Truth matters. Community matters. Your support makes both possible. LAist is one of the few places where news remains independent and free from political and corporate influence. Stand up for truth and for LAist. Make your year-end tax-deductible gift now.
This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
Professor James Franco Teaching Film This Spring at USC
Students at the University of Southern California may want to take note of a special guest professor who'll be at the lectern this spring. Actor James Franco--err, Professor James Franco--will be teaching a course in which students will create a short film for a collaborative project.Students in the School of Cinematic Arts got word this week via an email that Franco will be co-teaching the course with his business partner Vince Jolivette, according to Movies Now.
Each student will direct a short film no longer than 10 minutes, and the films will be worked together into a project called "The Labyrinth," which is mean to probe "the unknown, the unexplained and the unimaginable."
Of course, Franco is not a newbie at the head of the class; he famously taught a graduate film course last year at New York University in which the students turned poems into films.
Though Movies Now fears Franco will be sidetracked come March when his movie "Oz: The Great and Powerful" comes out, past experience leads us to theorize if he can't be in the classroom he can phone it in via Skype.
We'll have to wait for the syllabus to come out to know if Franco plans to address his own web series about USC, "Undergrads,"which takes a mockumentary-style look at the lives of students at the University of Spoiled Children. And while we've never seen Franco at work in the classroom, if his professor schtick is as lousy as his Oscar hosting, we hope he polishes his act.