James Franco is planning to release an album of material inspired by The Smiths.
The actor has collaborated with former Smiths bassist Andy Rourke and Tim O’Keefe and will release a record with accompanying videos based on poetry written by James, which in itself was inspired by the band.
Speaking of the project titled ‘Let Me Get What I Want’, James explained to Vice: “We took a 10-poem sequence called ‘The Best of the Smiths: Side A and Side B’.
“I originally wrote this sequence as a way to use one medium (music) to influence another one (poetry). The Smiths’ songs provided inspiration for the poems, lending tone and situation. Once I had the sequence, Tim and I took the material one step further and turned the poems inspired by songs, back into songs of their own.”
If viewed in sequence, a full story is told by the videos, crafted by students at the actor’s mother’s school.
Tim explained: “We created the record at the same time James’s mom ran a programme teaching kids how to make films [at Palo Alto high school].
“They developed scripts out of the same poems that we made songs out of, then shot film based on those scripts... While they were doing that project, we took all of the raw footage we had for each song and brought in editors to put together our film.”
