‘This is the End’ Featurette: James Franco Plays a Character Named James Franco
One of the gimmicks behind Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's 'This is the End' is that the cast is loaded with celebrities playing themselves. But that gets interesting when you have a performer like James Franco, whose life has become an art project. In this new featurette, you can see how the actors approached playing themselves.
In the featurette, Craig Robinson, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Franco, Rogen, and Danny McBride discuss their characters and these cinematic versions of themselves. Some of the cast are obviously playing against type/jokey versions of themselves (like Michael Cera), but it's suggested the main actors are playing heightened versions of the real thing. But what is Franco's type? It seems here he's playing a painter whose love and friendship for Rogen borders on the creepy.
What's also interesting is that Rogen describes the film as more of an action-comedy than horror movie. But from what we've seen so far -- with the massive amounts of death and weird animals -- the movies seems like something a little scarier. Which may mean that much of what's been in the trailer so far is from the first half of the movie (which is always a good thing). 'This is the End' opens June 12. Here's that featurette: