by James Franco
We met at Van Nuys airport at 10:30. I hung out in the lounge as they got ready. Then we got in the little plane on the dark runway. I sat in the back seat of the old Cessna and Thomas and Skip sat up front with their huge headsets. They talked into the mikes and played with the gauges and buttons that were lit up in the dark. The takeoff was much rougher than a commercial flight, but it was fine. We went up and got beyond the lights of the runway and then the outlying city, and we were in blackness above the hills. I lay back, listening to the whir of air in the joints of the aircraft, the sound of the propeller. The air was chilly, but I was comfortable. I fell asleep thinking about horses and parks, and the sun on the surface of a lake, and Casey, in a place where she was in love with me, and where I was a good person.
When I woke up the guys were talking to the control tower in Vegas. We landed and the place was empty except for a few people in uniform that stood about the runway. There was a nice car service that met us at the airplane door and drove us straight to the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. The Hard Rock was the newest place in town and Thomas wanted to see it. Everyone was gambling and drinking, and when you looked close, everything was ugly. The patrons were fat and the cocktail waitresses were worn down and saggy.
We took in a burlesque show at 40 Deuce and Thomas paid $500 for a table and a bottle of vodka. As far as I knew, Thomas had been sober for years, but he started drinking the vodka, so I joined in. The show was horrible. The girls didn’t even strip all the way, they came out for fifteen minutes and twirled their pasties a bit and left. Then there was nothing to do but sit around and finish the bottle. Thomas and I drank. Skip, the instructor, said that he would fly us back. Thomas drank a lot.
“How the fuck is it volunteering with Casey?” he said. He was pretty drunk.
“Fine. She’s not that into me, but whatever.”
“She’s not into anyone but herself. That girl is fucked up. I mean what the fuck, what the fuck?”
“Yeah,” I said, but I didn’t really know what he meant.
“If I was a dude, which I am”—he was really gone—“I would tell that bitch a thing or two about not being a bitch. And I did.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“When we were fucking. I told her. I told her she was just a shallow little actress and that she was fucked up because acting is all she knew. Because she’s been doing it since she was three or something. How are you going to be a whole human being with that kind of upbringing?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Stage moms and agents and money and fame and everything all wrapped up together, and it’s just all fucked up.”
“Sure,” I said. “Who needs her?”
“And her movies suck now.”
“Yeah,” I said.
We stayed a little longer. I got a buzz on and chatted up one of the waitresses. Melanie was her name. She was blonde and busty and dumb, and she said that she was a med student.
Then it was 3 a.m. and Thomas was so drunk he was falling asleep at the table. We had to go back; Skip was getting tired.
We got a cab to the private airport and Skip and I helped Thomas into the back of the Cessna. I wasn’t really that drunk. I guess I was surprised that Thomas had drunk so much, so I held back. After we took off, Skip asked if I wanted to try flying. He said it was easy, like a video game. I took the controls and it was pretty easy. The plane just coasted on the air.
There were no other planes around so Skip asked the control tower for permission to fly over the main strip with all the casinos. They said it was fine and I turned the plane in that direction.
“Aim it toward the Luxor light.”
The Luxor light was a blue beam that shot out of a fake pyramid straight up in the air. They said it was so bright you could see it from space. I turned the plane toward the light. Skip was letting me do all the steering, although he was doing something with the pedals at his feet that was helping.
“Let’s fly through it,” he said.
I was on course for the light. I looked back quickly and Thomas was asleep with his mouth open.
I kept the plane steady and we coasted through the beam of blue light, and it felt like something special was going to happen. The underside of the wings lit up bright blue. I thought of tractor beams and teleportation devices. We were in a place that few people had ever been. One special place in all the well-traversed globe. I thought about how maybe there were still a few other places in this world that were undiscovered and maybe I could find them. Maybe there was still something to life. And then it was over.
We flew out from the blue light and beyond the lights of the strip to the lightless desert. There was nothing to see. Skip told me to keep flying. He checked the gauges and electronic maps, and I just kept it steady in the direction he told me. About an hour into the flight, my mind shut down. I told Skip I was falling asleep but he said I would be all right.
But I really was falling asleep and then I did. I caught myself once and my head jerked back up, as it used to do when I dozed off in class, but then it happened again and I didn’t wake until we were on the ground in Van Nuys. I guess Skip had taken the controls. Skip didn’t talk to me as he taxied down the runway. He backed the plane into its spot and told me to drive Thomas home. It was 5 in the morning.
Thomas and I went back to Vegas the next weekend because this club was opening and Thomas got invited as a celebrity guest with a bunch of other actors. He took me and we and all the other celebrity guests went on a private jet.
That night they took us to dinner at a Thai place that was connected to the club, and Thomas had to have pictures taken to promote the opening. Then at about midnight we went to the club, and there were strippers dancing on platforms, and strippers in bathtubs full of rose petals, and Paris Hilton was there. It was so loud that there was no talking, but we all danced together in a little VIP area. Paris’s handler gave her a joint, and she, Thomas and I, and some of the other actors smoked it on the dance floor.
At about 3 a.m., Paris left with someone. I couldn’t find Thomas so I left the club and took a cab over to the Hard Rock. I went to the 40 Deuce and found Melanie, the blond waitress. She was happy to see me. She said she got off at 4, and I told her to meet me at the blackjack tables in the Venetian, because that was where we were staying.
I never gambled, but at the Venetian I played blackjack and I did really well. I started with $300, and by the time Melanie found me I had $6,000. We wanted to celebrate but there was nothing else to do in Vegas, so we went back to the room. I was sharing the room with Thomas but he wasn’t there. We ordered two omelets and sat and talked. She told me about growing up in Virginia and her two younger brothers, who were in college but they weren’t really good students. One had just gotten out of jail; he had been caught selling speed. Her father and her grandfather were both doctors, and she had studied pre-med in Virginia but hadn’t continued to medical school. So she wasn’t really a student like she had said the first night but she was thinking about it. I told her about Faith & Victory Church and Miles and how his mother had tried to kill him and how I liked to help the retards and I even told her about the movie Miles and I had made.
“Isn’t that a little violent for those kinds of kids?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, yes. But Miles isn’t like them, he’s not retarded, and none of the kids knew that we were pretending to kill them in the movie. They don’t even know what’s happening to them.”
“Oh. Well, it still doesn’t seem right.”
“It’s fine. Casey Deems volunteers there too. We’re pretty close.”
“Really? I liked her in that vampire movie.”
“Yeah. She was great.”
“The princess one sucked though.”
“I thought it was pretty good,” I said.
“It was terrible!”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it was stupid. A princess wandering around a castle? She’s sad because she’s so rich a
nd isolated? Boo hoo. Give me that fucking money, bitch, I’ll be happy. Know what I mean?”
I felt myself getting a little mad, but I didn’t let it out because I wanted to fuck her. And I did, although it took a little while because I didn’t exactly feel comfortable with her after she was criticizing my movie and Casey. But then I felt fine once I got into it. Her boobs were fake and I worried about how hard to squeeze them.
We didn’t go to sleep. After the sex, we watched Spider-man 2 on pay-per-view, and then Melanie left at 7. Thomas never came up. I went downstairs at 8:30 and met everyone and Thomas was there and we all got on the plane. Melanie had depressed me a little with her brothers and all that, but I felt good about the $6,000 I had won. Paris was on the plane and she had a duffle bag full of money. She had won $100,000 at blackjack. I stopped bragging about my $6,000.
Then, the next week, Thomas got invited back to Vegas for the opening of the Playboy club in the Palms hotel. We joked about how we were Vegas regulars and how sick we were of Vegas, but we decided to go anyway. It was the same kind of deal: Thomas and I and a bunch of other guests took a private jet and Thomas took some pictures on the red carpet and did some interviews, and then we went into the club.
Thomas went off somewhere and I played some more blackjack, but I wasn’t as lucky as I was when I played at the Venetian. I quickly lost $300 and stopped playing.
Everyone involved with the opening ended up in a huge suite that was called the Hugh Hefner Suite. Hef had been at the club but had flown back to LA earlier that night, so his suite was full of Playboy models and actors. I was pretty drunk at that point, and I saw Thomas. He was drunk too, and it was still weird to see him like that because he had been sober for a year.
“What is your problem, Thomas?”
“What do you mean, asshole?” He actually seemed mad.
“I just mean that I thought you stopped drinking.”
“I do whatever I want, and you’re only here because I brought you.”
“I know. I’m not doing anything. I’m just asking. As a friend.”
“Well, you’re not my friend, okay?” He said. “Okay?”
“Okay.” I said. His eyes floated in milky fluid.
“You just follow me the fuck around, everywhere. Vegas, LA, you even follow me to Faith & Victory Church. I mean, what the fuck?” He was really drunk.
“You told me to go there.”
“Fuck you, Mike. You just want to fuck Casey, don’t you?”
“No.”
“You just want to fuck her like all guys want to fuck her. Well she’s fucked up! Okay? She’s fucked up. She is a fucking head case. She got raped and everything, so now she is all fucked up, so fuck her, and fuck you.”
Thomas swayed and leaned on Hugh Hefner’s bar.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Thomas, but I’ll leave you alone.” I was mad at first but then I was just sad, in a weird way. I spent the rest of the night drinking free drinks. I saw Paris Hilton dancing with some guys.
When I woke I was on a circular bed. It was rotating. There was a man in a black uniform above me. He was telling me to get up.
“This is Mr. Hefner’s suite,” he said. “You can’t sleep here.”
“Okay,” I said, and lumbered up from the bed. He stood and watched as I moved toward the door. There were empty glasses all around the place. The sun was coming through the windows. Way down below, Vegas was a field of warehouses. The guy strode past me and opened the door, then made sure I walked down the hall.
It was only 7 a.m., so I sat in a café and had some black coffee until 8:30. Then I met everyone to get on the plane. I saw Thomas, but we sat far apart, and in Burbank I took a cab alone to my place.
On Monday I took what was left of the $6,000, which was about five and a half, and I mailed it in a large brown envelope to the UCLA Rape Crisis Center.
The next Thursday I went back to Faith & Victory Church. I hadn’t been there for weeks. I told Miles I went to the Playboy Club in Vegas. He loved that.
“Did you bang?”
“I banged two of them at the same time. One was high on speed and we did it all night in Hugh Hefner’s circular bed. The bed rotated while we did it.”
“Awesome!”
I had my video camera and I told him that we were going to finish Murder Hospital that day.
“Awesome!” said the asshole mouth, but it came out like there was a th in it.
Miles and I went into the community room where Casey and Christopher and some nurses were with the kids. Most of them were coloring. Christopher was actually playing an acoustic guitar and singing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” to a few kids sitting on the floor.
I positioned Miles with the camera in our usual spying spot in the corner. I told him that once we started not to turn it off and to record everything, no matter what. I put on the lab coat and turned up the collar. In the pocket I felt the rubber knife.
“Okay, you ready?” I whispered to Miles.
“Ready,” he whispered and I reached over and pressed record on the camera.
I started walking toward Casey like I was creeping. Then when I got close I stood over her and started cackling, first softly, and then really loudly. Casey looked back at me. She was sitting in a little chair so she had to look up to see my face. I was holding the knife high above her.
Through the cackling I could hear her say, “What the fuck are you doing?” Then her eyes looked scared. Before I could bring the knife down to pretend to kill her for the film, I saw Christopher out of the corner of my eye running toward me with the guitar in his hand. I was ready for that Swiss faggot. I smiled a murderous smile.
Miles recorded it all.
TRADITION 8
We should remain forever artists, but we can employ technical workers.
Back to Bataan
I WAS IN A FILM about the Bataan Death March. The real death march happened soon after the day of infamy, December 7, 1941. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they also attacked American bases in the Philippines, which had been stationed there since the Spanish–American War. These bases had been low-priority outposts and were not prepared for such an attack. It was the “country club” base, and most of the equipment and weapons had not been updated since WWI. The US army was not prepared for immediate response to the attacks, especially after suffering such a blow to its fleet in Pearl Harbor. So, soon after the Japanese attack on the Philippine bases, 75,000 US and Filipino troops, under the command of General King, surrendered. This was the largest US surrender in history.
The Japanese had been expecting only a third of the number of POWs and were unprepared to accommodate the actual number. In addition, the Samurai code of Bushido determined that surrender was a dishonor, and therefore prisoners were below contempt. The Japanese forced their staggering number of prisoners on a sixty-mile death march to various prison camps in the region. There was little water or food, many prisoners were infected with malaria, and if anyone faltered they were bayoneted or shot.
Three years later, when the United States was able to focus its military energies on the Pacific, there were only about three hundred US soldiers still alive. They had been so mistreated and subjected to such deprivations that they resembled Holocaust victims. If these soldiers were rescued, they would do nothing to contribute to the war effort, but their rescue was deemed a sentimental mission and necessary to make up for the lack of US support earlier in the war. The assignment was handed to an inactive unit of army rangers led by Colonel Mucci. The mission, planned by Captain Robert Prince, was ultimately a success that saved all the POWs, and resulted in only one US casualty.
In 2003 I acted in a movie about the death march and the rescue mission called The Great Raid. It was produced by Miramax and directed by John Dahl. Benjamin Bratt played Colonel Mucci, and I played Captain Prince. We filmed for five months near Brisbane, Australia, because terrorist activities had made the Philippines too dangerous
to use as a location. I stayed in a garish apartment on the beach in a city called Surfer’s Paradise. Whenever I mention this city to any Australians, I get a lot of eye-rolling and disclaimers about how the quality of that cheap casino/tourist city does not reflect the rest of Australia. But it was fine. I stayed inside most of the time that I wasn’t shooting. I had hundreds of books to read, and I didn’t dare venture into the undiluted, ozone-less sun.
Since Oliver Stone made Platoon in 1986, it has become a trend for war movies to put the actors portraying soldiers through an abbreviated boot camp. This boot camp crucible has been all but codified since Saving Private Ryan, where the depiction of the D-Day beach landings set a new standard for filmic immersion in a historic war zone. The man who was responsible for training the actors for Platoon and Private Ryan, Captain Dale Dye, was the military advisor on our film. Our boot camp was almost two weeks long in the wilds of Australia, the longest actor boot camp he had ever conducted. And also the largest. In addition to the principal actors (who are usually the only people in actor boot camp), we had sixty background players who, unlike most background performers, would be with us for the entire shoot. They would portray the rest of the ranger battalion.
As I was the captain in the film, I was regarded as a captain during boot camp. I gave orders and I planned the missions (with Captain Dye’s help) against the other camp full of Japanese actors who were going to portray our enemies in the film. We all had real M-1 rifles and BARs and sub-machine guns. Only the bullets were blanks. Dale Dye had us run reconnaissance missions on the surrounding farmhouses in the area. These were real farms. I don’t know what they would have thought if they saw young men in army greens with guns, sneaking around their property at night. But they didn’t see us; they were just watching TV.