The Broken Tower | |
---|---|
Directed by | James Franco |
Screenplay by | James Franco |
Based on | The Broken Tower by Paul L. Mariani |
Produced by | James Franco Caroline Aragon Vince Jolivette Miles Levy Christina Voros |
Starring | James Franco Michael Shannon |
Cinematography | Christina Voros |
Edited by | James Franco |
Music by | Neil Benezra |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Focus World [1] |
Release dates |
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Running time | 99 minutes [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Broken Tower is a 2011 American biographical drama film directed, written, produced, edited by and starring James Franco. The film was made by Franco as his master's thesis for his MFA in filmmaking from New York University. The film is about American poet Hart Crane. Franco appears in the starring role as Crane along with Michael Shannon as one of Crane's lovers. The Broken Tower made its world premiere in April 2011 at Boston College. It was shown at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF) in June 2011. It was released to theatres in the United States on April 27, 2012, [2] and released on DVD in 2012. The film includes the recitation by Franco of several of Crane's poems both as voice-over additions to the film, as well as actual readings of several poems rendered by Franco as portraying Crane himself.
The film begins with a plot structure based on a progression of chapters titled as "Voyages" in Hart Crane's life loosely related to Crane's lyric poem of the same name. In the first "Voyages", a depiction is made of an early attempt by Crane to take his own life. Among the other opening "Voyages", the audience is also shown depictions of several same-sex relationships which Crane had throughout his lifetime in semi-graphic portrayal consistent with the film's rating. Crane's life is shown progressing through the various "Voyages" in the film, largely portrayed through his troubled relationship with the father, his close relationship to his mother, and his frustrating relationship to his job in advertising as a copyrighter in New York City. In the final "Voyages," Crane's difficult relationship to alcoholism is depicted, ending with his final "Voyage" on a small cruise ship at sea in the vicinity of Mexico where Crane ended his life by his own hand.
Franco thought of the idea for the film while reading Paul Mariani's biography of Crane, also entitled The Broken Tower after the name of one of Crane's poems, on the set of his 2002 movie Sonny . Franco had publicly stated that the poet's tragic life story attracted him to the material. [3] The DVD release of the film includes a supplement which has an interview of Mariani with Franco.
The film's world premiere was held at Boston College on April 15, 2011. Franco chose to debut it at that venue since Mariani is a professor of English there. [4] The Broken Tower was screened at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival on June 20. [3] It was among more than 200 feature films, short projects, and music videos from more than 30 countries to be selected. [5] It was released on DVD March 2012. [6]
Critical response to the film was largely negative. The Broken Tower has an approval rating of 20% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 10 reviews, and an average rating of 5/10. [7] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 46 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [8] In one critical review, Elizabeth Weitzman from the New York Daily News writes, "It's not an insult to say the black-and-white film looks like a grad-school thesis project, since that's what it is (for Franco's MFA at NYU). . .But that does mean you should be prepared for some high-minded pretension, lots of self-consciously arty shots, and long stretches of apparently profound nothingness." [9] Although Weitzman is critical of Franco's writing and directing, she does compliment the film's cinematography and Franco's acting. In a review in The Village Voice, Melissa Anderson wrote that the film was "sincere, amateurish, and misguided" and that it was full of literary biopic cliches. [10]
Harold Hart Crane was an American poet. Inspired by T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote highly stylized modernist poetry. In his first and only long poem, The Bridge, Crane tried to write an epic poem in the style of The Waste Land, that expressed a more optimistic view of modern, urban culture than the one that he found in Eliot's work. In the years following his suicide at the age of 32, Crane has been praised by playwrights, poets, and literary critics.
Paterson is an epic poem by American poet William Carlos Williams published, in five volumes, from 1946 to 1958. The origin of the poem was an eighty-five line long poem written in 1926, after Williams had read and been influenced by James Joyce's novel Ulysses. As he continued writing lyric poetry, Williams spent increasing amounts of time on Paterson, honing his approach to it both in terms of style and structure. While The Cantos of Ezra Pound and The Bridge by Hart Crane could be considered partial models, Williams was intent on a documentary method that differed from both these works, one that would mirror "the resemblance between the mind of modern man and the city."
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Auto Focus is a 2002 American biographical drama film directed by Paul Schrader and starring Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe. The screenplay by Michael Gerbosi is based on Robert Graysmith's book The Murder of Bob Crane (1993).
Basket Case 2 is a 1990 American comedy slasher film written and directed by Frank Henenlotter, and the sequel to the 1982 film Basket Case. It stars Kevin Van Hentenryck as Duane Bradley, who moves with his deformed, formerly conjoined twin brother Belial into a home for "unique individuals" run by their long-lost aunt, eccentric philanthropist Granny Ruth.
Paul Mariani is an American poet and is University Professor Emeritus at Boston College.
White Buildings was the first collection (1926) of poetry by Hart Crane, an American modernist poet, critical to both lyrical and language poetic traditions.
The Bridge, first published in 1930 by the Black Sun Press, is Hart Crane's first, and only, attempt at a long poem.
"The Broken Tower" is the last poem meant to be published by poet Hart Crane in 1932. In keeping with the varieties and difficulties of Crane criticism, the poem has been interpreted widely—as death ode, life ode, process poem, visionary poem, poem on failed vision—but its biographical impetus out of Crane's first heterosexual affair is generally undisputed. Written early in the year, the poem was rejected by Poetry, and only appeared in print after Crane's famous suicide by water.
Marguerite Frances Cowley, known as Peggy Cowley and also as Peggy Baird and by her first married name Peggy Johns, was an American landscape painter. She was married to poet-playwright Orrick Johns and writer Malcolm Cowley and was the lover of playwright Eugene O'Neill and poet Hart Crane.
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James Franco is an American actor, filmmaker, and college instructor. He began acting on television, guest-starring in Pacific Blue (1997). He landed his breakthrough role in the comedy-drama television series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000). After his film debut in Never Been Kissed (1999), Franco won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film and was nominated for Screen Actors Guild Award and Primetime Emmy Award in the same categories for playing the eponymous actor in the 2001 television biopic James Dean. He went on to play Harry Osborn in the superhero film Spider-Man (2002), and reprised the role in its sequels Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007). For the last of the three, he garnered a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor. His only screen appearance of 2003 was in the ballet film The Company. Franco directed and starred in the comedy The Ape (2005).
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