Recent Reads, 3/40: Actors Anonymous

Oy.

I have to preface what I’m about to say with the honest statement that I have a love/hate relationship with James Franco. Mostly that I love to hate him. I never had much of an opinion of him until recently. He’s just sooooo weird.
I love Freaks and Geeks, but he’s definitely not my favorite character. I’ve seen the Spider-Man movies, and I forgot he was even in those. He failed epically at hosting the Oscars. He’s in movies with Seth Rogen. He was in a soap opera.
He (famously) went to college. He directs movies. He’s an “artist”. He played Alien in one of my favorite movies (pretty much the only role I like him in), and all the actresses say he didn’t leave character. And now he writes.

A while ago, I saw the “trailer” for this book, Actors Anonymous: A Novel. It is one of the douchiest things I’ve ever seen. Is that how you spell that? It’s true. If you watch that, that’s all stuff from the book. If you think it’s awful…it is.

I was never interested in reading it, especially after that, but the eBook has been on sale for the Kindle for 1.99 for a while. I decided to use the last bit of a gift card for it. So, yay to not spending money on this garbage. But then I found out that I could’ve used the Kindle Lending Library and not paid a cent. Grrrr.

I don’t think this should even be considered a novel. Each chapter tells a different story, if it even tells a story.
Some are just lists of things that actors do or names or whatever bullcrap.
The stories are supposed to intertwine, but there are too many people and too many name changes to actually remember who was from which story.
But my FAVORITE part?
James Franco writes himself it. Both first person and, even better, third person.
That’s right. One of the stories in the “novel” (again, this shouldn’t be a novel, because this story doesn’t get referenced later on, unless I completely missed the link) is about a girl who lost her virginity to James Franco. Yes. James Franco wrote a story about a girl telling a story of losing her virginity to the actor with the “squinty eyed smile”, James Franco. WHO DOES THAT? WHO WRITES THAT WAY? NO. When he talks in the first person about himself, I don’t know if it’s supposed to be fictional when he does, he references movies he’s been in, his NYU classes, his family.
Why not just write a memoir?

Unlike my DNF issue, this book was so absurd that I actually couldn’t stop reading. I hated it.
Surely, the only reason it got published was because he is famous.
The worst thing about James Franco is that he KNOWS people are going to pay attention to him. I guess because he’s an actor. BLAH. I can say, right now, that I largely dislike him. But then he’ll probably do something to make me like him again, temporarily at least.

Here’s a clip of Colbert SERVING HIS ASS.