James Franco isn’t just a live-wire actor and a certified hunk; he’s also a helluva good sport. Rather than parlaying his role in the Spider-Man flicks into pretty-boy parts in Hollywood pabulum, the Palo Alto native has played goofy in comedies (Pineapple Express) and gay in dramas (as Harvey’s lover in Milk as well as Allen Ginsberg in local filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s forthcoming Howl, a prime candidate to open the Sundance Film Festival). The actor stands revealed in multimedia artist Carter’s Erased James Franco, a video in which Franco “performs” lesser bits from his own movies, plus riffs on scenes essayed by Rock Hudson in 1966’s Seconds and Julianne Moore in 1995’s Safe, without the accoutrements of costumes, makeup, music, special effects, or co-stars (the original films also screen earlier in the day). Carter and Franco then take the stage to discuss the 21st-century blurring of art, celebrity, pop culture, and reality. It promises to be a one-of-a-kind, slightly tongue-in-cheek homage to screen (sur)realism.
Sun., Nov. 15, 8 p.m., 2009
