One look at
James Franco's IMDB page and you can see that he is a very busy man with a number of films including Your Highness, Rise of the Apes, Maladies, The Broken Tower and The Iceman either completed, announced or in the stages of pre and post production. He has also recently revealed plans to direct two of his own films including the Richard Ramirez biopic The Night Stalker and will be appearing on Broadway alongside Nicole Kidman this fall in the play Sweet Bird which will be directed by David Cromer. On top of this Franco is going to be occupied over the next month helping to promote his performance in 127 Hours for the Academy Awards, an event which he is also co-hosting with Anne Hathaway. It's frankly exhausting just reading about it all. According to
Deadline however this has not stopped the actor from discussing the idea of playing pornographer Chuck Traynor in a biopic centered around the life and times of his wife, the infamous female porn star Linda Lovelace.
Kate Hudson has been offered the role of the protagonist which is great news if she accepts as it will finally see the actress dealing with some challenging material for the first time in many a year and the film simply titled
Lovelace will be directed by Rob Einstein and Jeffrey Feldman, who recently worked with James Franco in the film Howl. Linda Lovelace, real name Linda Susan Boreman, was an American actress who became famous for her performance of deep throat felatio in the aptly titled hardcore porn film Deep Throat. She claimed later on that she felt forced into the porn industry by her relentlessly cruel first husband and went onto became a spokeswoman for the anti-pornography movement. In a rather harrowing autobiography she revealed that Chuck Traynor had held her at gunpoint to force her into the world of pornography and that their marriage was plagued by violence, rape and forced prostitution. Many people have backed up the actresses' claims in spite of Traynor's insistence that his wife loved the thrill of being sexually used and humiliated.
There is no question that there is enough dramatic conflict at the heart of this story to make for an engrossing feature film and I think both Franco and Hudson would thrive in the roles of victim and villain. Oddly enough this is not the only Linda Lovelace project in the as
Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story, based on Linda's own autobiography is
set to star Malin Akerman (Watchmen, The Heartbreak Kid) in the title role. Akerman has recently replaced initial lead Lindsay Lohan who had been cast before her stint in rehab at the Betty Ford Center in California. Apparently both projects are struggling to find funds and so it could be a while before either biopic sees the light of day.