LOS ANGELES, March 11, (Agencies): Actor James Franco, lauded for his serious roles and forays into art, was almost too earnest to land the lead in the big screen 3D adventure film “Oz the Great and Powerful,” which opened last Friday ahead of the summer blockbuster season. Filmmaker Sam Raimi, who directed Franco in the “Spider-Man” trilogy from 2002 to 2007, said he initially considered other heavyweight actors such as Johnny Depp and Robert Downey Jr for the lead role in Disney’s big-budget unofficial prequel to the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz.”

Both Depp and Downey have already spearheaded two juggernaut Disney blockbuster franchises, with Depp as raucous Captain Jack Sparrow in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and Downey as the main character in “Iron Man.” Franco has not carried a blockbuster film alone, but Raimi told Reuters the 34-year-old actor’s maturation would enable him to do so in “Oz,” in which he plays the charming, morally dubious circus magician who cons others on and off stage. When the character lands in Oz he continues his unethical ways, but becomes a reluctant hero after tapping into his inner goodness.

Similar
“I started thinking about what I knew about James in real life and realized they were very similar to Oz’s,” Raimi said. “James started out as a 21-year-old actor, was a little into himself, a little selfish, a womanizer. But he had a good heart.” When Franco and Raimi worked together on “Spider-Man,” the actor was a relative newcomer in Hollywood, playing the supporting role of Harry Osborn to Toby Maguire’s Peter Park/Spider-Man. Franco, who stars alongside actresses Michelle Williams, Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz In “Oz,” admitted that he lacked the maturity as a performer to play a character like the wizard when he supported Maguire in the “Spider-Man” franchise. “I was still in a stage where I think I took acting too seriously,” Franco told Reuters in a recent interview. “I couldn’t relax in the roles ... there was a kind of strangulation of the performances that was going on.”

Ventures
In recent years, Franco has undertaken several ventures outside of acting, including writing a book of poetry, curating an art exhibition in Los Angeles, engaging in performance art and teaching screenwriting at the University of California-Los Angeles. The actor also stepped behind the camera as director on numerous projects including this year’s LGBT film “Interior. Leather Bar.” Preoccupied with his serious artistic endeavors, Franco credited the 2008 stoner comedy “Pineapple Express” with loosening him up as an actor and allowing him to embrace the lighter side of filmmaking. “That movie really taught me that movie-making could be fun, that I don’t need to have complete control over everything, that if I relax my performances will be better,” he said. “I thought I needed to be this young, serious brooding performer,” Franco added. “And I was just blind to the value of comedy.”

Over the course of the three “Spider-Man” films, Raimi said he watched Franco become “more generous, more aware of others,” and it was that parallel arc that made the director believe Franco was the right person to play Oz. It also helped that since their last pairing Franco had starred in hit films like 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and scored a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Danny Boyle’s 2010 survival drama “127 Hours.”
Franco said he played the role of Oz “for comedy,” and studied privately with Las Vegas magician Lance Burton who taught him tricks and how magicians carried themselves.
In an attempt to reshape the often tedious atmosphere during the obligatory promotional tours for “Oz” that took Franco to Japan, Moscow and London, he brought his UCLA students along to film the trips as part of their class work.
Their presence made the media blitzes more endurable, Franco said, as he watched the students process “a side of the business I’m used to” with fresh eyes.
“At least we’re not spinning our wheels promoting this thing like we’re used to,” he said. “Other people are getting to learn.”

With his Hollywood career in high gear and his new film “Mud” out soon in US theaters, Matthew McConaughey said he feels no pressing need to put acting aside for a turn behind the cameras. Speaking at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival Sunday, McConaughey — a native Texan who graduated from college in Austin and now resides here — said he has a couple of ideas in the back of his head that he’d like to personally direct. One is a children’s tale he thought up before having three children of his own; the other is what he called “a ‘Spanking the Monkey’ slash black comedy” based on the year he spent as an exchange student in Australia.

“But, to be honest, I really enjoy being An. Actor. For. Hire,” the 43-year-old thespian said, emphasizing those four words in his thick Texas drawl. “I’ve just shut down my production company, shut down my music company, and I said I’ve got three things that I want on my desk on the proverbial Monday morning: that’s my family, my (charitable) foundation and acting. “And that has filled my days where I am able to give enough time to each of those, to really nurture all of them... They’re the three things that, when the phone rings or that email comes in, I want to look at.” Directed by Jeff Nichols and filmed in rural Arkansas, “Mud” stars McConaughey as the title character, a rough-hewn fugitive who strikes a deal with two boys to help him evade bounty hunters and reunite with his love.

The coming-of-age story, which also stars Reese Witherspoon, screened in competition at the Cannes film festival in 2012 before going on to Sundance this year and, on Sunday, the indie-angled SXSW event.
“There was an innocence (to Nichols’ script) and I think it comes across in the film,” said McConaughey when film critic Scott Foundas of New York’s Village Voice weekly asked what drew him to the project.
“It was Southern in the right way. It had a very defined sense of place and time and space... I’d never heard a voice like this from a character like Mud. I immediately was attracted to the dreamer aspect — he’s such a wonderful dreamer — and the aristocracy of this guy’s heart.”

The son a kindergarten teacher — she was in the front row at Sunday’s talk — and a now-deceased gas station owner, McConaughey recalled how he decided to drop out of law school up the street at the University of Texas to study film. His father’s advice at the time, he said, was simple: “Don’t half-ass it.” He also spoke of the making of the male stripper movie “Magic Mike,” saying had sent Steven Soderbergh “an eight-page email” discussing the ways he thought he should play his character, an empire-building Florida strip club boss. The director’s one-word reply: “Sure.”

With comedies like “The Wedding Planner” and action flicks like “Sahara” under his belt, McConaughey said he has two markedly different projects now in post-production and expected in theaters later this year. One, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” directed by Martin Scorsese, a hero to McConaughey in his film-school days, sheds a spotlight on fraud and organized crime in the New York financial district. The other, “Dallas Buyers Club,” finds the actor in his home state playing a drug-taking womanizing business executive in the 1980s who imports unapproved drugs for HIV-AIDS victims after he learns that he too has the virus. McConaughey, proclaimed “the sexiest man alive” by People magazine in 2005, lost 40 pounds (nearly 20 kilograms) to get into his gaunt mustachioed character.