Franco the most bored Oscar host ever.

I think it’s total sarcasm.

@Odilonvert: I’ve been to the Oscars (my husband worked for the film archive of The Academy at one time) and believe me, they’re even MORE boring in person.

Yeah, but did you sit next to anyone famous and constantly pester them with crazy movie ideas.

That what I would do anyways.

Sounds like your husband had a cool job.

Franco was totally trollin all over the Oscars. Not to mention he was HIGH THE ENTIRE DAMN TIME. I love that man.

I find it quite ironic that, during the viral marketing campaign of his 2007 album “Year Zero”, Trent Reznor mentioned, “Someone should blow up the Oscars,” only to be there four years later winning his own for Best Original Score. Strange how things work…

Franco may well have been high – who knows? But man, he was pathetic… if he was taking the piss, he did a pretty poor job. He couldn’t read the scripted lines without sounding totally inept, and he couldn’t improvise to save his life.

Ann Hathaway at least tried to be upbeat. But why did Franco get the gig? I don’t get it…

The Academy Awards are shit! They are no longer watchable and have any credibility (not that they did much in the beginning either). It used to be a great night. Now, it’s soundbites, overly sappy “let’s pat ourselves on the back for being so great” horseshit, and just a desperate tactic to market very mediocre and even bad movies that nobody watched in the theater or on home video by nominating them for best picture Oscars, hence the upping from five to 10 nominees. Shit, they had a hard enough time coming up with FIVE best picture films. Now they’re trying to tell us they have 10 amazing celluloid gems every year. You know, like that Lifetime Movie of the Week called The Kids are Alright. Puke!

@Bugsy – I don’t know why he did either, he’s got a lazy-sexy-slow-smile persona which doesn’t exactly lend itself to being snappy as a Danny Kaye gag which is pretty much what that job requires

@J & K — Pestering occurred at the bar, where everyone would mingle. But not the year I went. One thing about The Academy be known — they do NOT pay their archivists well. No gold there. Not even close. Which is fine if you’re single, young, and don’t have wee ones around the house. Otherwise yeah, there’s a lot of cool stuff there to see.

I would never pester or talk to a star. Let them have their privacy. And they’re just people anyway which the world has decided to smile upon in a big way. Big deal. No starstruck woman here.

@SP – I just CAN’T type your chosen name, so I’ll just call you “SP.” Looks like Franco is channeling a glam rock guy, either that, or Sid Vicious. I’d feel like that too if I were him and they dressed me up in drag. Definitely would be flipping people the bird.

More like the most stoned Oscar host ever…

Academy Award Winner Trent Reznor

well, let’s not forget about

Academy Award Winners Three 6 Mafia

song is just kind of a giveaway category.

Fitting that they chose the should-be-deceased to sing for the recently-deceased, though. That was genius.

After Marisa Tomei gave her spiel about the technical achievements:

“Alright. Congratulation, nerds.” – Franco

It was damned hilarious. & it was made even more damned hilarious that no one in the audience laughed.

they should at the very least stream the technical oscars on the web.

i’d be more interested in watching those.

http://www.whosay.com/jamesfranco/videos/14030

Just found this. He was tweeting the whole night… but here he recorded a video of walking out onstage. THAT’S what he was doing with the phone at the beginning!

Yeah, it’s pretty clear he didn’t really care.

Some say he was bored, stoned, apathetic, that he was reflecting our boredom and blase carelessness with the whole exhausted ceremony. I think he’s a reflection of all that and the fact that people in his line of work know all too well that their industry is in shambles, not economically but in terms of creativity, talent and spirit. Yet, instead of trying to turn this all around and do something about it, they persist with redundant ritual as if everything for them is just peachy.

The whole ceremony is enough to make anyone throw up.

I wonder what José said?

I caught a few glimpses of the ceremony; enough to see Franco in action. It was ugly.

When you say “yes” to a job, you do your best. It’s called “professionalism.”
It applies whether you are the host of a silly awards show, a lawyer earning $600/hr. or a greeter at Walmart.

The stoned slacker act you can save for when you are sitting in your basement with your buddies. It’s not funny, it’s not “cool”, it is one thing only: deeply immature.

Billy Crystal is loved as the host of the Awards, for good reasons:
He is genuinely funny, in his writing and in his performance.
He is, most often, the only really good thing about the Oscars.

He applies himself. He puts on a heck of a good show.
He is a professional.

I hope someone made Franco sit through the whole show afterwards as a lesson, but I doubt he would understand the point.