Howling at Moloch – James Franco’s other film

Probably lost to any Oscar consideration, left in the deep shadow of Danny Boyle’s and James Franco’s 127 Hours, another Franco-starring film opens in limited release this weekend. It’s called Howl, and it’s based on the Allen Ginsberg poem that defined a generation when¬†first published in 1956,¬†then seized by U.S. customs and the San Francisco police, finally becoming the subject of an obscenity trial. As a poet myself (in a minor way), I’m hoping maybe this¬†unusual film might get some Independent Spirit love. Who knows?

Erik Anderson at icsfilm.org interviews the directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman:

Erik Anderson: You guys are known for your award-winning documentaries. What made you decide Howl was going to be your first feature?

Rob Epstein: Well, we‚Äôve had other features we‚Äôve developed; this is the first one that got made. We decided to do this film because there are so many elements to it that excited us. It‚Äôs a film about an artist, it‚Äôs a film about what’s behind the creation of a work of art and how personal that is, how broadly thematic that is, so there‚Äôs a whole confluence of things that got us excited about this particular subject. And then the idea of doing something that was pushing the envelope excited us, and using our documentary sensibilities in a different way, dramatizing what otherwise we would have approached as a documentary. We were just creatively very jazzed by that possibility.