two-james-francos

It’s impossible not to wonder if James Franco is totally out of his mind.  Who the hell enrolls in four simultaneous graduate programs, two of them for the same thing?  Still, he gets away with it because he’s good looking, a great actor, and seems to have a pretty good sense of humor about himself (and a pretty good writer, from what I’ve heard).  Apparently, the next step in his march towards total eclecticism is becoming a black athlete, because he’s begun talking about himself in the third person.

‘He’s turned his celebrity into a form of performance art,’ Danny Boyle says. ‘While we were shooting [127 Hours], he would sometimes ask me, “What do you want him to do?” I would say, What do you mean? He would say, “What do you want from him in this scene?” You mean your character? “No, no. Franco. What do you want from Franco?” He was talking about himself in the third person. I said, Well, I think he should be more emotional. And he said, “Oh, I can get him to do that.” And then he’d do the scene and he’d be amazing. He turned on this extraordinary performance. He really does hold himself like a tool, to be used by the director for the benefit of the story.’

Oh, I’m sure it was just performance art or something.  Okay, now Telegraph Profile, I’m gonna need something that totally redeems him in my mind.  Go!

There aren’t that many private citizens who, with the help of Gucci sponsorship, exhibit a video installation featuring them wandering around the streets of Paris with a big floppy prosthetic penis strapped to their nose. When Franco exhibited this work, entitled Dicknose in Paris, earlier this year, one of the faculty members at NYU stormed out, muttering, ‘What an asshole… What an asshole.’

Awesome.  Probably the best use of Gucci funds in ten years.  And I think what that guy meant was, “This humorous idea isn’t nearly assholish enough for NYU.”