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James Franco and Boston College professor Paul Mariani team up

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January 08, 2012|By Mark Feeney

James Franco (left) and Boston College professor Paul Mariani discuss… (ESSDRAS M SUAREZ/GLOBE…)

“The Broken Tower,’’ which gets its Video on Demand release this Tuesday, is notable for two reasons. A biopic about the American Modernist poet Hart Crane, it was directed by James Franco, who also wrote the script and stars as Crane.

That’s one reason. The other? It’s Paul Mariani’s second brush with Hollywood.

Mariani, a very vigorous 71, is the author of a half dozen volumes of poetry, as well as several biographies of 20th-century American poets, including William Carlos Williams, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell. Franco based “The Broken Tower’’ on Mariani’s similarly titled 2000 biography of Crane.

After more than three decades at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mariani became University Professor of English at Boston College in 2000. That’s why BC was the site for the first screening of a nearly finished cut of “The Broken Tower’’ last April - “as a way to continue to work with Paul, to show our gratitude, just to present it on his home turf,’’ Franco said in a telephone interview.

Mariani has a prominent place on that turf. “Within the English department, he’s legendary,’’ said Ben Key, an English and political science major, who attended the event. “He’s a terrific teacher,’’ said David Quigley, professor of history and dean of the college of arts and sciences, in a telephone interview. “With his rapturous enthusiasm for literature, he really has a way of bringing the words of the poets to life.’’

Franco, 33, has his own rapturous enthusiasm for literature. An undergraduate English major at the University of California at Los Angeles, he’s published a collection of short stories, has a master’s in creative writing from Columbia, and is working on a doctorate in English at Yale. His own enthusiasm made him appreciate Mariani’s all the more.

“He’s made a big impression,’’ Franco said. “Not only is he a very smart guy, whose books I’ve learned tons from. He’s one of the nicest guys I’ve met and we’ve become pretty good friends.’’ At the start of a joint question-and-answer session following the screening, Franco sounded like a star pupil addressing a favorite teacher when he turned to Mariani and said, “Just tell me what to talk about.’’