We may have known how awesome James Franco is since Freaks and Geeks, but he’s finally in a movie where he’s getting the acclaim. 127 Hours is the harrowing story of Aron Ralston, the hiker who ultimately had to amputate his own arm to escape from a canyon where he was trapped by a boulder. Franco portrays Ralston’s inner turmoil through five days, and his external awesomeness as a master outdoorsman and survivor.
CraveOnline: What does it say about me, I wondered about going to the bathroom, not bigger things like whether he could sleep in that position?
James Franco: Well, I think yeah, in a lot of ways it is necessary to address those kind of things because people are curious, but if you do it with humor it makes it a little more palatable.
Q: What was your way into this character?
James Franco: Well, we did a bunch of things. Let’s see, I met with Danny [Boyle] I think in maybe October or November of last year and then soon after that, he told me I should go on a diet because first of all, Aron was in great shape but also he lost 40 pounds while he was there from water deprivation mostly. So of course we couldn’t do that over the course of filming but one thing we could do was I could get down to a very thin state and then for the early scenes we could do various things with makeup. We actually even built this prosthetic that we ended up unfortunately calling the plum puss. It’s just like this mouth piece that would put my cheeks out for the early parts of the film. Then as he started deteriorating we could use smaller and smaller versions until we didn’t use any and I would look more gaunt than I did at the beginning. Then we met with Aron extensively. When Danny was writing the original script, I think he met with him a bunch. I guess he had to make some deals with him and he insisted there were certain things in the movie or certain lines because I remember, there were certain scenes were verbatim.
Q: What are the lines that were actually what Aron said?
James Franco: Some of the video messages are verbatim what he actually said but our whole approach, not just for the video messages but in general was that we would honor Aron’s story and we would do everything that he did but also we wanted to have our own approach to it or have the latitude to just find things on our own. We did the chipping and everything as he did, but not like matching exactly what was his hand movement like? It was really just doing it on our own and figuring that out. So with the voice messages, they were scripted but I felt like, maybe he didn’t believe this, but I think he gave me the freedom to be a little loose with the words. The most important thing was that it would feel natural and because actually when we watched the real videos, one of the more powerful things about them is how simple it was and how direct and connected it was. To capture that, Danny I think allowed me some looseness but every once in a while there’d be a line in there and I’d say to myself, “I don't know. I just won’t say that because it’s kind of stupid. Who talks like that?” Not even stupid, it’s just like completely unnecessary. Like “Give this video camera to my parents, be sure of that.” I would try and not say a couple of those things and then Danny would come to me and say, “Well, actually, for whatever reason, Aron’s insistent that you say those two words.” But I think he actually cut some of them out.
Q: How difficult and challenging was it working with an arm tied behind your back?
James Franco: Was it difficult? Sure. There were a lot of things that were unusual. You don’t usually spend most movies with an arm pinned behind a boulder but you also don’t spend most movies alone or without other actors for most of the movie. So all of that took adjusting, not just for me. It was everybody. Danny as a director I’m sure is used to directing scenes where he has multiple people and that takes certain kind of skills. If you have a fight scene, you work with the various actors in that way, or a love scene, you’re directing them to come together but it’s always about how are these characters interacting. So when you take one away, it’s taking away something that is so essential to the way we’re used to working that everybody has to readjust. I’d say it’s certainly unusual but I wouldn’t say it was difficult. There was never the moment where it was like, “Danny, we’re making an impossible. This is just ridiculous. This just can’t be done.” It felt very natural but we just had to adjust. For Danny when he’s talking about this long scene, it was like 20 minutes I guess when he finally said cut. We figured out that that was a way to proceed with a lot of the movie. I imagine as a director, it must have taken a lot of trust because we would discuss in detail everything beforehand, but then he’d let me go. So it’s not like he’s directing it in the sense like, “Okay, then at a minute 03, you have to be here.” It’s just letting me go and experiencing it and then also trusting his DPs that they will capture it in the right way. The shots were set up to a certain extent but they were very mobile cameras and within that range, they could do anything, react to what I was doing. I guess what I’m saying is we all kind of learned how to do that and found the best way to make this performance feel organic.
CraveOnline: Was Rise of the Apes a chance to do a full on action hero role?
James Franco: I play a nerdy scientist in that so I’m not an action hero at all. I saw 127 Hours as an opportunity to have an unusual acting experience and I honestly felt the same way about Planet of the Apes where when I first heard about it I thought, “Well, hmm, I don't know. Those masks have cult value but…” And then I found out oh, that that’s not how they’re doing it, that it’s actually all of Peter Jackson’s Weta people doing CG and that I’ll be working with Andy Serkis who played Gollum, and it was the DP from Lord of the Rings, Andrew Lesnie. I was such a big fan of those movies and I am interested in new ways of performing and new ways of filmmaking so I thought why not? I had this opportunity and try it out. When I got to do the scenes with Andy Serkis, it was actually really interesting because Danny and I have actually talked about this too, he plays a chimpanzee, a real chimpanzee. There’s no way we would ever get scenes that we did with a real chimpanzee. Because Andy’s so good at that behavior so it’s like acting opposite a real chimpanzee with great acting instincts. It was cool, it was new, new for me.”
Q: Are you in a “why not” phase, with going back to General Hospital, to test different things?
James Franco: It’s not why not but it’s more like oh, that’s new. Yeah, I’m interested but not “Hey James, why don’t you shoot yourself in the foot or something?” Yeah, why not? Not quite Jackass yet.
