Sex, drugs and Franco,
Actor plays twins in The Deuce, the HBO series that tackles the rise of the porn industry in 1970s New York
Sex, sleaze and a supersized dose of James Franco.
Those are the basic bricks in the foundation of HBO’s next projected hit, The Deuce, the New Yorkcentric, 1970s period piece from The Wire creator and former Baltimore journalist David Simon.
Level that off with a little Maggie Gyllenhaal as a compelling, self-employed sex worker; an overarching narrative following the official rise of the porn industry during a decade of sheer profit; and plenty of tense mob-police-pimp relations, and the cabler may have found a winning combination of rich themes and sexy storylines indeed.
It premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival Sunday at 2:30 p.m. ahead of its HBO premiere at 9 p.m.
But back to that supersized dose of James Franco. Over the years, the actor has emerged as something of a poster boy for tacky memes thanks to his artistic dabbles in all walks of life, from soap star and Oscars host to artist, poet and Kimye impersonator.
At first glance, his pornstache-wearing dual role as identical twins Vincent and Frankie Martino in this drama is reminiscent of another punch line in the never-ending Franco joke. Delve a little deeper into the 84-minute pilot, however, and the technical demands and potential constraints of pulling off both parts begin to paint a different picture.
“This is the first time I’ve had an adult role. I’m almost 40, but I’ve played a lot of man-boys. Frankie is still a man-boy, but Vincent is a man,” Franco says. “One of the great things about The Deuce is they gave me the opportunity to direct one episode and doing a second was contingent on how well I did with the first. It got me to just focus; I really took it seriously.”
The Martino brothers are a complex duo, to be sure. One a gambler with soaring debts; the other a bartender with a knack for filling a joint with an all-encompassing clientele. In typical, confusing Franco fashion they’re also hard to distinguish between; there will be no Tatiana Maslany-level accolades coming from critics regarding the nuances of these roles. Yet that seems to be the point, especially in the pilot, as viewers question whether the Frankie twin actually exists.
“We made the choice to have them look alike and not do the easy thing, which was give one a moustache,” executive producer and longtime Simon collaborator George Pelecanos says. “It was all acting. We didn’t give one of them buck teeth.”
“There are different requirements if you’re playing a lead role and let’s say a supporting role,” Franco says. “Sometimes as a lead actor on other projects I wished I could get a little crazy, but you have to follow the emotional requirements of the story.
“Here I get the best of both worlds. Vincent has the whole emotional story and romance, and then Frankie gets to come in at key moments and be a goofy goombah. I get to play the Harvey Keitel and the Robert De Niro roles in Mean Streets.”
While such larger-than-life characters might seem surreal in a presentday storyline, Simon and Pelecanos found plenty of source material to draw from. The show’s premise began after the duo heard stories from the anonymous twin on which Franco’s characters are based (the man died shortly before filming began).
An hour-long meeting turned into several hours, with the writers taking smoke breaks to discern whether half the stories they were hearing actually happened. In the end they weren’t sure if they wanted to make a show about pornography, but a socio-economic series jumping off from that theme was richly appealing. Especially for two guys with a track record of exploring how a product (drugs in The Wire) or event (hurricane Katrina in Treme) can change a community, city or even nation.
“We’re arriving to the story in 1971, which is the point at which pornography went from being an underthe-counter, paper-bag product to being street legal,” Simon says. “It was beginning, as all vices begin, as something which organized crime was funding on a cash and carry basis . . . (Now) it’s a multibillion-dollar industry that has transformed not only the American economy, but also our cultural mores and the way in which men and women view each other. It’s had a profound impact.”
Now let’s see if the series will do the same.