James Franco Reads 6 Short Poems from His New Collection

James Fran­co, like Ethan Hawke before him, is one of those movie stars who gets bashed left and right for dar­ing to behave like any oth­er arty young man. How dare he think he can write a nov­el, or paint, or make short films? What a pre­ten­tious idiot, right?!

I would counter that these activ­i­ties out him as a pas­sion­ate read­er who cares deeply about art and movies.

His celebri­ty opens doors that are barred to your aver­age arty young men, but it also ensures that he’ll be scape­goat­ed with­out mer­cy. (An arty young man of my acquain­tance earned some nice pub­lic­i­ty for him­self per­form­ing a one-man show titled “Bring Me the Head of James Fran­co, That I May Pre­pare a Savory Goulash in the Nar­row and Mis­shapen Pot of His Skull.” )

I rarely feel sor­ry for celebs who tweet their wound­ed feel­ings, but I was rather moved by Franco’s poet­ic take on what it’s like to be on the receiv­ing end of all this vit­ri­ol. It’s the first of six poems he reads in the video above, when he shared the stage with his 74-year-old men­tor Frank Bidart, who no doubt enjoyed per­form­ing to a sold out crowd of 800. Franco’s debut poet­ry collection’s title, Direct­ing Her­bert White owes some­thing to Bidart. His poem, “Her­bert White,” is the inspi­ra­tion for a short film direct­ed by Fran­co.

Those who would con­sid­er all that just more evi­dence of Franco’s insup­port­able pre­ten­tious­ness should con­sid­er the oppos­ing view­point, cour­tesy of non-movie star poet Bidart, who told the Chica­go Tri­bune:

 “I’m almost 75. At some point you know the para­me­ters of your life. The ter­ri­fy­ing thing about get­ting old­er is the feel­ing that every­thing that hap­pens from now on will be a species of some­thing that has already hap­pened. Becom­ing friends with James changed that: I no longer feel I can antic­i­pate the future. Which is lib­er­at­ing.”

Per­haps all that fran­tic, cross-media cre­ative expres­sion can result in some­thing more than a snarky one-man show.

Because

Because I played a knight,
And I was on a screen,
Because I made a mil­lion dol­lars,
Because I was hand­some,
Because I had a nice car,
A bunch of girls seemed to like me.

But I nev­er met those girls,
I only heard about them.
The only peo­ple I saw were the ones who hat­ed me,
And there were so many of those peo­ple.
It was easy to for­get about the peo­ple who I heard
Like me, and shit, they were all fuck­ing four­teen-year-olds.

And I holed up in my place and read my life away,
I watched a mil­lion movies, twice,
And I didn’t under­stand them any bet­ter.

But because I played a knight,
Because I was hand­some,

This was the life I made for myself.

Years lat­er, I decid­ed to look at what I had made,
And I watched myself in all the old movies, and I hat­ed that guy I saw.

But he’s the one who stayed after I died.

You can see James Fran­co and Frank Bidart’s Chica­go Human­i­ties Fes­ti­val appear­ance in its entire­ty here. Find more poet­ry read­ings in the poet­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Fran­co Reads a Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

James Fran­co Reads Short Sto­ry in Bed for The Paris Review

Lis­ten to James Fran­co Read from Jack Kerouac’s Influ­en­tial Beat Nov­el, On the Road

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a  Freaks and Geek diehard who gets all her Lohan-relat­ed intel from the poet­ry of James Fran­co and  d‑listed. Fol­low her@AyunHalliday