In what could be one of the most chilling and uncomfortable true story thrillers in recent years, James Franco and Jonah Hill star in just that: ‘True Story’. And the experience has helped them relate to journalist Michael Finkel on which the film is based.
When Finkel was fired from the New York Times for fabricating a news story, he found himself without any job prospects. However, as luck would have it (good or bad, depending on how you look at it), he soon became embroiled in a high profile murder case when Christian Longo used Finkel’s name on being arrested for killing his family. This was finally a job that Finkel could take on, but little did he know how complex and unnerving his relationship with Longo would become.‘They’re both going through massive changes and, for both people, pretty negative changes at the same exact time, when this lie brings them together’, Hill – who plays Finkel – explains. While the idea of culling one’s own family might be lost on both Hill and Franco, the pair did admit to being able to relate to Finkel on some level.
‘The subject matter is really heavy and, a lot of the movie, Mike’s by himself taking all of this in’, Hill admits. ‘I found it hard to shake that off at the end of the day. Not in a pretentious way, just thinking about these murders and what happened. It was hard to just go home and go to dinner with friends and just laugh like I usually would.’
Meanwhile, Franco explains his understanding of Finkel’s initial mistakes. ‘The real Finkel made up a source and that’s why he got in trouble’, he says. ‘But anything, any news story, any non-fiction story is something that’s shaped, it’s something that’s edited, it’s something that’s, on a certain level, created and put together for a specific purpose, mainly to – yes, to deliver news – but also to get people to watch that. We’re all storytellers; whether we’re telling the truth, or our version of the truth, or just plain lying – they’re all stories.’
Hill and Franco previously appeared in ‘This Is The End’ together as fictional versions of themselves, and are currently filming an animated comedy called ‘Sausage Party’.
