James Franco The Director Loves Adaptations; Talks About ‘As I Lay Dying’ And How To Balance All His Careers

James Franco is one of the most recognizable actors. However, not too many people are aware that 'Alien' from "Spring Breakers" has been directing for ten years now.

James Franco had an interview with Collider and he talks about his career both in front and behind the camera.

On his love for adaptations:  "Once I went to film school, I realized that, "Okay, what am I doing this for?  This is your chance to make the movie that you want to make."  That led me to a lot of my favorite books and writers, and it also led me away from a lot of original screenplays.  Some people work best that way.  I found that I work best through adaptation.  I feel like when I do that, I'm part of a tradition and I've been fortunate enough to be able to adapt some of my favorite books by some of my favorite writers-Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner, and Charles Bukowski.  When I do that, it also pushes me to up my game because I feel such a responsibility to the people I'm adapting.  I try my absolute best.  I don't know maybe on the early films it's not that I was slacking, but I guess that what earlier films didn't have was just huge sense of obligation to the story because they were original screenplays.  I guess those are all ... it's a long answer to your question about how things have changed.  Now I think maybe we could say we wanted to define the approach of the movies I direct, to find literary sources that I love, that I see have maybe great characters but also they have something in the way that they're written that quickly leads to find unusual cinematic approaches."

On adapting the classic William Faulkner novel "As I Lay Dying"-why he chose that novel and what were the obstacles he had to overcome to bring the novel on the big screen:  "I chose the book for several reasons but one of them is that I ... let me put it this way, when I chose the book I knew that I wanted to be loyal to the book-that I wanted to be loyal to the spirit of the book. As crazy as the structure of the book is, it's still just about a family who is taking their mother's body to town to be buried and that's it.  You have that very simple journey.  And then all the stylistic things and structural oddities are kind of built on top of that but I knew that was in my favor, that the audience would be able to follow that, that they're going to bury the mother and that's life."

On how he balances his acting and filmmaking careers: "It's not as if there's like a quota that I try to meet or anything like that but I do have-you kind of feel it out. I guess you could say it's a balancing act but I guess I'm in a fortunate position where it's not like it's one for them and one for me.  They're both for me, they're both very, very enjoyable but I also know that I do need to kind of balance certain things if I want to continue to be able to do all the things that I love.  I do kind of keep it in the back of my mind.  I have to go do the ones that lots of people love and then I can go and try the challenging ones that I know not as many people will love.  But if I make them in the right way, it'll make the money back and I can continue to make them."