Actor gets kinky at Sundance
James Franco discusses the BDSM documentary he produced at the Sundance film festival and whether he'd play Christian Grey.
James Franco brought the sex to Sundance... literally. He has three films at the festival and they're all rather risque. There's Lovelace, the porn star biopic in which he plays Hugh Hefner, Interior. Leather Bar., a documentary he directed about gay cruising, and Kink, a BDSM documentary he produced that's definitely NSFW.
The actor/director/producer sat down with SheKnows in Park City, Utah, to talk about Kink, which goes behinds the scenes of kink.com, the leading BDSM porn production company. So why did he decide to tackle this taboo topic?
"I was doing a small film in San Francisco called About Cherry... I was acting in it. And we filmed at the kink headquarters and I was fascinated," he told us. "I was fascinated by how they ran the place, how big it was, how intricate the props were and the sets and everything, but also just the dynamics there. Despite making very intense and extreme kinds of videos, the dynamic among all the workers was very warm and very connected."
With the massive popularity of E L James' best-selling S&M novel Fifty Shades of Grey, it certainly seems like Franco and his director Christina Voros have hit on something timely. Although James hasn't read the Fifty Shades trilogy yet himself, he told SheKnows he's open to portraying the title character Christian Grey.
"It sounds interesting," he said, "I heard Gus [Van Sant] might direct it. If he directed it, I'd do it."
James also told us he wanted to dispel some misconceptions about the porn industry by making kink.
"At the Golden Globes, I thought Tina [Fey] and Amy Poehler did a great job hosting, but there was a joke... something about porn and how nobody wants to go into porn, which speaks to the very prevalent idea that a lot of people believe — that it's a dark place on just this side of sexual slavery."
"I don't know all porn production companies, but I do know this place now, and the way they do it is very artful, where everybody is a willing participant and where you have filmmakers from the same place we came from: NYU, who are there because they're interested in exploring this kind of material," he explained.
Just in case you're wondering, James doesn't have his own safe word just yet. "I don't know... what do people normally use?" he laughed.
Don't worry, James... there's still time for you think of one before they cast Fifty Shades!