Renaissance man James Franco has responded to Gawker’s claim that he is shacking up with “live-in boyfriend” Scott Haze by calling the report “homophobic.” For the record, James Franco is the only one allowed to imply his own inherent gayness for entertainment value.
Yesterday, Gawker published an article pointing out the romantic undertones in a Times fluff piece about James’ latest film Child of God.
J.K. Trotter writes:
But theirs is the kind of relationship—somewhat ambiguous, seemingly gay, probably romantic—that almost always sends The New York Times into a bizarre moral panic.
Of course, it’s always hard to distinguish Franco’s private interest and public provocation—so perhaps the Times’ squeamishness is a symptom of their fear of being fooled. Maybe Franco was just messing with them! Then again, the paper of record has plenty of experience playing coy about gay relationships, too. In that sense, Franco and the Times are the perfect match.
Franco, a heterosexual man who has previously used gay sex, plagiarized work from gay artists, started his own gay rumors and fueled gay rumors about his brother for the benefit of his own career, draws the line HERE.
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So for those of you taking notes, James Franco pretty much just labeled his own MO as homophobic:
mydude
Boy, people take James way too seriously…you do realise that you’re playing into his hand and giving him more what he wants?
It’s publicity for him, it’s publicity for his “roommate” and of course, it’s publicity for Child of God.
Tracy Pope
@mydude: Glad to see I’m not the only one who sees this for the usual self-aggrandizing stunts of James Franco that it is. Anyone who cares about “is he or isn’t he?”, please continue to enjoy his antics.
michael mellor
James is pushing the media’s buttons.
Lvng1tor
@michael mellor: And it’s awesome! Reminds me of Rosanne in the 90’s giving “anon” tips to gossip rags and then getting invited on talk shows to discuss how awful these papers are, how they lie and always say it was an “anon source” it’s freakn art the way Franco does it though….
jake75
Why is James Franco even a blip on the gay communities radar? Who really cares if he is gay? He is just another example of an attention grabbing media whore.
masc4masc
Anyone who can manipulate the media for his own entertainment the way Franco has since day one is okay in my book. And of course being easy on the eyes is just an added bonus.
jmmartin
@michael mellor: Ours, too.
Arkansassy
James Franco is the Justin Bieber of the acting world and I’m ready for both of them to go the way of Vanilla Ice and disappear for ten years, after which they can show up on VH1 as washed up has beens.
YesIDid
So sick of his nonsense.
Random
I used to quite like James Franco, but I’m finding all this ‘gay/not gay’ stuff really tedious now.