James Franco's creative output is so prolific, the man must never sleep. And maybe he should.

When he's not busy acting, directing, screenwriting, teaching high school kids, ruining animated children's films with his distractingly sexy voice and whatever else he's up to this week, Franco is half of an arty electro-pop duo called Daddy, with Tim O'Keefe. The pair met in one of the 8 million graduate school programs Franco attended in all his spare time over the past several years, the Digital + Media MFA program at the Rhode Island School of Design; they began releasing music in 2012. Some of their output, like the dream-pop/shoegaze-inspired “On the Sideline,” with its surreal awkward-teen lyrics, is actually pretty good.

Then there's the just-released video for “I'm a Sword Swallower (Prince Rama Remix),” which is so off-the-charts WTF it makes Franco's performance in Spring Breakers look like a master class in restraint. Shot by Franco at the Chateau Marmont and described by O'Keefe as “a short film that explores gender, power play and Hollywood lore in a cinematic psychedelic dream,” it's probably what premium-channel softcore porn would look like if it was directed by Luis Buñuel, with a soundtrack that resembles a chillwave remix of early Ministry. Watch and judge for yourself. (Warning: definitely NSFW.)

Like most art projects started in MFA programs, Daddy's mission statement is a slurry of academic buzzwords that don't actually explain much of anything: “The motivation behind Daddy … is to push beyond the sonic space of music into the surrounding ecology. Daddy investigates the territories of film/video, installation and performance while simultaneously exploring the connections that form between them.”

Or, maybe it's all just an excuse for James Franco to get his Eyes Wide Shut on with a bunch of models wearing masks and strap-ons. Like many things Franconian, we may never know the truth.

To hear more Daddy (some of which, again, is actually pretty good), go here.

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