“One of my main interests is Hollywood. I have a deep love for the art and craft of filmmaking and for the people who devote themselves to it. I’m also fascinated by stories about Hollywood as a kind of addiction – stories in which people become so consumed by their love for it that someone can even end up dying from being too close to the ‘heat’ of Hollywood.”
It is from this reflection by James Franco that Desert Films takes shape: a performance that looks at Hollywood with both fascination and unease, exploring just how seductive – and dangerous – the world of fame can be. Franco appears on stage alongside Blaine Kern III, in a work that draws on the language of cinema to create a story suspended between reality and imagination.
The inspiration comes from David Lynch’s Lost Highway, particularly the mysterious character played by Robert Blake. Here, that figure takes on a new dimension, appearing as an enigmatic presence who confronts a young actor and delivers an unsettling monologue about the allure of celebrity and the traps that can lie beneath it.
Desert Films deliberately plays with our expectations, questioning the boundaries we think we understand. Where does cinema end and theatre begin? How much of what we see belongs to reality, and how much to fiction? These questions run throughout the performance, drawing the audience into a deliberately ambiguous world where nothing is quite what it seems.
At its heart is Hollywood – but not the glossy, reassuring version we are accustomed to seeing on the big screen. Franco focuses instead on its darker and more vulnerable side, where the desire for success can become an obsession and proximity to fame can turn into a form of addiction. Cinema therefore becomes not only the subject of the performance, but also the very language through which it explores the complicated relationship between dreams, ambition and identity.
For James Franco, this exploration is part of an unusually diverse artistic career. An actor, director, screenwriter and artist, he moves between mainstream cinema and independent projects, working both in front of and behind the camera. He has starred in films including 127 Hours, Pineapple Express and The Disaster Artist, the latter earning him a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Alongside his film work, he has pursued a personal practice encompassing contemporary art, writing and experimentation, reflecting a creative curiosity that continually pushes him beyond the boundaries of a single discipline.
With Desert Films, Franco once again explores one of the subjects that fascinates him most: cinema as a dream, an obsession and a mirror of society, presenting audiences with a Hollywood that is as irresistible as it is unsettling.
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