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There’s a new trend taking off in Williamsburg, but this one’s a little more commercial than its residents would probably like.

Over the space of two days in the past week, both Kanye West and James Franco have taken over walls in the hip neighborhood across the water, joining a fast growing fashion for P.R. stunts in the area.

James Franco graced the corner of Grand and Bedford this weekend to paint a giant quirky advert for his latest film, the apocalyptic bro-comedy This Is The End, according to FreeWilliamsburg.com.

He was joined by Williamsburg’s Sky High painters, passing the work off as a "mural."

Meanwhile over at North 7th and Bedford, a ghostly Kanye appeared on the side of the Wythe hotel in order to promote his latest track "New slaves," as part of a world-wide projection.

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The bizarre video features a glistening West aggressively ranting about the evils of capitalism, which is a bit rich for a man who likes to tweet about how hard it is to"Sal" Photocall - 68th Venice Film Festival get the right kind of Persian rug.

The up-and-coming area has been the target of many high profile P.R. stunts in recent times, including Williamsburg branded cigarettes and even a line of GAP Jeans.

With more celebrities rumored to be moving to the area, including Lena Dunham, it seems that this trend is one that might keep growing.

See the videos below.

The happy couple.

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?)


Now that Jorma Taccone has done Girls, we are really hoping those Lonely Island guys find time to get together and make a movie/album/TV series/book of poetry/gay married to James Franco. After all, they can't busier than the Oz star, so what's their excuse for not popping up with new projects in the news every week? Laziness?

True Story. (Craigslist)

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?)

The IMDB page fill in a little more of the details:

A drama centered around the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name.

So In Cold Blood meets The Identity Thief! And with your chance to play a journalist! How hard could that be? Here's the full listing, for those interested in taking the gig. (We'll see you at the Cattle Call, baby!)

James Franco, perfect!

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!

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?

I guess that means the book, edited by Susannah Carson, did its job. Living With Shakespeare is supposed to whet your appetite; it wants you to see how much its 38 contributors—Jane Smiley, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Kingsley among them—care about the Bard so you can strike off and form your own bond with him. A lot of the essays, however, feel too exegetical, impersonal. James Earl Jones’s contribution, for instance, starts out promisingly but veers off into a nearly 40-page analysis of Othello that probably would have been better handled by a scholar like Harold Bloom, who wrote the book’s foreword. Living With Shakespeare takes a populist approach to the Bard; at the same time, most of its contributors—the actors especially, including James Franco (of course)—take themselves too seriously.

One short passage from this book stuck with me. It comes from Germaine Greer, on studying Shakespeare in school: “It never occurred to me,” she writes, “to read about Shakespeare. If I was curious about something, about how Shakespeare felt about war, say, I simply read the plays again.”

Spring Break forever...until you stick a Q-tip in your ear. (THR)

We'd actually go see this film. Wouldn't you?

Photo credit: James Franco/WhoSay

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.

Photo credit: James Franco/WhoSay

It must be great to have all that free time to play dress up with dolls and arrange them in interesting ménages while still somehow managing to support the entire American art industry simply by existing.

You might want to see this.

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.

Well, that about sums it up. James Franco admits to being a fraud, kind of also admits to hating NASCAR, tries a sad little Steinbeckian diss on Colbert because he is now starring in Of Mice in Men on Broadway (Seriously? As George? George??), and makes terrible metaphors about his education using source material from: a) a child's book; b) one of the most famous movies of all time and c) a movie he currently stars in.

Stephen Colbert read the script from America's collective consciousness, James Franco smiled with his dimples, and everyone who cared felt like maybe they could just let it go now...

You have to admit a resemblance. (Getty/Division Films)

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.

"Harmony Korine emailed me, i was gunna play alongside James Franco," RiFF RaFF wrote to The Observer from Amsterdam, where he's been for four days. "He said the Movie has my Energy."

The rapper, who appeared on the cover of Sneeze magazine with Mr. Korine in October, isn't able to recall if they discussed the movie, saying "we are friends we talk about random shit ... it's not always about Spring breakers." However, even that
Sneeze profile highlighted the tug-of-war over Alien's ownership:

Harmony’s cornrow-beaded drug dealer character, “Alien,” resembles RiFF RAFF. With “RiFFmony” being spotted trying to dunk on West Hollywood’s public courts, James-Franco-to-play-RiFF-RAFF headlines ensued. Not true. Alien, says Franco for the hundredth time, was inspired by a “panache” of southern rappers prior to RiFF entering Harmony’s world. If anything, RiFF was slated to be part of Alien’s “posse” but that didn’t pan out. What’s to follow doesn’t clarify much about the Spring Breakers mystery (Gucci Mane is in it, too). It does, however, identify RiFF’s flavor of Bill Cosby Pudding Pops and confirm Harmony’s basketball skills.

RiFF RaFF did admit that he was never approached by James Franco, nor has he ever been in contact with the actor. Still:

Ask FRANCO who his image was based on ? He always deflects the question and says "the character isn't based on RiFF RaFF..." Ask him who his image was taken from
Point out another famous white artist/rapper with braids, beads, loud bright color clothes, Texas Accent, gold jewelry, Name another person ever in the world who EVER did it like me ???? I Rest My Case ... It's a No brainer Here Folks

Well, Franco did claim that the role of Alien was based mostly on Dangeruss, who did have a cameo in the film and with whom Franco had collaborated with for a separate project while prepping for the role. (RiFF RaFF maintains he wasn't able to be in the film because he wasn't able to work within the tight shooting schedule.) However, it's true that the sartorial choices are way more RiFF RaFF than Dangeruss, who prefers less flashy clothes. And look, all the way back in March, RiFF RaFF was still feeling good about the whole situation, telling Fuse.TV:

"Even though I couldn't be a part of this project, I'm still glad that James Franco could play the role of me,” he said. “That's like if Denzel Washington was playing the role of O.J. Simpson. Even though it's not O.J. Simpson, O.J. Simpson still gotta be like, 'Denzel Washington is playing me.'"

There does seem to be some wires crossed here, with Franco thinking that he was making up the role based on whomever he felt fit the character, and Mr. Korine's friendship with RiFF RaFF obviously inspiring at least the wardrobe choice.

Of the film, which RiFF RaFF has seen, he has only positive things to say: "Yea i saw it its a good movie," he told The Observer. "Can't wait for the movie to come out #RapGameJamesFranco #SpringBreakers."