James Franco

James Franco

  • Fassy B. Heats Up 'Twelve Years a Slave'

    Twelve Years a Slave is a real account, written in 1853, by a man named Solomon Northup, a freeborn black man from New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. The book and the movie detail many of slavery’s horrors, as experienced by...

  • Revelation in ‘Mystic River’

    In books like A Drink Before the War, Shutter Island, and Mystic River, the murder mysteries give the story movement, while the hidden traumas of the characters bubble up to the surface.

  • Spring Break: A Fever Dream

    What is spring break today? In Spring Breakers, it is not the literal MTV-sponsored parties that take over and infect various beach locations across the American continent, although that version of spring break is certainly evoked for its...

  • J. D. Salinger's War

    The Catcher in the Rye is Salinger’s war book. Although it’s masked as a coming-of-age novel, it is about a character dealing with PTSD. Holden is J. D. Salinger, working through his loss of faith in humanity and all of the atrocities he...

  • Jake Gyllenhaal Is the Perfect Gumshoe in ‘Prisoners’

    Prisoners is awesome. I loved, loved, loved it. The atmosphere, the pacing, the framing, the acting, and the subject matter are all so good. I love that my man Jake Gyllenhaal is back as a hard-hitting actor. His detective Loki is mysterious...

  • Writing to Live in Hollywood

    F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby Stories and the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink are twisted, nightmarish takes on what happens when writers come to Hollywood—they're often crushed by the bureaucratic machinations of the small-minded...