Hollywire got front row seats at the HOWL premiere with the film’s star James Franco at this year’s Sundance Twenty Ten.

The video below features James talking about his connection to the character of Allen Ginsberg in his real life, as well as the directors of the film Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman discussing how the beautiful animation for the film was produced:

The video below starts just after James was asked “How important was marijuana to you in the portrayal of the character of Allen Ginsberg?”, after which James replies “Sounds like it’s pretty important to you…”

The directors also discuss the involvement of real audio recordings in the process of writing the script.

Check it out:

Howl is a dramatic recreation of Allen Ginsberg’s obscenity trial that resulted from his famous poem in1955.

Watch clips from the original film below: