Actors Anonymous
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. —Donna Seaman