A film distribution company has concluded that there’s an audience for James Franco’s controversial next movie, a true-crime thriller in which he plays a detective on the hunt for the Golden State Killer, the serial rapist and murderer who committed at least 13 murders and 51 rapes across Northern and Southern California between 1974 and 1986.
The company, Grindstone Entertainment Group, has agreed to market the film, titled “Golden State Killer,” and to try and get it into U.S. movie theaters or onto streaming platforms, according to Deadline, which reported that the film is on sale this week at the Cannes Film Festival.
Marketing the low-budget film to anyone beyond true-crime junkies or B-movie fans could be a challenge, given the sensitive nature of the subject and the fact that the movie also stars similarly contentious actor Vincent Gallo as the Golden State Killer.
Jane Carson-Sandler, a 1976 rape victim of Golden State Killer Joseph James DeAngelo, stands and gives a double thumbs -up to agree with a prosecutor’s statement about part of DeAngelo’s anatomy, during a court hearing in Sacramento, Calif., Monday, June 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)In 2018, one-time Auburn police officer Joseph DeAngelo was identified as the killer, who committed at least 13 murders and 51 rapes across Northern and Southern California between 1974 and 1986. In assaults in and around Visalia, Sacramento, Stockton, the East Bay and San Jose, De Angelo was known for breaking into homes in the middle of the night and tying up and sexually abusing the female occupants, often repeatedly. He also threatened to kill them and any family members in the house, including their young children.
This latest film by the supposedly canceled Franco has been mired in controversy ever since he and Gallo became involved in the project, according to a 2024 Rolling Stone report.
Both Franco and Gallo have faced accusations of mistreating or exploiting women they worked with, including while performing in sex scenes. It’s well known that the high-flying Hollywood career of the Palo Alto-reared Franco crashed amid #MeToo-era allegations that he engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior with five women, four of whom were students at a Los Angeles acting school he founded. Oscar-nominated for “127 Hours,” Franco hasn’t appeared in a studio movie since 2021, when he settled a $2.2 million lawsuit brought against him by his former students and admitted it was “wrong” to have sex with them.
Such histories of alleged sexual misconduct involving Franco and Gallo have raised questions about the filmmakers’ intentions and why they thought that these two male stars should help tell a story about a criminal who devastated the lives of scores of women.
NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 06: Actor Vincent Gallo attends the Anna Sui Fall 2008 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Fall 2008 at The Tent at Bryant Park on February 6, 2008 in New York City. (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for IMG)The world first learned about the production of this film last year when Rolling Stone revealed that two actresses accused Gallo of saying disturbing, sexually lurid things to them, including about his “torture porn fantasies,” as they auditioned for roles as DeAngelo’s victims. These women reported Gallo to SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, according to Rolling Stone.
DeAngelo also was known for saying threatening and sexually lurid things to his victims as he sought to assert control and torment them during his attacks. Perhaps Gallo, a polarizing cult figure in edgy, independent films, thought he was employing an extreme form of Method acting by making certain alleged demands during the auditions, which took place in November 2023.
According to the complaints, as documented by Rolling Stone, Gallo appeared to revel in the opportunity to play DeAngelo, especially when it came to re-enacting his attacks. Indeed, Gallo told one actress: “We don’t want to see any acting. If DeAngelo says don’t scream or I’ll kill you, you do not scream, because if you do, you die. DeAngelo hates screaming. He hates fighters.”
Another actress told SAG that she accepted that the role involved full nudity, Rolling Stone reported. But when she met Gallo during the audition, he talked about his “torture porn fantasies.” He also said that in order to truly tell the story in an “accurate way,” he needed actresses who were willing to have their “minds and bodies be 100 percent dominated by him.”
Such statements have suggested the possibility that “Golden State Killer” will sensationalize DeAngelo’s crimes and focus on a male point of view and on Gallo’s performance, rather than on the trauma inflicted on his female victims. One of the women who spoke about this trauma was Mary Berwert, who was 13 in June 1979 and enjoying the summer before eighth grade, when DeAngelo, then known as the East Area Rapist, broke into her family’s Walnut Creek home and raped her in her bedroom.
“He stole my innocence, my security, threatened my life, threatened the lives of my family,” Berwert said in court in 2020 when DeAngelo, who had pleaded guilty to 13 murders, was sentenced to life in prison. “I had to break the ties on my legs. I had to open my bedroom door with my hands tied behind my back.” She said she ran to her father’s room, telling him, “Daddy, I’ve been raped.”
After the actresses made their complaints to SAG-AFTRA, the union said it was committed to ensuring a safe and respectful environment on all film sets. A spokesperson for the film’s producers told Rolling Stone that a union intimacy coordinator was hired for the production, which was “carried out in a safe, protective, and respectful environment.”
These complaints represent just the latest controversy involving Gallo, an actor, director, writer, model and musician, who has variously been described as a “genius,” a “nightmare,” “narcissistic” and as having a reputation as “one of the most paranoid, controlling men in movies.” Among the many questionable aspects about having Gallo play DeAngelo is that he is 62, while DeAngelo was in his late 20s and early 30s during the 1970s.
Gallo may be best known for his 2003 experimental film, “The Brown Bunny.” This road drama, which Gallo also wrote and directed, was met with criticism following its Cannes Film Festival debut because of an non-simulated sex scene between him and Chloë Sevigny, in which she performed oral sex on Gallo. Many viewers and critics questioned whether Sevigny was pressured into the sex scene by Gallo.
Meanwhile, Christina Ricci had a difficult time with Gallo when she, at age 17, co-starred with him in “Buffalo ‘66,” his 1998 directorial debut. In a 2008 interview, Ricci called Gallo “a crazy lunatic man” and described how he later mocked her about her weight and said other “horrible things” about her. “I’d never encountered such insanity.”
The producers behind Gallo’s Golden State Killer movie said they “envisioning a … gritty tone,” akin to films and TV series about the Zodiac Killer and Jeffrey Dahmer, according Rolling Stone. Deadline said that the writer and director for “Golden State Killer is Vito Brown, and this is first credit in both positions, according to IMDB. One of the listed producers, Jordan Gertner, was a producer for Gallo’s “Buffalo 66″ and Franco’s 2012 film, “Spring Breakers.”
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