James Franco and Gawker have had an openly adversarial relationship in the past, with Franco rubbing his fancy bloggin’ award in their faces, so it’s hard to say whether they’re stickin’ it to him on purpose or just doing the normal Gawker stuff. But today they’re implying pretty heavily that James Franco is in a gay relationship with his Child of God star Scott Haze (an adaptation a recent review called “best left read“). It all stems from basically two paragraphs in a New York Times profile of Franco that mention that Franco and Haze live together:
Mr. Haze and Mr. Franco met about a decade ago when they were acting students in Los Angeles. They are now so close that describing them merely as friends would be a disservice. […]
By now, it was 12:30 a.m. and Mr. Franco was clearly fading. An assistant pointed him and Mr. Haze to two waiting town cars. Mr. Franco expressed surprise, since they needed only one.
“We live in the same place,” he said.
Spoiler alert, I also live with a dude! Draw your own conclusions. Though that last part of the block quote was the last sentence of the Times article, so I’ll admit it does have an element of “we’re not sayin, we’re just sayin” to it. Which Gawker takes it to the next level:
But theirs is the kind of relationship—somewhat ambiguous, seemingly gay, probably romantic—that almost always sends The New York Times into a bizarre moral panic. Remember Marty Peretz and “his assistant, a 26-year-old former I.D.F. officer”? Or Anderson Cooper’s “good looks, high spirits and glamorous adventures”?
Of course, it’s always hard to distinguish Franco’s private interest and public provocation—so perhaps the Times’ squeamishness is a symptom of their fear of being fooled. Maybe Franco was just messing with them! Then again, the paper of record has plenty of experience playing coy about gay relationships, too. In that sense, Franco and the Times are the perfect match.
Oh snap, James Franco is not only gay, he’s in bed with the old grey lady! Franco and a newspaper, sittin’ in a tree, F-E-L-C-H-I-N-G... Look, I’m not saying James Franco is or isn’t gay, but if he was gay, he’d be the first closeted gay man ever to use public obsession with homosexuality, the male gaze, and all things gay, bi, and ambiguous as a cover (not that there’s anything wrong with that). He very much seems like a straight white art student using gay themes to stick it to the squares.
And of course, all this latest Gawker article proves is what James Franco already said back in 2012:
My first chapbook came out, Strongest of the Litter, but people seem to be more interested in who I’m dating than poetry.
You think, bro? How many graduate degrees did it take you to figure that one out.