James Franco Interview For ‘Sal’ – Talks Directing, Hollywood, Sal Mineo, Biopics & More

The James Franco-directed ‘Sal’ details Sal Mineo’s rise to fame in such films as 1955′s ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ and 1960′s ‘Exodus,’ his conflicted sexuality and friendships with James Dean and Natalie Wood, as well as his 1976 death in West Hollywood after being stabbed by a pizza deliveryman. Franco’s ’Sal’ completed filming earlier this summer following an accelerated nine-day shooting schedule, Val Lauren portrays the late actor. ’Sal’ is adapted from Michael Gregg Michaud’s acclaimed 2010 biography ‘Sal Mineo.’ Check out what  James Franco had to say below.

You’ve described ’Sal’ as not a factual biography, but an emotional biography, can you elaborate on that? Also why did you concentrate on this latter part of Sal Mineo’s life?

James Franco: I’ve done biopics before, I played James Dean, the American poet Alan Ginsberg, the story about Aron Ralston, I was apart of a film about Harvey Milk – they kind of covered real peoples lives in different ways. The James Dean thing, I guess that was more of a traditional biopic, Alan Ginsberg, not so conventional but it did cover a certain period of his life and covered keys moments of his life. Aron Ralstan’s kind of covered the big event of his life. I enjoyed the ones more, I guess as a filmmaker, when they took an unusual approach to a persons life story, they had some unique way into that person – I was less interested in giving a history lesson. I think with the technology we have today, it allows you to look up facts about practically anything in two minutes. So I felt like we didn’t need to tell all the beats of Sal’s life. What we could do as a movie was deliver the emotional side of him, that’s maybe something you can’t get from Wikipedia, that’s something you can only get from a performer. We sought a way to give an emotional impression of who Sal was, and to capture his spirit rather than just tell you all the major things of his life.

You have a real unique way of shooting, especially with the way you use close-ups and extreme close-ups.

James Franco: I guess that….I’m not ashamed to say, I think it’s obvious to a lot of people, but one of my biggest influences as a director is Gus Van Sant, he doesn’t necessarily use a lot of close-ups that way, but the way in pacing and structure he is a huge influence. As far as the close-ups, I guess it’s my….maybe it’s my own thing, I done a series of short films before this, I guess I like sitting with the persons face, maybe that’s because I come from an acting background. But yeah, I think it’s a different use of close-up, where you get to really sit with it, you don’t get to cut away from it, it’s not punctuation, you are really staying with these shots. I think what happens then is…and it’s not even about cutting to a close-up for extensive sequences of dialogue all the time, a lot of it is sitting with that person. In that way I hope the audience just become closer and closer to the character, without kind of making the action put you closer to him, really just putting you next to him, so over the course of the movie you’re sitting with him, sitting with him, sitting with him. I think because Val Lauren gives such a realistic well-rounded performance, something is transferred in a more subtle way by putting the camera so close to him, and then just allowing him to just be I guess.

When did your interest for Sal Mineo start?

James Franco: I was introduced to Sal Mineo’s work when I played James Dean, almost ten years ago now, he was under contract at Warner Bros so he had a part in ’Giant’ with James Dean as well. Mark Riddell the director of ’James Dean’ had known Sal, I knew a little bit of his work. Then I started to get to know about him a little bit more, and his story became more and more interesting to me, and then this new Biography came out by Michael Gregg Michaud, so I read this biography. It was very interesting to me because he had fallen out of favour, and he was murdered by a stranger, or at least the man that was convicted was a stranger. But because the man hadn’t been caught, he wasn’t convicted until two years after Sal was killed, I guess there was all this space for ungrounded speculation about why he was killed. Rumours about it being one of his lovers, or it had something to do with drugs – and in fact the man they convicted had no idea who he was killing, it was just happenstance. Because of that, I remember talking to people about this movie and some people would say, ‘Wasn’t he killed by a lover?’ It’s become tainted by tabloid reporting, his memory has been tainted by rumours in certain outlets that can just write whatever they like – it does have an effect on peoples memories, public persona, or the way people perceive someone. So part of me wanted to set the record straight, but I guess more than anything, Sal….and this is also one of the reasons we made the movie the way we did it, Sal embodies a tragedy that a lot of creative types go through – where they have so much passion, and in Sal’s case so much talent, but they are unable to practise their art. When Sal was in his twenties, for various reasons, because he was no longer the cute child actor, because he sort of came out – I guess it was kind of known, and also because a series of roles….that if we look at now, a movie called ‘Who Killed Teddy Bear,’ we think it’s so tame, but at the time it was a risky movie, it damaged his career a little bit. He could no longer act in the way he wanted too. To me that is a sad circumstance, that someone can’t be expressive as they want to be. So I wanted to tell the story for Sal, but also for every kind of creative type in that position.

Often when an established Hollywood actor goes behind the camera, they surround themselves with very well known professionals, other movie stars. They make films that are very structured, they are protected. You are the complete opposite, when you go behind the camera as a director, you work with your friends, with a very low budget, you film very fast, and you edit even faster. Can you explain a little bit about those choices?

James Franco: That’s true, I made another feature about a year ago, right before this, it was about a poet named Hart Crane, an American poet, the movie is called ‘The Broken Tower,’ Focus Features are gonna release it. That and this film were very small, they had very small budgets. But it’s very important to me, because I’ve worked in film for fifteen years, I’ve been in some of the biggest movies that have ever been made, I’m doing a huge movie right now, ‘Oz: The Great and Powerful,’ they are apart of what we call “the film business” for a reason, it’s a business, those movies are huge investments, they need to make their money back. Yes the directors….Sam Raimi is an incredible director and he wants to entertain, to say something about human nature, human relationships – but he also needs to make a movie that is going to make its money back. My subjects, an obscure poet named Hart Crane, and Sal Mineo, an actor most people have forgotten about, they are not subjects that are gonna be Blockbusters, and I don’t expect them to be, and I don’t want them to be. I am really trying to find a way to make movies about things that interest me, to be able to kind of step out of that realm where we judge success by box office. It has been such a huge thing, box office numbers, as if that is the final goal.

I can step out of it, we were able to capture this movie about someone with which it would have never been made otherwise, and we were able to capture a wonderful performance with Val Lauren as Sal Mineo. The film looks exactly how we wanted to do it, and we were able to do it responsibly and also standing confidently and say, ‘Hey, no one can get mad at us for wasting money, we did this film exactly like we wanted to do it.’ We didn’t have to compromise for any reason, we can even be as bold to say, ’Hey, we did this for artistic reasons.’ We actually believe film can be art still, it doesn’t have to just be this entertainment or a money making thing, actually it can still have artistic aspirations. So that’s why I did it.