September 25, 2010 | Arts / Entertainment

James Franco howls

James Franco finds homosexuality to be enormously interesting. As a student he adapted two gay-themed poems to film. He has played a 17-year-old swimmer in the gay indie film "Blind Spot" and Harvey Milk’s lover in "Milk". He's also created performance art pieces about gender and sexual confusion; his first solo art show this summer in New York featured video monologues with lines like “We’re all gender-fucked—we’re all something in between, floating like angels.”

And now Franco plays the famous gay beat poet Allen Ginsberg in a movie titled after Ginsberg's iconic work "Howl."

Vince Jolivette, Franco’s close friend and producing partner, told The Advocate, “James is probably more similar to Ginsberg than any other character he’s had to play. They’re both writers. They’re both poets. And they’re both fascinated by art and who gets to decide what art is.”

"Howl" centers on the obscenity trial of City Lights bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who published the poem in the fall of 1956. The following spring, U.S. Customs agents seized copies of the poem as the books were on their way from England, where the second edition had just been printed. Ferlinghetti was arrested and charged with publishing obscene material, leading to a historic free speech trial.

"Howl" explores the young Ginsberg's struggle with deep shame about his homosexuality, and chronicles his love affairs with Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Peter Orlov­sky (who remained  his partner for 43 years, until Ginsberg’s death in 1997). But this film is more than biography, covering universal themes of creativity and the pursuit of authenticity in life and in art.

The movie opens this weekend in New York and San Francisco.

The Beat Goes On  Advocate.com