Posing for photos by Eric Ray Davidson, actor James Franco joins his I Am Michael director for a feature in BlackBook. Discussing his upcoming project, which the magazine refers to as a “reverse coming out story”, Franco points out how I Am Michael differs from most LGBT films. He explains, “There’s the coming out narrative, the fighting for rights narrative, the closeted secret affair narrative, like we saw in Brokeback Mountain. All of these films are very important, but not every movie needs to be like that. Once those stories are told, we can tell unexpected ones that might challenge us or make us uncomfortable in some ways. What I think is so innovative about I Am Michael is that we’re watching a man go in an unexpected direction, and that direction brings up a lot of questions about identity, and what identity consists of, and how it’s defined, and who gets to decide.”
Franco continues, “And this film tackles faith versus sexuality, and the tensions there, in an important way. But what’s innovative here is not only the trajectory of the main character, but the fact that Justin made this movie about a person’s inner life, about a person’s beliefs and how they shift over time. To track that is also so fresh. You don’t really track a person’s belief step by step in most movies. Usually it’s enough for a character to have one main need, or one defining obstacle. To have a character where you see all the gradations of his beliefs is really unusual.” Read more on BBook.com.
