James Franco isn’t just known as the greatest Oscars host of all-time, he’s also an actor. An actor who up until now was the most recent man to portray legendary beat poet Allen Ginsberg on screen. Franco played Ginsberg in the movie Howl, which didn’t shy away from the perceived obscenity of Ginsberg’s works, the fact that there was a lot of drug use going on in the man’s life, or the fact that he was pretty openly homosexual. You have to be comfortable dealing with some pretty risqué stuff if you’re going to accurately portray Ginsberg on film, so it makes sense that an actor as concerned with being artsy and progressive as James Franco would take the poet on. But what’s a little more shocking is the newest actor who is going to be stepping into Ginsberg’s shoes. In the upcoming film Kill Your Darlings the poet is going to be played by none other than… Harry Potter?!
Yes, that’s right, Daniel Radcliffe is all set to star in the film, by writer/director John Krokidas, which centers on true life (and murderous!) events involving the relationships between Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Lucienne Carr. Radcliffe has actually become a fine actor, and I’m sure he will do well playing Ginsberg, but I like to bring up his Harry Potter past to rib the guy a bit, because he seems to be so self-consciously anxious to make us forget. First he shows his magic wand in Equus, and now he’s playing a homosexual drug addict. That’s a little much for someone who, just a few months ago, was an idol to little kids. How about we dial it down a notch Daniel? Playing Rimbaud didn’t prove to the world that Leonardo DiCaprio wasn’t that little kid from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? anymore; people just wanted to see him starring in Titanic. How about we ease into that adult career by doing a romantic comedy or something?
Kill Your Darlings was originally talked about back in 2009 with Jesse Eisenberg, Chris Evans and Ben Whishaw set to play the Ginsberg, Kerouac and Carr trio, but with Radcliffe’s involvement it now appears that most if not all of those old plans have been scrapped. Time will tell if Evans and Whishaw are still slated to appear alongside Eisenberg’s replacement, or if what we’re looking at is an all-new cast and all-new approach. If that’s the case, then it appears we’re going to have to start brainstorming which two actors would look good standing next to Radcliffe wearing 50s garb. And don’t say Rupert Grint and Tom Felton. Let’s cut the kid some slack. [Twitch]