James Franco. Formerly just an actor, now a phenomenon. What can’t he do? On any given day, he might be at Yale getting a Ph.D., or in New York taking acting classes (what A-list actors actually take classes?) or turning “General Hospital” into his own performance-art space. Next week he’ll probably land an Oscar nod for “127 Hours,” even though director Danny Boyle had doubts about casting him (“He was so relaxed. He looked stoned to me,” Boyle told Marc Malkin of E!).
And at the Sundance film festival he has an art installation based on “Three’s Company” and has been spotted prancing and singing in a blonde wig. He doesn’t even have a movie here. Yet his name is on every tongue. He needs a new conceptual framework, an alternative tag. JF? Too easy. Could be anyone. “The Franco” is getting closer to the essence here, the importance, the hugeness of his legend and the mystery of his methods.
Even better: Think of him as Le Franco.
Before the festival opened, film lovers were crowding into a spooky building, a former miner’s hospital now full of oddball conceptual art. Outside a smashed-up car and a set of red-velvet lounging sofas were meant to convey…something or other. Upstairs, on the second floor, you notice a wall with a neon sign in the logo of “Three’s Company” with the words “The Drama” underneath.
Inside a small room is a set that imitates Jack and Janet and Chrissy’s living room. There is a velour, chipmunk-fur-colored couch, which must be the first art-installation couch I’ve ever been allowed to sit on. There are ferns like the ones in the friends’ apartment. There is a Pier One Imports rattan chair. On three walls are being projected scenes from (I think) the pilot episode. The sound has been removed, though, and the same dialogue is being read off (some of it by Le Franco, some of it by other actors or maybe Le Franco after a nice drink of helium or after having been filtered through voice-scrambling software, in deadpan dramatic style. Weird. Unsettling. Dreamlike. Genius? Probably. Very probably. A curator who sounds as if she has suffered heavy exposure to Yale art department thinking explains that Le Franco is “tearing out the individual elements” of the sitcom and weaving them back together. She says Le Franco is “rebuilding our relationship” to the show. The word “deconstruct,” alas, does not go unused.
48 hours later, Le Franco has ordained that a Main Street bar be converted into a replica of The Regal Beagle lounge from the show. No one, he decrees, shall be allowed in unless dressed in period attire. Guests cheerfully don polyester. The guy who played Larry on the show, Richard Kline, is present. Le Franco chooses to dress in a Chrissy Snow wig. He takes to the microphone. He sings! Not the theme song — (“Down at our rendez-vous, three is company too!” How very true.) But it is some seemingly made-up ditty containing dirty words. Le Franco is not merely Warhol crossed with Brando crossed with Harold Bloom and a little Rick Springfield. No. Le Franco is a one-man Strawberry Fields. Nothing is real. And nothing to get hung about. Long live Le Franco.