Actors anonymous : a novel

Format:

Book

Title:

Actors anonymous : a novel

Author:

Franco, James, 1978-

ISBN:

9780544114531

9780571311699

Publication:

Boston : New Harvest, 2013.

Physical Description:

xiv, 286 pages ; 24 cm

Contents:

The actor's opinion -- The twelve steps of actors anonymous -- The twelve traditions of actors anonymous.

Summary:

"Actors Anonymous is unsettling, funny, personal, and dark, a story told in many forms, from testimonials (in the style of Alcoholics Anonymous) and scripts to letters, diaries, and more. Franco turns his "James Franco" persona inside out--sometimes humorously, often mercilessly. The book brims with profound insights into the nature and purpose of acting, bawdy satires of the high life, as well as deeply moving portraits of aspiring actors who never quite made it. Franco's seemingly inexhaustible celebrity currency makes this that rare work in which the writer's fame matches his considerable literary ambition. Partly inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Actors Anonymous is an intense, wild ride that's pure Franco."-- Provided by publisher.

Subject(s):

Actors -- Fiction.

Performing arts -- Fiction.

Actors and actresses -- Fiction.

Genre:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	Franco, J.	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

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Summary

The actors in James Franco's brilliant debut novel include a McDonald's drive-thru operator who spends his shift trying on accents; an ex-child star recalling a massive beachside bacchanal; hospital volunteers and Midwestern transplants; a vampire flick starlet who discovers a cryptic book written by a famous actor gone AWOL; and the ghost of River Phoenix. Then there's Franco himself, who prowls backstage, peering out between the lines--before taking the stage with fascinating meditations on his art, along with nightmarish tales of excess. "Hollywood has always been a private club," he writes. "I open the gates. I say welcome. I say, Look inside ."

Told in a dizzying array of styles--from lyric essays and disarming testimonials to hilariously rambling text messages and ghostly footnotes--and loosely modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Actors Anonymous is an intense, wild ride into the dark heart of celebrity.

Author Notes

James Franco was born on April 19, 1978 in Palo Alto, California. He enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles as an English major but dropped out after freshman year to pursue a career as an actor, taking acting lessons with Robert Carnegie at Playhouse West. After 15 months of training, he began auditioning in Los Angeles California and got his first break in 1990 after he was cast in the leading role of the television series Freaks and Geeks. His first major film was the romantic comedy Whatever It Takes. He was later cast in the title role of the 2001 TV special James Dean. He received a Golden Globe Award and nominationations for an Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2002 the superhero film Spider-Man was released and James Franco played Harry Osborn, the son of the villain. Spider-Man was a commercial and critical success. In the same year he was cast in the drama City by the Sea. The following year he co-starred in Robert Altman's The Company. With the success of the first Spider-Man film he was able to reprise the role in the sequel Spider-Man 2 in 2004. The movie was well received by critics. He continues his acting career with roles in films such as the Great Raid, Annapolis, Flyboys and Wicker Man. He is a successful actor, director and screenwriter.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Franco's debut novel, following his short story collection Palo Alto, is an assemblage of chapters whose organizing factor is a parody of the Alcoholics Anonymous manual Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Each chapter is headed by a step or a tradition, such as step three: "Turned our will and our 'performances' over to the Great Director." Some chapters are first-person narratives, ostensibly by different narrators, though it's hard not to think of the author as the sole narrator, since the tone and voice of each is identical to the others-flat, Bukowskian recitations of acting classes taken, sex had, and drugs done. Elsewhere, readers encounter uninspired maunderings about the nature of acting: "Kazan said actors acquire the look of waxed fruit." The chapter headed "Step 4: Made a fearless and searching moral inventory of our 'character' " is composed of sophomoric poems about River Phoenix. At one point, a narrator named James receives a note from a professor that says, "Stop writing." Another chapter includes the pronouncement, "Writing sells mass produced objects." This mass-produced object will likely appeal only to Franco's most devoted fans, but you can't fault a guy for trying. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

Actor Franco's experimental first novel (Palo Alto: Stories, 2010) focuses on the field he knows best--acting. Part aphorism, part instruction manual, part reflection, part short story and, seemingly, part memoir, the narrative is a pastiche of forms and moods. We find a narrator who's occasionally called "James Franco" and a reminder (in a footnote) that this work is a fictional creation. We also find an order of sorts, for he breaks the narrative into two major sections: "The Twelve Steps of Actors Anonymous" and "The Twelve Traditions of Actors Anonymous." The first part is casually based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and includes steps such as "[We] turned our will and our performances' over to the Great Director" and "[We] made a fearless and searching moral inventory of our character.' " The "Twelve Traditions" include "Every film ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside financing" and "We should remain forever artists, but we can employ technical workers." As is clear from these rubrics, some of this advice is either overly obvious or to be taken with a grain of salt. Gnomic statements abound: "Your characters need to love something, otherwise they will be unlovable" and "The grammar of film is more complex than the grammar of text." In the interstices, Franco (or his alter ego) presents his ideas through anecdotes and semiplausible fictional incidents, with plenty of inside references to Hollywood actors. Loosely structured in the extreme, the novel seems to have been written in odd moments while Franco was taking a break from his acting career--and it was probably more fun for him to write than it is for the reader to read.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

After establishing his literary cred with his story collection, Palo Alto (2010), actor and director Franco ups the ante in this canny first novel. It purports to be an assemblage of confessional tales told by members of Actors Anonymous, a 12-step support group relying on a higher power, the Great Director. Each mordantly funny and unnerving actor-wannabe struggles to cope with the abyss between dream and reality and the peculiar identity crises intrinsic to performing. Jerry is fiasco-prone. Corey's ambitious mother colluded in his sexual exploitation as a child actor. Sean speaks in fake accents when working at McDonald's, hoping to seem exotic. The ringleader is James Franco, or the Actor, a notorious deflowerer of virgins and a metaconstruct that allows author Franco to gleefully, bawdily, and scathingly dissect the cult of celebrity and the paradoxes of acting, blur the line between autobiography and fiction, and dispense genuinely resonant artistic advice. Though the pastiche of clever narrative modes doesn't always click, Franco is provocatively revelatory in this mask-on, mask-off inquiry into delusion and illusion, hubris and art.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist