James Franco - 30 Minutes

This man has always been an inspiration to me on so many levels. He's extremely attractive, extremely talented, and extremely intelligent. I mean this guy is just the epitome of extremity. I once read an article about him and it talked about how he takes his craft of acting extremely seriously. When he wants to prepare for a part he will literally do anything and everything he can to make it appear authentic, whether it be taking vigorous horse fighting classes or going to a gay club and leaving with two men to watch them have sex and snort cocaine. That truly speaks to the love, respect, and dedication he has for his art. But not only that, the man has studied at UCLA, taking some 60 credits at a time, and received all A's. He's now studying at both NYU for filmmaking and Columbia University for an MFA in writing. And I complain about my workload at Fordham??? AND...he has just been accepted to Yale's PhD program for English.

ANYWAY...there's a performance art piece going on at the MoMa that hopefully I'll be participating in later today. ONTD describes it as follows:

When Marina Abramovic concludes her piece, on May 31, she will have spent 716 hours and 30 minutes sitting down opposite a succession of more than 1,000 people, and counting. Where she sits, in the atrium on the MoMA's second floor, has to be the most overlooked area of the whole museum: while I waited, faces appeared, paused, and then vanished on balconies and at windows on each of the floors above. It goes something like this: Marina looks at you, you look at Marina, and hundreds of other people look at you and Marina looking at each other. The guy ahead of me in line, a burly, bearded man in a flannel shirt and work boots so unscuffed I took them for a fashion statement, had come to the MoMA four times and never succeeded in sitting down with her. (That day he'd cleared his schedule.) We talked about how we so rarely look at each other in daily life. When two adult strangers make eye accidental contact, we hasten to look away. "It's like we're scared of connecting," he said. It's a hard thing, to really see another person, and to be scrutinized yourself in return.

So what does all of this have to do with James Franco..well he spent 30 minutes gazing into this woman's eyes. There's something about that that just resonates with me. He was committing to something while doing that and it's something much deeper than just merely staring at someone's eyes. I'm not sure what exactly he was committing to but there was something going on inside of him physically, intellectually, and artistically. He's just so...I don't even know how to describe it but I would LOVE to have coffee with him and just talk about EVERYTHING. He just seems like such an interesting person.