Hollywood

James Franco To Girls Main Character, Hannah: ‘Get A F—ing Job’

The life of a writer can be rather difficult. Multifaceted actor/teacher/student James Franco knows this all too well because he’s a part-time scribe himself, and he wants mopey, uninspired “Girls” main character Hannah to find a job already, whatever kind of work it may entail.

“I worked at McDonalds, and my first suggestion to Hannah would be this: get a fucking job,” the celebrity writes in a new Huffington Post column on Hannah, a fairly recent college graduate who loses her unpaid internship when she asks to become a staffer and has no source of income. She soon finds an office position elsewhere but is forced to quit after unsuccessfully seducing her boss. And now all she does with her time is fawn over fickle half-bro, half-hipster Adam, bicker with BFF Marnie, and lazily babysit naive buddy Shoshana.

Though I have trouble relating to Franco for a laundry list of reasons, he makes a valid point when he says that different kinds of life experiences can give writers material from which to draw, and Hannah either rejects or is unaware of this idea:

“If you really want to have experiences to write about, go to work; and if you really want to be an artist, take responsibility for yourself and wait some tables. You might mature a little in the process.”

Oddly enough, fellow “Girls” cast member, Jemima Kirke said last month that she requested that her own character wait tables on the show as a way of fulfilling something she always wanted to do, but never got around to, likely because she’s the daughter of a Bad Company drummer and never needed to work among regular old folks. Don’t you hate when that gets in the way of things? Kirke told Vulture:

“I’ve pitched things that I would like to do. You know, like, I always wanted to work at a restaurant and I never did. And I was like, ‘Lena, can you get me to work at a restaurant?’ So there’s things that I wanted to do, you know.”

I guess the ship has sailed on that one, but there’s hope for Hannah, who still needs a job. As Franco points out in his piece, show creator Lena Dunham, who portrays Hannah, is nothing like her onscreen persona. No matter how many times Hannah fails or makes poor decisions on the program, she leaves the set as Dunham, a wildly successful, ambitious, ballsy 20-something who has a popular series to her name. It’s her character who needs growing. After seven episodes, I’m ready to see it, too.

TAGS: girls HBO | girls show | hbo girls | james franco | lena dunham

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