Later this year, Hollywood superstar James Franco will come out with a new film whose animating concept is so confusing it takes an entire article to explain and contextualize it.

Here’s what happened: a few years ago, Franco listened to some songs by The Smiths to help him write poems that he later compiled into a poetry collection entitled Directing Herbert White. He then turned those Smiths-influenced poems back into Smiths- and poetry-influenced songs. He then gave those songs to high school students in Palo Alto and asked them to translate the songs into a third creative genre—cinematic screenplay—and based on the resulting screenplays, he and his band Daddy (yes, he has a band) wrote an album’s worth of new Smiths-, poetry-, and screenplay-inspired songs. The student screenplays have now been produced, and, with the aid of songs by Daddy, comprise a film called Let Me Get What I Want.

You can watch the first music video to emerge from this project here .

The upshot here is that Franco has engineered a compositional process that mirrors the way culture moves in the Internet Age: from one genre to another, with each successive genre translating (and also mistranslating) the same source material in its own way. The best part is that not only is Franco letting us see the results at each stage in the process, but his “final” product—a film and its accompanying soundtrack—offers us both listenable music and watchable film, making it not only a suitably complex concept-driven artwork but also a likely entertaining one. If avant-garde literary artists and filmmakers are pissed at Franco, as they usually and currently are, they have a right to be—but only because Franco has a (to them) unimaginable budget, not because the ideas Franco is working with are subpar. They’re not subpar; frankly, they’re pretty great. It’s not a popular thing to say, but it’s not a difficult position to defend. If the late novelist David Foster Wallace once criticized the American postmodernism of the 1980s and 1990s as “hellaciously un-fun,” and in doing so prophesied the imminent demise of postmodernism (and its poster-child irony) as a generative cultural paradigm, young artists like Franco have taken the hint and begun producing avant-garde art that’s at once cerebral and a visceral delight.

In lauding Franco as I do here, don’t misunderstand me: plenty of writers and filmmakers are coming up with ideas just as good as Franco’s, they’re just not coming up with as many of them all at once, and in so many different genres, and all while living a life in the public eye that’s equal parts “hounded celebrity” and “pariah for every disappointed artiste-cum-barista from Seattle to D.C.” Those who hate Franco’s art, and the (to them) obscure motivations that drive its production in such copious volume, are the sort of artists who have always hated those who step outside anticipated roles. These artists often find ways to double down on the status quo without seeming to be doing so—they maintain their bohemian street cred even as they strangle in its crib any audacious innovations in art. In the end, though, Franco’s critics are profoundly misunderstanding what they’re critiquing. They believe themselves superior to Franco as artists if they can (variously) write a better screenplay than Franco, write a better poem than Franco, and so on—when in fact Franco’s creative persona has nothing to do with quality per se, and everything to do with the new byword in the arts: interdisciplinarity.

Franco masterfully coordinates multiple genres, discrete disciplines, and disparate resources in a way the rest of us can’t, not only because we’re poorer but because, generally, we’re not as smart or creative as Franco is within his own context—that context being a life of limitless resources, staggering visibility, and a restlessness that many celebrities deal with through moral sloth or gestural charity work. While it’s true that much of Franco’s smarts and creativity are attributable to him being wealthy and famous enough to know and collaborate with some very smart and talented people, even here we must say that the ability to aggregate talent is both rare generally and vanishingly rare among the Hollywood elite—even as it’s perhaps the most critical skill an artist can possess in our present age of collaboration and intertextuality. Postmodern dialectics have given way to metamodern dialogue, and Franco knows it.

In other words, given his local and cultural contexts, Franco is, conceptually speaking, hitting the ball out of the ballpark nine times out of ten. His projects, both Let Me Get What I Want and its immediate predecessors, are conceptually astute even when (sometimes particularly when) they fail as individual artworks. Is Directing Herbert White a particularly good book of poetry? No. Is it any good at all? Not really, at least if we judge it using conventional standards of craft, form, and imagination. But the concept behind the book, that being to have a famous person unabashedly write earnest poems about what a celebrity’s life is like—which, judging from American culture, is all anyone wants to know about celebrities anyway—is ingenious in its way. We didn’t get that kind of fan service from Jewel, or Billy Corgan, or Leonard Nimoy, or any of the other Hollywood darlings who’ve decided to try their hand at poetry. Franco writes poems entirely responsive to who he is to us as well as who he is to himself, and in making that difficult and perhaps unintentionally selfless decision he’s exhibited a sensitivity to context which, surprisingly, even today’s most multi-generic artists seem to lack. Indeed, American poetry—by way of example—has repeatedly made national headlines over the past couple years for its brazen commitment to giving exactly no one in America what they want, for doing almost nothing to write verse that reflects the culture in which it’s being written, and meanwhile—on top of that—for arguing loudly about how it’s preposterous to expect it to do otherwise. Franco has made a different decision, and in the context of his cross-generic career it’s clear that that decision was motivated by the actor’s artistic vision rather than financial gain. Franco doesn’t need the cash, after all.

It’s time for the Franco hate to stop. Viewed at the level of a career rather than on the level of individual artworks, Franco is Hollywood’s most interesting, daring, and multi-faceted artist. Hating on him is not only easy to do but also easy to justify as coming from a protective instinct—that is, the idea that the arts must be protected from the intrusion of dilettantes like Franco. In fact, the anti-Franco madness is as retrograde, conservative, and reactionary as any inclination we find in the arts today. It says that not only should we all stay within our generic and subcultural boxes, but that delivering anticipated results is always preferable to displaying uncommon (even if only intermittently winning) daring. In fact, the reverse is true, a premise for which Franco is the poster-child. In light of the age we live in, and the explorations of genre and how artists live and interconnect that should be happening right now across all genres, the truth is that James Franco is as intelligent and creative as any of his peers, and perhaps much more so.

Seth Abramson is the author of five poetry collections, including two, Metamericana and DATA, forthcoming in 2015 and 2016. Currently a doctoral candidate at University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is also Series Co-Editor for Best American Experimental Writing, whose next edition will be published by Wesleyan University Press in 2015.

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James Franco has signed with Untitled for management, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Until late 2013, he had been with James Levy Management for about two decades.

That firm’s partners, Miles Levy and Randy James, sued one another last April over, in part, claims that Levy concealed Franco commissions from the rest of the company. They settled in July.

The Interview star is coming off the Berlin bows of Queen of the Desert and Wim Wenders’ Every Thing Will Be Fine, following the Sundance premieres of True Story and I Am Michael. He is directing an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, which will star an ensemble including Selena Gomez, Vincent D’Onofrio, Robert Duvall, Ed Harris, Bryan Cranston and Danny McBride.

Franco continues to be repped by CAA and Sloane Offer.

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James Franco has written a lengthy poetic essay about his love for Lana Del Rey and revealed that he wants to produce a film based on one of the singer’s ideas.

In the letter, published by V Magazine , The Interview actor Franco gushed that Del Rey “isn’t made for this Earth” and prompted speculation that the pair might work together in the future. “I wanted to interview Lana for a book and she said, ‘Just write around me, it’s better if it’s not my own words. It’s almost better if you don’t get me exactly, but try,'” Franco said.

He added: “She has this idea for a film. I want to do it because it’s a little like Sunset Boulevard. A woman is alone in a big house in LA. She doesn’t want to go out. She starts to go crazy, and becomes paranoid because she feels like people are watching her. Even in her own house. It’s like an awesome B-movie that lives in Lana’s head. It’s about her, and it’s not about her. Just like her music.”

Franco has expressed his adoration of Del Rey in the past. In December, the actor told Howard Stern that he wanted to “make love to her music”. “There’s a weird thing with creative types,” he said. “Sometimes I love a person’s work and, like, I’m just so enamoured with that and their persona in their work. But outside of that, it’s like, our dynamic is we’re just kind of friends, we get along so well. But all this sexual attraction is for the person and the work.”

Earlier this month, Del Rey revealed her third album will be called ‘Honeymoon’. It was reported that the singer has written nine tracks for the album already, which she says will be “very different” to last year’s ‘Ultraviolence’. It will also include a cover of the Nina Simone version of ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’. “I’m looking for a few more songs to tie everything together,” the singer explained.

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Motorola hasn’t officially announced the existence of its upcoming Droid Turbo smartphone yet, but the Kevlar-coated device has appeared all over the internet, with leaked images showing the Android phone’s red and black variants. With the Droid official Twitter account posting teasers for the Turbo, it can only be a matter of time before the phone gets an official release — even actor James Franco has one.

Franco — poet, polymath, and star of pot comedy Pineapple Express — appears of a new viral ad for the Droid Turbo. The 30-second clip shows Franco being filmed by a fan as he’s riding a bike in a button-down shirt. He engages in small-talk with the unnamed cameraperson, flashing her a sinister grin, before peeling off into the darkness. In a second he’s back again, pulling out his red Droid Turbo to take a picture of the people filming him. The viral short appears to be emphasizing the Droid Turbo’s speed: Franco tweeted it alongside the hashtags #FrancoFast and, with slightly less subtlety, #ad

Me on a bike … even their camera can’t keep up #ad #Droid #FrancoFast http://t.co/SzQzWw1YFX

— James Franco (@JamesFrancoTV) October 27, 2014

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Today, AOL Originals unveiled three all-new episodes of its 10-episode comedy “Making a Scene With James Franco,” an innovative comedy showcasing Academy Award nominee James Franco’s recreation of cinema’s most iconic moments. Whether it’s an irreverent twist on genre or a mash-up of two entirely different scenes, the series throws convention out the window and in the end delivers a truly unique— and always hilarious —twist on cinematic history. The latest installments of “Making a Scene”—all available now—deliver a trio of fresh mashups, including “I’m the King of Wayne’s World,” an absurdist look at what happens when “Wayne’s World” poses as “Titanic”; “Forrest to the Future,” a glimpse at what might have been if “Back to the Future’s” Doc Brown took a journey with the titular Forrest Gump; and “I’m the One That I Want,” a new, narcissistic slant on mega-musical “Grease.” Making a Scene With James Franco is a 10-episode comedy on AOL Originals.

We sat down with the actor, author, artist and photographer to discuss “Making a Scene With James Franco”—a project born of the film buff’s love of movies and a childhood spent acting out scenes with his brothers—his favorite films and what iconic movie he fervently wishes he had been cast in.

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