This week’s issue of New York magazine has a very interesting cover story focusing on the ongoing enigma that is the actor/director/artist/author/whatever James Franco (“James Franco: Is He For Real?”). Fresh from his second short-term stint on the soap opera “General Hospital,’ in which he plays a homocidal performance artist–also named Franco–fixated on resident hitman/heartthrob/hero Jason Morgan (played by Steve Burton), as well as COUNTLESS projects that have him simultaneously pursuing master’s degrees at NYU, Brooklyn College and Columbia in creative writing and film and god knows what else; starring in high-profile films (i.e. Eat, Pray Love, 127 Hours); churning out articles for prestigious publications and a book of poetry; masterminding quirky art exhibits for LA’s MOCA (the venue for a key plot development during his most recent “General Hospital” stint), there seems to be one overriding question: How in the world does this young man from Palo Alto, California have the energy and wherewithal to do all this? Plus, how does he find the time???

The New York magazine article tries to answer these two questions, succeeding…somewhat. Evidently, according to James Franco’s mother Betsy (who appears on “General Hospital” as the mother of his homocidal artist character), son James has always been an inexhaustible ambitious dynamo. “But there’s so much I want to do,” he supposedly told his mother as a little boy after she gently broached the topic of mortality with him following the death of a close family friend. That dogged determination to circumvent mortality has driven Franco to undertake an insane 24/7 quest that has him doing in a single week what most people barely do in a lifespan. Is James Franco a Renaissance man? Is he a pretentious dilletante? Or a garden-variety nutcase with a serious case of ADD?

I think he’s probably a bit of all three. I do give him high marks for continuing his education in light of the fact that so many of his peers are high school drop-outs. I find it kind of ironic that Franco should register so strongly on the media radar these days after experiencing some professional doldrums early on.

After receiving a Golden Globe award for his turn as James Dean in the 2001 TNT movie bio, Franco went on to star in a number of films, most of which (except for the Spiderman franchise in which he had a supporting role) failed to catapult him to the A-list. Then in the mid-2000s, Franco returned to school, finishing his BA at UCLA; during this time, he filmed Milk and Pineapple Express, both of which jump-started and advanced Franco’s stalled career to the next level. For Milk, Franco generated critical raves, even winning the Independent Spirit Award; and for Pineapple Express, he finally achieved the honor of starring in a commercial hit (playing the part of a stoner/drug dealer all too believably).

Since then, his career, in between the marathon course-taking, the forays into soap opera acting, the art-making and prolific writing, has taken off like a meteor. Next up for him is the imminent releases of two anticipated films, Howl, in which he plays a young Allen Ginsberg on trial for obscenity and the aforementioned 127 Hours, directed by Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), in which he plays a real-life mountaineer who after being trapped underneath a boulder during a climbing expedition, amputates his own arm in a desperate bid to survive. The buzz for both films is high, although Howl seems more like an art-house film while 127 Hours could finally be that breakthrough film that might establish Franco as an A-lister once and for all (while also garnering a possible Oscar nomination for him).

As a fan of his, I’m delighted his career is going so well and that he and his wonderfully crinkly smile (and that gorgeous Gucci spokesmodel face) have become so ubiquituous. It’s about time.

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