It’s been months since Spring Breakers hit theaters. During its promotional period Harmony Korine’s hyper neon look into spring break madness saw a lot of op-eds across the board on teen promiscuity and the young girls that portrayed the scandalous lifestyle, but that was to be expected. Something that the production probably didn’t bet on was rapper Riff Raff vocalizing his discrepancies with the film at every turn.
When Spring Breakers initially geared up for release, the rapper claimed that James Franco studied his likeness for his now notorious role as rapper Alien. His grill wearing, gun-toting, cornrow, hillbilly look is pretty similar to Riff Raff, but the actor claimed the look was intentionally copying his style. However, this fact was shot down by James Franco, who gave local Florida rapper Dangeruss all of the credit. Franco told GQ at the time, “He’s fairly unknown, but he was down there in the place, living the life, and he became the biggest model for me and he’s in the movie.”
It appears as though the Spring Breakers DVD release was enough ammunition to get rapper Riff Raff heated up all over again. In an obvious attempt as using Spring Breakers as a springboard for his own relevancy, the rapper revealed his plans to sue the producers of Spring Breakers for 8 million to 10 million dollars.
Later he explained to The Daily Swarm his opinion on the whole situation:
“It’s like if I have a front yard. And you’re planting soil and you’re planting trees and building peaches and houses and selling parking lots on my property, then I deserve to be compensated for some portion of that money.”
Initially Riff Raff made claims that the role of Alien was also written for him, and might have been played by him if Harmony and the rapper had a better way of communicating clearly. Korine has since refuted this claim.
Since Spring Breakers , Riff Raff has gone on to turn the tables on James Franco by spoofing him on the soap One Life To Live , which might be a dig seeing as the actor had appeared on General Hospital playing a psychopathic character named Franco for a few seasons.
Do you think Riff Raff has a case? Did the producers steal his likeness for the character of Alien? Check out two NSFW comparison videos of both Riff Raff and Dangeruss.