Author Topic: The James Franco Project Continues:What It’s Like To Be James Franco’s Professor  (Read 78150 times)

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Now that James is talking about Richard Prince, a favorite artist of Annie Proulx, perhaps somebody might like to look at what I wrote about him in the thread Time, String Theory and Everything.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/nyregion/04franco.html?_r=1&hp




James Franco Straddles
Two Roles at Yale

By LISA W. FODERARO
Published: March 3, 2011



James Franco, best known as an actor, is also pursuing a Ph.D. in English at Yale. He took a red-eye
flight from Los Angeles after co-hosting the Academy Awards with Anne Hathaway.




Mr. Franco and Anne Hathaway hosted the Oscars on Sunday.


On Sunday night he was in Hollywood, as co-host of the Oscar telecast in black tie. At 9 the next morning, he was in a Starbucks in New Haven, hunched over a book and barely recognizable in a gray sweatshirt, but still wearing his tuxedo pants.

James Franco, movie star, had rushed back on the red-eye to play his other big role: Yale doctoral student. By 9:25, he was at his seat in a seminar on medieval manuscripts. “I was surprised and delighted that he made it to class,” said Jessica Brantley, an associate professor of English. “He’s a dedicated student.”

Mr. Franco seemed to shrug off the bad reviews of what many in the national news media called an inert performance at the Academy Awards show. Yet later on Monday, he pounced on The Yale Daily News  for some mild criticism of his monosyllabic Twitter style, posting a message with an obscenity scrawled in red Photoshop paint.

Yale has had its share of screen-star students, including Jodie Foster and Claire Danes, who have walked a delicate line between visibility and aloofness. But by all accounts, Mr. Franco, 32, who arrived last fall as a full-time student in Yale’s Ph.D. program in English, has straddled the line like no one else — at once the retiring scholar and the focus of attention.

In campus interviews this week, several people said he had worked to keep his new role more of an intense character part than a lead.

“He’s very good at not attracting attention to himself and blending in,” said Michael Warner, chairman of Yale’s English department, whose graduate course on Walt Whitman Mr. Franco took last semester. “He goes down in his charisma, and he looks with thoughtful attention at the people around him and doesn’t display the Hollywood wattage.”

But Mr. Franco, who declined to be interviewed, has hardly escaped the glare of publicity. Student journalists chronicle his every move. Twitter messages breathlessly report sighting him in his habitual hoodie and shades. A student-generated blog, James Franco Has Fun, lampoons all things Franco, soliciting pictures of “James being a crazy dude.”

And the fascination is fed by Mr. Franco himself, a self-promoting — and often self-mocking — polymath who is a film director, screenwriter, painter, author, performance artist and actor, with several film projects under way. In addition to the Yale program, which could take several years, he is on track to earn a master’s degree in film from New York University this spring. (“It’s a full-time program,” an N.Y.U. spokesman said. “You can’t do it any other way.”)

Last year, Mr. Franco received a master’s degree in writing from Brooklyn College, and this semester he is co-teaching a course on film editing at Columbia College Hollywood, a private school in Los Angeles. It is called “Master Class: Editing James Franco — With James Franco.”

Even at Yale, home of overachievers, he stands out. He has found time to undertake a multimedia musical production with about four dozen undergraduates that will open on campus in April. He is listed as a producer, but has worked with students on all aspects of the show, “The Stargazer,” including casting, making script revisions and acting in the film elements.



James Franco answered questions from Yale students in
October after a screening of "Howl," one of his movies.



“We’re all really fascinated and awed,” said Cokey Cohen, the columnist at The Yale Daily News  who drew Mr. Franco’s ire. “To see someone who has what we all consider to have an ideal life — with a fun, successful career — to be voluntarily doing so much schoolwork all the time is both really admirable and something I can’t even comprehend.”

Dr. Warner said the actor’s academic ambitions were impressive. “We have had experience before with students pursuing parallel degrees,” he said, “although the scale of his obligations is something that we’ve never seen before — but who has?”

Among students, attitudes run the gamut, from indifference to curiosity to full-blown obsession. Ileana Lucos, 21, an environmental studies major, said she and her friends were on high alert for news of Mr. Franco’s whereabouts.

“Definitely, the girls are like, ‘Oh, my God, I just saw him!’ ” she said. At Yale, she explained, “you have politically famous or otherwise famous, but not like a movie star that is Hollywood famous.”

“I don’t know,” she continued. “There’s something about him that’s mysterious.”

Others have had enough. “It doesn’t make a difference to my experience here,” said Stacey Diaz, 22, who has a double major, in international studies and African studies. “I think it’s weird that people are so wrapped up in following his every move.”

For his part, Mr. Franco strikes a balance between staying “almost under cover,” as Dr. Warner put it, and indulging his fans. This week he posted pictures online from inside his room at the Study at Yale, a boutique hotel where he stays when not commuting to his apartment in New York.

At Atticus Bookstore Café, where he stops in a few mornings a week for coffee, the general manager, Ben Gaffney, said Mr. Franco usually took a table in the back, books in tow. “He doesn’t come in to socialize,” he said. “Girls go up and blush and giggle and say, ‘Hi.’ He just smiles and nods his head.”

Still, Mr. Franco is clearly not your average graduate student. Last semester, when he and Dr. Warner needed time to discuss a paper, Mr. Franco’s personal assistant helped arrange an unusual solution.

“The only time we could find time to talk was during a train ride from New York to New Haven,” said Dr. Warner, who splits his time between the two. “So I met him on Metro-North.”

Jorge Castillo contributed reporting from New Haven.
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline serious crayons

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I don't get you, James Franco del Mar.


Offline serious crayons

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ME (to 16-year-old): Did you hear that James Franco made it to class at Yale at 9 a.m. the day after hosting the Oscars?

SON: He's a dilligent boy.

ME: It's not so much that he made it across the country. Of course it's possible to get from LA to New Haven overnight. But it's that he thought it was that important -- he didn't use "I just hosted the Oscars" as an excuse to skip class.

SON: Mm-hmm.

ME: And did you know he's also earning a master's at NYU? A full-time program?

SON: An ambitious young man.

ME: Oh, and that during the same time he also starred in one movie, appeared in several others, wrote a book, had an art exhibit at --

SON: -- learned heart surgery, yadda yadda yadda!!! OK!!!!



Hmm. Do you think I might have overplayed the Franco card?  :laugh:



Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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ME (to 16-year-old): Did you hear that James Franco made it to class at Yale at 9 a.m. the day after hosting the Oscars?

SON: He's a dilligent boy.

ME: It's not so much that he made it across the country. Of course it's possible to get from LA to New Haven overnight. But it's that he thought it was that important -- he didn't use "I just hosted the Oscars" as an excuse to skip class.

SON: Mm-hmm.

ME: And did you know he's also earning a master's at NYU? A full-time program?

SON: An ambitious young man.

ME: Oh, and that during the same time he also starred in one movie, appeared in several others, wrote a book, had an art exhibit at --

SON: -- learned heart surgery, yadda yadda yadda!!! OK!!!!



Hmm. Do you think I might have overplayed the Franco card?  :laugh:

 :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:



Katherine, you are a good  Mom!


(Now, I have to run to meet my AutoCad II tutor at FIT--seriously, no joke--or I am going to be late! No tuxedo pants, though. My movie? My book? My song cycle cum art performance piece with Kalup Linzy? It's coming, it's coming, I'm sure of it!   ::) ::) ::) )
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Monika

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Has the Spiderman Musical opened yet? Otherwise, we knew who they should call...


and how about world peace? Eh, James?

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/03/watch_dave_franco_and_chris_mi.html

By: Kyle Buchanan
3/9/11 at 6:50 PM

Watch Dave Franco Seduce Christopher Mintz-Plasse Still, it'll take more than this for Dave to top his brother James when it comes to on-screen homoeroticism.


You're So Hot
Christopher Mintz-Plasse vs Dave Franco



"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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On the whole, I prefer James Marsden.  ;)
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/12/james_franco_at_yale_franco_s_professor_speaks_.single.html


What It’s Like To Be
James Franco’s Professor

His English professor at Yale reveals that the actor rarely missed a
discussion, even when filming in Detroit.

By R. John Williams
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2011, at 5:38 PM ET



What is James Franco like as a reader of scholarly work?
 

When I read that an NYU professor was allegedly fired for giving James Franco a “D,” I was shocked for several reasons. First, that any college could be so stupid as to fire a professor for not giving a good grade seems ridiculous, so much so that I imagine there will be an enormous burden of proof on the part of the accuser even if it is true. Second, I was shocked that James got a “D” for not attending class. I doubt that assertion shocked anyone else, since James is often written about as though he were coasting through the system, playing off the college “cred” he gets by enrolling in as many programs as possible. But I’ve been James’ professor, and it struck me as highly uncharacteristic for him to just “blow off class,” as several articles are suggesting.      

When I was assigned to be James Franco’s adviser in the English department at Yale, I was not exactly sure what to think. I was not on the admissions committee that had enrolled him, and to be perfectly honest, I’d never read anything he’d written. (I had, of course, seen a few James Franco films, but who hasn’t?) I am also fairly new at Yale, and so was not sure what sort of “advice” I could offer beyond, I guess, “study hard, and good luck.” When he came to my office, he was already deep into classes on Romanticism, Walt Whitman, and modern American literature. He had also just received an Oscar nomination. James’ personal assistant had called the day before to ask if I could meet in the afternoon, rather than the morning, since he had been invited onto the Colbert Report that day. I was flexible, and happy to accommodate, but remember feeling a little stunned at having to speak with one of my students in such a Hollywood manner—his people calling my people.

In any case, he looked exhausted, but was respectful, interested, and eager to find out more about how he could pursue his interests in both film and literature during his time at Yale. Directed reading is a fairly common practice in graduate school that allows small groups of students with more specific interests to pair up with a professor and read through a list of texts, more or less like a seminar, but with less lecture and more discussion. Over the next few months we agreed on the topic of film language and drew up a list of important texts on film history and theory all dealing with the question of film as a kind of language or grammar. Another graduate student, Matt Rager, also expressed interest in joining us, and so, last August we began meeting once a week to discuss our readings. [Read James Franco’s film language reading list.]

The catch was that this was also the semester that James was going to be in Detroit filming for the new Disney blockbuster Oz, the Great and Powerful, which meant he wasn’t going to be able to meet with Matt and me in New Haven. However, I didn’t feel comfortable carrying on a Ph.D-earning conversation over the phone each week, and so I told him he’d have to agree to take the time away from whatever he was doing (which just happened to be shooting a multimillion dollar film) and at least have a video conference call for several hours each week. Otherwise, it just wasn’t going to work. I would have expected as much from any other graduate student. He was more than happy to do so, and over the course of our reading I imagine he enraged more than one Disney executive in adhering faithfully to our scheduled “meetings.”

One week, however, the Oz shoot went over schedule and he was stuck on set. Rather than answering the texts from his personal assistant about the possibility of rescheduling, Matt and I carried on the discussion without him. Later, when James meekly offered to meet with me another time to make up the session, I declined and told him, “I respect your effort to test the boundaries of what is humanly possible within normal space and time, but this is one of those boundaries. You’ve got to meet when we agree to meet.” But that happened only once over the course of the semester and James was remarkably punctual to every other discussion. He always came prepared, and at one point even followed through on our scheduled meeting from Palo Alto where he was attending his father’s funeral. That’s right—he actually did the reading and scheduled discussion the same week his father suddenly died. "I'd still like to have the discussion," he said when I realized that he was preparing for a funeral and offered to postpone. "My dad was very proud that I was at Yale, so this is what he'd want." Blowing off class? I certainly would have blown it off under similar circumstances.  

I won’t pretend that it hasn’t been interesting, even thrilling, to be studying film theory with James Franco. When, for example, we were reading Jerome Christensen’s America’s Corporate Art: The Studio Authorship of Hollywood Motion Pictures,  it occurred to all of us that there was probably no better environment to see Christensen’s theory in action than on the set where James was currently working. So, for one of our weekly meetings, Matt and I flew to Detroit. (I paid for both tickets, since I didn’t want Matt to miss out and I didn’t feel right letting James pay for it.) Having studied film for so many years, it was breathtaking to see it happening on such a grand scale. Imagine six Costco-sized warehouses, each one fitted with enormous blue-screen walls and gigantic sets: yellow brick roads, emerald cities, poppy forests, flying monkeys, little people, and on and on.

So what is James like as a reader of scholarly work? I’ve often heard it expressed that he must be a mountebank, since no single person could be doing as many things as he does. How could he possibly be simultaneously reading for a Yale Ph.D and filming a multimillion-dollar motion picture? How could he possibly have time to write anything when he’s also teaching a class at NYU and starring so many films? I’ve wondered the same thing myself. But on that trip to Detroit, I learned a secret. People think that when you’re the star of a film, your time must be chock-full with endless minutia—appearances, conversations, getting “into character,” and so on. But when you’re the star, you end up just sitting around a lot. For a single shot to take place, for instance, a whole series of organized events have to be set in motion: The 3D crew has to gauge the shot, the cinematographer has to line up the camera, the lighting crew has to arrange its lights and shades, the set has to be rearranged or otherwise moved into place, the wardrobe and hair departments have to prepare the actors—and through all of this, the actor just sits and waits. In fact, actors will often sit and wait so for so long that “body doubles” will sometimes be hired just to sit and wait in the appropriate place for the actors. So when you see James’s character with his arm trapped under a rock in 127 Hours,  what you don’t see is that there was an assigned reading under the rock with it.  When he’s playfully wrestling with a genetically-enhanced chimpanzee in Rise of the Planet of the Apes,  just off to the right of the shot was a stack of books.

The truth is, if you’re an A-list Hollywood star like James Franco, and are willing to put the time into earning a Ph.D, you may actually have more time to read than many of your colleagues. Heck, you don’t even have to worry about the grocery shopping, laundry, and other sundry tasks that every other poor graduate student in the country has to worry about. After visiting Detroit, the thing I found myself wondering was not “How does James do it?” but rather “Why aren’t more Hollywood actors earning Ph.Ds?”

I’m no longer surprised, then, when James comes online for our chat and has not only done the assigned reading, but gone ahead and read a few extra texts as well, watched a few extra films, seen the DVD “special features,” and is prepared with several written pages on what we’re studying. So while a lot of actors turn to knitting, James Franco is becoming a scholar, and I suggest we take him seriously. Pay attention to that man behind the curtain. He’s doing a lot of reading.
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Wondering When the Schadenfreude Bus Arrives Dep't:


http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2012/01/james-franco-sold-his-first-novel.html

James Franco
Sold His First Novel

By Amanda Dobbins
Today at 6:00 PM




The busiest movie star-performance artist-writer-grad student-dreamboat in the business has apparently found time to attempt another literary opus. (Palo Alto,  is collection of short stories, was published in 2010 to less-than-enthusiastic reviews.) Franco has sold Actors Anonymous to Amazon's publishing division; the novel will reportedly be "a fictionalized version of Mr. Franco’s experiences as an actor." So not only do we get a new piece of Franco meta art to obsess over, but we also get to play the Blind Item game with basically every actor or director that Franco has ever worked with! There are gonna be some great angry boulder stories in this one, for sure.
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"