TwitterJames Franco: actor, academic and author.
After writing an ode to his good friend and muse, Lana Del Rey, earlier this year for V Magazine, the 127 Hours star, 37, decided he wanted more for himself and his pal. Perhaps in a bit of foreshadowing, Franco ended that piece by writing, "I wanted to interview Lana for a book and she said, 'Just write around me; it's better if it's not my own words. It's almost better if you don't get me exactly, but try.'"
Fast-forward and bam, Franco is co-writing Flip-Side: Real and Imaginary Conversations With Lana Del Rey with David Shields. The 100-page book will be released March 15, 2016, via Penguin Random House.
Although he first agreed with those who criticized her performance on Saturday Night Live, Franco got to know the "Young and Beautiful" crooner and became incredibly taken with her and her music.
"Lana has become my friend," Franco wrote in the magazine tribute. "She is a musician who is a poet and a video artist. She grew up on the East Coast but she is an artist of the West Coast. When I watch her stuff, when I listen to her stuff, I am reminded of everything I love about Los Angeles. I am sucked into a long gallery of Los Angeles cult figurines, and cult people, up all night like vampires and bikers. The only difference between Lana and me is her haunting voice. That carries everything. The voice is the central axle around which the spokes of everything else extend."
To say he is a fan would definitely be putting it lightly. Flip-Side will join Franco's other novels, which include Hollywood Dreaming, Palo Alto and Actors Anonymous. Franco has worked with best-selling novelist Shields before, co-writing a film adaptation of I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel.