James Franco’s Instagram has become a place where he reveals all sorts of new roles, from Jizz-Covered Batman to Weird Naked Guy, and recently he used it to announce his role as Michael Glatze in Michael. Glatze is the former head of Young Gay America who publicly renounced denied his homosexuality in 2007, became an anti-gay Christian minister, and married a woman, a real fundie success story.
The movie is based on a 2011 New York Times Magazine article by [Glatze’s] friend and former colleague Benoit Denizet-Lewis (a former Advocate contributor). [TheAdvocate]
Executive produced by Gus Van Sant and co-produced by Franco, Michael is directed by newcomer Justin Kelly, who wrote the script with Stacey Miller. It stars Zachary Quinto as Glatze’s boyfriend and Emma Roberts (who also gets perved on by James Franco in Palo Alto) as the lucky lady the not-gay minister eventually marries. And hopefully no one will confuse the film with that other Michael, the one about John Travolta playing an angel from 1996. Hmm, totally-not-gay John Travolta playing a ladies-man angel has the same title as the gay guy who becomes a homophobic minister. You have to admit, there are some parallels there.
You can read all about Michael Glatze over at the New York Times and in the Advocate, which I will do, and then hope that the movie doesn’t take ridiculous liberties with the facts and turn it into Hollywood melodrama like every biopic seems to do. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends with Franco being chased down a runway by the Iranians like Argo.
https://youtu.be/glz1OfXbc_0