..[Los Angeles without a car, work permit or superpowers]
.............

Monday, February 28, 2011

Wake Me Up

I make some guacamole, buy a radioactive flagon of mojitos, and we sit down to watch the 83rd Academy Awards. 

- What's wrong with James Franco's face?

asks my husband, thirty minutes in.

I don't know. 

I thought Franco was behaving oddly during the pre-show interviews, but assumed -- he's a clever sort -- that it was some sort of hilarious bit that I was just too slow to understand.

Perhaps I am slow, because Franco's performance throughout the whole show is similarly enigmatic. His expression defies description. A statistical analysis:

80% nonplussed Keanu Reeves 
15% the peevish face my cat pulls when you put something too close to his nose
5% the half-smirk Rhett Butler makes during Scarlett O'Hara's violent tempers

It really is the Mona Lisa of awards show performances. Anne Hathaway isn't too bad, albeit very GO TEAM GO perky-shrieky-yay in a way that sees me topping up my drink frequently.

Google 'James Franco Oscars' now, and the second most popular option is 'James Franco Oscars High'. Or is it a case of Occam's Razor -- simple nerves, an over-tight truss? 

Monday is dull enough as it is. I give you five drug-free explanations for the James Franco Oscars Face:

- hacked teleprompter screen full of obscenities so vile they make a Mel Gibson rant look like a Charlie Sheen rant, and a Charlie Sheen rant look like a Julie Andrews song  

- sentient hologram of Bob Hope wandering backstage harvesting souls

- contractually-obliged colonic irrigation immediately prior to show (Franco told it was 'standard beauty treatment, kind of like a facial')

- at the dress rehearsal, Anne Hathaway baked a metaphorical cake of rainbows and smiles, sprinkled it with ground-up cheerleaders, Wolverine's nail-clippings and Zoloft, and stuffed the entire thing, whole, into her enormous maw. Nauseated and traumatised by this, Franco decides to go the other way, method-acting a mouthful of lye-flavoured sourpatch candy

- is that... is that Kim Basinger in the wings? She's not presenting, is she? Oh dear god, no -- this is still a dream within a dream within Alec Baldwin's dream, and it's about to get stabby. WAKE ME UP!
.
.

No comments:

Post a Comment