Actors Anonymous

by James Franco

  2 I did some research, and I think The Actor is referencing Edmund Burke’s From a Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. The quoted passage above continues, proving that Burke was an insatiable breast man:

  the deceitful maze, through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to fix or whither it is carried.

  Meaning what? That he couldn’t decide whether to look at the cleavage, the nipples, or the whole cup?

  3 The above was written in a red scrawl on several of The Actor’s pages. I have typed them out in the places they were written on the original sheets. They looked something like an editor’s notes, except for the poor spelling and diction. Later I found similar handwriting, jagged and broken, in the same waxy red ink in the bathroom behind the toilet.

  4 I had just finished my business on the toilet, when I realized that the toilet paper on the dispenser was out. While staying seated on the toilet, I opened the cabinet under the sink and pulled out a fresh roll from the plastic bag. In the process, while trying to keep things from being smeared in my backside, I dropped the fresh roll. As I reached down for the dropped roll, you might imagine my surprise upon finding a message written on the wall in such a sequestered place. And being a message of intense declarative assurance, which, compounded by my being in a vulnerable, and I thought, until that moment, private position, with my pants down, so to speak, that I almost jumped (but didn’t, I still hadn’t wiped). The red scrawl’s claim might be written off as a joke, like any scribbling on a bathroom wall, but something about it was different, and I took it seriously. For one, it was in my bathroom, and for two, three and four, I was bent over, scrambling for a clean roll of TP, my dirty asshole hanging above the dirty water, and thus, to be greeted by such an unexpected and personal message threw me. It said, “I SEE YOU.”

  5 I found this line particularly strange, because, as I said, the red portions which are typed out above, were originally in hand written red ink, and NOT in a different font. Was The Actor planning to type out the red lines in a different font, exactly like I have done? I don’t know who this other voice is. I assume it was just The Actor writing as a different persona, as a way of criticizing himself. I have presented it as I found it.

  6 This appellation is disturbing, especially after my experience with the scrawl in the bathroom. The bathroom writing was definitely in the same hand as the red ink written on the typed pages, which this italicized critic is now attributing to The Devil. Unsettling, to say the least.

  After the message behind the toilet told me that I was being watched, I quickly picked up the fresh toilet paper that I had dropped. I pulled off the outer layers that had been exposed to the floor, and wiped myself. (I keep my bathroom clean, but I still hate the idea of all the bacteria on the floor infecting the paper and then being applied to my bare backside. This is the reason I don’t have pets: they just walk around in shit all day and then walk upon the kitchen counter or jump on you for scratching love sessions). After flushing and pulling my pants back on, I washed my hands for a full minute, and then looked around the room to make sure no one could actually see me, as the scrawl declared. There was no one.

  In the kitchen I retrieved some cleaning supplies. (These were my own addition to the apartment. As I said, I am a very clean person.) The scrawl behind the toilet would not come off. Using 409 for fifteen minutes with various rags didn’t even smudge it. “The Devil” indeed. Eventually I painted over the disturbing message. Nevertheless, whenever I take a shit, I can’t help but keep a constant lookout, to make sure there are no eyes in the walls.

  # In defense of myself, this is a piece of fiction. I know that my stories might sound like autobiography, and I am not making much of an effort to hide when I call my character “The Actor,” but isn’t fiction about writing what I know? If I wrote a science fiction piece about aliens on Mars, or a love story set during the Civil War, wouldn’t I be criticized for my lack of knowledge in those areas? At least acting is something I know a little about.

  I had discussed my plans to become a writer with a Distinguished UCLA English professor (who will go unnamed, as I met him in an addiction recovery program), and he said writing was a great idea, that I could chronicle the life of a film actor better than most. All the behind-the-scenes stuff and material like that. Well maybe I can. Not to say that any of The Actor’s experiences are real, they are not. It’s just that I can imagine circumstances from an actor’s perspective better than I can imagine electro beams or fixed bayonets.7

  7 The previous footnote is The Actor’s own footnote. As you can see, I have presented all my own notes between brackets, in 10pt. Helvetica font.—TLNT (The Lonely New Tenant)

  8 This page was torn off at the bottom. In the lower right corner, just above the tear, written in a blue ballpoint pen, there was handwriting, which I took to be The Actor’s. It said, “die girls.” On the back of the page, I found a phone number with an LA area code, written in the same handwriting, with the same pen, as the writer of “die girls.” Above the number was the single letter “D”.

  9 After reading this, I put together the “D” written above the Los Angeles phone number, with “Diarrhea.”

  I don’t know what possessed me, but I decided to call the number. I used the apartment line.

  A perky female voice answered.

  I was struck dumb, like there was a sock in my mouth.

  Then the voice sounded scared. It asked who was calling.

  I remained silent.

  Then she said The Actor’s name with a hesitant, worried inflection.

  On instinct, I replied in the affirmative: a curt, and deep toned “yes,” using an imitation of The Actor’s voice, which I must have picked up from watching his films. It just came to me. I admit, as The Actor himself has admitted in this very story, that I think most of his movies are shit, but I must also confess a deep attraction to these horrible films. I watch them almost daily, usually with two cones of pistachio ice cream, which I get from an amazing place on Larchmont. It is a bit of a drive, but the smooth texture and rich flavor from the Larchmont vendor tastes like real Italian gelato, and it is usually just about to melt when I get back to the apartment and press play on my DVD player. There is something about watching The Actor’s old films, in his old apartment, while eating his favorite food that makes me feel close to him.

  10 I’ll take this space to finish dictating my phone call with D.

  It was very exciting to be “playing” The Actor in his old apartment, with someone who was responding as if I was indeed The Actor. Everything was supporting my imaginary world.

  I had said, yes, I was The Actor.

  This was followed by a moment of silence, after which she said in a whisper, “I thought you were dead.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was being literal or figurative.

  In The Actor’s voice, I responded with a short and frank, “no.”

  More silence, (considering, I guess), then she said, “I haven’t heard from you since…”

  “Yeah,” I said gruffly.

  She didn’t say anything, but I thought I could hear telltale gasping sounds of someone holding back sobs. She was definitely no longer the perky person who had answered the phone. Yes, she was crying.

  “Do you want to see me?” she said, now letting the sobs gush forth.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Tonight.” I was feeling strangely confident about my impersonation of The Actor; he was flowing through me without any effort.

  “Chateau?” she said.

  I assumed that she meant the Chateau Marmont on Sunset, a half block down the street from the apartment.

  I said, “Yeah, Chateau, midnight,” and hung up. I didn’t want to risk any more talking, in case I wasn’t sounding as close to The Actor as I felt.

  11 After the phone call I was shivering with excitement. I couldn’t believe how the situation had fallen into my lap. Of course, I would be discovered as soon as D se
t eyes on me, but I put that out of my head momentarily. I was too worked up over the possibility that I would be participating in The Actor’s life, as The Actor. There is a particularly bad film that The Actor starred in where he plays a medieval star-crossed lover. He is kept from his true love because she is married to someone else. The film is full of clichés and flowery costumes, but I love it. Maybe because of the clichés and costumes.

  I quickly drove to Larchmont and bought two scoops of pistachio ice cream. It was one of the few days of LA December rain. The LA drivers moved cautiously, but at least the gelato stayed cool in the chilly air.

  I got back to the apartment, and watched The Actor’s medieval love film for the two hundredth time. As I watched, I licked my gelato. I held one cone in each hand and alternated my licks from one to the other. I projected D and myself onto the roles in the film. But I didn’t know what D looked like, other than having a well-sculpted, shit-projecting ass, (if D was in fact Diarrhea, and if Diarrhea actually existed outside of the ostensibly fictional story). Because of my unfamiliarity with D’s looks, my projections eventually transformed into a new coupling: halfway through each glob of pistachio gelato, I began projecting myself into the role of the girl. I projected The Actor onto his role (easily), but it was different now because I was his beautiful blond lover.

  12 Yes indeed, The Virgin and I share the same tastes in film. Romantic schlock popular with teenage girls, and twenty-something men that live in The Actor’s old apartment. Heh.

  13 The rest of The Virgin sequence was nowhere to be found. I searched every corner of the apartment, but found nothing more than what I had found in my original search: two notes, a set of keys, and a pair of sunglasses.

  One of these notes read:

  “I love you Angel. You’re the only one.”

  It was signed by The Actor.

  I realized that the keys were in fact for the Chateau Marmont. There were two keys on the key chain and a one-inch square red cushion with tassels in each corner. The number 89 was embossed in black in the center of the cushion. I was familiar enough with the Chateau to know that Room 89 was a bungalow in a courtyard near the pool, separated from the main building of the hotel. (In the past, I had participated in my share of cocaine parties in this secluded bungalow area).

  The other key must be for the secluded bungalow/pool area. I knew about a secret gate to this private area, hidden by overhanging shrubbery, just off Sunset. Needless to say, I had used this secret gate before.

  14 [I too have read many magazine articles about The Actor, and she is pretty accurate here. I don’t know about the whole murder though. Oh yeah, you haven’t read this part yet. It was typed on a separate page in this Comic Sans font. You’ll see what happens.]

  * Professor Crane wrote the foreword to The ______ Edition of Macbeth. In this foreword, he argues that large sections of Macbeth, in particular the weird sister scenes (particularly the anti-Semitic portions — “liver of blaspheming Jew” indeed) were not written by Shakespeare, but were added later by Jacobean playwright Thomas Middleton, who had his own play about witches called The Witch. Middleton took material from his less successful play and inserted it into Shakespeare’s.

  15 This is around the place where the pages didn’t have numbers. There were a bunch of different fonts, and it seemed like different writers. I assumed it was just The Actor writing in different voices, but I wasn’t sure. I present them in the order that makes the most sense to the flow of the story.—TLNT

  16 Ah-ha, Professor Crane is the one writing in italicized Courier. Good to know.

  17 [Here is where it gets a little confusing. I guess someone else (The Actor?) was impersonating Professor Crane? Well here is another Crane. Did Joe Donuts really exist/die? I’ll have to look it up somehow.]

  18 [Here is another hodgepodge of stuff that I found. I tried my best to put it in an order that makes sense. (On another note, after the movie, before I met D {Diarrhea?} at the Chateau, I smoked a bunch of The Actor’s cigarette butts {Parliaments} that I had found around the apartment. Then I took my clothes off and jumped on all the couches and the bed. Odd behavior for a man in his late twenties, I know.—TLNT]

  19 Okay, I wrote the part you just read. I had come to the end of the material that I had found under The Actor’s couch. I had searched for more; all closets, behind all appliances and under every piece of furniture for more pages, but there was nothing, not even any red scribbles.

  I have a friend, Missy, who took a playwriting class with The Actor through UCLA Extension. She gave me a scene from a play that The Actor had written for class. The play was about this father whose daughter gets raped and he tries to get revenge.

  I made up that stuff above about the Angel being raped, because it seemed so close to the play that The Actor wrote. I don’t know if the Angel was raped or not or if any guy named Ben had moved to LA or went to the Valley Playhouse—which is indeed The Actor’s old school.

  Missy would only give me one scene from the play, and she made me promise not to show anyone.

  Who knows, maybe I’m right, maybe the Angel was raped.

  20 I added that.

  21 That’s all that my friend Missy would give me. I begged her for more of The Actor’s scenes, but she wouldn’t give them to me. She said I was too obsessed. I could have killed her. Doesn’t she know what love is? I could feel The Actor’s pain, anger and helpless despair seeping through the lines of his play.

  The Actor wrote the play because he couldn’t avenge the Angel. What happened in the play was wishful thinking; it’s not what really happened.

  How was The Actor supposed to deal with such feelings of inadequacy? He couldn’t assault Ben himself because he would be arrested and it would be all over the papers, and he couldn’t call the police or tell the school because it was the Angel’s word against Ben’s, and nothing could be proved. In addition, it had happened two years prior, and she had been drunk.

  In real life, The Actor had chickened out on Joe Donuts’ offer to fly his thug friend out from Boston, and all he could do was write a scene for a UCLA Extension class. The rape and his inability to rectify it drove his friend Joe Donuts crazy. Joe, that ex-con who had seen so much bad happen to so many people, couldn’t let the rape go. It was the injustice of it, and that it happened to the girlfriend of The Actor, whom he considered a son. When The Actor didn’t take him up on his offer for revenge, Joe had to anesthetize the pain that the rape had caused to his own soul. He went out and started using heroin again. He would never have been at the drug deal that ended with a bullet in his head if The Actor hadn’t told him about the rape.

  Missy said that The Actor had been extremely serious when he read this scene in class; he wasn’t crying, but almost. Missy said the teacher, Ms. Prism, loved the scene. Ms. Prism had cried. I said that Ms. Prism had probably been raped when she was younger. Missy didn’t like that.

  I begged Missy for more scenes, and just before I was about to resort to stealing her computer, she gave me an additional snippet from The Actor’s play. It’s a speech; Saul, the father character, is speaking again:

  SAUL: When I think about that night, I can’t help but wonder if she called out for me. And if not aloud, was she thinking of me while it happened? And if she did, was she hoping that I would come save her, or was she thinking that she was shaming me?

  She didn’t tell me it happened. I had to hear it from her mother.

  One night out of the half million in human history. One girl out of millions who have been raped. It’s a small blip on the great radar. But down here on earth, the imprint of this act has been pressed upon my family and me. Somehow, the course of human actions brought her to that room on that night, the molecular balance of that boy mixed with his temperament and the physical disparity between him and my daughter was forced closed. Something that can never be erased.

  Somewhere on the scrolls of history, this act is recorded. Now the only thing in question is if the act will be an
swered.

  This kind of thing will never end.

  It’s a little melodramatic, but can you blame him? The poor Actor was trying to process his pain and impotence. Of course when we read about a rape, it sounds cliché and overdone, but does that mean that it isn’t fresh and painful for those involved? Ever since Daphne, Leda, and Persephone, women have been raped in literature. Sure, we’re sick of it. But how does a young man get over it? A young artist? What can he do?

  I’ll tell you what he did. He slept with every young girl that he could find. He wanted to take Ben’s place. He couldn’t stand that someone had taken advantage of his lover, so he was going to take advantage of everyone he could find. But he didn’t have to rape, he was The Actor, he had the charm, he could have as many girls as he wanted freely.

  And I’ll tell you what else happened (I figured all of this out as I donned The Actor’s sunglasses I had found, left in the apartment, and walked down to the street through the rain to the secret Sunset gate; it was getting late): After The Actor had slept with many women, before France and in France, while the Angel was busy doing her shampoo commercial, he got caught.

  It wasn’t the Angel’s sister, the Virgin (or Heart as she likes to call herself) that exposed him, (and she certainly didn’t kill him); it was Diarrhea. The little anecdote about The Actor being murdered on the UCLA campus was just another attempt by The Actor to purge himself of guilt, to expose himself for the chickenhearted cheater that he was. What the UCLA murder scene was covering was the very real, (but narratively uninteresting) break-up of The Actor and the Angel. You see, Diarrhea had found out that Cunty had been sleeping with The Actor in France.

  This was months after Paris, when they had all returned to LA. Cunty and Diarrhea were at UCLA and The Actor was shooting another movie. The Actor would meet Diarrhea at the Chateau Marmont bungalow he kept for assignations, number 89. They would meet there in secret and relive their times in Paris.