James Franco directs, writes and plays in 'As I Lay Dying'

MANILA, Philippines - James Franco showcases his versatility in "As I Lay Dying," a movie based from the 1930 classic American novel William Faulkner.

Franco plays the role of Darl Bundren in the movie, which he also directed and co-written the screenplay with Matt Rager.

The story chronicles the Bundren family as they traverse the Mississippi countryside to bring the body of their deceased mother Addie to her hometown for burial.

Addie’s husband Anse and their children, Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell, and the youngest one Vardaman, leave the farm on a carriage with her coffin - each affected by Addie’s death in a profound and different way.

Their road trip to Jefferson, some 40 miles away, is disrupted by every antagonistic force of nature or man: flooded rivers, injury and accident, a raging barn fire, and not least of all -- each individual character’s personal turmoil and inner commotion which at times threaten the fabric of the family more than any outside force.

William Faulkner wrote "As I Lay Dying" in six weeks, while working at a power plant.

The novel was published in 1930 and was Faulkner’s seventh. Fifteen different characters narrate As I Lay Dying over 59 chapters.

Bringing the classic novel to the screen faced as many natural and man-made challenges as the Bundren family: 25 days to shoot on a low budget, finding local actors in Mississippi, a dangerous water stunt in a running river, the burning of a barn. But before all that, the biggest hurdle was turning Faulkner’s complicated, 56,000-words, 59-chapters and 15 different characters into 120 concise screenplay pages.

That process took much longer than the time it took the Bundren family to deliver their mother to Jackson, and the six weeks it took Faulkner to write the novel. But no one has ever suspected Franco of being an underachiever.

“As I Lay Dying, the book, was one of the first novels I read outside of the high school curriculum. My main interests were art, literature, acting and film. As I Lay Dying was a book that my father gave me and I can remember spending a weekend reading late into Friday night and Saturday night, when all of my friends were out partying. It was a difficult book back then. I just tried to understand every line of it. It stayed with me. I thought it would be a very interesting movie because of its structure," Franco said.

Franco added: "Each chapter in the book is in the first person by different character. Even though it's very complicated in the way it's told, it had a very simple structure. There was a journey that an audience could follow, and I thought that combination would allow for a good movie because you could have complexity, but it would be hung on a very clear through-line."

As I Lay Dying is considered a masterpiece in American literature, but was always considered an impossible challenge for adapting to film.

“There were a lot of things that I was interested in the book. On one level it's a very simple story, and on another level it's told in a very complex way. I felt like it's about a farming family just trying to bury their mother. You could say each member of the family has his or her own need, and that it’s about a family coming apart -- that the death of the mother is an event that starts a chain reaction," Franco said.

The movie will be screening in Ayala Mall Cinemas starting November 27.