James Franco spoke to Variety about "Child of God," which he directed and co-wrote with Vince Jolivette. Find out what he had to say about lead actor Scott Haze!
"We have mutual friends, mainly Scott's childhood friend Jim Parrack. Scott was just a wild man, and Jim has plenty of stories about him being even wilder when they were younger," Franco explained of choosing Haze for Ballard's character.
"And then Scott just changed," he added. "I think at first Scott thought that to be an artist meant you had to be crazy, just really kind of no-rules, and that's how he lived. But at some point he realized there's something to being responsible and being disciplined."
Haze also explained how he prepared for the damaged and necrophiliac character.
"I moved to Tennessee," the actor said. "I thought there's no way I was preparing for this in Los Angeles. I had to lose a lot of weight, because I'd just bulked up to play a Marine in "Post" [which Parrack wrote, directed and produced]."
He continued, "And now I had to be this ghastly, ghostly, monstrous creature who lives in the Tennessee hills. I have an old friend who, oddly enough, is the town historian of Sevierville, Tennessee, and who showed me everywhere that the book was set. I spent a good month and a half there."
The "Post" star recalled when he first met Franco 10 years ago in a parking lot.
I met James well over 10 years ago in Hollywood, in the back of a parking lot," Haze said. "He came and saw a play I was in called "The Beach Play," and he told me he liked my performance. James' face was all over Hollywood then, and I was like, "That's the dude that just played James Dean" [in 2001 TV movie "James Dean"].
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