Actor James Franco says his new film I
Am Michael asks whether being gay is a choice “in a very
healthy way.”
Franco plays “ex-gay” activist
Michael Glatze in the film, which premiered Thursday at the Sundance
Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Glatze is the controversial publisher
and former gay rights advocate who gained notoriety for publicly
renouncing being gay in 2007, two years after he was featured in Time
magazine as a gay rights activist.
Glatze and former boyfriend Benjie
Nycum (played by out actor Zachary Quinto) in 2004 launched Young
Gay America magazine (YGA Mag), a bimonthly magazine for
LGBT youth which folded three years later. The pair, who met while
working at XY
magazine, also co-authored the book XY Survival Guide.
Franco told the AP that the film
fosters discussion about sexuality and identity in a “very healthy
way.”
“Is it nurture or nature and do we
allow someone to make these decisions?” he said. “I think this
movie touches on those issues in a really interesting way where it
allows people to talk about it and fosters discussion in a very
healthy way.”