James Franco Wrote Something For the Paris Review and You Did Not
Hiring James Franco to write for your publication is essentially like posting a list of the twenty-five silliest cat pictures of all time—a gleeful, fuck-you admission that quality’s not really important, because think of the pageviews! And what a dehumanizing term, pageviews: You’re not attracting readers, you’re attracting numbers, and in James Franco’s case you’re attracting very young girls and then ten MFA programs’ worth of hate-readers. And I know the “think about all the other worthy writers” complaint doesn’t hold much water in this pageview culture, but really, for a second, think about all the other worthy writers: The rent this piece could’ve helped them make, the smiles this piece’s existence could’ve planted on their mothers’ faces. And of course “making mothers smile!” should not be an editorial consideration when hiring writers, but then again neither should “this person is famous, let’s hear what they have to say about Twilight!”
I mean, the piece reads in places like a padded, hastily written term paper for an undergraduate course in magazine writing: The same stilted phrasing (“But both use sex as a submerged theme while on the surface promoting a wholesome idea of family”), the same old hack critiques (barely!) disguised as cutting social commentary (MTV is bad, and also produces a television show called Jersey Shore! Twilight is not about vampires at all, it is about sex stuff!); I can see a professor rolling his eyes and writing in red pen, “too much plot summary. How do you feel about the films?” And really one more thing but why do you think that hot tub scene in About Schmidt was “grotesque,” James Franco? Because an old person was naked in it? Because I don’t think that was the point.
