Last week, some excerpts of James Franco’s Playboy interview surfaced, and CB already covered the portions that included Franco’s continued refusal to take any responsibility for his awful turn as an Oscar host as well as his legitimate disgust over the “gay rapist” blind item that was pinned upon him. Now, Playboy has published the full piece online. As expected, it’s a doozy of an discussion wherein, among many other points, Franco declares that he really wanted a part in Breaking Dawn, but director Bill Condon didn’t bite. Naturally, Franco intended to use the role as performance art, which is also a term that he uses to describe Twitter; and (in a rare move) he makes a slight admission of handling Twitter the wrong way (remember those public temper tantrums?). However, those self-referential brownie points quickly disappear when Franco preemptively disassociates himself from his role in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (here’s the trailer). Essentially, Franco takes great care to explain that everything in life is performance art, except when it’s not. When it comes to making the distinction between the two, well, the line is obviously quite blurry. Let’s do this, shall we?

On Using Twitter (Including The Hand-Down-The-Pants Photo) As Performance Art: I couldn’t do Twitter the conventional way. I resisted the idea of posting comments, opinions; I felt they weren’t worth anything. I also felt that if I had something worth saying, I’d put it in an essay or a story, not on Twitter. So I thought Twitter was where I’d post cool photos and videos–a kind of collage, an outlet where I could just throw my scraps–and I posted some of a big art project I was doing. I knew people in the art community would see them as art, but they were perceived as something else.

I thought, It’s my account; I can post anything I want here. But I had underage followers on Twitter. Don’t follow me or Lady Gaga if you’re underage. Some companies I work with reminded me that my image is now connected with their image and they were not happy.

Somebody writes or says something about you that can be upsetting, and your first reaction is to want to write back–and usually the first reaction is an angry one. I personally do not do my best thinking when I’m angry. Before Twitter, I always had that buffer period when I could actually think and decide, Is this worth it? You respond to someone and it immediately goes out to hundreds of thousands of people and becomes a big thing that people report. For me Twitter is a dangerous thing.

On Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Here’s my guess: Critics will be out to kill this movie and blame me for it just because they are out to kill me. Last year people were pretty nice. This is the year when people are going to have fun going after me. I don’t feel the same way about Rise of the Planet of the Apes as I do about 127 Hours or Milk. It was a ­different kind of acting.

Because I’m in the digital and media department at Rhode Island School of Design, it was fascinating for me to get to work with Weta Digital, the company that also did The Lord of the Rings and Avatar. I also got to work with Andy Serkis, who plays the ape Caesar and did a lot of motion capture. I never thought of this movie as an example of my creativity. I was an actor for hire. But people still have it out for me, so they’re going to go after the movie.

They haven’t shown me the movie yet, so I don’t know what the result is. I did reshoots, and it sounds to me the final movie will be different from the screenplay, which had a lot of character development. The movie seems to be more action now. I went and did my job, and I’m supposed to be a scientist. I feel pretty confident that I did that.

What strikes me, looking back at [the original Planet of the Apes] movies now, is that they had really good actors, including Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowall, in these crazy masks, and they were having pretty interesting philosophical conversations about society, the ethics of interacting with other ­societies and mysterious cultures. It’s fun to see those kinds of conversations and issues. In the later movies it becomes about race and social upheaval, so the movies were kind of comments on current issues. The older movies can get away with that with their cult value. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is not a bunch of apes sitting around having philosophical discussions.

On How He Wanted To Do A Twilight Movie: I had my agent tell [director] Bill Condon that I’d be happy to do anything in Breaking Dawn, but that was because it was supposed to be part of a multimedia project at Yale. I was working with a Yale undergraduate who had written an autobiographical play about putting on a theatrical production of Twilight in which I was a character. So I was interested in Twilight because I was going to be part of that play. I thought what a great connection it would be if I were also involved with the real Twilight.

On How Bloggers Accuse Him Of Coasting On His Fame Through Academia: It’s a great thing. When people heard I was in all these academic programs, the reaction for some person I don’t even know was to take a picture of me sleeping at Columbia. It wasn’t even in class; it was a 10 p.m. optional guest lecture. But people love to post that picture on the internet and criticize me for taking a spot away from somebody else who would really care about the lecture. ­People sleep in class at all my schools all the time and nobody posts their pictures.

Because if someone from Gawker or any of those blogs wants to say I’m “the superstudent” or “the stoner student,” it takes the edge off this public persona that others have created for me. I can just slip under the radar and do my work without being bothered. They will perceive you however they want to anyway.

People from these horrible blogs came to my book party for Palo Alto last year. Normally I don’t care, but it’s like your worst enemy showing up at your birthday party, like, “Why are you here? Get the f&**k out of my party.” But it gave me a chance to see that a lot of the people writing for these blogs are just people my age who are in the same writing programs I was–or trying to get into those programs. So it was like, “Oh, so you’re just one of my classmates who doesn’t like me. That’s what this is all about?”

I’ve been perceived as this guy yelling, “Hey, look at me. I want attention.” I’m not going to school to get articles written about me. I’m just going to school. But the fact that I’m going to school or that someone takes a picture of me sleeping is like, “We’re gonna jump on that and criticize him for his antics.” What antics? I write. I make movies. I’m going to school. I hosted the Oscars. I take these projects seriously.

[From Playboy]

There’s much more to the interview, including Franco’s strange rant on how even his (recurring) role on “General Hospital” is performance art. In fact, he’s very bummed out that the show might go off the air because he was planning on tying the role in with some school project. Of course, Franco claims to take school so seriously and separates it from his silly “performance art” label, which is (let’s face it) just a blanket excuse that he uses to dismiss things that go wrong. Like, if he doesn’t take things seriously, why should we blame him if a project flops? At the same time though, he does claim to take these things seriously. This contradiction, and Franco’s oblivious denial of such, leads me to believe that the guy might just have a breakdown someday. I do hope that this isn’t the case because, underneath all of the douchiness, Franco appears to be a benevolent soul.

However, I do find it interesting that Franco is justifying his participation within Rise of the Planet of the Apes upon a really great script that has somehow disappeared through a series of reshoots. Obviously in his mind, when Franco signed on, this was an Oscar-caliber movie, but now? Not so much.

Photos courtesy of WENN