James Franco can’t catch a break. Despite his acting accolades, the
would-be Renaissance man is often dismissed as more of a hipster dilettante,
stumbling at everything he attempts outside
of acting. The New York Times excoriated him
for his “excruciatingly sophomoric poems,” “entitled narcissism,” and “confused
desperation” in pursuit of the visual arts. Acculturated’s own RJ Moeller skewered
him as a morally suspect pseudo-intellectual. But I’m going to stick up for him
for another reason.
Franco left college at 18 and launched a successful acting
career. But eight years later in 2006, weary of that narrow (for him) focus, he
enrolled in the English department at UCLA. “When I went back,” Franco explained in a recent interview
with Forbes about the role of
education in his life, “I was there
strictly to learn, and not just to get skills to find employment. Being there
to learn what I wanted to learn made all the difference. I focused solely on
classes that interested me.” And he was interested in a great deal; he piled
on 62 units of classes (most students take a maximum of 24).
An advisor recalls that Franco’s “was
truly just a thirst for knowledge, a sense that ‘I've waited this long, I'm
going to take advantage of everything, I don't want to miss anything.’” He studied
the philosophy of science, American literature, American Holocaust literature,
French and more. “I love school, Franco has said.
“I go to school because I love being around people who are interested in what
I’m interested in and I’m having a great experience… I’m studying things that I
love so it’s not like it’s a chore.”
As reported
in The Guardian, Franco continued
acting while studying, reading Shakespeare, Milton and Chaucer on the set of Spider-Man 3, 16th-century Jacobean
drama during the filming of Pineapple
Express, and the novels of Thomas Pynchon while filming Milk. Franco points out that there is a
lot of down-time on-set, and he prefers to fill that time reading. “He’s a very
education-minded person,” says
director Judd Apatow, who has worked with him on numerous projects. “We used to
laugh because in between takes he'd be reading The Iliad on
set... With him, it was always James Joyce or something.”
He received his undergraduate degree in 2008 with a GPA above 3.5. “After that,” Franco told Forbes, “I went on to graduate school in
writing, art, filmmaking, and English lit. I’ve had tons of incredible
professors along the way. I want to now give some of that knowledge back to
others.”
I get this. I understand that thirst for knowledge and the
compulsion to share it. I too dove into college late; when I was 18 I wasn’t
ready or especially interested, but by the time I did go back to school years later, I was chafing at the bit. It
unleashed in me an obsession with a wide range of interests like Franco’s in
culture and the arts. I double-majored in English and the Humanities, absorbing
as much as I could as fast as I could. And from my very first semester back, I
knew I wanted to teach.
Considering the false notes he seems to be hitting while
dabbling in the visual arts, maybe Franco should consider being a teacher himself,
in between acting gigs. He actually already is one, to some extent: he teaches
university screenwriting courses at UCLA, USC and Cal Arts, and acting classes
at Studio 4. Perhaps he should focus on that. I suspect he will be more
successful at it, and it will be more meaningful to him, than indulging in failed
artsy projects.
Whatever complaints his
critics may have, and whatever his personal faults may be (like his habit of
posting semi-nude Instagram selfies), I admire James Franco’s wide-ranging
curiosity, his passion for learning, and his urge to share that intellectual
excitement. They’re the qualities of a born teacher. And as a celebrity, he is
in an influential position to inspire young fans and steer them toward an
appreciation of literature and the arts. Franco said he’d had many “incredible
professors” along the way;
if he got serious about sharing his love of learning, perhaps one day students could
say the same of him.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 7/3/14)
