James Franco discussed his "character research" for his role as a gigolo in the Nicolas Cage flick "Sonny" with GQ.

According to a feature interview at Style.com, Franco followed an escort boy on Bourbon Street on a three-way "date".

James Franco: “I was just standing over near the desk. And they all got in the bed and, I mean, he was out of his head. He was so high on cocaine, I guess, or drunk or whatever, and he was saying, like, ‘Oh, my wife and daughters are coming tomorrow, but this is great.’ It was the first time I ever saw a cock ring. He put on a cock ring. And then they both kind of like stood over him, and the guy was, like, stroking both of them and he was like, ‘Ah, all these cocks, I love these cocks.’ ” (Later, Franco would tell Cage about all this, and it would become the inspiration for when Cage’s character in the movie, a pimp called Acid Yellow, snorts a line and then declares, “I love coke cock.”)

Chris Heath for GQ: And did you take your shirt off to, so to speak, be in the vibe?

Franco: “Yeah, I guess I had my shirt off.”

Heath: You must have felt: This is a very weird thing to see.

Franco: “It was. It was mixed, because on one hand, it was scary, strange to be there—you know, I’ve done bad things and I have been arrested but I have never been in that situation. So I was feeling all that, but then on the other hand it is just like a human interaction, so there’s none of the movie music going on to heighten the situation. And so it had this strange, you know, casualness to it. Just people having sex, or about to have sex, and there I am standing in the room, you know. And so that was weird.”