There is a movie called AirBud, about a dog who can play basketball. Of course, I don’t need to tell you that, you’re probably already a fan. I mean, who could resist a tale about a young boy who adopts a homeless puppy, learns the dog is a wiz at human athletics, then teams up with the pup to win his high school’s basketball championship? It’s charming, it’s dramatic, it’s a story we can all relate to. In fact, there’s an entire series of Air Bud films: Air Bud 2, Golden Receiver (football pun); Air Bud 3, World Pup (soccer pun); and Air Bud 4: Air Bud Spikes Back (simultaneous volleyball and Star Wars pun). Sports fans still marvel at Bo Jackson, an athlete so gifted he could play professional baseball and football simultaneously – well, Bud can do all that AND lick his own balls. So, how about we start giving Bud the attention he is due, eh? Why am I telling you this? Because War Horse, the heart-tingling Hollywood epic that’s considered a favorite for a Best Picture nomination is Air Bud as interpreted by Steven Spielberg. And it’s about time everyone knows it.

The essential appeal to the Air Bud franchise is that there is a dog that can do things humans can do. War Horse is the same, exactly the same, in fact, except War Horse isn’t a dog, and Steven Spielberg can cast better supporting actors. War Horse is a tale about a young boy whose father buys a homeless horse (covering his tracks, Spielberg has changed Bud’s name to Joey), learns the horse is a wiz at gardening and human comprehension, then teams up with Joey to save his family’s farm. Sound familiar? Were the film in the capable hands of Air Bud director Charles Martin Smith, it would’ve ended there. But Spielberg being who he is, he had to push things. Not only does Joey save the farm, but he goes on to give a dying girl a reason to live, fight gallantly for both France AND Germany in the first World War, remind both sides of their humanity which no doubt results in the ultimate cease fire, have a (possibly gay) love affair with another horse, and ultimately return to his boy owner, now a man, and help him convince his taciturn father that it is OK to love. Can Joey shoot a free throw with his snout? We may never know. But that other stuff is pretty damn impressive.

Every scene in War Horse is built the same: create a scenario where an almost God-like person saves the day… then replace that person with a horse. It’s manipulative beyond belief, and at a certain point you wonder what might be left for this great horse to accomplish. Can he cure cancer? Perform a c-section of human twins? Present himself as a viable Republican candidate for the Presidency? These are the questions you expect from a movie about a dog playing sports (“The audience is gonna lose it when when Bud saves the winning goal with his tail!”) — but not from the guy who made Schindler’s List.

The most memorable example begins with Joey hauling missiles for the German army with his (possibly gay) horse mate, Topthorn. The two met when they were both serving in the French army, and remained close after being captured by the Germans. Sadly, Topthorn has contracted an unknown horse disease, and is having trouble pulling the missiles that the brutish Germans so insist upon moving about. When a particularly barbaric German tells Topthorn to get to the front of the cavalcade, Joey immediately stands up for (possibly gay) companion. He neighs, pounds the dirt, and does that thing where horses stand up on their hind legs and move their front hooves around in a circle. Joey convinces the Germans that he is stronger and more capable than Topthorn, and takes over the greuling lead role for his (possibly gay) partner. Topthorn returns to the back of the march where he can get some much needed rest. It’s heartwarming and of course, completely ridiculous. You could easily see this happening with a person. A brave, powerful person who’s heart was as strong as his back. Maybe Russell Crowe. Or Elizabeth Taylor. And that’s what makes the scene seem like such a good idea. We’d love to watch a human perform such a valiant act, imagine how great it would be with a horse! The exact same principle that was no doubt going through the Air Bud screenwriter’s mind as he scripted the final game-winning jumpshot as performed by a canine.

For this to work with a horse, however, Joey would have to speak human, speak German human, love another horse, be braver than pretty much every person alive, and be able to do that thing where horses stand up on their hind legs and move their front hooves around in a circle. It’s fun and all, but it’s also deeply formulaic. And manipulative. And cynical about the state of modern audiences. In short, it sucks. And it’s the sort of thing we accept from maudlin movies we let our kids watch while we’re making dinner, but not really the thing of celebrated Oscar contenders. We can still tell the difference, but I’m starting to get the feeling that maybe Steven Spielberg can’t.

It is only fair to point that War Horse was not Steve’s creation alone. It’s based on a children’s book (surprise, surprise), and its subsequent adaptation as a Broadway and London theater sensation. So there’s more than one person to blame. But just because they were doing it, doesn’t mean you had to too, Steven. In the end, I’m not sure what’s more disappointing, that a great director is adopting the approach of a preposterous series of children’s movies, or that he’s going to get an Oscar nomination for it. Am I going overboard? I thought maybe I was. That is until I read this Twitter review from one of today’s great critical minds…

Now I know it was crap for sure.

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It’s been 26 years since the Cheshire-grinning Ferris Bueller whisked away his rodeo jacket-tasseled girlfriend and perpetually angst-ridden best friend for a day out in Chicago, as brush-stroked by John Hughes, and certainly befitting the sausage king of the Midwest, Abe Froman. The day itself was a measuring stick for people who knew that another day spent lamenting amongst disinterested teachers and administrators with daily vendettas as if hot lunch items just wouldn’t cut it. Ferris Bueller taught children of the ’80s and ’90s that a day of fun wouldn’t be spent hot-boxing various rooms with ticklish vapors dubbed kush, crash, splash, dash or Westside OG. Rather, it would be spent absorbing the surrounding cultural flavor through a series of peripheral osmosis. The day off was so thoroughly complete that the trio of northshore explorers left the Windy City truly winded.

It’s easy to look back at yesteryear through sepia-toned eyes and think that what came before was inevitably better because nostalgia sticks to those memories like pinkelponkers do to liquidambar trees. While things in the past were simpler, new world amenities have made life easier for a generation that still plays hookie from work like it was third-period chemistry. But what exactly would Ferris Bueller’s Day Off look like if he took a mental health day in 2012?

The question isn’t “what are we going to do,” the question is “what aren’t we going to do?”

What he did: Took in a ballgame at The Friendly Confines.

What he’d do today: Set his fantasy baseball lineup.

The fantasy sports phenomenon has turned even the most fair-weathered fans into die-hards for the simple fact that they root for a win and loss result as opposed to statistical bukkake. It’s not enough anymore to attend a game and bask in the physicality involved with playing professionally. Instead, we expect these athletes to deliver timely hits and lights-out pitching performances so that our fantasy team can outplay a guy with a single syllable name from accounting in the first round of the playoffs. There was a time when “play ball” truly meant to “have a ball.”

What he did: Took part in a rousing rendition of “Twist and Shout” by The Beatles during the Van Steuben Day Parade.

What he’d do today: Look at videos of people covering “Twist and Shout” by The Beatles on YouTube.

It seems that more and more folks experience the world around them through a screen that is peppered with spittle from gut busting videos of people falling down and kittens so painfully cute that you want to bake them into a orange tabby custard. People consume life experiences in even tinier optical boxes than their predecessors, and children of the ’80s and ’90s were practically parented by the television.

What he did: Observed some of the great works of art at The Art Institute of Chicago.

What he’d do today: Leave anonymous comments on blog posts.

It seems only fitting that Ferris’ romp through Chicago included a visit to The Art Institute where he notably observed George Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, which depicted a leisurely day spent along the spearmint shores of the Seine. What made Ferris, Sloane and Cameron’s day so special is that while only teenagers, they weren’t oblivious to the great and wonderful things that had come before them. They didn’t despise things because they didn’t understand them. They didn’t loathe an image because they were shameful that they would never be able to create something like that for themselves. It was their humility that made them transcend being characters and turned them into real people. It seems the same can’t be said for many folks who take it upon themselves to police the internet with the intellect of a tumble weed and the sharp sting of a boot spur. Your opinion matters, but it shouldn’t matter all of the time.

Perhaps Ferris would even use his free time to become a spam emailer. Certainly he’d have more success than his Royal Highness Ibrahim Mbenga from Zimbabwe. Who wouldn’t open an email that was labeled, “SAVE FERRIS?”

What he did: Saw the city from spectacular heights.

What he’d do today: Get high and forget he cooked a Hot Pocket.

Anything is peaceful from one thousand, three hundred and fifty-three feet.

Big cities have the tendency to humble even the most braggadocio individuals with a swift kick to the rump. That’s what makes the survival that much sweeter when your old zip code is as distant in your mind as the thoughts of the individuals 1,353 feet below. It’s hard to imagine that a seventeen-year-old kid in today’s society would dare to think of others when those around them have fluffed their egos and turned them into medicated Adonises.

What he did: Swam in a complete stranger’s pool.

What he’d do today: Tended to an imaginary farm.

Ferris Bueller you’re my hero.

Triumphs in 2012 come in the form of being fictional, yet successful land baron/ baronesses where fatback output proves to be more valuable than real life or death decisions. Would Ferris react, or would he replant a bushel of rutabagas?

What he did: Ate a decadent lunch at ‘Chez Quis’.

What he’d do today: A hundred crunches so he’d have transcendent abdominal muscles.

A carb was nothing but a carburetor back in the 1980′s. Pie holes ran over with intricate sauces and abominable, ice cream mounds, unlike today, when people treat food like it’s been poisoned by Wesley from The Princess Bride. There are two type of people in the world: people who think about the food and people who think about how the food tastes.

What he did: Borrowed a red 1961 Ferrari 250GT California.

What he’d do today: Love his own car more than his friends and parents.

People have argued that there is perhaps a Fight Club/ Tyler Durden element to the John Hughes classic, where in Ferris is merely a figment of Cameron’s imagination. It seems only apropos to offer the following assessment: “the things you own end up owning you.” While it was the car that ate away at Cameron’s very essence in the ’80s, it’s the material nature at which we value our relationships in the present day that would lead one to believe that Mr. Bueller would love his things more than his living, breathing counterparts. As it turns out, Ferris Bueller would still very much need saving in 2012.

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

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image – Ferris Buellers Day Off

Less Than Zero (1987)

A novel that revels in and romanticizes the destructive nature of the rich, uninhibited youth of America.

Hollywood’s problems

(1) Teenagers on drugs, especially cocaine, ramble and are emotionally/ physically numb to the vast majority of human experiences despite their enthusiasm about discussing them, and when they witness something horrific, they either express underwhelming levels of disgust or try to photograph it, which, as a motif, would desperately frighten most viewers.

(2) Movies are a medium of passion. If there is no passion, there is no movie. This is what Hollywood thinks about a “true-to-the-zeitgeist intellectual tome documenting the depths of teenage confusion”: if there is no drama, we cannot sell it.

Hollywood’s solutions

(1) Hire actors who convey “numbness” and “drug addiction” convincingly, give their characters just enough emotion to appear to feel shame regarding their lecherousness, and allow this shame alone to drive the plot.

(2) Completely wipe away any semblance of realism by working the quantitatively daunting character count down to five and do not, do not, involve homoeroticism, except in the context of the warm-hearted anti-hero giving BJs for crack, because Gays are frightening.

What we got

_____

American Psycho (2000)

A novel about a demented, homicidal one-percenter who brutally kills people or just elaborately daydreams about brutally killing people. How might Hollywood adapt this meditation on Shakespearean evil for the screen?

Hollywood’s problems

(1) Hollywood is primarily made up of demented, homicidal one-percenters who don’t want their clandestine fantasies revealed to the public.

(2) If this movie is perceived to be a commentary on white-collar psychology (and you for one are not sure whether or not the book is), then this movie could have lasting negative repercussions with the public perception of the concept of “businessmen” and possibly scar the genres of both magical realism and horror in a way that will drive the public to solely desire escapist science fiction for the duration of cinema’s existence.

Hollywood’s solutions

(1) Form a highly unstable human being out of plastic and out-of-control enthusiasm and program him to be the main character, so that empathy is impossible and the audience can easily compartmentalize what they are watching and what their actual thoughts on serial homicide are.

(2) Play the “it’s all just a dream” card.

What we got

_____

The Rules of Attraction (2002)

A book that ignores contemporary ideas of narrative structure. It’s about three college kids: an amoral, suicidal everyman; a guilt-ridden, potentially suicidal, severely lovesick everygirl; a Gay. They attend an Ivy League school, and haphazardly experience promiscuous, mind-altering, and yet somehow, to them, mind-numbingly boring events in a hyper-reality where college is literally just about testing the limits of how messed up you can get.

Hollywood’s problems

(1) A Gay is a primary character. In the early ’00s, is it “hip” to be gay yet?

(2) The Western World desperately needs their teenage population to believe college is about discovery and a sense of securing one’s eternal destiny, not sampling every possible human experience to the point of entering a vortex of eternal horror, which in many ways is the primary substance college provides.

(3) The broken nature of the plot structure would have to be something like a sequel to Memento, or maybe a two-hour, three-wheeled, alternating zoetrope, which is just not marketable in a Hollywood, multi-million dollar business venture sort of way.

Hollywood’s solutions

(1) Hire three beautiful people to act. Have their characters be “searching for something” and wondering when the drug and sex cyclone will end.

(2) Make The Gay kind of the bad guy and the suicidal everyman kind of like Clark Kent, and… yeah, just make Memento II. With sex scenes, we need those, just not gay ones. Okay, maybe one gay one.

(3) Concretize the story in a way that results in a sense of solidarity between these “lost young adults” and sets up for a drawn-out reconciliation in an idyllic setting. Maybe give them some capacity to “move past” this endless cycle of destruction, because we don’t want the suicidal everyman to be every man and woman who walks out of the theater.

What we got

_____

The Informers (2008)

A series of vignettes about severely depressed Angelinos on various tiers of the economic totem pole, and a vampire. Given Hollywood’s track record and BEE’s unquestionably cemented place in postmodern history, can they decipher this? Can Hollywood somehow milk a coherent narrative out of it?

Hollywood’s problems

(1) Vampires aren’t “in” yet, so there’s no way Hollywood’s going to risk trying to explain that through story development. He’s out.

(2) The book is set in the eighties and references all kinds of period concerns and pop culture nuances. What were the eighties?

(3) It’s finally “in” to make a movie sans drama, the independent market is flooded with them. But how do you get people in the theater if the plot is driven by establishing and then immediately disintegrating what would normally set up “plot,” followed by three-to-five minute long meditations on “white people problems” that then resolve in terminal bleakness?

Hollywood’s solutions

(1) Hollywood puts together an impregnable team of beautifully vapid A-list actors. Money in the bank.

(2) Ray Bans! Naked People! Synthesizers! Movie Stars! Drugs! Polyamory! (Subtly inferred) AIDS! Ladies and gentlemen, the ’80s, but like… in the ’00s, but it’s the ’80s! It’s so postmodern it’s crazy!

What we got

_____

Glamorama (????)

A throw-away novel about the fashion industry and espionage that’s more an experimental, masturbatory meditation on popular culture. Whatever.

Hollywood’s potential problems

(1) The idea of Glamorama as a movie is hilarious.

(2) The book is not hilarious.

Hollywood’s potential solutions

(1) There are no solutions.

(2) Ben Stiller needs ideas. Ben Stiller is hilarious. Zoolander.

What we got?

_____

Lunar Park (????)

There are no plans to make a movie about this book — BEE is living this book. This book is his life. Does he have a camera? Can we take part in the horror of BEE?

_____

Imperial Bedrooms (????)

A sequel to Less Than Zero.

Hollywood’s potential problems

(1) The actors are old. Specifically, Robert Downey Jr. has moved past his “drug-addled Loki” typecast phase. Would he even be willing to botch another poorly-interpreted iteration of Julian?

Hollywood’s potential solutions

(1) You don’t do it. You stop writing. Everything is right with the world.

(2) Impending doom.

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image – Name Your Link

1. The Descendants

Did you ever worry that you were dead inside? That a MacBook Pro lived where your heart should be? No worries! If you watch Alexander Payne’s new film, The Descendants, you’re bound to feel something. It’s a film that’s nothing but emotions! It’s about a man who has just found out his wife is cheating on him. He would confront her about it, but oops she’s in a coma! Instead, he just has to yell at walls and his children to get the aggression out. It’s not an enviable position to be in. Nope. I would not be jealous of George Clooney… for once.

Alexander Payne has a knack for making films that are so real and raw that they often feel like documentaries. The Descendants is no exception. There are no explosions, nudity or drugs. It’s relatively quiet, which makes the big “a-ha!” moments all the more powerful. And there’s no happy ending tacked on at the end either. The message is defiantly realistic: Families are screwed up and there’s a lot of resentment next to all the love. Ah, how refreshing!

2. Shame

In all honesty, I’m not sure if I even liked Shame but it stuck with me for days afterwards, which is a lot more than I can say for most films. Everyone’s talking about it because it has an NC-17 rating and, even though there’s a lot of sex and penis in this film, it’s never actually sexy. There is no joy in the sex that Michael Fassbender’s character has. On the contrary, it’s pure misery. It’s a very American thing to do — make a movie about sex and show no joy coming from the act. Sometimes I think our collective head would explode if we showed promiscuity without consequence. What a novel idea! In any event, seeing the agony attached to something that is supposed to bring you ecstasy is interesting. Plus, Michael Fassbender’s dick is huge. So bye.

3. Young Adult

Let me say something upfront. This movie isn’t perfect. In fact it’s quite flawed but somehow the film manages to make that work in its favor. Charlize Theron does an amazing job playing a female character who’s downright unlikeable. It’s a revolutionary concept actually — creating someone who has a vagina with few redeeming qualities — but screenwriter Diablo Cody goes for it in her third feature film, Young Adult. Imagine if the lead character, Mavis, was deplorable and didn’t look like a supermodel. Now that would be truly progressive! But we’re not there yet as a society so in the meantime, we must swallow the bitter pill that is Charlize Theron acting like a narcissist. Patton Oswalt does an amazing dramatic turn as a handicapped nerd and Patrick Wilson plays a DILF so, yeah, go see it. You will have an opinion about it no matter what. Guaranteed reaction!

4. We Need To Talk About Kevin

I haven’t seen this yet but everyone is losing their minds over it so I figured I should include it. The premise seems interesting. A couple raises a boy who turns out to be a murderer and they’re like, “What? Didn’t see that one coming.” This idea that you could give birth and raise someone who becomes a monster seems intriguing. What if you legitimately are afraid of your child? Are you allowed to hate who they are? Some interesting ideas going on in this little indie. Plus, Tilda Swinton is God.

5. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Based on the Jonathan Safran Foer novel of the same name, the title of this film irks me but I’m looking past it because I legit tear up every time I see the trailer. From the looks of it, it just seems to be about a young boy running around New York City while laughing, screaming, and crying, but whatever. I’m sold. Sold and already sobbing.

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It’s that time of year, when all of us are forced — via that deceptively celebratory title of “Year’s Best” — to realize how poorly we’ve spent the last eleven months. No one cares that you made it through 928 pages of Murakami’s latest in just a week (or built an impressive 2% of bicep muscle from holding it up), It’s December, pal, so you if you haven’t already listened to every album released in 2011, and previewed a few coming out in 2012, just move to the back, like Stone-Ages back, because you’ve lost your right to participate in the modern human race. Talk about a Homo Neaderthalensis.

“Best of” Lists are to December what mosquitoes are to August, but unlike the panic-inducing insect, no one wants to get rid of the “Best of.” Instead, they feed them, passing them around to their friends, acting aghast when the most fringe author/ artist/ television show has been left out, but smiling in smug recognition at any item that matches up to a notch on their own belt.

I can say this because I do it every year. For a former yearbook editor and perpetual sentimentalist, an annual pass to let my gaze linger backwards long enough to read a 10-point list is better than any gift that could be shoved at me this month. Suddenly my personal mantra to never forget about anything has a culturally-sanctioned purpose. Hallelujiah, indeed.

Perhaps it’s time we stop letting our self-worth be so easily bought and realize what these lists are actually doing. Because they’re not just another page in the adults’ arts and culture yearbook, open for drawing hearts or a million arrows with the word “Hot!” in neon markers. Not anymore. They are cleverly packaged, taste-monopolizing guilt trips that, when properly delivered, make you wonder why you even bothered with trying to seem cultured this year.

I thought we were supposed to be busy gazing at our own navels and adding a lowercase “i” in front of every device we use. Since when did we let other people start deciding what’s best for us?

I’d like to reclaim the year-end best-of lists to give equal weight to everything that could have been important to someone this year. Lists that are as much about the best books we’ve read as they’re about the best books we read halfway, but pretended like we’d read all the way through when people ask us at parties. Just because you missed all of the films Roger Ebert believes were humanly impossible to miss, you must have done some things this year that are worth thoughtfully piling into a ranked list.
Why not stick your heel into authoritarianism and start thinking for yourself? To start, here are some lists you might want to think about:

The Best Tumblrs to make you feel like you’re doing something better with your life than the person who started them

The Best Photos taken on days you called in sick to work and made your friends jealous because you actually went to the movies and ate ice cream instead

The Best Horrifying Craigslist Ads you responded to

The Best Meltdowns to occur after responding to horrifying Craigslist ads

The Best TV Episodes that hinted at, nay, begged to be rewritten by you in your journal

The Best Concerts you would have gone to had you not fallen asleep and slept through your friend’s phone calls

The Best Friends you lost after buying a book they recommended, hating it, and telling them you hated it

Of course, I’d be wrong not to mention the other purpose of these ”‘Best of’ lists, which is to leave future generations with a time capsule of what could be considered some of the highest artistic achievements of the year, to perpetuate any fragment of collective consciousness that may exist, for our own narcissistic posterity. See, I knew that navel-gazing would find its way back in here.

So someday, inquiring young minds spelunking the deepest hidden layers of the Internet will be able to discover the top nipple slips of 2011 as well as the best fiction published that year. That’s some deep King-Tut’s-tomb sh-t.

Crap. Just got an email about the Top Ryan Gosling Moments of this year. Yeah, I’m gonna feel bad missing that one. Who’s up for choosing favesies from that list and calling it a year?

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1. Zooey Deschanel – highly profitable child-like sense of wonder + British-accented HPV = Katy Perry
2. Asher Roth – hair = Mac Miller
3. Britney Spears – rehab + (glitter x Jack Daniels) = Ke$ha
4. Adele + absolutely no sense of restraint over vocal wailing and show-boaty high notes = Christina Aguilera
5. Mariah Carey + terrible life choices – Nickelodeon-approved husband = Whitney Houston
6. Michael Fassbender + the vague sense that this man would kill you silently in your sleep if given sufficient reason = Viggo Mortenson
7. Michael Cera + 50 years + an overly eager support of the adoption process = Woody Allen
8. Lance Bass – life behind the eyes + a 74-hour work day = Ryan Seacrest
9. Daddy Yankee + (CULO! x MUJERES!) = Pitbull
10. Lil Kim – demure, restrained conservative attitude = Khia
11. Kanye West – the last semblance of self-awareness he has about what a massive tool he comes off as = Tyler the Creator
12. Young Will Smith – charm + (Canadian inoffensiveness x the assumption that anyone cares if he banged Nicki Minaj or not) = Drake
13. Kim Kardashian – everything that makes Kim Kardashian even remotely interesting + spawn = Kourtney Kardashian
14. Madonna + exploitation of sociopolitcal movements – a pornographic coffee table book, though we know that’s only a matter of time = Lady Gaga
15. Celine Dion – incredibly creepy husband/ father figure – charming French Canadian bilingualism + incredibly irritating song named after you = Barbara Streisand
16. Marilyn Manson – intelligence + (Faygo x meth) = ICP
17. Reese Witherspoon – cuteness + anti-depressants = Kirsten Dunst
18. Johnny Depp – pretentious pseudo-Eurotrash thing + British accent – any semblance of talent = Orlando Bloom
19. Glenn Beck + the slightest bit of control over political tears/ self-righteousness = Keith Olbermann
20. Luke Wilson + that scene in Brady Bunch where Marcia got hit in the face with a football in the back yard = Owen Wilson

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Hello. I’m James Franco. …Or am I? Yes. …I’m James Franco.

I’m James Franco. The internationally renowned actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author, painter, and performance artist. I also teach a class at NYU about transferring poetry to film, James Franco-style. Did you know that? …Have you read my critically acclaimed first book of short stories, Palo Alto: Stories by James Franco? I was in Spider-Man 3 and 127 Hours. I’m James Franco. I might be gay or maybe not, because I’m James Franco. I make performance art out of dildos. If you like, you can pay me twenty dollars for a piece of paper describing a piece of art that I have imagined, or, if you’d like to pay $10,000, I will provide you with a lifetime supply of fresh air. For I am James Franco and through me, all is possible.

Whoa, it’s getting kind of Franco all up in here, am I right?

Did you see me hosting the 83rd annual Academy Awards along with Ann Hathaway? …That wasn’t me. I would never host the Academy Awards, c’mon. That was my twin brother, Frames Janco. We’re everything alike, but we have nothing in common. He has a mustache, but I do not. Frames Janco is secretly one of the richest and most evil men in the world, but I am not. I am James Franco, but he is Frames Janco. …Beware. He was thrown in jail in Tennessee. He robs old ladies for their lunch money. Watch out for Frames Janco.

Here’s a poem that I wrote:

ming up his photo shoot’s thesis, Franco added, “Having sex with dolls with plastic dicks is f-cking great, because you get to examine that act without the onus of people just looking at it and saying ‘That’s pornography.’” Thus satisfied th

I AM JAMES FRANCO

…What’s that? An egg.

By the Brothers Boot it smells fresh.

I am James Franco.

I am the alpha and omega.

I am a gnat.

I am the dog urinating in the corner.

I am every god and hero from the first crack of time.

Where I am not, am I not, but when I am not

People should stand with their arms spread wide

Saying “Where’s James Franco?”

And so on.

…How was that? Good, right? Here’s a joke: I’m not really James Franco. My real name is Oliver Miller, and I’m an underemployed writer living in Pennsylvania. I’m 6’1″, 175, blue eyes, red-blond hair. …What’s that that you’re saying. That’s not true? That’s impossible? Anything is possible, or it would be, if I was James Franco.

Hey. Look behind you. No, I promise you that I’m not messing with you. I know that you’re reading this on the computer, but what’s that, right over your shoulder. Behind you. No, seriously, you’ve got to look behind you right now.

Haaa. I was just kidding. There’s nothing behind you. So, anyway, here’s a real joke:

–Knock, knock.

–Who’s there?

–James Franco is not there, man.

Funny!

No, but I could never fool you. You saw right through me, didn’t you? I am James Franco. Oliver Miller is an alter-ego who doesn’t exist. He is nothing, I am something. Did you know that I used to date Marla Sokoloff, my co-star from the film, Whatever It Takes? I’m the new face of Gucci. I make performance art out of old episodes of Three’s Company. Some of these things are true, some are not. …To play James Dean, I went from a non-smoker to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. We’re working on a film made entirely out of my tears. We’re going to press my tears, dry them, and mount them on celluloid. I’m James Franco. Look into my eyes; my dreamy-weamy brown eyes. My hair exists. Would you like to buy some of it, some clippings from my hair? You cannot.

Know that when you lie there, sleeping comfortably in your bed, that I’m out there, somewhere, being James Franco. …I don’t sleep; I can’t sleep. This city needs me. So I’m out there, Franco-ing it up; running over rooftops, running, jumping, stumbling, fighting crime like I only know how. …I’m not the hero you want; I’m the hero you deserve. For I am… James Franco. 

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“Passionate indifference” is a phrase I’ve been passionate about for a while now.  It came to me first after first watching Pulp Fiction.  Here is a film that is cold, that seems to enjoy a casual brutality.  We may  feel for John Travolta but he gets shot, as an aside, while taking a shit. Uma Thurman takes a syringe to the heart. “Flock of Seagulls” is shot mid conversation.

And yet the film itself is absolutely passionate — every scene brims not with pathos but with vim, with verve, with vigor. It has a certain indifference to the plight of this or that character and an indifference to our identification.  The film gives us something else: the passion of film making, the passion of the event, the passion of a humanity that is not mired in bathos but in the very flow of the world — or at least of the moving image.

The best of nature shows and nature commentators speak with passionate indifference. Nature, after all, is neither kind nor brutal: it just is.  There is such intense drama — the large cat taking down a gazelle, hungry polar bears bearing the burden of an infinite winter, flora fighting for survival. And yet nature is absolutely, mercilessly, indifferent.  We can hear this in the voice of the great nature documentaries we know so well thanks to PBS.

And we see it in the great new book by Matthew Deren, “A Forgotten Wilderness: Nature’s Hidden Relationships in West Central Idaho.” You can see this passionate indifference in the sub-title: the hidden relationships.  For this is what Deren finds: a world that brims with ever-shifting relationships between animals, weather, insects, flora, man.  There is no good or bad.

The ancient Native Americans, Deren tells us, came to the New World, found it over run with large beasts — mammoths and saber tooth tigers — and slaughtered them all in a matter of a thousand years or so. This, in turn, gave way to different environment where food was to be found in more elusive forms of deer and plants.  Which, in turn, gave way to a culture of humility and interconnectedness.

Now, this is a beautiful argument. And one we are tempted to judge, to read through a moral lens. But Deren doesn’t do that: to him, it — nature — and a nature that includes man — is simply, or not so simply, an ever shifting set of relationships.  These may not always be obvious unless you know how to look. His book teaches us to see everything — the berries and birds and beasts — with passionate indifference, with an unbounded love and respect but utterly free of moral judgement, of bathos, of cloying human sentimentality.

There is a certain coldness that is, in fact, sizzling hot.  It is cold to the insularity of humanity and its self-absorbed sense of self. This perspective grasps the bigger picture: man as one beast amidst the beasts, amidst the fray.  And as our gaze takes in these “hidden relationships” that teem, we experience a surge, a vitality, a passion — a passion that is indifferent to the bullshit and utterly alive to life.

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Dong shots! No two words in the English language thrill me more, except maybe band entrance and Japanese steakhouse.

Remember when action movies always had that one scene where the anti-hero cries into his refrigerator, or gun, or eight ounce glass of whiskey over his dead dog, or wife, or kid? And remember how in these scenes said anti-hero would usually be without pants and have an ass like Michelangelo’s David?

Those scenes were put there for women like me. That’s what got women like me out of the house to see some crappy action movie we would have avoided otherwise. I remember watching To Live and Die in LA and just about fainting during a scene offering a full frontal view of William Petersen’s ‘situation’. Who among us hasn’t been at least a little curious about the cut of Gil Grissom’s jib? And there it was in all its glory.

I realize an unsheathed penis on film is usually an NC-17 rating and that means most theaters will refuse to run your movie, but is that really sensible? Don’t most of us see wangs on a daily basis, either your own or a loved one’s? Will the world end if you see a comely young actor’s package flopping around? I don’t have many causes, but I think I just might take this one up.

When I tell men about my desire to see more actors whipping it out, many come back with objections, the main one being shrinkage. It’s probably cold in that studio, and nerve-wracking too, with all those key grips and burly work men watching you cavort with some actress in her physical prime, biting into hot dogs from the craft service table, saying, ‘What’s the big deal?’ That dong shot will live in infamy, either getting you laid for the rest of your life or laughed at and pitied.

But fear not, cock lovers, for there is a milky white light at the end of this flesh tunnel. British director Steve McQueen’s impending film, entitled Shame and probably named for how all those boyfriends and husbands are going to feel after viewing it with their ladies, is slated to be a tour de force of Michael Fassbender’s brick house body.

The story surrounds a sex addict (because when I think of sex addiction I think of young Magneto, not some slob jerking it into a paper bag at a red light) and his increasingly risky behavior due to his insatiable libido. Sure it’s a drama, but who cares? I’m going see Michael Fassbender’s manhood! Leave it to art films to provide that which Hollywood lacks. Next on the agenda, balls. Look for one or both of them in a theater near you.

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Robin Hood: Somehow, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were for a little more wealth distribution. You probably voted for Obama, you might really identify with Occupy Wall Street, and you get violently angry when you watch (or even think about) the film Inside Job. That, or you think dancing, British woodland creatures are so adorable it hurts.

Tarzan: Not only did Tarzan come at an incredibly important moment (where you were sure to get the N*SYNC version of Trashin’ the Camp as well as the movie one), Tarzan made you think about a lot of really tender family things. You may have seriously considered adoption, wondered why there are so many white guys with guns being total dicks in Disney movies, and appreciated how big Jane’s butt was. You probably identified with Jane quite a bit, let’s be honest, and now Phil Collins and jungle skateboarding hold an extremely special place in your heart. That jungle skateboarding, depicted as so deceptively effortless, left you with the thought, “Hey, that looks totally do-able! I should go into the woods behind my house and slide down some branches this afternoon! BYE MOM!”

Freaky Friday: Sometimes you think about how cute Lindsay Lohan was, how much was just going right for her, and how much potential lay ahead of her…and then you get really, really sad and have to sit down for a minute.

Beauty and the Beast: First and foremost, you love yourself some books. Some people have porn, you have that scene where Beast reveals to Belle the library that he is now giving over to her, as he knows it’s what she would love more than anything in the world. No human being will ever romantically live up to you in your life now, as no one will be able to present you with an 8,000 square-foot Baroque library in the middle of a French castle to use at your discretion. You also have a soft spot in your heart for provincial France, Stockholm Syndrome, teacups with tiny chips on their rim, and furniture that springs to live to give you fabulous dating advice. Essentially, when you dream and go to that happy place, you are Belle.

Newsies: From now, likely until the end of time, you will see Christian Bale in movies being so super serious and acting really, really hard and you’ll just be like “LOL come on put on your cap and sell some papers you silly billy.”

Homeward Bound: Though you fully accept that Milo and Otis will forever be the gold standard when it comes to the brief-but-culturally-important “Lost, Anthropomorphic, Ragtag Animals On A Crazy Journey Back To Their Suburban Owners” genre (and you had better), you still have a tender spot for Homeward Bound. You may have shed a tear or two over that golden retriever, and no one would ever judge you for it.

James and the Giant Peach: It’s safe to assume you love all things Roald Dahl, because let’s be honest, those that didn’t grow up reading that Svengali of Touching British Wisdom’s works just…doesn’t get it. And they’ll never get it. They can’t appreciate things as nuanced, as culturally important, or as delightfully whimiscal as the Peach. If this is your movie, you are way into reading, you knew how to pronounce “Roald” at 7, and nothing terrifies you more than the thought of cloud rhinos coming down and eating your family one idle Sunday afternoon.

Flubber: You don’t care what critics say, poorly CGI’d balls of green Jell-O and Robin Williams will always have a special place in your heart.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Umm, essentially you had balls of steel at 8 years old if this was your Disney film of choice. You’re like, “Whatever, I’m totally into physical deformities, racial profiling, genocide, religious corruption, repressed sexual desire, murder, blackmailing, and the general horror that was medieval France. I get it.” You straight up watched a super-religious Lord lock a family in a house and set it on fire–FIRE–in the interest of squishing their race out like ants, and you were like “This movie is for me.” Hats off to you, sir, because even as a 22-year-old woman, this movie makes me sad inside. I watch it, and I love it, but I have my super serious face on and spend most of the movie shaking my head.

Jungle 2 Jungle: You saw this movie and were like, “God has given me another Johnathan Taylor Thomas. God is good.”

The Princess Diaries: I assume it’s all of you people that really liked this mediocre-at-best film that’s keeping Anne Hathaway so steadily employed. Know that I’m putting the blame on your shoulders. And I know you’re like, “But she was phenomenal in Rachel Getting Married!” And I’m just like, “Feh. She’s no Streep.” And you’re like “But she has a really consistent body of work.” And I’m like, “She is okay. But let’s put down the Princess Diaries Crack Pipe and stop pretending she’s the next Helen Mirren.”

The Incredibles: You are very adept in recognizing this movie as the best Pixar movie, hands down. Get at me, Wall-E fans, get at me.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Let me guess, you like saying “Why is the rum gone?”, corsets, sword fights that last for about thirty years too long, and Johnny Depp swaying back and forth for an hour or so at a time. In all seriousness, though, the one thing that can be gathered about die-hard PotC fans is that they love–nay, they live for–quoting the hell out of this movie at any and all times (when it was not terribly funny to begin with).

George of the Jungle: You don’t take life too seriously, you don’t need Brendan Fraser to be this generation’s Marlon Brando to appreciate his appeal, and you love funny movies about bananas and a beautiful, beautiful, mostly naked man.

Up: That silent scene, that quiet little five minutes with the soft piano music behind it, changed you in a way you don’t know if you understand yet. You remember everyone–everyone–in the theater crying, holding hands, and being totally unashamed about it. Up made you feel something so real it’s almost uncomfortable, and showed children something many adults aren’t ready to acknowledge. You will remember Up for the rest of your life.

Aristocats: You’re a terrible, terrible human being.

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image – James and the Giant Peach (Special Edition)