Just as we were beginning to tire of all of these Kickstarter campaign stories from the trendsetting uber-successful “Veronica Mars” to the backlash-ridden Zach Braff project to a second “Friday Night Lights“ (yes, a movie of a TV show of a movie), James Franco and Seth Rogen throw us for a loop. While promoting their upcoming meta-apocalyptic comedy “This Is The End,” Complex asked them about the possibility of a “Freaks and Geeks” movie, referencing the “Veronica Mars” campaign.
Rather than shirking it off, Franco admitted that they’ve “discussed it periodically,” and Rogen said, “Yeah! Why the fuck not?” Be still my beating heart. Can it be true? Is there a chance, however slim, that a “Freaks and Geeks” movie could happen? Where do we sign? Any incentives lined up? Maybe some of Franco’s chicken-scratch lecture notes or a copy of the future script with some NSFW Rogen doodles? Our hopes are higher than they should be. Even if this is more than a weed-induced pipe dream, a “Freaks and Geeks” movie would take ages to come to fruition from working around everybody’s schedules (the crew has become rather in-demand over the years) and coming up with a pitch-able concept for a nearly 15 year-old TV series that only survived one season to begin with before it got cancelled. But hey, Kickstarter, right?
Still, we’re going to see the pair reunited on screens before too long; we’re only a few weeks out from “This Is The End,” the meta-com that sees Rogen (and co-writer Evan Goldberg) making his directorial debut, and playing himself, with Franco one of a number of their other pals, also including Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson and Danny McBride, who also feature. A host of new photos from the film has arrived, along with a new clip from the film, which features another of the film’s star cameos, in the shape of “Harry Potter” actress Emma Watson. Hermione seems to be acquitting herself nicely among the improv-happy buddies, but this clip isn’t quite a gut-buster. Will the film be funnier? We’ll find out in a couple of weeks.
In more Franco-phile news (see what we did there? And during Cannes, of all times…), Vice has published James Franco’s critique of Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby,” for some reason. The actor-director-producer-professor-student defends the film in what we’ve come to see as a characteristic Franco manner, a blend of “intellectual” rhetoric, over-sharing and pop culture references. Within the 900 or so words, Franco goes from referencing “On the Road” and “Romeo & Juliet” to comparing Gatsby’s desire to his own “high school relationships, where I tortured girlfriends for getting fingered by other boys when they were freshmen,” to mentioning “Entourage.” Squirm much? Along the way, he also attacks dissenting critics, deeming them “hypocrites” for writing that the film doesn’t follow the original F. Scott Fitzgerald novel close enough. Oh no, critics were comparing a work to its source material. Oh the horror. Although Franco makes some valid points (see Criticwire’s take), we can’t help but feel that the time he used to write this somewhat disjointed film review could have been better spent on other things, *ahem* brainstorming “Freaks and Geeks” follow-up *ahem*.