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James Franco has been studying film at NYU, and a student film he created recently had a screening at the CineVegas film festival for his short film adaptation “The Feast of Stephen,” based on Anthony Hecht’s poem of the same name. A review of the short:

. . . the silent, black-and-white Stephen opens with its meek, bespectacled title character (Remy Germinario, in his screen debut) watching a pick-up basketball game in New York City. But the only score Stephen is keeping is the number of shirtless hunks dribbling, sweating and writhing on the court. One mop-topped stud in particular has all the moves, nudging Stephen’s daydream into the more erotic realm of naked boys playing hoops — in slow-motion, natch, and suddenly transported to a wooded glen where society’s referees won’t blow a whistle on their hard fouls.

But one sporting fantasia calls for another, apparently, and by now Stephen daydreams of himself as the object of the naked boys’ violent game. Franco pulls this together stylishly if graphically, with chests, thighs and asses pressed tight in various permutations, infusing the violence with the poem’s more visceral sense of ecstasy.

And this isn’t Franco’s first gay short film adapted from a poem — he also adapted “Herbert White” by Frank Bidart.

AND Franco is currently shooting “Howl,” a feature film adaptation of gay poet Allen Ginsberg’s most influential work.

The gayer, the better, I say.