James Franco To Direct R.E.M. Video For Collapse Into Now Film Project

Michael Stipe has invited renaissance-actor James Franco and English filmmaker Sam Taylor-Wood to join him on a list of guest directors who will create a series of short films to accompany each track on upcoming R.E.M. album Collapse Into Now. The record can be found now streaming at NPR; it will be released officially on March 8.

Stipe, who like most recording artists is trying to revive the album as a viable format, conceived of the Collapse Into Now Film Project as a way to help resuscitate the neglected art of the long player. "It was really fun for me to curate, working with all these different artists, and seeing how they interpreted the songs," Stipe told NME. "The thing that was surprising is how much they interlockingly work, like an album."

The videos for the projects will be released through various web and network outlets of the course of the next several weeks. The tracklisting, with each director listed parenthetically, is as follows:

'Discoverer' (Michael and Lynda Stipe)
'All The Best' (James Herbert)
'Uberlin' (Sam Taylor Wood)
'Oh My Heart' (Jem Cohen)
'It Happened Today' (Tom Gilroy)
'Every Day Is Yours To Win' (Jim McKay, Chris Moukarbel and Valerie Veatch)
'Mine Smell Like Honey' (Dominic DeJoseph)
'Walk It Back' (Sophie Calle)
'Alligator_Aviator_ Antipilot_ Antimatter' (Lance Bangs)
'That Someone Is You' (James Franco)
'Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando And I' (Albert Maysles and Bradley Kaplan)
'Blue' (James Franco)