When he’s not busy selling wafts of sweet nothingness for 10 grand at the Museum of Invisible Art, dicknosing college kids for a web show, or generally invoking Nicolas Bourriaudian interrelational aesthetics, James Franco directs. Specifically, he’s directing an adaption of the Cormac McCarthy necrophilia novella Child of God. Speaking for myself, I can think of no one better to most thoroughly explore the hyper-subjective pseudo-meditation on patro-centric motivations inherent in McCarthy’s lengthy passages about the lapstrake catamites ravaging their corpseslung sidemeats with mutton-flamed rutglory than James Franco. Holy shit I almost passed out typing that sentence. (*breathes into paper bag*)
The film is currently shooting in West Virginia and The Pocahontas Times recently got some time with the filmmakers, who shared their plans for the movie. “We’ll hit film festivals in six to eight months and then it’ll be out in theaters next year,” said producer Vince Jolivette. No word on if any deals have been struck with distributors yet (doubtful, since most will want to see what they’re dealing with first) but fingers crossed as it seems this could be headed to Toronto or Venice to unspool in the fall.
While Tim Blake Nelson has been reported to be taking a role, We Got This Covered has done some digging and revealed that Scott Haze has the lead role of Lester Ballard with Jim Parrack (Hoyt from “True Blood”) on board as Deputy Cotton. [via ThePlaylist]
Scott Haze is no relation to Chet, unfortunately, though that would be awesome. Anyway, this project promises to be a perfect storm of pretentiously polysyllabic proportions. If this gets released and Armond White ends up reviewing it, we might have to start stockpiling thesauruses.
More on Child of God, from Amazon:
“Scuttling down the mountain with the thing on his back he looked like a man beset by some ghast succubus, the dead girl riding him with legs bowed akimbo like a monstrous frog.”
Child of God must be the most sympathetic portrayal of necrophilia in all of literature. The hero, Lester Ballard, is expelled from his human family and ends up living in underground caves, which he peoples with his trophies: giant stuffed animals won in carnival shooting galleries and the decomposing corpses of his victims. Cormac McCarthy’s much-admired prose is suspenseful, rich with detail, and yet restrained, even delicate, in its images of Lester’s activities.
“You could say that he’s sustained by his fellow men, like you…. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their wrong blood in its history and will have it.” [Amazon]
So yeah, this is probably going to be either really awesome or really confusing.