What happens when the imaginary Allen Ginsberg walks the same university campus where the real Allen Ginsberg once walked?
Last week Hollywood Reporter listed the cast for the upcoming Ginsberg biopic, Howl. Hunky and smart James Franco will play the young poet as he composes the epic poem that landed him in a famous courtroom battle over obscenity.
As Leon Neyfakh reported, Franco recently enrolled in writing school, honing his writing skills at Columbia University’s MFA program. While Franco’s representative wouldn’t comment on this new adventure, GalleyCat interviewed an anonymous creative writing applicant who sat in on a writing workshop with Franco earlier this year.
“It’s April or March, I don’t remember exactly, I was visiting Brooklyn College’s MFA program, when in walks Spiderman’s arch-nemesis, Harry Osborn. He was wearing a black leather jacket over a hoodies, jeans, Vans, and his hair was weirdly orange,”
our spy recalled…
“We go around the table introducing ourselves (“Hi, I’m James. I’m from Los Angeles”), and then, right before we’re about to head over to the workshop, it comes out that the future Allen Ginsberg hadn’t read any of the stories for the workshop. So he sits at a desk in the other room and reads.
“Later, we mosey on down to the workshop. No one in the room of 20 or so students seems to recognize or acknowledge him, which is making me kinda angry and happy at the same time. Throughout the three or so hours, Franco sits quietly and unobtrusively at one end of the table, listening, not taking any notes, just listening.
“The only really life that came out of him was in response to the workshop leader’s detonation of the word ‘Hirsute’ at the end of a funny (but not really THAT funny) comment about a young woman’s legs. Franco laughed breathily, ostentatiously, as if to say, ‘Hirsute. I know that word. That’s funny.'”