Daily Archives: May 15, 2010

Art imitating life imitating art.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

For your consideration, this clip:

That’s James Franco from his recent turn in General Hospital. I wish I had time to watch soap operas because of that clip alone (which you’ll notice also features Marsha Thomason, who was Naomi in seasons 3, 4, and 5 of Lost) . It’s just so… weird. Wonderfully, fully weird in such a lively way. Everything about it is ridiculous and perfect and I highly suggest that you watch it. For some reason I couldn’t stop laughing at this line: “The woman in the photo is connected to an artist whose work I’ve come to admire,” and the delivery of it. Talk about a perfect combination of an actor with material, yes?

And how perfect is it that his character is simply named “Franco?”

Do you remember how bad Spiderman 3 was? If you said “No” to that, then I envy the fuck out of you. I’d rather watch my family die in a fire than watch that movie again… except for the roughly 20 minutes of the movie where James Franco’s Harry Osborn tries to get a soap opera revenge on Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker through Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson. That was like a lovely little gem of silly trash hidden deep in a pile of rotting shit set to showtunes.

Franco really is setting new heights for a dramatic actor of promise who’s made an equally impressive career out lampooning themselves brilliantly. I mean, this is a guy who’s played James Dean and Harvey Milk’s lover and also has done some tremendously hilarious stuff in the burgeoning new world of online comedic (viral) videos, as well as that perfect guest spot as himself in 30 Rock.

Never mind his college career and his interest in the performance art of Marina Abramović, which we linked to something about a few days ago, as well as others in the art community. And for every weird and highly varied thing he’s up to that I’ve mentioned here so far, there’s an equal number that I haven’t mentioned. Like, life imitating art, his upcoming art career.

Anyway, I remember hearing about James Franco doing a turn on General Hospital a few months ago and thinking that was genius after remembering that stuff from Spiderman 3, but I finally saw those clips today over at Tomorrow Museum when I saw the Mark Zuckerberg quote that I blogged about earlier.

The post there featuring James Franco is certainly an interesting one and has a great quote about Franco’s role on the soap opera…

…General Hospital’s “Franco” character is scripted like the writers have never met an artist, never gone to a gallery. It’s this fantasy element like the city itself. They might as well have dressed him in a beret and given him a French accent.

… and also contains this nice quote by China Miéville, the British author “Weird fiction,” which you find here:

The world is split into two different kinds of people. When I moved into my flat, we were having all our kitchen goods delivered. My then girlfriend got off the phone and said to me, “we need to stay in because the fridge men are coming.” The world is divided into those who hear that and think, “I need to be in because I’m having a kitchen delivery” and those who hear the word “fridge men” and immediately conceive of a kind of cyborg creature with a big open door in his chest and stopping arms and legs and kind of freezing demeanor—a fridge-man hybrid.

Beautiful. That quote is originally from here. And before we go, just a little more of James Franco on General Hospital, where he’s just doing the work of his career…

“There’s only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do.”

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Last week we were in the past and in the dark with vampires from an alien ocean and now we’re trapped both in the here and now in the freezing cold and in the future, in a dark and nasty happily ever after. Two realities, two dreams, and an impossible choice between the two with the wrong one leading to certain death…

Continue reading →

Identity crisis.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

“You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly. Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

-Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, quoted in an interview in David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect.

It’s an interesting thing to see Zuckerberg’s thoughts on this issue laid out so clearly, but in such a cardboard way. I get the feeling that he feels this is right and ethical and moral and is willing to stand by it and I wonder how much of an effect this will have on people’s already natural inclination to slide away from certain models of social networking for a certain period of time. Plus, it kind of ignores the point, I think, that “secret identities” is natural for people (not just super heroes) in a lot of cases. The person you are with your family at Thanksgiving dinner isn’t the same person you are with your boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other, and neither of those is necessarily the same person you are with your friends or within different groups of friends.

It’s natural for you to be different in different situations and amongst different groups. And not just natural, it’s nice. “Always be yourself” is perhaps not the greatest advice to give to someone who sucks, or who hates who they are. There’s times where, either out of stress or just because you can, it’s nice to say, “I’m going to be somebody else right now.”

I mean, in this day and age, who wouldn’t want to be their own evil twin if they could?

And, of course, nothing in our life is as private as we think it is or would like to think it is. That’s something you just have to accept. Though it’s not something you have to be happy with. But you still have to live your own life, and hopefully one you’re happy with.

Plus, it seems like move in certain patterns… At times, we strive towards authenticity, and then conversely, we seem to be running away from it.

Then again, I’ll admit a certain bias towards Facebook: I’ve never been all that impressed with it.

As something that seemed primarily started originally as a way to alert your buddies at college when the next party was going to be, I never quite understood the mass migration of people into it’s borders and I’ve never understood the way it’s continued to grow, or why features like Farmville have caught on. I guessed they’ve just never SuperPoked me in the right way. Also, I won’t lie, I originally joined to get “closer” to a girl I liked way back when, which is… stupid, but stupid in that way that you can really only appreciate in hindsight, sadly. I don’t know which was briefer and more fleeting, my interest in the girl or my “excitement” about using Facebook.

…which, that kind of thing, the article I linked to above goes into a little bit, that people love invading the privacy of others but hate it when their own is invaded, of course. So whenever Facebook reorganizes and becomes more open and transparent, then the complaints and protests grow, but so does the usage…

I get that when someone has an “online persona,” then those who try to get to know that person in some kind of “real way,” something at least seeming to appear authentic, can feel hurt or cheated in a way. That makes sense. Most of your magnetic, fascinating online people are probably quite boring in real life. That’s two different versions of them, and honestly, it has to do with which one is their medium, which arena they can thrive in. But the same thing can happen in life: You think you know something, then you learn new aspects about who they are, and you feel betrayed in a way. But really, that has more to do with you in some cases than them.

Mostly I’m just talking here, all of this fast and loose. It all has to do with the wildly contradictory aspects of human nature. Knowing everything there is about a person’s one true identity isn’t in the actualization of that notion, but in the approach, much like happiness is in the doing.

Just remember this: Everything is connected, and so is everyone, even if you don’t see all the links and the fibers and the knots. If you don’t, that’s okay. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t either (nor his wacky sister, I’m guessing). You don’t need to see them all. After I finish typing this, I’m going to hit the “publish” button and go be somebody else for a while. I’ll go for a jog, then maybe read a book, watch a movie (today’s is Michael Clayton), and probably watch Doctor Who later. After you finish reading this, you’ll close your internet browser and you’ll go be somebody else for a while too.