Ask the Flying Monkey (November 04, 2008)

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Ask the Monkey!

Q: I recently read that James Franco has signed on to portray Allen Ginsberg in a film called Howl. Do you know anything about the film? And do you know who is going to portray Ginsberg’s partner, Peter Orlovsky? – Stephanie, Houston, TX

A: Franco’s going all-in on the gay thing, isn’t he? It’s one thing to play gay, collect your Oscar nomination, then move on with your career, never to play gay on film again. It’s something else entirely to play gay in two high-profile projects practically in a row as Franco is doing in Milk and then playing Ginsberg in Howl, due next year.

James Franco (left) & Sean Penn in Milk

Howl, which is being written and co-directed by Oscar-winning documentarians (and former partners) Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein, isn’t about the life of the late Allen Ginsberg, but rather the 1957 obscenity trial he faced after the publication of his classic poem, Howl, which includes frank allusions to sex, including homosexuality.

In addition to Franco, the movie stars gay faves Paul Rudd (as a literary critic) and Mary Louise-Parker, as well as Jeff Daniels, Alan Alda, and David Strathairn.

But the movie is not just a gay The People Versus Larry Flint. It's actually something truly unique — sort of a documentary hybrid, with "recreated" scenes of actors, including Franco and Rudd, acting out the courtroom drama from actual court transcripts, but also animated sequences (re-imagining the poem itself), archival footage, and interviews with Ginsberg's living contemporaries, including Ginsberg's partner Orlovsky, who will appear as himself.

Peter Orlovsky (left) and Allen Ginsberg

Q: I heard Paul Newman was planning on making a film based off a book describing a coach’s homosexual attraction to a player he was training back in the 70's. Is this true, and if so what happened and where is the project now?—Maxwell, Connecticut

Paul Newman (right)

A: Let’s have a moment of silence, and raise a shot of salad dressing, for the late, great Paul Newman, shall we?

Yes, Newman was the first to option the film rights to Patricia Nell Warren’s 1974 best-selling novel The Front Runner, about the relationship between an Olympic athlete and his male coach. Newman intended to direct and star, but was unable to get financing (not surprising, given that it was 1975). In addition, Warren was unhappy with the script, which she thought underplayed the gay element. Newman later expressed regret that he wasn’t able to get the movie made.

The project, which is notorious in Hollywood for the obstacles it’s faced, went through a long string of producers before Warren herself got the rights back in 2003. She wrote her own screenplay and has been trying, without success, to get financing for the project ever since.