Actors Anonymous

by James Franco

  It was meant to be challenging, but not frivolous. We are in a fine arts program, so I felt free to work on this kind of material. It is hard for me to apologize for the content. I believe that most forms of expression should be allowed in an art program. But I can apologize for not warning anyone. Because I had planned to show a film other than my second-year film, I should have made people aware. I am sorry for not warning anyone about the content of the alternate film.

  I understand that M_____ designed a precise schedule to create a smooth flow from film to film, and that my film may have damaged the presentation of T_____’s film, which was the film that came after mine. I have apologized to T_____ and offered to make reparations. Also, I was not at the screening because I had a documentary screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. I was very excited about the Tribeca screening, but I was excited about the marathon as well. I tried to make M_____ aware of the Tribeca screening, but I guess the message didn’t reach him, because he scheduled my marathon slot the same time as the Tribeca screening. I was required to go to the Tribeca screening, otherwise my documentary would not have been shown, which is the only reason I wasn’t at the marathon. I love being a part of the class and I would not have missed the marathon by choice.

  I love NYU, and I love working with all of you. I have worked in film for a while, and I have been in several arts programs, so I know that NYU is special. It is hard to find a place like NYU that is at the same time instructive, supportive, rigorous, and innovative. I am writing this letter because I cherish the time I have spent learning with all of you. I know what we have is unique. I did not need to write this letter. I wrote it because I respect our class and the environment that we have established. Therefore, if I upset you, I am sorry.

  Peace,

  James Franco

  STEP 10

  Continued to take our “character’s” inventory and when he was wrong, promptly admitted it.

  Very Real

  Int. Car—Night.

  JERRY is in a car with VANCE. It rains outside.

  VANCE drives. He is forty-five. He is slightly overweight but virile. He still acts as if he’s twenty-five.

  They sit in silence.

  VANCE: You know, I picked you up because I wanted a little company, but you’re not really fulfilling your role, if you know what I’m saying.

  JERRY: Oh.

  VANCE: “Oh?”

  JERRY: I don’t know what to say. I thought you picked me up because my car was broken down in the middle of nowhere.

  VANCE: Sheee-it. Well, the least you could do is talk a bit.

  JERRY: … Crazy weather, eh?

  VANCE [unimpressed by his attempt]: Jesus. Yeah. It is. So where you from?

  JERRY: Back there.

  VANCE: Back there? What? That town? That little town?

  JERRY: Yeah.

  VANCE: They actually breed people back there?

  JERRY: Yeah.

  VANCE: You like it back there? Living back there?

  JERRY: No. I hate it.

  VANCE: Didn’t make it very far, did ya?

  JERRY [says nothing]

  VANCE: Yeah, I guess you got pretty lucky I came along. You got lucky and I… got lucky.

  [They sit in silence.]

  VANCE: You get much pussy back there?

  JERRY: Hungh?

  VANCE: Pussy. You get much. You clip it often?

  JERRY: Oh, uhh… no.

  VANCE: No? I love pussy. Actually, no, I love ass. I don’t do it in the pussy no more. Not since I was a kid. You ever do it in the ass? With a girl I mean?… You should try that shit. Totally psychological. Like they’re just letting you in, you know what I’m saying? Not that I’m totally into a power struggle, I just like to know that they would let me in there, in that superprivate place. You know? The dark hole. You can get lost in there.

  JERRY: You see that accident?

  VANCE: Yup.

  JERRY: Maybe we should stop.

  VANCE: Yeah, and pick up another winner like you.

  JERRY: I’m just saying maybe they’re hurt.

  VANCE: They have cell phones. It’s the modern age. Everyone has cell phones.

  JERRY: Well maybe we should at least call.

  VANCE: Go ahead.

  JERRY: I don’t have a cell phone.

  VANCE: Well, neither do I.

  [Silence.]

  VANCE: So, you don’t like anal, huh?

  JERRY: No.

  VANCE: No? You crazy? I bet you never done it. I can tell. At least I know you haven’t done it with a girl… Are you gay?

  JERRY: No.

  VANCE: You half a fag?

  JERRY: What?

  VANCE: It’s okay. I got no problem with that. I mean ain’t nothing gonna happen with us, you know what I’m sayin’? That’s not why I picked you up. I’m just sayin’ if you’re half gay and like putting it in other men’s assholes that’s okay with me. I gotta lotta friends who are half fags. Ha ha.

  JERRY: I think you should have stopped for those people.

  VANCE: People? What the fuck you talking about, kid?

  JERRY: Those people. They looked like they were in bad shape.

  VANCE: You kidding me? I ain’t going back there. I’m already late because of your ass. If you want get out and run back there it’s fine with me, I’ll slow down to ten miles per hour for ya.

  JERRY [to self]: What the fuck? Crazy man.

  VANCE: Crazy man? What, are you talking to yourself? Crazy?

  JERRY: I think you’re crazy. I think you’re a fucking asshole.

  VANCE [laughs]

  JERRY: I mean who talks about anal sex to a total stranger? I mean what the heck? I don’t want to hear about it, all right? And now you’re just driving off and leaving those people back there! Where are you going that it’s so important?

  VANCE: You want to know?

  JERRY: Yes.

  VANCE: To beat on a guy.

  JERRY: What?

  VANCE: To punish this fucker for raping this guy’s daughter.

  JERRY: What?

  VANCE: You know, rape? This frat boy faggot raped this girl so I’m gonna go punish him for it.

  JERRY: What are you going to do?

  VANCE: Beat him. Beat him with a pipe. Beat him till he’s out. Maybe stick it up his ass.

  JERRY: Are you serious?

  VANCE: Yeah, why not? You think that guy deserves less?

  JERRY: … Well, are you sure he raped her?

  VANCE: No. I just do what the guy tells me. If Dad says frat fag raped her, then he raped her.

  Ext. Café—Day

  VANCE sits with SAUL, a middle-aged man. SAUL is nervous and VANCE is his regular self.

  VANCE: So you liked it.

  SAUL: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I liked it.

  VANCE: So it was like the best script you’ve ever read.

  SAUL: Well, that’s a tall order. I mean I’ve read a lot of scripts.

  VANCE: Yeah, but nothing like this. I mean honestly, name me one script you’ve read that’s better.

  SAUL: Well, in school we read Chinatown, so I guess technically I couldn’t say it’s the best script I’ve ever read.

  VANCE: Okay, so second best.

  SAUL: Well, we read Casablanca too. And Citizen Kane and…

  VANCE: Okay, okay, so besides Chinatown and Casablanca and all that shit, it’s pretty much the best script you’ve ever read.

  SAUL: Well… it was very real.

  VANCE: That’s right, very real, very real. That’s because it’s my life. That’s my life, sucka. Can you believe it?

  SAUL: No, it’s actually quite scary.

  VANCE: It’s not all real, I don’t want to lie to ya. I mean, I didn’t actually take down five cops like that with my bare hands, but the bit about getting sober is all real, of course…

  SAUL: Of course.

  VANCE: And when I slapped the shit out of my sister for dating that fucking Chinese motherfucker. And then how I slapped the shit out o
f his Peking duck ass and made him chew dog shit on our front lawn, that was all real.

  SAUL: Wow.

  VANCE: Oh that’s nothing. I mean that was just kiddie shit. That script is just my twenties and thirties before I got sober. I’m thinking about writing a sequel for the sober years.

  SAUL: You got worse when you got sober?

  VANCE: Oh, hell yeah. That’s when I really got into the cocaine smuggling thing in Florida. It was great, pre-9/11, we just smuggled that shit in through FedEx. I had this Brazilian buddy that was in with all the dealers over there; heh heh, they were all surfers. It was good times. That’s when I met you, you know, before I went back to New York.

  SAUL: I had no idea you were doing that when you were sober.

  VANCE: Oh man, you had to have known, at least after we got caught. I came and made an amends to the meeting and everything. I mean I felt bad because I was acting like I was living a spiritual life but I guess really I wasn’t.

  SAUL: I guess I wasn’t going to meetings for a while because I missed it.

  VANCE: Yeah, everyone at the meeting was shocked, then they just ragged me about it. I turned state’s witness on all those fuckers I was with, and had to set up a few sting operations for the cops, but then they let me get out of town for a while.

  SAUL: So you snitched on your friends?

  VANCE: On my brother.

  SAUL: Your own brother?

  VANCE: Yeah, I had to.

  SAUL: Well, are you going to snitch on me?

  VANCE: For what?

  SAUL: For this thing.

  VANCE: What? Oh this thing? Fuck no.

  SAUL: Why not? I mean you snitched on your own…

  VANCE: First of all, don’t say snitch, it just, it just sounds silly. Second, I ain’t going to say anything to anyone about this.

  SAUL: But what if you get caught?

  VANCE: Brother, listen, this shit is such small potatoes even if I did get caught the police wouldn’t do shit.

  SAUL: Vance, I mean you have a record… this kid is probably very rich…

  VANCE: Listen, buddy, I ain’t gonna rat you out, okay?

  SAUL: You did it to your brother.

  VANCE: Yeah, but he wasn’t going to finance my movie, was he? I mean why would I turn you in and shoot us both in the foot like that? I’ll tell you the truth, I’d rather go to jail for you if it came down to it. I mean that would be worth getting my film made. I mean I would, I would actually walk myself into prison if I knew that would get my movie made.

  SAUL: Okay, Vance, but that wasn’t part of the deal. When Joe Donuts said that you would come do this thing for me it never involved me trying to get financing for your movie.

  VANCE: I know that. Sheee-it. Of course not. That’s what I get the two grand for. No, we’re just talking about the script because you seemed to respond to the idea when I brought it up on the phone, and you were the one who said “I’d love to read it sometime,” I didn’t push it on you. You were the one who said he wanted to read it and now since you’ve read it and loved it and thought it was the best script that you’ve ever read I figured that you would just be dying to make it.

  SAUL: Well, we’ll see. It’s a complicated process.

  VANCE: Sure, sure, I understand. Of course. But you’ll make it happen right?

  SAUL: Well… We’ll see, I don’t know, but we’ll see.

  STEP 11

  Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the Great Director, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry out his direction.

  McDonald’s II

  AFTER TWO MONTHS AT MCDONALD’S, things got into a routine. I worked nights from 9 till 2 in the morning. I would spend most of my days hanging out with my sobriety sponsor, Sonny. We’d watch old movies at his place or I would watch newer movies at my parents’ place. Sometimes I would work out with weights in their garage.

  The acting thing was growing on me too. Now that I wasn’t using heroin, I thought about things that I wanted to do with my life. Acting and marriage seemed like good goals. I didn’t know where to start with either of them but I thought about them a lot. I was twenty-seven and my time was running out.

  I didn’t feel like using heroin. There was a lot to live for. For extra money, I kept the handjob thing going with Juan. He could only afford to pay me the twenty-five bucks a week, but that was good enough for cigarettes. On payday, we’d go back to the bathroom and do it. But then, after the third time, he asked me to return the favor. But I told him he would then have to pay me thirty-five bucks. The next week he had thirty-five, so I did it.

  We used the same position that we used when he would do it to me. I put my chest up against his and my cheek against his cheek so I wouldn’t have to look at him. When he had done it to me I would close my eyes, but when I did it to him I kept my eyes open. I didn’t want to imagine anything. I stared at the drawings on the stall wall. It seems like the same guy drew all the pictures in all the bathrooms in all the world. Sea slug dicks, and beanbag tits with perky nipples, and piggy asses. The drawings made me think of the church camps I went to when I was young, back when the pictures depicted things I hadn’t done yet. While I worked on Juan, I stared at them and thought about childhood. Juan whispered in my ear, “Jesús. Jesús, Jesús. Shit, fuck, Jesús.”

  His belly pressed against my stomach; it was like a waterbed. Then when he came, it moved in quick spasms and jiggled all over me. The cum shot against the wall and we left it there.

  During work hours, I hardly saw Juan because I was back in my little drive-thru area, but I’d see him when I passed the grill to go to the bathroom or when I’d go outside to smoke. He’d watch me walk by with his dumb animal eyes in his dumb baby face. If I looked he would smile a bat smile, his sharp baby teeth peeking over his bottom lip. I would give him my dead eyes. I didn’t want him to think that our thing in the bathroom was anything more than a money thing. But I also didn’t want to lose him.

  I would work until 2 a.m. most nights, and then I would go home and sleep a bit, and then I would have to wake up for the daily meeting at El Jardin Encantado. I was always really tired, and Sonny would get on my case about paying attention in the meeting. I asked if I could go to other meetings, but Sonny told me I had to go to that meeting, the Valley Bucks men’s meeting, because it was where I got clean and sober. I liked it because I liked all the guys, and I liked that we met at the Mexican place, but it was so early. One time, soon after I jerked off Juan, Sonny and I were sitting in our regular booth, the one next to the wall painting of the little Mexican in the sombrero, bent over carrying corn, and I put my head down sideways on the table, and then I was asleep.

  “Wake the fuck up.”

  “Sorry, Sonny. I was just working late last night.”

  “First priority is your sobriety. First priority. If you don’t have your sobriety you have nothing.”

  “I know, but I was working.”

  “First priority. That means before everything. Before work, before family, before sex, before everything.”

  “Okay, but you told me to get the job.”

  “Sean, don’t be such a fucking idiot all the time, okay?”

  “I’m trying not to be.”

  Then he told me a story. There was another guy sharing in the meeting about his wife, but Sonny talked over him. The guys at that meeting were used to private conversations during the meeting, but Sonny always spoke too loudly.

  “You know, I had another sponsee about your age,” he said. “He wanted to be an actor. They all want to be actors.” This was funny coming from him because he was a failed actor himself. “And then this guy got a little job on a soap opera and he thought he was hot shit. Hot shit! And then he started falling asleep in the meetings because of work. And then he stopped coming to the meetings because he was so busy. And then you know what happened? He went out. Mister hot-shit hotshot started using drugs and then one day, you know what he did?” Sonn
y looked like he really wanted an answer.

  “No.”

  “He took some acid. And he decided to jump off the back of a moving pickup truck because he thought he could fly. Well, he couldn’t, and he knocked out all of his front teeth. Smile now, motherfucker. No more soap, no more hotshot.”

  “Was that in the nineteen-sixties?”

  “Funny. I guess you’re a hotshot too, hungh?”

  “No, I won’t do that stuff,” I said.

  “We’ll see, you selfish prick. Keep it up Mr. McDonald’s, coming in here and sleeping, and we’ll see if you have any teeth to become a big actor.”

  “I’m just working at the job you told me to take.”

  “First priority means first, motherfucker.”

  Some of the other guys told Sonny to shut up because he was talking too loud. He told them to suck his cock, and everyone yukked.

  Then I joined an acting class. I found one on Lankershim Boulevard, near Universal Studios called the Valley Playhouse. We met twice a week at noon. It was intense and good. My first scene was A Hatful of Rain, this play from the 1950s about a drug addict. Some of the dialogue was old-fashioned. I got matched up with this girl named Jeanette, who was nice but who wasn’t right for the scene; she was too tense. She was supposed to be my wife, and I was supposed to feel guilty because I couldn’t stop doing drugs and I was hiding it from her. It wasn’t too far from what I had gone through with my real wife. But my real wife had been pretty and Jeanette wasn’t pretty. So it was going to be hard to pretend that I was in love with her.