James Franco certainly knows how to make an entrance.
The 34-year-old actor paid a visit to Jimmy Kimmel Live! Wednesday night by arriving in a hot-air balloon on Hollywood Boulevard. Of course, the stunt was all in good fun as Franco's currently making the promotional rounds for Oz the Great and Powerful, a prequel to The Wizard of Oz that finds him playing a younger version of the titular character.
During his appearance, which also saw his grandma watching from the studio audience, the thesp discussed the opening of his "Gay Town" art show in Berlin last week and took some good-natured ribbing from Jimmy Kimmel over some of his paintings.
The funnyman then asked him about the graduate film class Franco teaches at UCLA, at which point the 127 Hours star revealed that he and his protégés happened to be shooting a student film on Tuesday nearby where police had cornered fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner.
"In the film class, we make movies and I act in them. And then I get great actors to come be a part of the show," the star said, name-checking pals Natalie Portman and Kristen Wiig. "I was acting in one yesterday, in fact. We were…in Big Bear, like, five minutes from where all of that horrible stuff went down."
He continued: "In the movie, I was driving a sheriff's car, too, so it was really weird. And there were SWAT team trucks going right by where we were shooting."
Good thing they missed out on all the action.
The Sam Raimi–directed Oz the Great and Powerful casts its spell in theaters on March 8.