The Broken Tower is a 2011 American black-and-white docudrama directed by James Franco. The film is about American poet Hart Crane, who committed suicide in April 1932 at the age of 32 by jumping off the steamship SS Orizaba. Franco appears in the starring role and edited, co-produced, and wrote the screenplay. Michael Shannon also stars in the 90-minute film. The Broken Tower made its world premiere in April 2011 at Boston College. It will be shown at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival in June and theatrically released sometime in 2012. Franco thought of the idea for the film while reading... Paul Mariani’s biography of Crane, also entitled The Broken Tower after the name of one of Crane's poems, on the set of his 2002 movie Sonny. The poet's tortured life as an artist attracted him to the material: "He was trying to write in a way that was atypical for his time; he was not understood by most of his peers; he was struggling both with his financial circumstances and within himself to produce his work. He drank, he had lots of sex, he had one great, if short-lived, love", Franco told The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.
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