And Franco is currently filming his Charles Bukowski biopic, which he stresses is not based on the poet-writer’s thinly veiled autobiographical novel
Ham on Rye, but is similarly concerned with Bukowski’s bleak Los Angeles boyhood, using an undisclosed biography as source material. Picking up on other favorite Franco themes of isolation and abuse, Bukowski’s upbringing was riddled with bullying from his classmates and beatings from his father, but Franco insists he will cleave to the wry, funny tone with which Bukowski tells his own sad stories. “The thing about Bukowski is that, as hard as his life was when he was a child and adult, it all turned into work, work that is harsh but humorous,” wrote Franco in his
occasional rambling blog for Huffington Post. “He always casts himself as the loser, but in the end he is the winner because he turns his losses into art.”