Franco

James Franco is a man of many faces and many lives. He has somehow created and perpetuated his own life and overseen his public image broken down into various archetypes. He is impossible to pin down and define, once you think you know the man an entirely different side of his persona will emerge. Like a Bob Dylan of the social networking age. There is Franco the actor, the Hollywood heartthrob everyone knows and loves. Franco the writer and poet, the artist, the teacher, the student, the musician, the director, the list goes on. In modern Hollywood, it is so rare that somebody can pursue every ambition they have and still be as successful as they already were, in fact even more so. James Franco today is known as the Renaissance man, an artist who seems to have his finger in every pie, obsessed with working, the man never seems to sleep. How can a Hollywood actor who puts out more films than any other, have time to teach, write, study, direct, paint etc. He is literally addicted to the work and his own various archetypes he plays. Franco is not without his detractors, for all the adulation and praise, many question the validity and sincerity of Franco’s work, especially his art and writing, whether or not it is any good. That remains up in the air.

Until 2008 James Franco was just another Hollywood actor. After having great success in the ‘Spiderman’ franchise Franco was a well known name, although he hadn’t done much else worth mentioning. He had been in that James Dean TV biopic which he was in fact brilliant in, but no one ever saw it and not to forget his first ever role as Daniel Desario in ‘Freaks and Geeks’ a phenomenal show that ended sooner than it began. There were a handful of good films but none really worth mentioning. All that changed in 2008 when he starred in the Judd Apatow comedy ‘Pineapple Express’ and the Gus Van Sant Drama ‘Milk’. Both films were a critical and commercial success and earned James critical acclaim both for his abilities as a comedic and dramatic actor. During this period Franco the student emerged as the actor went back to College to study English Literature. It was at this time that the public persona began to change. When most Hollywood actors decide to go back to school they are met with animosity, why when you have all that money and success would you want to go study?

The thing that has to be said about James Franco the student is his commitment and work ethic throughout the entire process. This was not yet another vanity based decision, this was real. He was taking full time courses in Writing, Poetry, Literature and Film Making and taking more modules than humanly possible. If this was all for publicity and media attention, why would someone so clearly passionate and intelligent go to such lengths to achieve a spectacle of fame he already has. After the undergraduate degree came the Masters and now the Doctorate. James Franco is no pseudo-student, he is the real deal, a searing passionate academic who although is a Hollywood actor, craves more from his artistic passion that the gloss of tinsel town. The press took unkindly to Franco at this point and criticised his academic pursuits. Headlines about the actor wherever you read them were about his unsuitability to being a student, claiming he was burning out with the workload, despite succeeding in every course he was taking.

All of this was happening as his acting career was reaching new heights starring in great films that were far from the calibre of movie he had been doing prior to this resurgence of energy. In 2010 Franco starred in ‘127 Hours’ and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. This put him into the Hollywood elite, and now is seen as a Hollywood leading man, bankable by the studios and desirable to all film makers. It was around this time that Franco the artist begun to emerge and his persona in the media became a thing of infinite interpretation. Franco began to tackle his own public image at every turn, ingeniously self depreciating his Hollywood persona whilst pursuing his artistic passions. When the actor released his first book of fiction, a collection of short stories titled ‘Palo Alto’ he received both praise and eternal damnation from the literary world. The book, a collection of short stories about teenagers in his hometown of Palo Alto, was a semi autobiographical account of the alienation and despondency of one’s formative years, and though flawed was a pretty incredible debut. The writer James Franco had emerged, and with it existed entirely independently from his Hollywood counterpart.

The many roles and works of James Franco continued to emerge throughout the 2010’s, as his public profile begun to increase, James appeared intent on tarnishing his own public image at every turn as an artist. The artist James Franco meets an awful lot of criticism. Can he call himself and artist for using Instagram as a canvas? His crude childlike paintings and foray into the world of installation and photography have been met with much speculation and interpretation? Is Franco criticising his own fame and public image, is all of this an attack on Hollywood and mainstream celebrity culture, is this a work of genius dissecting every aspect of his public persona through various mediums and using the tool of the celebrity age i.e. social networking as the paintbrush and the easel? Was his attempt at hosting the Oscars his greatest ever art installation or is Franco merely just another 21^st Century hipster douche bag, void of any artistic merit, drenched in his own ego and fame, obsessed with his own legacy, yet another victim of the vulgarity of celebrity culture, contributing to its vacuous nature.

It is an impossible debate. James Franco certainly can be describes as all the formerly mentioned. It would probably be quite easy to put forth an argument proving him to be exactly that, or does the genius of James Franco’s ‘art’ lay in the causing of said debate? Is he intentionally provocative to create pure art wherever he goes? It is no secret that Franco likes art installations; he is obsessed with using people and society as a living breathing canvas. We are all living our lives through various lenses and perceptions, who is to say this isn’t just one big art piece. Is celebrity in its very voyeuristic nature an installation, reality TV on the widest level? Franco’s largest installation was his role on ‘General Hospital’; he actually used an acting role on a Soap Opera as a piece of performance art. Can he be described as having no talent as an artist or is he simply using different apparatus? He is adapting to the artistic tools at hand in his environment, unfortunately that environment is Hollywood and celebrity and the tools are Social Networking platforms and reality TV, award shows and press junkets. It is easy to see where the scepticism comes from, but when studied and debated it is easy to find the genius in Franco’s approach. He is living his life in the public eye; therefore he is creating his art through the same medium.

James Franco will always have his detractors; people do not like it when a successful Hollywood actor takes a stab at literature. Did you read his novel? What was that? Was that garbage, or was that genius? People do not like it when someone can continue to be so inordinately successful yet somehow intent on shaming their own public persona. Franco’s success shows no sign of letting up, he is currently one of the busiest men in the world, it is impossible to understand how he fits it all in. How can a Hollywood actor currently attached to more projects than any actor ever, who is writing and directing their own movies still find time to write, paint, study and teach! It is a commitment beyond anything the average guy on the street can understand, because it is not money or adulation that Franco seeks, it is the obligation, as an artist to create, fighting sleep just to have another hour in the day to create something, anything, this is what makes Franco a real artist.

The reason for Franco’s continued success is because he cannot be pinned down, there are too many pieces of the puzzle and all of them are mutually exclusive. The Hollywood heartthrob that most people know is not at all affiliated with the Director who made ‘As I Lay Dying’ or ‘Interior. Leather Bar.’. The kids who love the comedian Franco, friends with Seth Rogen, ‘Sal’ from Pineapple Express’, crazy, dumb ‘This is the End’ Franco will never read ‘Actors Anonymous. He has created his own infinite enigma and in that allows him complete artistic freedom. By perpetuating the various interpretations of these archetypes, the real Franco is able to continue to pursue everything he loves. The thing that separates Franco from being just another celbrity-instagram-hipster is his commitment to academia. That interpretation could well be plausible if he wasn’t currently doing his Doctorate. It is in his long list of academic credentials that you can rest assured there is something more grand and meaningful to all this. James Franco is the ultimate mystery, known by all but understood by no one. His life and career are his greatest installation yet. He is the painting we are all the brush.