Hey Luke, how many months behind on your rent are you?

File this one under wowsers. 127 Hours, the story of trapped hiker Aron Ralston later adapted by Slumdog Millionaire’s Danny Boyle and starring artsy-fartsy wonderboy James Franco, was almost a Luke Perry production. Starring Brian Austin Green. I will now post a block quote, to buy some time to clean the brain matter off of walls. Hit me with some unnecessary exclamation points, omg! from Yahoo!

“This movie that was made just recently — Danny Boyle film with James Franco about, the story of Aron Rolston — ’127 Hours’ — I tried to acquire the rights to the story and do it with Brian [Austin] Green,” Luke revealed to Billy Bush and Kit Hoover on Friday’s Access Hollywood Live.

“Brian’s a great actor,” Luke continued of the star, who now appears on “Desperate Housewives.” “I thought he ‘d be great in that part, but Danny Boyle, he got it… Brian’s a great actor and I always wanted to find something to do with him.”

Now, I’m kidding here because I love. The above caption isn’t fair. Luke Perry has maintained a career as a working actor since his heartthrob days on “90210,” which is no small feat given how most teen icons end up. And what Brian Austin Green lacks in a long-term, successful acting career, he more than makes up for in “body parts that have been inside Megan Fox.” So, again, kudos. But I don’t think there’s any doubt that the movie ended up better with Danny Boyle and James Franco attached. (Haha, that is funny because the movie is about Ralston “detaching” his arm, and you are welcome for the explanation.)

Although Brian Austin Green does have Franco matched in one area: the arts. While Franco is becoming a darling in the more avant garde, experimental circles, Green has street cred leaking out his butthole. Exhibit A after the jump.
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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.”

127 Hours isn’t a great movie and it isn’t a terrible movie.  More than anything else, it leaves me with one question for director Danny Boyle: was the point of this to tell us a story, or to have us marvel at your storytelling ability?  Because I suspect it was the latter.  Those motives can be related, but they’re distinct.  It’s seeking to entertain vs. seeking approval.  For a comedian, it’s the difference between a bit that gets laughs and a bit that gets applause.  127 Hours is not a bad movie, but it’s most definitely an applause movie.

Boyle making a film like 127 Hours is a lot like that time Dave Chappelle did comedy for seven hours straight.  Is it incredible that Dave Chappelle could do stand up for seven straight hours?  Yes.  Could a lesser comedian pull off something like that?  Probably not.  But does that make a seven-hour comedy show a good idea? Fuuuuuu*k no.  There are actually multiple reasons people don’t do seven-hour comedy shows, and the biggest one is that no one wants to watch comedy for seven hours straight. We’ll stick with the 90-minute show, thanks. There comes a point at which you’re not choosing a project because the project is good, but because of how good that project will make you look if you pull it off.  It’s pure d*ck measuring, and that’s what 127 Hours is.

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Aron Ralston’s tale of a Moab Canyon adventure gone bad has been well documented for the seven years since it happened. Ralston, of course, was canyoneering in Utah when his arm was trapped underneath a giant rock. Ralston spent five days stuck in the canyon until he finally used a pen knife to amputate his own arm, and now moviegoers are saying that director Danny Boyle’s recreation of the amputation in his film 127 Hours is just too realistic. If only he had gone with his original idea of having golden retriever puppies lick Ralston’s arm off.

127 Hours stars James Franco as Ralston, and the scene in question features Franco simulating the breaking of his arm and then a very graphic removal of the arm at the point of trapping. The scene lasts for approximately five minutes and as many as 16 viewers have reported passing out. In related news, 127 Hours is now the most popular movie among drunken frat boys.

Why do people insist on talking during movies, Fox News?

At a screening of the R-rated film at the Savannah Film Festival on Saturday, a woman began calling for a doctor to help a man who had apparently fainted after watching the scene.

“You have to turn the lights on,” a woman screamed.

“We need a doctor,” another man yelled.

Added another man, “Hey, there’s a penis in my popcorn! Damn you, Vince Mancini!”

A number of other moviegoers have reportedly walked out of the theater during the amputation scene, but Boyle claims that most people aren’t reacting to the actual removal of the arm, just to the intensity of the story in general. Meanwhile, I’ve still been unable to find a studio to produce my heroic story of the morning I chewed my own arm off when I woke up next to Khloe Kardashian.

In his latest wacky performance-art stunt, interdisciplinary graduate student James Franco dresses like a man for all two minutes and thirty-nine seconds of the latest trailer for Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours, the story of self-amputating outdoorsman Aron Ralston.  It’s impressive work.  He could win an Oscar for this.  Or even a Gertie, the prestigious award given every year to the country’s top performance artist, named for 60s Berkeley professor Gertrude Jenkins-Gold.

“Literally 127 hours of thrills!” -Pete Hammond.

Opens November 5th. HD version available at Apple.