On being a collector

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By Bill Browning

On January 15th of this 2013th year of our Lord, a drama, About Cherry, starring Ashley Hinshaw (whom I’ve never heard of), James Franco and Heather Graham came out on DVD. I do not yet have this DVD because I have no damn money.

It’s my understanding this film is about a young woman, Angelina, who’s fixin’ to graduate from high school.

I get paid Friday, but that’ll be like, so? Big whup. And I still won’t have no damn money.

Cherry’s boyfriend — wait, Angelina’s boyfriend (she’s not Cherry yet) — played by Johnny Weston (Mrs. Weston’s boy, I guess), talks her into taking some nudie pics of herself and selling them to a high bidder.

I gotta pay rent and car insurance Friday, neither of which, in my opinion, is as important as obtaining Franco merchandise. But worrywart, we-got-to-keep-a-roof-over-our-heads Paula doesn’t have a clue about good priorities.

So Angelina, the nudie-pics-taking character in the movie (that I don’t have, because I don’t have any damn money) who isn’t Cherry yet, does a photo shoot and spends the money she gets from it on running away to San Francisco with her best friend, Dev Patel. Dev Patel is that Indian kid who was in Slumdog Millionaire which beat out Milk (co-starring James Franco) for a best picture Oscar in 2009.

You’d think, at my age, I would have twenty lousy dollars salted away, but I don’t. I get by on the kindness of strangers. Barely.

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Francterist

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By Bill Browning

I hear Paula descending the stairs at the back of the house. It’s late night. I’m at my computer. A black and white cat that, in all honesty, I could live without sleeps, back against my laptop, beside me.

Paula spends several minutes rattling around in the kitchen, likely loading the dishwasher, wiping up our last night’s supper mess and cussing my got-nothing-better-to-do-than-surf-the-Internet ass.

There’s a final-sounding closing of a cabinet door and then I see her, peripherally, enter the office where we work. Carrying two large cups she moves behind me and around to her side of the desk. She sets the cups down and takes a seat across from me.

Paula clicks on the keys that brings her computer life. She then picks up a tall blue cup with the words “I’m Awake” written in large letters down one side of it and sips coffee. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for pictures of James Franco in prone positions to put on my ‘James Franco Laid’ Pinterest board.”


“Good lord.”

I find a site with pictures of James Franco laying face down on something and a man in a gorilla suit laying on top of him, one that appears to be from the movie Pineapple Express of him laying on a floor and grabbing his crotch, and a shot of him propped in bed reading a poem.

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“The Letter” is “Z” … as in zzzzzzz

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By Bill Browning

The last James or Jennifer movie that Paula and I watched was a little psychological drama called The Letter. Oh my gawd, and what a struggling shit-wagon it was. I can’t think of a single good thing to say about this film or James Franco in it, so I’m not reviewing it for the project this time around.

Do not tell Paula any of this.

I’ll claim I didn’t write anything because I’m going blind or… I’ll think of something, some excuse. It’ll be fine. She never reads anything I put on this site, anyway.

If you’ve been following our James and Jennifer Project, you know I love James Franco more than puppies, summer and cheesecake. Love him more than sleep, new white cotton socks, NPR and Xanax. And since I can’t bring myself to say bad things about him or any movie he’s in, I think it’s best I say nothing at all about The Letter.

If I were to write a review this movie, I’d start by praising the performance of MIA-in-recent-years Winona Ryder and complimenting her triumphant return in the fabulous The Letter. But that’d be a burning-in-hell kind of lying.

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Freeing Winona: it sure ain’t what it used to be

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By Paula Burba

Take one look at Winona Ryder in The Letter and you immediately realize two things: she’s made a deal with the devil to stop herself from aging … and he’s called in that bet by making her do a movie with James Franco.

Okay, so maybe Winona’s had those asinine cheek implants that seem to be all the rage right now, but she looks exactly like she did in Heathers, Mermaids, Reality Bites, Edward Scissorhands — all the classics that inspired this Generation Xer to have a “Free Winona” poster back in the day. (Wonder if I still have that one in the poster tube in the back of the closet? Wonder if people even remember that incident anymore?)

Her first-person narration is the very same I’m-so-smart-I’m-crazy voice people of a certain age will remember from movies like Girl, Interrupted. (The movie which earned Angelina Jolie — nemesis of our own beloved Jennifer Aniston — an Oscar for Actress in a Supporting Role in 1999. Small goddamn world, Hollywood.)

But I digress, mostly to avoid insulting James Franco yet again, because even to me this entire exercise is starting to sound just plain spiteful.

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The Letter

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By Bill Browning

It’s a Saturday in early January, colder than Ann Coulter’s coo… her stare… Coulter’s whatever. It’s damned brisk out. Returning from a trip to Kroger, I can see as I start up the front steps to my house, the mailman has come.

I’m expecting new things to add to my James Franco collection, so the postman’s arrival is a bit of a big deal. Maybe more than a bit, because my hands sweat and my heart-rate increases as I approach the box on the front of the house.

I stand on tiptoes and see, among several flyers and the electric bill, there’s a large envelope in the box. I know from the size and shape of it it’s a DVD.

Lifting the package out of the box… just touching it’s plain wrapping… causes a slight stirring in my Calvin Klein briefs — which I hope is sexual excitement and not the beginnings of a much-anticipated, years-long battle with incontinence.

Hands shaking from cold and exhilaration, I put my key in the door, unlock the lock and step into my living room. I place the mail that doesn’t hold precious treasure for me on the coffee table in front of Paula. Hiding the large envelope that does hold treasure under my coat, I hurry on through the house toward my bedroom.

“What you got there?” Paula wants to know.

I throw on the brakes. “Medical supplies,” I tell her.

“What kind of medical supplies?”

“Um… diabetes testing supplies.”

“But you don’t have diabetes.”

“I don’t have diabetes yet. But I’m, like, two trips to Sonic away from developing  it.”

Watching this exchange, Paula’s cat, Molly, looks inquisitively at Paula’s other cat, Boomer. Boomer, the larger and more opinionated of these flea-bitten fuckers, mouths “new video” and Molly shakes her head, all “poor old fucker”-like.

Thinking everybody should mind their own beeswax, I hurry into my room and close the door.

I sit on the side of the bed and rip into my package. I clutch James Franco’s The Letter to my chest. The DVD is a straight-to-video mess, I’m sure, but I don’t care. James is in it. And right now, for me, that’s all that matters.