How To Succeed in Business by, Perhaps, Over-Extending Yourself...

I had been planning to write a post-Oscars piece. I was halfway through with it, in fact. But let's face it, that show was (as a friend said once) "a bloodcurdling joke".

I am not even sure it bears going into the train wreck that it was. Except, that most of the burden of blame falls on my handsome boy-hero, Mr. J. Franco. As much as I am tepid about Miss A. Hathaway, she did her best against the static, stuck-up, void that was James. I was kind of waiting for him to break in to hysterical giggles and yell "cut" and say "sorry, sorry, sorry, that was all a big haha - now on with the real show!".

Was his "hosting" really a performance piece? Will it come out in the future that it was part of some of his ever expanding body of art work? Let's hope some good can come from this, I don't need to lose respect for another actor, few of whom I have anything but blah to think of when they cross my sight.

Let's be real, acting is a tough job. Even when it's done with mediocrity. As anyone that's worked or sat on a film set knows, nothing about anyone's job there is easy. Forty people (minimum) with jobs that are as important to them as the actor's is to him or her. The main behind-the-scenes big wigs with egos the size of Alaska. I mean, we've all heard the Christian Bale rant. And I can tell you that most of the people in the biz were not that surprised. My reaction was what the hell was up with that idiotic DP crossing Bale's eye-line? That is a mortal sin on set. Something that even the lowest members of the totem pole know not to do. But what Bale highlighted, in that expletive-rich love letter in defense of actors everywhere, was that film sets are tense places. And acting is a tough job.

But you know what's harder? Getting your PhD. You know what's harder than that? Getting your PhD from Yale. 

Monday morning after the Oscars, and I mean 9:30AM not 11:59AM, our James was in class in New Haven. Studying Medieval manuscripts. 

And you know what he was doing the night before the Oscars? Attending the opening of his latest artwork. A 100 minute film he cut from the out-takes of the cult classic (and I don't throw that term around lightly), "My Own Private Idaho" - which is, essentially, an ersatz study of the late, intensely missed, River Phoenix. (And as an editor, I have to say... that's one hell of a job.) 

So, I wonder about JF, sometimes. Is he scrambling to put his mark on the world? Perhaps, make so many marks that he can not possibly be forgotten? Is he really, stupendously ADD? Is he so gifted that we barely deserve to have him count among our plebeian population? 

Well, as one of my daily morning interweb readings told me today "Be More Fucking Productive". So, I'll take a page from James. But I won't host the Oscars, sorry.