A couple of weeks ago I wrote a takedown of James Franco’s new film, with the rather harsh title “James Franco’s The Disaster Artist: Hollywood Caught In the Act of Kissing Its Own Ass”. The more I thought about it, the more I wished I had made the title “James Franco’s The Disaster Artist: Hollywood Caught In the Act of Kissing Its Own Cheek”, faulting Franco (and “Hollywood”) for being self-indulgent and self-congratulatory without the scatological jeer, which struck me as a bit adolescent. Yes, Mr. Franco was patting himself rather grandly on the back for “recognizing” the pluck, if not the talent, of struggling idiot savant Tommy Wiseau, but I didn’t have to be mean, did I?
Well, I think I’d have to go a ways to be as mean as Jimmy Boy, for, as Vulture’s Emily Yashida reports, during the recent Golden Globes festivities, which I am boycotting until they become, you know, interesting, Franco invited Tommy up on stage while James, and not Tommy, received “Best Actor” for his performance as Tommy in The Disaster Artist, and then “mike-blocked” poor Tommy when the poor shmuck reached for the fifteen seconds of what was so not his fame. I’ll let Emily do all the heavy lifting on this one, since she’s a whole lot stronger than I am, so if you want to know what went down, and what should have gone down, at the Globes, well, check with Emily, for she is on it, but my take is this: If, after the massive success of Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman had gone on the road with the “real” Rain Man, talking up his (Dustin’s) support for the autistic, people would have looked, you know, askance.1 Well, same thing.
- If Hoffman did go on tour with an autistic guy, then shame on him. ↩︎
