Franco Howls for more Poetry – Has Bukowski’s ‘Ham on Rye’ and ‘The Broken Tower’ in the Works

James Franco digs poetry and filmmaking, and while Howl is the perfect marriage between the two, looks like multi-tasker is set to take on more projects of the same vein. The Playlist found an interesting blurb from Berlin where Howl had its second premiere, mentioning that he and his brother David are adapting the last new poem meant to be published in Hart Crane’s life, The Broken Tower and a Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye. I wonder how much did it cost to option these properties?

So far, Franco hasn’t managed to really break-out as a filmmaker (modestly budgeted features and shorts have been on the film circuit) but with a name like Bukowski he could get a bit more help with the funding. We should think of these titles as passion projects in the distant future.

Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by American author and poet Charles Bukowski. Written in the first person, the novel follows Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s thinly veiled alter ego, during his early years. This is a coming-of-age in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.

The last new poem meant to be published in Hart Crane’s life, ‘The Broken Tower’ (1932) has been widely acknowledged as one of the best lyrics of Crane’s last years, if not his career. 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 (with Peggy Cowley, estranged wife of Malcolm Cowley) is generally undisputed.