James Franco has recorded a new album that takes its cues from classic Smiths songs and has enlisted Smiths bassist Andy Rourke's help.
The 36-year-old star of Pineapple Express plans to release Let Me Get What I Want in 2015 as part of his Daddy project with Tim O'Keefe.
Franco tells Vice that the idea began with his debut collection of poetry, which included 10 poems entitled The Best Of The Smiths: Side A and Side B:
"The Smiths’ songs provided inspiration for the poems, lending tone and situation. I originally wrote this sequence as a way to use one medium (music) to influence another one (poetry) … [But] once I had the sequence, Tim and I took the material one step further and turned the poems inspired by songs back into songs of their own."
The first fruits of the project soundtrack a new ad for Gucci sunglasses starring Franco; check it out below.
You can next see the Californian renaissance man starring alongside Seth Rogen in The Interview, which North Korea's UN ambassador Ja Song Nam has called "the most undisguised sponsoring of terrorism as well as an act of war."