How James Franco forged a career playing Gay For Pay

When James Franco’s movie ‘I Am Michael‘ was released back in 2015 it was the ‘actor’s’ 10th movie in which he played ‘gay for pay’. In most instances, he plays it very safe indeed but in ‘The Broken Tower’ he actually gives a very explicit blow job sucking a rather substantial penis which he claims was merely a dildo, and in ‘Interior Leather Bar’ he is just four feet away from two naked guys having very real anal sex. With rumors always flying around about his real sexuality he finally addressed the matter in the March issue of Four Two Nine Magazine when he ‘argues’ with himself about what he really is .

Straight James: Let’s get substantial: are you f**king gay or what?

Gay James: Well, I like to think that I’m gay in my art and straight in my life. Although, I’m also gay in my life up to the point of intercourse, and then you could say I’m straight. So I guess it depends on how you define gay. If it means whom you have sex with, I guess I’m straight. In the twenties and thirties, they used to define homosexuality by how you acted and not by whom you slept with. Sailors would f**k guys all the time, but as long as they behaved in masculine ways, they weren’t considered gay.

Here then are Queerguru's Top Ten Picks of James Franco being 'versatile' .

10). I Am Michael is in last place as this is the rather irritating story of obnoxious Michael Glatze, a gay activist who denounces homosexuality and becomes a right-wing Christian pastor and turns on everyone in his past. Poorly written and lamely directed by newbie filmmaker Justin Kelly, the movie is often promoted on the promise of a titillating hot sexy threesome including Franco (playing Glatze) which is actually a brief scene shot from a distance with all the men wearing underwear.

9) Interior, Leather Bar (2013) this hybrid docu-fiction movie that Franco co-directed and starred in with Travis Mathews set out to re-create the missing 40 minutes of deleted and lost sexually explicit footage from William Friedkin’s controversial 1980 film ‘Cruising’. Instead, it is the story of Franco and Matthews mainly over-intellectualizing about putting together their own idea of what was missing, and then filming some disjointed and explicit sex scenes that fall very flat.

8) If Tomorrow Comes (2000) is one of those cheap low budget movies that looks like someone’s cousin shot on their home video camera, and is one that even Franco must wish could be erased. He plays a guy named Devin who is apparently gay but also not, and has to shoot a guy he doesn’t want to kill. Confused? Then don’t watch this hilariously bad trailer as it will only make matters worse.

7) Blind Spot (2002) Franco plays Danny Alton, a troubled teenager who has fallen in love with the rough-edged street kid, Darcy in this noir-thriller which quickly disappeared without a trace even though Franco himself got good notices in the very few reviews the movie received.

6) The Broken Tower (2011) This is a black-and-white movie that Franco directed, wrote, produced, edited and starred in for his Masters thesis for his MFA in filmmaking from New York University. It’s the true story of troubled gay American poet Hart Crane who took his own life at the age of 32. One reviewer summed it up as ‘an obscure and difficult to watch movie about an obscure and difficult to read poet.’

5) Wild Horses (2015). In this drama which Robert Duvall wrote, directed and also starred in, Franco plays Ben the son of a rancher who is thrown out of the family home as a young man when his father discovered he was gay. At the same time that Ben scurried off to the city for a new life, Jimmy his boyfriend completely disappeared and now years later, his mother persuades the Rangers to investigate what really happened. Franco puts in a good performance but the movie was quickly dismissed by critics as being a muddled mess.

4) Sal (2011). This one slipped into the list even though Franco who wrote and directed this bio-pic about openly bi-sexual Oscar-nominated actor Sal Mineo, actually played the part of Mineo’s teacher Milton Katselas (whose sexuality is not disclosed). Mineo who had starred alongside James Dean in ‘Rebel Without A Cause‘ was brutally murdered on the way home from rehearsing the gay play ‘P.S. The Cat is Dead‘. He was just 41 years old.

3) Howl (2010). Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s docu-fiction movie about Allen Ginsberg the gay poet and the obscenity trial over one of his most infamous poems ‘Howl’ was a big hit at Sundance when it premiered but soon disappeared after playing the Film Festival circuit. Franco received good notices for playing Ginsberg even though it was noted in more than one of them that he was much better looking than the poet had ever been.

2). Milk (2008) In Gus Van Sant’s movie on the life of the slain gay San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk that picked up an Oscar for both actor Sean Penn in the title role and Dustin Lance Black for the screenplay, Franco got to play Milk’s first and main boyfriend Scott Smith. Going ‘gay’ in this mainstream movie earned Franco an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor.

1) James Dean (2001) In first place we have chosen a made-for-TV biopic of the iconic troubled talented actor even though director Mark Rydell deliberately opted not to include a single reference to Dean being gay. It is there however in the subtext and in a role that the sexually ambiguous Franco seemed born to play, and for which he deservedly won a coveted Golden Globe Award for his pitch-perfect and faultless performance.

P.S. Franco won a coveted LGBT Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009 for his short film ‘The Feast of Stephen’ which dealt with bullies and homosexuality. It was based on a poem by Anthony Hecht.

Footnote : In the last year, a now 44-year-old James Franco has begun slowly resurfacing in movies after a period in the wilderness following serious allegations against him which surfaced in 2014 By late 2019, lawsuits were filed against him in relation to some allegations, and by 2021, The Huffington Post reported that Franco had tentatively settled them. Amid the massive uproar surrounding these incidents and the 2014 allegation, Franco seemed to have disappeared from the acting world for a period.

He later admitted to having sex with many of his former students and has publicly stated that he is a sex addict and has sought treatment for his addiction. After some time away from acting, last year, Franco returned to movies as he had been cast to play the controversial former Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, in an upcoming film about him. Franco has another three movies in post production including The Long Home which he directed Ashton Kutcher and Giancarlo Esposito in.