Frank Bidart’s “Herbert White”: A Nympholept Necrophiliac Serial Killer

Herbert White (2010), Directing Herbert White (2014), and “Directing Herbert White” are three James Franco pieces that are based on Frank Bidart’s poem “Herbert White”:

Here are some relevant excerpts from Bidart’s “Herbert White”, which is about a married, with kids, serial killer who kidnaps nymphets and rapes them - even after death. And when the nymphet’s bodies become too decomposed for necrophilia, Herbert  masturbated “letting it fall on her” :

When I hit her on the head, it was good,

and then I did it to her a couple of times,—[...] I liked to drive past the woods where she lay,

tell the old lady and the kids I had to take a piss,

hop out and do it to her... [...] When the body got too discomposed,

I'd just jack off, letting it fall on her…[...] well, like I said, she didn't move: and I saw,

under me, a little girl was just lying there in the mud: [...] I got in the truck, and started to drive,

and saw a [new] little girl—

who I picked up, hit on the head, and

screwed, and screwed, and screwed, and screwed, then

buried,

in the garden of the motel…[...] — About six months ago, I heard Dad remarried,

so I drove over to Connecticut to see him and see

if he was happy.

She was twenty-five years younger than him: [...] I kept thinking about getting a [new] girl,

and the more I thought I shouldn't do it,

the more I had to—

I saw her coming out of the movies,

saw she was alone, and

kept circling the

blocks as she walked along them,

saying, 'You're going to leave her alone.'

'You're going to leave her alone.'

Except for the part where the serial killer visited his father, whom married a woman “twenty-five years younger than him”, Franco’s Herbert White (2010) depicts that poem very closely; thus, let us take a look at “Directing Herbert White” where we learn that Bidart, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, wrote “Herbert White” while he was a student at Harvard and that Herbert White is based on “The Necrophiliac” - a medical case study in 21 Abnormal Sex Cases. 

Franco went on to share in “Directing Herbert White”: “James [Franco] knew after hearing the poem read in class at Warren Wilson [College] that it was something he wanted to adapt to film. These impulses are visceral.” Yes. The allure of nymphets does cause some men to have visceral impulses. 

Yet for some reason, Franco wrote: “Herbert has a secret - he’s a murderer of women and a fucker of corpses - which he can tell no one,” instead of: “Herbert has a secret - he’s a murderer of nymphets and a fucker of teen corpses - which he can tell no one.” 

Herbert White (2010)