palo alto. james franco. (127)

i read online that james franco was doing a fundraiser, kinda like kickstarter but not, to turn his collection of short stories, "palo alto" into a movie.  

before i go on, quick rant about celebrities doing kickstarters.  seriously?!?! doesn't the general public give you enough money by watching your movies and tv shows?  i mean don't you already get paid a ridiculous amount of money for acting yet you are begging common folk for money?  fund your own projects, you can afford it!

back to "palo alto", though i didn't agree with his fundraising, i was excited about reading his work.  i admire his acting and he seems to be pretty intelligent and cultured.  he did go to UCLA and he sat with marina abramovic during her piece "the artist is present" (he was featured in the doc).  so i had pretty high expectations for his writing, but his fundraiser should have been a red flag.

i mean it did seem odd that james franco would have to do a kickstarter with all of his hollywood success but this collection of stories was horrible.  so bad that its no wonder he couldn't find anyone in hollywood to back it, you would have to be an idiot to.  it was bad.  it was like a sad attempt to be "jesus' son" but whereas denis johnson has talent and a way with words, franco has nothing.

i mean i knew it was going to be horrible after reading the first line of the first story, "halloween":

ten years ago, my sophomore year in high school, i killed a woman on halloween.

i swear to god, i am not making this up.  that was the first line.  it reminded me of that "girls" episode when hannah goes to the reading for her old professor and she reads that poorly-written and forced story about her online boyfriend dying.  and her first line is about him dying and she doesn't get a reaction so she repeats the line about him dying assuming people didn't catch it the first time.  so embarrassing.  in my head, i imagined franco repeating "killed" for a reaction and for effect.  

so that line set the tone for the rest of the stories and after that i couldn't take anything seriously.  everything felt forced.  i know what franco was trying to write, he wanted to create some great beat manifesto for generation y but sadly didn't come close.  i mean franco did capture the pretentious ignorance of gen y hipsters.  it was shocking yet lacked any real depth or edge.  it was all self-righteous intensity, kinda like hipsters.  franco's characters were soulless druggies yet would namecheck kerouac, faulkner, and hemingway.  it was as if the mention of their names would result in literary greatness, instead franco just came off like a wannabe beat.

his characters were  bad people, i was disgusted by everything i had read in  the story.  they were bad just for the shock value versus finding a deeper truth.  it was full of lines that i am sure franco wanted his readers' minds to explode as they read but everything was overdone and cliché.

franco's stories were filled with bad stereotypes as well.  the second story is the tale of girl who is . . . good at math!  what girls can't be good at math?!?!  or the slutty asian girl who will love you long time.  there was also a lot of half breeds and even a mormon.  but a mormon who knows nothing about scriptures (mormons, even the bad ones can discuss scriptures).  and just way too many bat shitty crazy boys with too much time and drugs on their hands.

and i mean i get wayward youth, i enjoyed "a clockwork orange" and "trainspotting".  i revered sal paradise.  but there was nothing enjoyable or enlightening about the reckless youth of "palo alto".  it was so bad that i now have a better appreciation for "jesus' son".

but i will add i did enjoy one thing.  i genuinely enjoyed franco's mention of the children books author bill peet.  i actually checked out a handful of his books because they are alluded to in a story.  though i did not believe anyone would let a druggie do service hours at a library.  

but in the end, i am glad i read "palo alto" because now i won't waste my money to help fund a film version or pay for a movie ticket to see it.

jesus' son. denis johnson

denis johnson's "jesus' son" is a flavorpill 30 before 30 book.  i had heard of it prior to my reading because of the film based on it starring billy crudup but never saw it or thought to read the book.

and since thirty is a week away, i ordered it on abebooks.com (for some odd reason the library did not have a copy) and read it in about two days (due to the quick-paced momentum of the stories).  "jesus' son" is a collection of stories told by the same narrator, a small town junkie.  there is an epigraph at the begging quoting lou reed's "heroin", "when i'm rushing on my run and i feel just like a jesus' son", which is where the collection gets its name.

to be honest, "jesus' son" wasn't for me.  flavorpill said that it would knock you down regardless of your age.  and yes johnson's writing is amazing.  it's just that the content wasn't for me.  i grew up and currently live in a small town (which is how i knew even before the narrator said it that his "work" would be stealing copper wire from buildings and selling it, people actually do this in delano) and don't like the druggies here so reading about one similar to them was of no interest to me.  i think individuals like the narrator are what is wrong with the world today and so i spent most of my time disgusted by what i read.

and i get it.  if i read "jesus' son" back in 92 (more like 99, i was only 9 in 92), it probably would have knocked my socks off.  i did read "trainspotting" when i was in high school circa 00/01 and that knocked my socks off back then.  but whereas i enjoyed reading about mark, sickboy and the gang, i was repulsed by the narrator of "jesus' son".

i tried googling to find an analysis to help me better understand my disapproval

of the content and found a quote in a new york times article:

The narrator "lives in a random world, a certain part of America where wildness is actually expressed rather than depicted," Mr. Johnson said. "Some of us go to the movies to see everybody shooting each other, and then there's another bunch who actually shoot each other." 

and perhaps this is it.  maybe i am

just tired of the lowlives in delano to have the openmindness to find this profound.  i just have no sympathy for people with drug addictions, its not a sickness, cancer and luekemia are.  and to clairfy,  i did grow up in an extremely sheltered househoild and do not know any actual junkies in real life.  but i did lose an uncle (that i never met) to heroin and perhaps that is where my prejudice against junkies comes from?  and due to these prejudices, though johnson didn't intent it to be, i read "jesus' son" as romanticising addiction.

but as i mentioned before denis johnson is a wonderful writer, it was just his subject matter that turned me off.  he did  have many beautiful lines.

"[the bartender] poured doubles like an angel, right up to the lip of a cocktail glass, no measuring. . . . you had to go down to them like a hummingbird over a blossom."

"she wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother."

and though i didn't approve of the stories told, johnson is a wonderful storyteller. i loved the inconsistency of it all, the memories of the narrator were all jumbled just like a junkie.  but it's hard to appreciate good writing when you can't stomach the narrator.  however, i do plan on reading johnson's other works, "jesus' son" just wasn't for me.