James Franco’s Obsession With Fetishizing Damaged Goods

In the wake of James Franco’s doucherific story, “Bungalow 89,” “loosely based” on his encounter with Lindsay Lohan at the Chateau Marmont, one would have thought he’d be set for awhile on honing in on a certain type of female vulnerability that seems to run most rampant in Los Angeles. Unfortunately for the literary world, Franco will be continuing his fame-bought authorship with a book called Flip-Side: Real and Imaginary Conversations with Lana Del Rey.

No one is really sure when Lana Del Rey and James Franco started talking/being friends, but apparently their shared love of L.A. and the damage it wreaks upon the psyche was enough to forge a bond. And that bond cajoled LDR into allowing Franco to write a 100-page book (obviously there wasn’t enough material–real or imagined–for more) featuring dialogue like:

“This is a poem about Lana Del Rey.

This is an essay about Lana Del Rey.

Lana has become my friend. She is a musician who is a poet and a video artist.

She grew up on the East Coast but she is an artist of the West Coast.”

If the rest of the book is anything like this wooden and contrived “prose” (taken from this article), we’re going to be thanking our lucky stars for the many Polaroids filling up most of the pages. And for whatever seasoned writer David Shields’ (who has also collaborated with Franco on War Is Beautiful) contribution is.