Flip-Side: Real and Imaginary Conversations with Lana Del Rey is
a work of collaboration between bestselling author David Shields and
polymath actor/director/author/artist James Franco. The project
originated as the rough draft of a book Franco wrote about and for his
close friend Lana Del Rey. Shields took the rough draft and turned it
into a one-act play.
Flip-Side is a work of dialogue that explores the relationship
between performance and persona, on the one hand, and underlying pain
and trauma, on the other. The text is completed my dozens of selfies of
James and Lana.
Flip-Side is the extension of an ongoing collaboration between
Franco and Shields. Franco's film adaptation of Shields's co-authored I
Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel premiered in spring 2015 in
Vancouver and Seattle; national distribution of the film is forthcoming
soon. Flip-Side also builds on Shields's recently released That
Thing You do With Your Mouth: The Sexual Autobiography of Samantha
Matthews, as told to David Shields (published by McSweeney's).