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Read James Franco's Touching Poem To Late Gay Actor Sal Mineo

sal-franco

James Franco is a man of many talents. Many talents of dubious and differing qualities, but many talents nonetheless. Somewhere between making homoerotic art and making homoerotic films, Franco wrote a book of poems, including an ode to slain out actor Sal Mineo, to whom Franco dedicated a biopic:

Sal Mineo

I directed a film about the actor Sal Mineo.

Many people in the new generation

Might not know who he was,

Because he’s been dead since ’76.

My film focuses on his last day alive,

He talked to his lover Sid on the phone,

About plans for the future;

He went to the gym;

He invited people, including Liz Taylor and Paul Newman

And Nick Ray to the opening of his new play,

P.S. Your Cat Is Dead;

And he went to rehearsal

With Kier Dullea of 2001 fame, and Milton Katselas,

The future guru of the Beverly Hills Playhouse.

In P.S. Sal played a bisexual burglar

That gets caught burgling an apartment.

Later that night, after rehearsal,

Sal was actually stabbed

By a real burglar

In front of his apartment,

On Holloway Drive.

Stabbed near his heart,

In the heart of Hollywood.

For a year they didn’t capture his killer.

So the tabloids said he was killed for drugs,

Or because he was gay:

A GAY LOVE TRIANGLE KILLING.

But it was none of those things.

None of those things.

Don’t worry, famous people;

Three and a half decades

Aren’t the limit of fame.

Sal fell out of favor long before he was killed.

He came out.

He got older.

He did bad films.

He couldn’t find work.

He did cocaine.

A down-and-out actor randomly killed.

I made the film,

It’s called Sal,

Because I wanted to tell about a life

That had lost its life,

And I wanted to tell it with love.

h/t: Out

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