Hold on to your gladioli: James Franco has teamed up with ex-Smiths bass player Andy Rourke to record an album of songs inspired by the band.
The project, entitled Let Me Get What I Want is a release by Daddy, a conceptual band comprised of Franco and Tim O'Keefe, and features Rourke playing on every track. The album is based on material taken from Franco's debut poetry collection, Directing Herbert White - specifically a 10-poem series called The Best of the Smiths: Side A and Side B.
Franco explained to Vice: “I originally wrote this sequence as a way to use one medium (music) to influence another one (poetry) … [But] 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.”
Naturally, there are extra strands to the project; each song will have its own video, which, together, will comprise an art film. The videos will be made from scripts developed by teenagers at a Palo Alto high school, where Franco's mother had organised a film-making programme.
And if that wasn't enough for you, each video will open with an original Franco painting, created during his time at the Rhode Island School of Design, with each one inspired by his 1993 high school yearbook.
The whole thing will be released next year, with the first video, This Charming Man, available to watch below; we would pay serious money to know what Morrissey thinks of it all.
[via Vice]
(Images: Rex)
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