When I was younger, I thought, 'Ok, I'm supposed to do this project because it'll help my career,' but that didn't work because I ended up doing movies that I worked really hard on but I didn't really like and they didn't turn out well, so it was like I lost double. Once I just started working with people and projects I believed in, everything changed and I suddenly had a career that I loved and that I was proud of.
James FrancoI was being generous. Gia Coppola wasn't even a filmmaker at that time, but I asked her to do it, because I believed in her as an artist. And because I wanted a woman's take on the material. The book Palo Alto is very male-centric, but Gia carved out a bunch of the female characters, and brought them to the fore in the movie. And the project was richer for it.
James FrancoWhen I was younger, I didn’t know that I should just listen to my own voice, my own artistic sense of things when I was choosing projects, because one of the biggest creative decisions that an actor can make in the film business is what you will work on.
James FrancoThere is actually a huge suicide problem in Palo Alto schools, so obviously not all is well in paradise. High expectations, and the pressure to achieve in a highly competitive world are too much for a lot of very promising young people. There have been something like ten youth suicides in Palo Alto in the past ten years. They usually step in front of the train that runs by the high school.
James Franco