Video
As part of YouTube’s “Comedy Week,” Zach Galifianakis held a very special edition of his Funny or Die web series Between Two Ferns which starts out like a regular James Franco interview but then gets weird real quick. Lonely Island and Edward Norton co-star, which is great, because we haven’t seen those guys in forever. (Edward Norton, where’ve you been hiding?) Read More
Because this is what the world needs: More people imitated James Franco’s career path. (Where all houses are half built before being abandoned, all prose is a pale imitation of Jack Kerouac’s writing style and even beverages are somehow phallic.) Though we do think that rapper Riff Raff has the right idea at beating the actor-cum-whatever at his own game after Mr. Franco dissed him by not acknowledging his stylistic contributions to the character of Alien in Spring Breakers. The former From G’s To Gents reality star has decided to go back to the small screen…this time taking a cameo in One Life to Live as a character named–wait for it–James Franko. Read More
Okay, so technically this movie is called True Story, but the synopsis, via Craigslist’s P/T paid gigs pages, reads like it was torn from the Capote non-fiction novel:
SYNOPSIS: STORY OF A JOURNALISTS’ RELATIONSHIP WITH A MOST WANTED MURDERER AND A CASE OF STOLEN IDENTITY.
Short. Brief. Succinct. To the point. And more adjectives! (We wonder if Mr. Franco himself wrote the entry?) Read More
Writing Gibberish with James Franco
Because he’s too busy doing all the other things to line edit, actor James Franco posted a very confusing 1,000-word book report on the Huffington Post yesterday. This article plays with form and function, taking the form of a letter that Mr. Franco is writing to a friend, “D_____,” (who, we learned in the first edition of this series, is a teacher, but also taking classes–much like Mr. Franco himself!) and functioning as evidence that Mr. Franco read all the way through Ham on Rye.
And it must be a good friend indeed to read all the way through Mr. Franco’s musings on the new UCLA class he is teaching (he took them on a press tour for Oz: Th Great and Powerful, which makes sense for a creative writing class), how he is kind of like John Gregory Dunne, how Dunne and the Maysles–which he spells Maysels–didn’t have to do any pre-research on their subjects so neither should he, the low-budget Charles Bukowski movie he’s making and the one Larry Brown story he’s actually read in Big Bad Love. (The fact that this whole paragraph was one long sentence gives you a sense of how Mr. Franco actually writes.)
While we won’t subject you to any snippets of the actual essays–go look for yourself if you want to fall down that particular rabbit hole–Jeva Lange at The New York Daily News brought up the commenting threads inspired by this particular series. Now that’s a much more interesting rabbit hole, not to mention one with a better grasp of the English language. We’re currently taking over/unders on how long it will be before Franco starts putting up sockpuppets complimenting his own writing and fighting with detractors … if he hasn’t already! Let’s make the walls shadow-colored, you guys! Read More
Living with Shakespeare: Essays by Writers, Actors, and Directors
Edited by Susannah Carson
Vintage, 528 pp., $16
It should come as no surprise that the best essays in Living With Shakespeare are by the writers, not the actors and directors listed in its subtitle. Overall, though, this 500-page collection left me unfulfilled: about a quarter of the way in, I found myself craving the real thing. Why am I getting Shakespeare secondhand, I thought, when I can just go straight to the source? Read More
Video
You see, we put a question mark in the title because that way you will click through to find out whether The Hollywood Reporter‘s video combining scenes from Spring Breakers and HBO’s GIRLS is as great as we question it to be. But the truth is, you already know the answer. You’ve known it all along, deep down. This is obviously the best mashup you will be seeing for awhile. Honestly, they had us at “Spring Breakers meets Girls.” Enjoy. Read More
A little over a week ago we noticed that James Franco–currently starring in Oz: The Great and Powerful, an autobiographical look at the actor’s life as a con man who lies about his accomplishments and convinces a lot of other people to do work for him so he can take credit for it–had started reading Teddy Wayne’s tremendous book about a tween celebrity, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine. Of course, being James Franco (note to James Franco: please title your next movie that), he couldn’t just post a picture of himself reading the book, so he added a little puppet friend to help him out.
Now, half a month later, Mr. Franco may have finished the book, but his little buddy hasn’t. And now his buddy has his own buddy … a doll that looks like it came off the set of his other documentary, Kink. Read More
Video
Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert had a very funny segment with someone pretty famous. We’re not going to say who, because, really, does it really matter? Colbert sometimes just has those “On” nights, where all the jokes land and everyone is in the mood and the guest gets totally schooled while trying to one-up Colbert with trivia questions about the novelizations of those Peter Jackson movies that James Franco read last semester.
Damnit. Okay, fine, the guest was James Franco. BUT IT IS STILL WORTH WATCHING. Read More
Last week, The Observer reported on a potential feud brewing between Nascar Grand Marshal James Franco and RiFF RaFF, a Texas-based rapper who had claimed that the role of Alien in Spring Breakers was originally offered to him, though he was later offered a smaller role as part of the character’s posse. Franco not only disagreed, but claimed to not have even used RiFF RaFF as a major inspiration for the part, despite striking similarities in grooming and wardrobe.
Today the artist currently under Diplo’s label and working on an album called NEON iCon responded to our requests to clarify the situation. Read More
We do not know how you were taught to read serious literature, but below you can educate yourselves via actor/whatever James Franco, who posted a WhoSay photo yesterday of the correct way to enjoy Teddy Wayne‘s new novel, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, which fittingly concerns a young man trying to figure out his place in the world as a super-famous megastar. Read More
