James Franco Talks Art

James Franco recently sat down for an interview with Vulture, where he talked about his forays into art. Here are a few excerpts from the interview:

But what is the allure of stepping into the art world?
"It’s the freedom of making something that doesn’t need to entertain, that isn’t going to be tallied up in the box-office tolls. And it’s something that, frankly, I’ve done longer than I’ve been making films. My public life and my professional life started in film, and so that’s what I’m known as. But there’s the making of the work, and then there’s the showing of the work."

The art and “the art world.”
"I’ve read the thing that you wrote about celebrities going to the art world

Saltz wrote, “Fame has become such a meta-subject and an American obsession that just the act of someone famous making a painting is thought to add kicky secret layers to the artist’s image.”

— you talked about seeking a certain credibility that maybe we don’t get in our own professions. There was also an interesting idea you had in there that the celebrity persona shrinks the closer it gets to the art world.

Celebrity nowadays is built on the idea of mass reproduction. We are put in front of these cameras and projected around the whole world. The art world is smaller. You have to go into the temple — you have to go into the gallery and be in the presence of it. Yes, we can put it across on Instagram or whatever, but it’s not the way that the art world works, at least right now. There are still temples — the museum, the galleries. When celebrities go into that world, they are shrinking. On the other hand, people can’t help but comment about it endlessly."

The celebrity still gets in front.
"From my perspective, that’s a little unfair, because contemporary artists—since [John] Baldessari was teaching at CalArts — have practiced in many different mediums, and it’s not as strange for a painter to suddenly make a video than it is for an actor to go make a painting."

Your earnestness comes through as irony, is what I think may be happening. But do you regret the Oscars?
"I wasn’t trying to turn the soap opera into something of my own making. I was in their hands. When I was asked to do the Oscars, I thought I’ll do the same thing. Nobody expects me to host the Oscars.

So I thought, here’s, again, an opportunity to put myself in their hands, but I’ve never aspired to be the Oscars host. I don’t care really. I’m going to do what they ask me to and do it as well as I can, but I don’t need this to be the best Oscars ever. I’m not getting anything out of that. In the best-case scenario, even if I killed it, it’s not going to help my career, because that’s not what it’s based on. It was an experiment.

But I think similar to what happened with the Cindy Sherman show — hosting the Oscars is a whole 

different thing than going onto a soap opera. Nobody cares if you disrupt a soap opera, but if you go and host the Oscars and they get even an inkling of you trying to subvert it in any way or punk it in any way, people are going to get pissed."

Let’s talk about what you’re putting out there. You’ve said you’re gay in your work.

I"n the March 2015 issue of FourTwoNine magazine, “straight Franco” interviewed his alter ego, “gay Franco,” about why Franco has, for instance, starred in a reimagining of the controversial 1980 film Cruising."

In a way, I think, in my work, I’m sometimes assholish, and a few ­other things like that — hysterical.
"It’s a little bit of a persona."

But if I’m to be honest, my second self is also real. So if you said, “I’m gay in my work,” I guess that must mean that you’re also gay. If I’m an asshole in my work, I’m also an asshole. A lot of gay men have said to me, well, Franco’s kind of a gay cock tease.
"Yeah."

And you do say you’re gay in your work.
"There is a bit of overfocusing on my sexuality, both by the straight press and the gay press, and so the first question is why do they care? Well, because I’m a celebrity, so I guess they care who I’m having sex with. But if your definition of gay and straight is who I sleep with, then I guess you could say I’m a gay cock tease. It’s where my allegiance lies, where my sensibilities lie, how I define myself. Yeah, I’m a little gay, and there’s a gay James."

Read the full interview at Vulture.