Director talks about his admiration for author Cormac McCarthy at Tribeca screening with crowd including Bernadette Peters & Lana Del Rey.
James Franco arrived 30 minutes late to the screening of “Child of God” at the Tribeca Grand Hotel screening room on Wednesday night, but guests didn’t seem to mind as he turned on the charm for the intimate gathering, where he called his most “favorite” film project ever.
“It’s dark and disturbing, and Bernadette Peters is here, and she didn’t know that, so I hope she likes it,” said Franco, who had just come from taping “The Colbert Report.”
The actor/writer/director/novelist/poet, who directed the independent flick starring Scott Haze, posed for pictures on a tiny red carpet area inside after ducking paparazzi outside. He told the crowd, “I’m proud to be part of this movie by my favorite living writer,” Cormac McCarthy. Then Franco introduced Haze, who plays violent homeless killer Lester Ballard, who lives in the mountains of Tennessee.
The story takes place in the 1960s, and Haze said he studied hard to nail the East Tennessee hills accent.
“I really wanted to get Lester’s voice,” he said. “I had to find people who still had it.”
To prepare, Haze spent 3-1/2 months in self-imposed isolation in Tennessee without any contact with the outside world other than an iPod that only had Eminem songs.
“I lost 45 pounds subsisting on apples and fish. … It’s all about discipline. You don’t have Internet access, or the numerous things that you normally have in life to occupy yourself, so you invent things and talk to yourself,” he said. “I made friends that were not there.”
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In the film, which some say could earn Haze an Oscar nom, his character obtains, then shoots dead, two stuffed animals who he believed had betrayed him.
Franco, who makes a cameo in the film as Jerry, who tries to persuade Haze’s character to admit to murder, said he’s been friends with Haze for over a decade and loved working with him.
“I saw the project as an opportunity to examine extreme isolation,” Franco said. “He is pushed into this dreadful situation because he has been pushed out of all civilized society. And heck, he’s even a little funny. He’s a bumbling killer. Half ‘Deliverance,’ half Charlie Chaplin.”
Also at the screening was songstress Lana Del Rey, who came with MoMa PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach. After the movie, the two were overheard by the elevator bank at the hotel asking what room Franco was having his party in.
The “Summertime Sadness” singer, seen earlier this month backstage at Broadway’s “Of Mice and Men” starring Franco, wore an all-white dress and flat gold sandals, and was very flirty congratulating Franco on the film.