The Busiest Man in Hollywood Counsels Hannah From ‘Girls’ to Get a Damn Job

Arguably hitting the sweet spot between relevant and ironically belated, Freaks and Geeks star and conceptual artist James Franco has finally weighed in on the HBO series Girls, via a lengthy op-ed on The Huffington Post. I think the 206th Amendment to the Internet Constitution states that once James Franco has weighed in on a controversy we can officially bury it, right? No? Well, Franco doesn’t seem too interested in reaching a definitive answer on whether Lena Dunham’s show sucks or rules: In one paragraph, he chastises her self-modeled character, Hannah Horvath, to “get a fucking job,” in another he admits that Dunham did, in fact, get a fucking job — if writing, directing, and acting on a premium cable television show qualifies. (I think it at least ranks somewhere above “Selling Non-Visible Art to Canadian Models” on the “fucking-ness of job” scale.)

On a more personal note, Franco says that while he finds most of the male characters on Girls to be pretty loathsome, “For all I know, but for the grace of Judd Apatow I would be just like those struggling male idiots I see on the show.” Let the endless hall of mirrors of that particular statement sink in for a second. Maybe we are all being too hard on Girls. It’s possible we just don’t have the critical distance gained by the transformative experience of having a career launched by its co-producer.

Go ahead, make whatever edits you need to that Girls screed you posted on Tumblr back in April, we’ll wait.

Filed Under: Girls, James Franco, Judd Apatow, Lena Dunham