Val Lauren portrays actor Sal Mineo in “Sal,” directed by James Franco. Courtesy Photo
Shortcuts-Film Fest Food: Didn’t make dinner reservations? Don’t worry, you can still have dinner and a movie – with or without a side of popcorn. Check out what the film festival venues will have cooking by watching today’s Shortcut at mydesert.com/filmfestival
‘Sal'
Country: U.S.
Length: One hour, 30 minutes
Cast: Val Lauren, Jim Parrack, Brian Goodman, Stacey Miller, James Franco
Screening: 7 p.m. today and 2 p.m. Sunday at Regal Palm Springs. James Franco is scheduled to appear.
Information: (800) 898-7256; www.psfilmfest.org
For complete coverage of the Palm Springs International Film Festival including reviews, trailers and photo galleries visit mydesert.com/filmfest.
More
The multifaceted James Franco's latest multifaceted project is a film about the late actor Sal Mineo.
He directs the bio-pic, titled “Sal,” and plays Mineo's director in a play within the film.
The acting role is tiny for a guy who last year co-hosted the Academy Awards while being up for a Best Actor Oscar. All you see is the back of his head as he directs Val Lauren as Mineo, and Mineo's co-star, played by Jim Parrack, as they rehearse “P.S. Your Cat Is Dead” — which is the play Mineo was rehearsing just hours before being found stabbed to death in an alley near his Los Angeles home in 1976.
“Sal,” screening tonight and Sunday at the Regal, isn't intended to be a commercial film such as Franco's acting hits like “127 Hours” and the “Spider-Man” franchise. But he said in a telephone interview at a New York airport last week it's consistent with his other art endeavors that reveal multiple levels of reality.
“It had a fairly long evolutionary period,” he said, launching into a detailed explanation of the film's genesis while standing in a security line.
It began when he was playing his Golden Globe Award-winning title role in a 2001 TV movie about Mineo's 1950s co-star James Dean.
During his research on Dean's role in “Rebel Without A Cause,” Franco said he became intrigued that Mineo was playing the first gay teen in a major film.
Franco was taking acting classes with Lauren and he thought he would be perfect as Mineo. There wasn't a part for him in the TV movie, but Franco said he retained the idea of Lauren as Mineo.
Then, last year, Franco participated in a fine art show featuring paintings, sculptures and other media inspired by “Rebel Without A Cause” at the Venice Biennale in Italy, and an agent sent him Michael Gregg Michaud's 2010 biography on Mineo, titled “Sal.”
“It seemed like another avenue to explore these characters and themes,” said Franco, so he purchased the film rights.
Then he, Lauren and actor Vince Jolivette began conceiving a nontraditional film on Mineo.
“The more I heard about his last day, it occurred to me you could tell his whole life and who he was just by telling his last day,” said Franco. “That was so exciting to me.
“Everything kind of locked into place and I just said to (screenwriter) Stacey Miller, ‘Write down everything that happened to him in his last day and more or less we'll have an arc.'”
The film is so finely detailed, it lulls you into liking Mineo. Then you wait with trepidation for his murder.
But when Lauren, as Mineo, rehearses “P.S. Your Cat Is Dead” with Parrack, and Parrack blows his lines, the film crosses a line of reality. Lauren seems to be ad libbing as Mineo, and Parrack and Franco, as the director, react to them. So it's hard to tell what was written as cinema verité and what was ad libs captured on film.
“It is combining a lot of different levels of reality,” said Franco, who is expected to attend tonight's screening. “It is shot in a different way. We had the lines from the play and everybody knew their parts, but this was out there. In a way, it felt like we were rehearsing a play we might do in our acting school.”
Franco, 33, has shown his wide range in studio hits such as “Pineapple Express” and “Milk.” But he's also made the art of blurring the lines of reality into a second career.
In 2010, he played an artist on TV's “General Hospital” named Franco, who has an art exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. MOCA then had a real exhibition of James Franco's art based on his soap opera experiences.
Last year, he teamed with the conceptual art duo Praxis to create a Museum of Non-Visible Art. An invisible piece titled “Fresh Air” sold for $10,000.
Franco has done several experimental film pieces as projects of his various academic pursuits, including three films he presented at the 2009 Palm Springs ShortFest.
He said his fascination with the lines of reality could have been influenced by his mother, who is a poet from Palo Alto.
“It is something I find gives a lot of energy to different kinds of performances,” he said. “It opens up multiple readings in a way I kind of like.
“Sometimes you want to do a piece where you suspend disbelief.”
