matter of acting being an addiction. What is the correlation? FRANCO: The mixing of the more direct statements or musings without contextual narrative, mixed with sections that are mini-narratives, makes the whole book follow, to a certain extent, the structure of recovery books, which is something that I liked, specifically, something like the Alcoholics Anonymous book that is kind of the granddaddy of all the recovery books. There’s an opening section of about 150 pages or so that outlines the program, the 12 steps. And it gives practical advice, based on experience. And it talks about what past members have discovered their issues were and then ways to possibly overcome them, etc. But it’s sort of the practical part of that book. And then, at the end of the AA book, there are a bunch of stories or testimonies about people who suffered from addiction and recovered. So I liked that combination of the different styles of writing. I don’t frontload my book with all of the practical stuff or all the statements. They’re interspersed with the narrative pieces. But it’s the same kind of idea, something that kind of speaks directly to you and then something that uses a story to kind of say the same things. PCC: Because the reader is going to be very aware that it’s a James Franco book, did you play with their perceptions by injecting yourself into the proceedings, with your own voice, and as a character? FRANCO: Yeah. I mean, my first book was a book of short stories, called “Palo Alto,” about teenagers in Palo Alto in the mid-90s. And, with that first book, I was afraid that my actor life, my film life, might spill over into my writing life, because I wanted people to look at my book not as an actor’s book, but as a writer’s book. And I was very happy with the way that came out and the reception. But after that, I realized, one of my big subjects, one of the areas that I know most about, is acting in film and celebrity. So why don’t I just use that? Why don’t I actually bring my two worlds together? Because I actually know as much about working in the film business as most. And when you’re in writing school, one of the things they teach you is find your own voice and find your own subjects and how to write about them. So that’s one of my subjects. And I was really hurting myself by not using it in my work, meaning film and acting, as subjects. And I knew that, if I did that, people would read into the book and try and pull things from the book and apply them who I am. And that’s part of it. I think that’s part of the book. They’re going to do that regardless, whether it was about acting or not. But I’m sure they’ll do it doubly, because it’s about acting. And I’m fine with that. People already attribute a lot of false things to me, so I don’t mind, if they kind of mix some things up. PCC: The process of writing the book, did it alter your perspective on yourself or on the art of acting? FRANCO: That’s interesting. I mean, I know it more or less feels like a dark take on acting or the film industry. But, in other ways, I feel like, there’s some things in there that are liberating ideas about not only how to be, as an actor, but also how to just be... out in life. And one of the things I wanted to do was talk about acting and film, but have those things stand in for more universal things, like just being human, acting with others, how we engage with the world. Because that’s what acting is. When I act, in front of a camera, I’m engaging with other characters or actors playing characters, and I’m engaging with my imaginary circumstances. And so, it’s a very small leap to say, “Well, when I’m out in the world, I’m engaging with people and engaging with my, I guess, real circumstances.” And so, in that sense, living is a kind of performance. And so, I guess, writing it just made it even clearer to me that life is a series of choices and it is a performance, not in a weird way, where nothing is real, but it’s very dependent on us. PCC: And everyone then, in some way, is acting all the time? FRANCO: Yeah. I know that can sound pretentious, but I really believe that. One’s life is not a predetermined thing. It’s made up of different pressures put on you and different things imposed on you. And then also how you react to those things and what you choose to put in front of you. Certain practical things often need to be done. And maybe we don’t enjoy those things or want to do those things. But that’s not to say that they absolutely have to be that way. There are always innumerable choices to be made. And that’s what a performance is made up of - choices. And choices of how to behave. And so, in that sense, yeah, we are all putting on mini-performances every day. What you choose to wear in the morning. You don’t wake up wearing something. You purchase certain things to wear. And you made those decisions. Maybe there were pressures on you to make certain decisions. But you still made them. So, in that sense, it’s a character that you’re dressing. PCC: Some aspiring actors have sad stories. If you hadn’t had the success, early on, would you have stuck with acting regardless? FRANCO: That’s a good question. I haven’t really thought about that. I have a lot of interests. I guess, if I found that acting just didn’t work out, I’d just pursue something else. Maybe I would have gone just straight to directing. PCC: You’ve gone from project to project, so often taking artistic risks, is it that you like to scare yourself a little bit? Or are you fearless? FRANCO: I do like to push myself in new directions. And so some of the projects I do are chosen because I know that they will push me to make choices I haven’t made before. And, it’s not that I’m fearless, I just don’t like fear to enter my decision process, when I’m thinking about what to do. So, if I really believe in something, I don’t want fear to keep me from doing it. PCC: instead of allowing the fame to get in your way, have you been able to use celebrity as a tool in your creativity? FRANCO: Yeah, in different ways. I’m in a position where I can do some difficult projects that maybe I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. But also, I guess I feel like, because I’m an actor in mainstream film, I have a public persona. And it’s not all of my making. And I view it as something that’s connected to me, but also separate from me. So I use it. I step to the side and use that public persona for some of my own projects. PCC: For you, is acting more a matter of putting on masks or removing them? FRANCO: Um [pauses]. That’s a good question. I guess it just depends on the movie and the role. There is the, I guess you could say, mask removal, as far as emotions go, in most roles. I, as an actor, am making myself vulnerable. I’m showing the camera and the audience something of my inner life, even though, on the surface, I’m playing a different character. And that’s usually the case with most roles I play. There is a kind of vulnerability or a, yeah, taking down of a mask, in an emotional sense. And then there are some roles that, in addition to that unmasking, there is, simultaneously, a kind of masking. I think I’m more of an unmasker, you know? Even when I play characters whose surface behavior is very far from my own, or whose beliefs are very far from my own, I’m always looking to find something that I can latch onto, that I can understand emotionally, something that makes sense to me underneath, even if I don’t follow it in life, at least as a performer, something I can understand, I can understand the motivation, even if I think the character’s acts are wrong, I seek to understand why he’s doing it, so that I can emotionally relate to it. And I guess the only masking is just when I have a character whose physicality and behavior and even look is very different from my own, I guess you can say that’s a kind of masking. PCC: And in writing fiction, is there some parallel in terms of wanting to unmask the characters you’re creating? FRANCO: [Pause] Uh, yes and no. Yeah, obviously, I wrote it and it’s all coming from me and that’s already kind of an act that makes every writer vulnerable. This is pointedly not a memoir. So this is not like a confession. I don’t view it as a confession of who I am. If I really wanted to write a memoir, it would be like, ‘This is what it was like on “Milk.” And then I did “127 Hours” and this is what it was like. And I would just be a little more plain about everything. And explicit. But this is not that. It’s a piece of fiction. So that’s kind of a masking, I guess. But, I don’t know. One of my teachers told me, talked about the way Chekhov used conversations on the different kinds of beliefs that the characters had. But they weren’t his own beliefs. They were just contents of the story. And I would say that, there are things in the book that I relate to or believe in, but everything is kind of recontextualized, so that there’s sort of a mask over everything. PCC: What about the process of adapting? What were the most difficult aspects of bringing Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” to the screen? FRANCO: Yeah, it was hard. It was a book that I’d loved since I was a teenager. And, after going to film school, I realized that now is my chance to make the movies that I really wanted to make, that nobody else was making. And I started thinking about the books and the stories that I loved and then I came across “As I Lay Dying” again, which was one of my favorite books and it’s been a big influence on me and a lot of stuff I do. And so, it hadn’t been adapted in the 80-plus years since it was written. And what I realized was that, if I was going to adapt it, I couldn’t just have adapted the story, that I had to also be loyal to the spirit, to the style in some ways. And I had to be loyal to the structure. And so in the book, each chapter is told from the first-person perspective of a different character. So there’s a feeling of multiple perspectives. And so we came across this idea of using split-screen to give actual, distinct perceptions of each scene as happening simultaneously. And then also, at some points, the split-screen shows a scene in one location and a different scene in a completely different location, like Dewey Dell’s at the pharmacy, trying to get an abortion, and the family is at the cemetery, burying the mother. So it was a way to capture that, in terms of the structure of the book. PCC: And lastly, your own book, “Palo Alto,” did it require a great deal of trust, having Gia Coppola adapt your stories and direct the film version? FRANCO: It was great. It was exactly what I wanted. After I wrote the book, I automatically thought about a movie version, because I’ve been in the movie business for so long. And then, pretty soon after that, I realized I didn’t want to do it myself. I wanted another mediating voice in there, who, hopefully would be loyal to the spirit of my book, but would find new things in it. And then I saw Gia’s photographs and some of her little videos. She’d never directed a feature before. And I just had a feeling that she was the right person. So I asked her to do it. She read it the book and really liked it. And we were off. And yes, it was kind of a leap of faith. And it really paid off. She made a great movie that I think is loyal to the spirit of what I was trying to do, but it’s also a version, a movie that I would never be able to make. I would never have made it how she made it. And that’s really exciting to me. ***************************************************************************** And our earlier James Franco Interview... JAMES FRANCO: STUDENT OF LIFE By Paul Freeman [May 2013 Interview] We’re all products, to some degree, of our environments. James Franco, Academy Award-nominated actor, author, filmmaker, visual artist and teacher, was born and raised in Palo Alto, California. And those years there, the first 18 of his life, definitely helped shape him. That’s evident from his first publication, the intriguing short story collection, “Palo Alto,” and a new book, the fascinating memoir, “A California Childhood” (Insight Editions). Franco’s imaginative assemblage - family photographs, paintings, drawings, poems and stories - creates a swirl of impressions. His parents, author/actress Betsy Franco and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Doug Franco, who passed in 2011, met at Stanford. They had three sons - James, Tom and Dave. Franco, who later brilliantly portrayed the archetypal rebel without a cause, James Dean, nearly wound up in juvenile hall after incidents involving underage drinking, graffiti and shoplifting. His passion for the arts rescued him. At Palo Alto’s Pacific Art League, Franco studied life-drawing and painting. Eventually, his focus shifted to acting. In Hollywood, Franco’s interpretations of intellects and emotions has made him convincing in a dazzling array of roles, including Harry Osborn (Spidey’s frenemy) beat poet Allen Ginsberg, hiker Aron Ralston, Hugh Hefner, Scott Smith (Harvey Milk’s lover), and the Wizard of Oz. He still has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Franco returned to complete his studies at UCLA and, already an established movie star, attended graduated school at NYU for filmmaking, Columbia and Brooklyn College for fiction writing and North Carolina’s Warren Wilson College for poetry. He’s currently earning a PhD in English at Yale. As busy as he is, Franco makes time to work with numerous worthy organizations, including Art of Elysium. That charity encourages actors and musicians to volunteer their time to seriously ill children, whose lives can be enriched via the arts. Franco took time to chat with Pop Culture Classics before discussing “A California Childhood” during an appearance with his mother at Kepler’s book store in Menlo Park, California on May 13 (keplers.com). PCC: The new book is fascinating. How did you decide on the concept for the memoir, the unusual form it was going to take? JAMES FRANCO: It might have started way back on the night that Scribner threw me a book party for my first book, ‘Palo Alto.’ I remember talking to my agent. I’d just gone through all the usual procedures of putting out a book and giving blurbs and having it reviewed. Even before that, going through the galleys and getting the type right and formatting it correctly and finding a cover and all that stuff. And I felt like there was something good about that, about fitting my work into this pre-established form and going through the regular rituals of putting it out there. But I have desires to do other kinds of things, to do work that doesn’t quite fit into this form and maybe doesn’t need to be read in the same way. I guess I was maybe thinking about reviews and how things are read and that, when they are put into a conventional prose form or novel form or short story form, then there are expectations that are set up. Essentially, you’re writing just to make art, but you’re also writing with some of those expectations in mind, even if it’s subconscious. But I thought, I have work that defies those expectations. I want to make something that is many things, that is not just a piece of written fiction, that has images, that has material that’s borderline fiction and non-fiction, which is something that I was already aware of anyway. Maybe every author is, to some extent, aware of that border, especially if he or she is writing about situations that they easily could have lived through or maybe even did live through a form of that. There’s a consciousness of, ‘Will people read this as having actually happened to the author?’ And I know that’s one of the most annoying questions authors get. ‘Is this true?’ ‘Did this really happen to you?’ Etcetera. Even though my first book, ‘Palo Alto,’ wasn’t really about Hollywood or acting or my life as an actor or anything close to that, I felt like my stuff would be read that way, if not more than others, than at least as much as others’ work has been read as autobiographical. And so, that was also on my mind. I thought, ‘Well, why don’t I just embrace that and bring in all different kinds of forms?’, the short stories that definitely are short stories and they’re fiction and I’ll say right now, all those things did not happen to me [Chuckles] and I did not do all those things that are in the short stories. But the photos are photos of my real life and my family and friends. And then there are the images of the paintings and the drawings. You could say that everything has a similar source that it all comes from - my youth in California, specifically in Palo Alto. And those seeds, the Palo Alto seeds, the seeds of my youth, have grown into different forms. Sometimes it’s fiction, sometimes it’s poetry, sometimes it’s paintings. And then, also, you get work that - Sorry, you’re the first person who’s asked me about the book, so I guess I’m unloading on you, but anyway - there’s paintings in there that I made when I was in high school, some drawings I made when I was a little kid, there are some that I made in my early 20s. Then there are some that I made with a very accomplished contemporary painter, named Josh Smith, within the past six months. So you get also things in there that were made in different periods of my life, about, or inspired by similar periods of my life. PCC: As you sift through the seeds of your younger years, did that give you a different perspective on where you’ve been or where you’re going, who you are? FRANCO: Yeah, it’s interesting. I feel as if most people’s childhood definitely has a big effect on who they become. And that varies in every person, the degree to which it has an effect. But I think mine had an effect on me, but then I moved away from Palo Alto, went to Los Angeles, started acting, then I went back to school for writing and art. And I feel like I act on that material now more than it acts on me, that I can look back on it and I find when I do look back and I make work, whatever form that might take, based on that early period of my life, then it’s very fruitful, very inspiring to me and my creative work, but that the experiences I had then - I mean, who knows how aware I am of myself, so why I do certain things - but I feel like the experience I went through then as a child are not acting on me in such a strong way, where I could say, ‘Oh, that happened then and that led to this, which led to this and led to this and led to this.’ Certainly that’s there. But now I’ve had enough formidable experiences and I’m trained in certain things since then that have moved beyond just being acted upon by those experiences and now I can act upon them... or use those experiences for my work. PCC: You’ve said that, in your formative years, seeing the dichotomy between Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, the haves and have-nots, made a lasting impression on you. How did it affect your thinking? FRANCO: That was just a situation I was born into. When I was pretty young, I guess East Palo Alto had one of the highest murder rates, per capita, in the country, if not the highest. And I talked to police officers. I’m a friend of a couple of Palo Alto police officers and they told me that they would patrol the entry points between Palo Alto and East Palo Alto. So I guess that says that there was a real effort to keep that area separated. And, the book had a different title [“My Posse Don’t Do Homework” by LouAnne Johnson], but the movie is called ‘Dangerous Minds,’ with Michelle Pfeiffer. That was based on kids who were being bussed to Belmont from East Palo Alto. And that was all happening when I was a kid. So that was my experience. I know that people in high school, they could go to East Palo Alto and buy liquor. So that was really the only interaction I actually had with East Palo Alto. It was a strange phenomenon. They’re different counties, but they’re cities with basically the same name. And they were so different, as far as Palo Alto having two of the best public high schools in the country and East Palo Alto didn’t even have a high school. I guess I can look back on it now and do a real analysis of it, but when I was a kid it was just a situation I was born into and reacted to by just living our lives. PCC: You also touched on that aspect of your generation of Palo Alto teens rebelling against the materialism, as well as the conformity. FRANCO: Yeah, I write a lot about Palo Alto and it’s kind of a funny thing to say, ‘Oh, the rebels of Palo Alto,’ but, in fact, there was a lot going on. I think of what I knew of what young people went through when I was there. It was intense. Not to harp on all the bad things, I mean I love Palo Alto and my mother still lives there. But I guess I just saw it as, once I had lived through it and moved to Los Angeles, I just saw it as a great area to examine what it is to be young. Comparatively, it’s a great place to grow up. But despite that, there was still plenty of angst. There were plenty of great students, too, probably some of the best in the country. You had it all. So I don’t see this book or the ‘Palo Alto’ book as sociological studies of Palo Alto. I tend to focus on some of the darker sides. That’s certainly not the whole picture of Palo Alto. But for me, to sort of overload the books with glimpses into the darkness, is a way to capture not the actuality, the facts of what might have happened in my life or anyone’s given life or on average what happens in Palo Alto, but it gives maybe an approximation of what it feels like to be a teenager, how intense it feels to be a teenager. At least how intense it felt for me. PCC: During your teens, when you were getting into trouble, did your interest in the arts help pull you out of that descent? FRANCO: It did, certainly. There’s a story in the other book, when I was in high school, I got into quite a bit of trouble. When a lot of people say like music saved them or the arts saved them, a lot of it, I think, they’re talking about emotionally, it was a place to find release. And it was a place to put energy, to guide energy. So it was that for me, too. But even more than that, I remember, after I’d gotten into a fair amount of trouble for a minor, I remember having this conversation out loud with my Dad, I played sports when I was younger and a little bit when I was a freshman, but I had stopped, and I remember saying to him, [chuckles] ‘Well, if I’m not out getting into trouble, I’m going to have all this time on my hands. I have to find some stuff to do, to actually just fill my time.’ I’m a fairly obsessive person. I do a lot. I spend a lot of time doing what I love. And soon after I had that conversation, I started going to the Pacific Art League, it was downtown, near the Blue Chalk Cafe on the corner, across from the police station. I’d go there or they also had classes in the building across from the main library. And I’d go to one, or sometimes both of those places, every day after school, from about 3:30 till 10 at night. They had classes all afternoon and evening. And that’s one of the ways I stopped getting into trouble. I would do life-drawing and painting, six hours a day, every day. PCC: So you were immersed in the fine arts. What led you towards acting and theatre as your main pursuit? FRANCO: For a long time, I’d loved film. But I was in Palo Alto. I’d seen a few productions by the Children’s Theatre and I think, when I was really young, I felt jealous. I saw ‘Oliver’ there. And I remember wanting to be a part of it. I was pretty shy. But it was something I wanted to do. And then, it wasn’t until my senior year, when I really got into it. I’d wanted to do it and then, when you’re sort of open to something, opportunities arise or information comes your way that maybe you weren’t ready to hear before. And so, I had a girlfriend that was an actress. I wanted to go to art school. My parents didn’t want me to. So I was applying to English departments. But my girlfriend was applying to all these drama departments. She had to go and do live auditions. So I remember going to San Francisco with her for her NYU audition. I was outside the door. We both were waiting for her to go in. And we could hear all the other people go in and do their monologues. And sitting there, maybe I was a little arrogant [Laughs], but I remember listening to some of them and thinking, ‘Oh, I could do that. I bet I could do that.’ [Laughs again] This is just a long, stupid story. But then she like did a play this guy in the drama department had written. It was a one-act. Just the two of them. And it was a romantic one-act. They actually kissed in it. So he had asked, of all people, my girlfriend to be in it. And I was very upset about that. I think I was probably more upset that he had actually written something and was putting it on and acting in it and then doing it with my girlfriend. Like he was doing all of the things that I wanted to do. And then doing it with my girlfriend. That was probably the most upsetting part of it. And not really the fact that they kissed in the play. But I got very upset and begged her not to do it. But she, correctly, ignored me and did it [Chuckles]. So as, sort of revenge - I think really I was just looking for an excuse at that point, something to push me onto the stage - and so, as revenge, I joined the Drama department. I auditioned for the last two plays my senior year and I got the leads in both - Dostoevsky’s ‘The Idiot’ and Georg Buchner’s ‘Woyzeck.’ And, in ‘Woyzeck,’ the lead actually murders his wife, so it was an extra kind of revenge [Laughs]. PCC: Did you have any compunctions about revealing yourself, your emotions through the art? Or did you find it therapeutic? FRANCO: Well, I think that was my fear before I did it, it’d be revealing or that, if I wasn’t good or wasn’t received well, it would be a very public kind of embarrassment or rejection. So I think that’s one of the main things that kept me from going into it at an early age. But once I started doing it, I felt very comfortable. PCC: In film, you’ve tackled such diverse and challenging roles, often culturally significant roles. Is that a compulsion to fully explore your art? To take risks? Or is it all about examining various corners of your own psyche? How do you make those choices? FRANCO: Well, the second chapter of my life is Los Angeles and trying to become an actor and, when I started doing that, I knew what kind of movies I liked to watch. But there was some weird disconnection between what I knew I liked artistically and then the kind of roles that I was performing. It took me a little while to understand that, as an actor, one of the biggest creative decisions is the roles that you choose to do and the movies that you decide to be a part of, because it is such a collaborative medium. And so, later for me, after I’d been doing movies for a while, I realized that I should only be doing movies that I really care about or to treat my choices as artistic choices. If my choices are just based on being in movies that are just going to be commercially successful or safer choices that I know have a better chance of being liked, it just gets pretty boring. So, as far as my acting career goes, I guess I try to treat my choices truly as the first and most important creative choice. PCC: Even though the roles are so different, do you see some common thread, being outsiders in some way or in terms of the conflicts they face? FRANCO: That’s hard to say. I have played a lot of different kinds of roles. I’m sure there are some throughlines. But I think that’s a very long discussion. PCC: You talked about how important the arts were to your own development. Is that why you became involved with Art of Elysium? FRANCO: That’s one of the reasons. I remember around the time that I realized that I needed to take a lot of care with the choices in the movies, was a time that I was dissatisfied with a lot of the movies I was doing and dissatisfied with the way I’d been living my life. And so, I knew that, for me, one way out of feeling bad about myself was to help others. And I did have a desire to teach. But at that time, I didn’t know what I could teach. I was primarily an actor. In a fortuitous way, when I put that energy out there, this opportunity opened up. Actually I was working with Kirsten Dunst at the time on ‘Spider-Man 3.’ And she had been volunteering at Art of Elysium. She told me about it and it sounded like exactly the place that would fill all of the things I was hoping to do, where I could give to others, but I could also use everything that I’d learned as an actor and a filmmaker. And that would be what I would give. And my time, obviously. And that would be enough. That’s how it started. And I became close with everyone there and just continued that relationship. PCC: And generally, that role of education in your life, both as teacher and student, that hunger for knowledge, was that inherent in you, did it come out of your environment? Or what do you think sparked that? FRANCO: Most of my interests haven’t changed since I was in high school... or even younger. The book ‘California Childhood’ shows that I was interested in art from a very young age and even interested in writing. But when I went back to school, it was a way to treat those interests as seriously as I’d done with my acting. I went to a lot of schools, but I don’t think it’s out of a need to be the best at anything. I just get very anxious when I feel I’m not part of a conversation or I’m not on the inside of a situation or an area or an interest, because, I don’t know, I just don’t like being on the outside. So basically, when I was just an actor, I was very jealous of directors. I was so envious that they got to be out there, setting everything up and telling a story. And I loved literature and I’d always wanted to write. I’d left UCLA after a year, and they had a Creative Writing focus, but you had to apply, and rarely did freshmen get into those classes. So there I felt like, ‘I’m on the outside. All I get are like the survey classes. I want to be where they’re creating things.’ And I felt on the outside. So when I went back to school, it was my chance to be on the inside of all those things. PCC: Besides the joy of the creation itself, do you think about what you want to accomplish through your art? FRANCO: That’s another big question. But the school, I’m still a student. I’m getting my PhD from Yale and it takes a long time. But I’m more of a teacher now than I am a student. And being a student has evolved into being a teacher. It’s the newest thing in my life. And I love it. I teach at a bunch of schools, all things, directing and writing and performance. Because I do love the academic world and the kinds of conversations that happen there. And so teaching is a way to continue those conversations.