James Franco as Allen Ginsberg

Looks like there's an Allen Ginsberg biopic in the works and Pineapple Express star James Franco is set to play the famous poet. The movie is titled Howl and it will revolve around the obscenity trial that his famous poem sparked in 1957.



This is a huge coup for Franco, and it seems like he'll be working with a pretty decent team. The Hollywood Reporter reports that Gus Van Sant will serve as executive producer, and Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedberg the filmmakers behind the superb documentary The Celluloid Closet [link to trailer] will be directing.

An excerpt from "Howl":

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz...

And speaking of period biopics of homosexuals that involve James Franco and Gus Van Sant, the trailer for Milk is online. Watch it here, and look out for the scene I saw them shoot in San Francisco.