Just in case we weren’t fully aware of James Franco’s weird-out dickheadishness, he’s written a short story about the times he didn’t sleep with Lindsay Lohan. Really, he should have got that role in Mean Girls – playing Regina George, though.
Interest in his previous relationship with Lindsay piqued after an apparent list of her previous sexual partners was leaked this January. A photo of the list, in all-caps, went viral after someone spotted it lying about at the Beverly Hills Hotel earlier this year.
We thought it was too good to be true, but Lindsay admitted that the list, written as part of her Twelve Steps programme, was hers. James Franco, though, went on the record – repeatedly – to say that he hadn’t slept with her.
Just in case we didn’t get it, though, he’s written an anti-kiss-and-tell for Vice as part of their short stories issue. We’ll spare you too much of the prose, because it’s hard to navigate our way around all the names he’s dropped, and all the self-love related to his stint as a Gucci model, but basically, he tells a story of how Lindsay Lohan came to his room when he was staying at Los Angeles’ Chateau Marmont while having his house redecorated, way back when.
In one instance, he calls her ‘our fictional Hollywood girl, Lindsay,’ and this story is meant to be part of the magazine’s fiction issue, but for the most part, he refers to her as ‘Lindsay’, or ‘Lindsay Lohan’. For his sake, we hope that the stories are true, because she could have quite the lawsuit to pelt at him if not.
Also, there’s a bit where he refers to her mum as ‘looking her slutty best’ – which isn’t the sort of shit you should say about anyone’s mum, James.
Though he mentions Gus Van Sant, Keanu Reeves, River Phoenix and Terry Richardson, among others, it’s Lindsay he fixates on the most. Funny, considering he previously tried to distance himself from her by saying their make-out session was ‘lame’, you’d have thought he’d wanted to draw a line under it in his Moleskine notebook.
Instead he claims that, though she was in his bed, ‘[he] wasn’t going to fuck her.’ Instead, he read her a short story by JD Salinger.
James does make an interesting point about Lindsay’s sobriety being difficult because she has confused fame as an actress with fame as a tabloid star: ‘How would she ever stop the craziness when the response to her work and the response to her life had converged into one?'
However, it doesn’t take a genius to work that one out, and it comes from a really mean place: ‘Every night Lindsay looked for me… Every night Lindsay looked for me, and I hid.’
Really, James? Dress it up in all of the literary references and disjointed chronology you like, it’s basically a kiss and tell, and it’s tackier than anything Lindsay’s done, including that advert for Fornarina (never forget).
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.