Actors Anonymous (14 page)

Authors: James Franco

BOOK: Actors Anonymous

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“Elizabeth!” The girls stopped like the Three Fates, one lovely, leading the way to paradise, the other two leading to boredom and misery. I was half a block behind them.

“Hi,” Elizabeth said. I walked toward them. I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to her alone. My kneecaps turned to air and the back of my neck was wet and the crotches of my arms were wet. I was entering the scary zone, where physical things sucked away and my dreams came to the fore to be challenged, and everything that had been imagined and decided upon with assuring certainty in my head was now dragged out for inspection and judgment.

“Can I talk to you?” She didn’t answer. “Alone?” Then she smiled and said something to the other two that I was still too far away to hear, and after giving me one more glance they walked on, leaving my beautiful lizard alone, caressed by a blanket of California sun that
elevated the vision on the bridge to the heavenly. Once I passed the metal barrier and was on the bridge myself, I could see that the sun was playing a sparkly game in the trickle of green scummy water in the cement creek below, and for a second everything seemed perfect.

“How are you, cousin?” she said.

“Cousin?”

“Yeah, we’re cousins, remember? Tybalt is Juliet’s cousin?”

“Oh, right.” I was standing next to her. She had her hand on the orange rail. There was a bit of graffiti carved into the paint, just by her large finger, but I couldn’t read what it said. Down below, on the cement wall of the creek, there was a large bit of graffiti in spray paint that said
LUST
. It was suddenly hard to look at her, so I kept looking down at the water and at the mocking sun that jumped from the water into my eyes.

“How are you?” I said.

“Fine.” Her voice… Then she said, “You wanted to talk?” There was really nothing else to say. I could tell her that I fantasized about marrying her, that I knew I would be someone special when I grew up, and that she could be part of that, that I would do anything for her, including fight someone, anyone, almost anyone, and I could tell her that Jesse was an idiot, a phony, and that I was the real Romeo, the Romeo of real life, or that Mrs. Young had turned us into star-crossed lovers,
real
star-crossed lovers, by forcing Jesse upon her in the play and trying to keep me from her by giving me the role of the cousin, but it didn’t seem like any of that would serve my purposes. So instead I said, “I love you.”

I wasn’t looking at her so I didn’t see her immediate reaction, but as I watched the reflection of the sun pirouette on a large ripple in the water, cable shaped, that was elevated from the normal plane of the water’s surface, caused by a rupture in the cement, I heard a trickle of
laughter that fused with the image of the sun-pumping ripple, and it shot terror into my black center, filling it with ripping, sinking meaninglessness. I looked to her; her face was kind but not emotional, not full of the same fervor that was consuming me.

“Harry,” she said, as if she was trying to chide me into seriousness, as if I hadn’t just confessed the most serious thing of my life. “You
don’t
love me.” She was still smiling, but in a kinder way. I could have jumped off the bridge. I wouldn’t have died, but maybe I’d get a broken leg.

“Yes, I do. I love you, Elizabeth.”

“Harry, stop it.” She wasn’t smiling anymore. The other girls, boring and tough, were a little way down the street, waiting. They were looking back like they could hear what we were saying, even though they couldn’t.

It had happened. I had brought the dream out into reality and it had dissolved. It was just a dream and had found no purchase in the real world where it was dependent on other people for its realization. I wished that I could have sucked my words back inside where they had lived a colorful life of promise, had been nurtured by hope, and had never been tested. Now such sentiments would never be able to live without a forceful inner revision of the facts. Because it felt like someone had just taken a knife to a painting that I had spent three years composing, I decided to chuck the whole thing, and with the flourish of someone tossing a bucket of bloodred paint at a landscape full of lambs and shepherdesses, I said, almost in a yell, “Oh, so you love that motherfucker Pordge? Well, it serves you fucking right, you fucking Gross Lizard. I hope you fucking love each other in a great Gross Porgy lizard fucking mess.”

She registered momentary shock, then said I was an asshole and
walked off toward her two waiting maids who yelled back at me and also called me an asshole.

“Go fuck yourself, Harry asshole,” said the tough one.

“You’re a fucking Harry-monster,” said the boring one. Elizabeth didn’t even look back.

That bridge was then the loneliest place in the world.

So there I was in the middle of all those students from all those schools in my yellow and red tights and the stupid skirt they made me wear, full of the bile of jealousy and rage. Adam and I did our Tybalt/Mercutio bit; I killed him and then Romeo hit the scene. I dare say that the little fucker could see his fate in my eyes. We really didn’t have many lines with each other, he said:

Now, Tybalt, take the villain back again,

That late thou gavest me, for Mercutio’s soul

Is but a little way above our heads,

Staying for thine to keep him company:

Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him.

And I said:

Thou, wretched boy, that didst consort him here,

Shalt with him hence.

And then he said,

This shall determine that.

And then we were supposed to fight, and he was supposed to kill me. We had worked out the blocking for the sword fight, and had done it
many times. He was supposed to thrust and I would parry, we would circle ninety degrees in one direction, I would strike and he would dodge, and then we would circle back in the other direction a full half circle where I would then strike at him, he would side step, and then bring his rapier up under my arm as if he had thrust it through me and I would act as if I was stabbed and fall. Well, we did all of that, albeit a little more slowly and deliberately that usual: The tension was so tight between us I was worried that someone would step in and stop us. When I made my strikes I did them with extra force, and when we circled, my eyes never broke from his. His eyes were full of weepy blue fear, although he tried to hide it, and I know that my eyes were full of the red fury of a devil scorned.

When we finally got to the death moves, I swung for him, and he sidestepped as he was supposed to do, but when he stepped in for the kill move, I didn’t give him the open target that he expected. Instead I raised my rapier toward his torso as he thrust himself toward me. This move would have been bad enough on its own, but it was compounded by my malicious forethought: While he had been slipping Lizard the tongue at the top of the ladder, over her mustachioed father, I had removed the plastic cap at the tip of the sword. The tip wasn’t pointed, but it was metal, and would do damage. And it did. At first no one knew what had happened, there was always a slight pause at that moment so that the deathblow could register with the audience before I made my dramatic fall backwards. But this time I didn’t fall—he did, with my sword sticking out of his stomach.

STEP 9

Made direct amends to such “actors” whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or other “actors.”

Dear Class

It is James Franco. I have had several conversations with L_____ , other faculty, and some of our classmates, and it seems that my film at the second-year marathon has upset some of you. It was not
The Clerk’s Tale,
the film I made for my second-year evaluation; it was
Masculinity and Me,
a project that I collaborated on for a class I took in the film studies department called Film and the Body. In this class, we studied a variety of experimental, avant-garde, and medical films that focused on representations of the human body. I understand that some of the material in my film (e.g., the close up of an old man’s penis in the act of urination) might have been shocking, unpleasant, or distasteful, depending on your perspective.

It was meant to be challenging, but not frivolous. We are in a fine arts program, so I felt free to work on this kind of material. It is hard for me to apologize for the content. I believe that most forms of expression should be allowed in an art program. But I can apologize for not warning anyone. Because I had planned to show a film other than my second-year film, I should have made people aware. I am sorry for not warning anyone about the content of the alternate film.

I understand that M_____ designed a precise schedule to create a smooth flow from film to film, and that my film may have damaged the presentation of T_____’s film, which was the film that came after mine. I have apologized to T_____ and offered to make reparations. Also, I was not at the screening because I had a documentary screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. I was very excited about the Tribeca screening, but I was excited about the marathon as well. I tried to make M_____ aware of the Tribeca screening, but I guess the message didn’t reach him, because he scheduled my marathon slot the same time as the Tribeca screening. I was required to go to the Tribeca screening, otherwise my documentary would not have been shown, which is the only reason I wasn’t at the marathon. I love being a part of the class and I would not have missed the marathon by choice.

I love NYU, and I love working with all of you. I have worked in film for a while, and I have been in several arts programs, so I know that NYU is special. It is hard to find a place like NYU that is at the same time instructive, supportive, rigorous, and innovative. I am writing this letter because I cherish the time I have spent learning with all of you. I know what
we have is unique. I did not need to write this letter. I wrote it because I respect our class and the environment that we have established. Therefore, if I upset you, I am sorry.