Franco: New film examines celebrity

James Franco has said he tries to examine celebrity, not just satirise it, in his new film Francophrenia.

The 127 Hours star made a spoof psycho-thriller directed by his friend Ian Olds, which was filmed on the set of US medical soap opera General Hospital during James' appearance in the show.

James told New York Times magazine's Vulture blog: "It's mocking, but I wouldn't say it's solely a mocking tone. It's a real examination."

The 34-year-old actor, artist, writer and filmmaker was inspired to make Francophrenia because of the hype around his appearance in General Hospital.

James has a number of blogs and art projects on the go, but admitted he was surprised that a video of him singing along to a Selena Gomez song in the car that he posted on his blog had attracted so much attention.

He said: "The first one was Selena Gomez. And we did a Rihanna one. The latest is Bieber. But we have a whole channel of videos that we produce; we have an online soap opera that Kalup Linzy produced and directed. All this stuff takes a lot of time to put together. And we do get a lot of viewers for those shows.

"But then when I do something so stupid and simple as singing, like, one and a half verses of Selena Gomez's song with cornrows in my hair, it blows up on the blogosphere and we get all these viewers.

"Part of it is, 'Wow, I guess I just tapped into what they want!' You know, this pop, surface-level kind of thing, but done in a way where you feel like something else is going on. Or the fact that it's me doing it is like ... fascinating to people, I guess."