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A Mural Painted By James Franco Was Removed Following Sexual Harassment Allegations Against Him


James Franco’s legacy is getting painted over. At least, the mural he painted at his alma mater, Palo Alto High School, is. In 2014, the actor donated 20 large paintings to the high school campus, along with the murals he painted himself. While one of the murals was taken down in 2016, the second was removed in late January in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations leveled against him by at least five women. According to the school, the 20 other works will be “transitioned” out of public view.

“Related to this, district staff recently considered the best interests of our students in the light of our educational mission and decided to remove and return the remaining artwork. The second mural was taken down last week; our Latinos Unidos group is working with the Paly ASB and VAPA Department around the concept for a new mural to be painted,” Palo Alto Unified School District interim superintendent Karen Hendricks told The Hollywood Reporter.

Kimberly Diorio, the school’s principal, told the school’s student paper, The Voice, “I made the decision we’ll take down the mural on the [student center] because I think that’s the one that’s most visible to the outside community.” Diorio did note, though, that the decision to take down the mural was not a direct result of the allegations against Franco.

“These are still allegations,” Diorio added. “I can’t even say [the decision to replace the mural] is based on fact because he’s denied those allegations and hasn’t been charged with a crime.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the actor’s artwork was inspired by his own Palo Alto High School yearbook. “When I was a teenager, it seemed like I felt so much; everything seemed so important and there was so much pressure of all kinds and I was experiencing certain things for the first time. And so, the paintings, for me at least, captured that,” Franco told The Voice, in 2014.

Franco has denied all the sexual misconduct allegations against him. In a January sitdown with Stephen Colbert Franco said, “Look, in my life I pride myself on taking responsibility for things that I have done. I have to do that to maintain my well being. The things that I heard that were on Twitter are not accurate. But I completely support people coming out and being able to have a voice because they didn’t have a voice for so long. So I don’t want to shut them down in any way.”

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James Franco’s Accusers Speak Out on ‘GMA’: ‘If We Allow Any of Them, We’re Allowing All of Them.’



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Scarlett Johansson Called Out James Franco During Her Women's March Speech


An estimated 4.9 million protestors gathered at 673 marches around the world on Saturday to support equal rights for women, protest against sexual harassment and assault, encourage crowds to vote in this year’s midterm elections, and speak up for the rights of immigrants and Dreamers. As people gathered in the streets of cities like New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and Los Angeles, celebrities gave rousing speeches and shared their messages of empowerment. Scarlett Johansson stepped up to the podium in Los Angeles to address her own experiences as a young women—and to call out James Franco, who, in opposition to his public support of the Time’s Up movement, has been accused of sexual misconduct.

She started her speech by thanking the women who helped organize the march and the Time’s Up movement before explaining that the reckoning taking place in Hollywood has made her step back and think: “How could a person publicly stand by an organization that helps to provide support for victims of sexual assault while privately preying on people who have no power?”

She paused and looked at the crowd, “I want my pin back, by the way.”

A rep confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that this comment was directed at Franco, who recently won a Golden Globe for his leading role in The Disaster Artist and accepted the award while wearing a Time’s Up pin. During the ceremony he received backlash on Twitter from actress Ally Sheedy, who alluded to Franco’s behavior as the reason she left the entertainment industry. Days later the Los Angeles Times published a story in which five women accused Franco of sexually exploitative behavior.

Johansson went on to reflect on her own experiences as a young actress: “Suddenly I was 19 again and I began to remember all the men who had taken advantage of the fact that I was a young woman who didn’t yet have the tools to say no or understand the value of my own self-worth. I had many relationships, both personal and professional, where the power dynamic was so off that I had to create a narrative that I was the cool girl who could hang in and hang out, and that sometimes meant compromising what felt right for me.”

She encouraged everyone to take responsibility for themselves, for their actions, and for teaching their children by leading by example.

“I have recently introduced a phrase in my life that I would like to share with you: No more pandering,” Johansson said to the crowd. “No more feeling guilty about hurting people’s feelings when something doesn’t feel right for me. I have made a promise to myself to be responsible to myself, that in order to trust my instincts I must first respect them.”

She also told the crowd that she is still working on forgiving herself, “forgiving the girl who felt used and heartbroken and confused and guilty and taken advantage of and weak.”

The actress concluded her speech by saying, “It gives me hope that we are moving towards a place where our sense of equality can truly come from within ourselves.”

Watch Johansson’s full speech in the clips below.

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James Van Der Beek: “Getting It Right Is a Process”


I use a screenwriting software called “Final Draft.” Love the program. Hate the name. “Final” Draft? Really?? I’m trying to bridge that first tentative connection between inspiration and manifestation, and already I’ve got the word final hanging over my head?

Okay, maybe I’m being sensitive. But as an actor, evolution has been key to my professional survival. At 20, I was cast in a zeitgeist-defining TV series. By 27, I was adrift. I’ve since managed to work my way back into a very exciting flow, but there are definitely a few projects along the way I’m hoping you either never saw or have long since forgotten. No need to go on IMDb. Really. Just keep reading.

Recently, I staged a full-on reinvention. I co-created, wrote, executive produced and starred in my own show (about a DJ, of course). And while it garnered the best reviews of my career, boy was it a process. Exhilarating highs were matched by debilitating lows spent questioning, “Is any of this good?” But what I eventually realized is, you have to allow the process to benefit your work. A first draft is a guess. A “final” draft…is just a best guess. If you’ve done it right, you’ll discover so much along the way you’ll look back almost embarrassed by what you didn’t know—couldn’t have known—while banging out that first humble effort on Final Draft.

But the age we live in isn’t big on process. It’s a “gotcha” culture, high on “likes,” followers, and scathing zingers that feel true, whether they are or not. And labels. The internet loves its labels.

I was reminded of this in October, amidst the first wave of Harvey Weinstein allegations. I saw brave women challenged on everything from credibility to timing to—most appallingly—complicity in the violation of their own human dignity. Here they were, re-claiming their narrative and transforming a moment of powerlessness into one of resolve and getting backlash for it.

It pissed me off.

As someone who’s dealt with harassment and abuse on a few levels, it’s my understanding that people cope with it the best they know how at the time. You can’t judge their process. I retweeted an article illuminating this, added a few words of support backed up by a passing mention of my own experiences with powerful, abusive men, and went to bed.

I awoke to discover a backlash of my very own. Most of it was easy to dismiss—until I got called out for not naming names and saw speculation naming dear friends and mentors as possible perpetrators. I felt sick. I was just trying to help. But that didn’t matter. I quickly clarified the perpetrators were not famous, and had either already been punished or were dead, but the damage had been done. Should I have just shut up?

Fear of getting it wrong can be so paralyzing it’s tempting to stay quiet. But that creates its own problems. So how to navigate?

It’s something I struggle with even as I write this. Legendary acting teacher Stella Adler said, “In your choices lies your talent.” And I’ve always loved that, because it puts the power in our hands, in every moment, to get it right. It’s not about any past role, review, nasty comment, or mistake, and it’s certainly not about someone else’s complete disregard for our dignity, or our initial response to it (or even our second).

“In your choices lies your talent” means, to me, that the source of our prowess is our instincts. That we’re not defined by any kind of win-loss record but by how diligently and honestly we keep watch for what we’ve yet to discover. And that, as long as we reserve the right to keep evolving and making our own choices, no draft of ourselves can ever be labeled “final.”

James Van Der Beek is an actor, writer, and executive producer on Viceland’s What Would Diplo Do? He will next appear in Ryan Murphy’s FX series Pose.





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Taylor Swift Confirms the 'Gorgeous' Baby Is James Reynolds


There’s one element to Taylor Swift’s song “Gorgeous” that people have been talking about for weeks: the baby’s voice at the beginning. I mean that literally, by the way; the song begins with an actual baby cooing the word “gorgeous.” Seconds after the song dropped, fans started theorizing about the identity of this child, who was quickly dubbed on social media the “‘Gorgeous’ Baby.” Some Swifties thought it was her godson; others even posited it was North West. (Can you imagine?) But the dominant hypothesis out there was that the “‘Gorgeous’ Baby” was James Reynolds, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s eldest daughter—which makes sense. Reynolds and Lively are close friends with Swift, after all, so it’s not implausible to think they’d allow James to lend her 2-year-old pipes to the song.

And those super-fans were right: Baby James is the child whose voice you hear on “Gorgeous.” The production credits on the song, which became available after Swift dropped Reputation late last night, list James next to “baby intro voice.” See it for yourself, below:

Case closed, my friends. Let’s be honest: James’ voice is the best part of “Gorgeous.” Fingers crossed this is the start of a very successful career making cute cameos in female pop stars’ songs. Britney Spears, Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga—hell, everyone—would seriously benefit from adding a little Baby James to their music. She’s coming for the charts, people. Watch out.

Reputation is now available to download.

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The Problem With “New” Taylor Swift Is That Nothing’s Changed





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38 Women Have Just Accused Hollywood Director James Toback of Sexual Harassment


PHOTO: FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images

Almost 40 women have come forward to accuse Hollywood director and screenwriter James Toback of sexual harassment in a bombshell L.A. Times story published Sunday morning. Known for movies like The Pick-Up Artist (1987), Love & Money (1982), and Two Girls and a Guy (1997), he would allegedly approach young women wanting to break into the industry or those he just saw in the street, try to impress them with name-dropping actors or producing clips about his work, and then try to arrange a one-on-one meeting with them that “quickly turned sexual,” according to the Times report.

Not just sexual, but “humiliating”: Toback would allegedly ask these women how often they masturbated and how much public hair they had. According to several accounts, he would tell them to take off their clothes, saying if they weren’t comfortable, then they didn’t have the “sexual confidence” for a role. Typically, he would grind his crotch into women’s legs or masturbate in front of them until he finished, alleges the Times, either on them or in his pants. Some women report him asking them to look into his eyes while he masturbated and pinch his nipples before he came.

He allegedly told one woman, 18 at the time and thrilled about a connection to help in her along with her dream of screenwriting, that she had to “be ready to turn yourself completely over to me.” He met with then-As the World Turns actress Terri Conn in Central Park and, she says, told her that “the best way to get to know someone is to see their soul. And the way you can see someone’s soul is to look into their eyes when they’re experiencing orgasm.” He allegedly “began humping her leg”—with people nearby—until he finished in his khakis.

“I was shocked and frozen and didn’t know what to do,” she told the Times. “I thought if I resisted, it could get worse. He could overpower me.”

Toback’s alleged behavior was whispered about enough in Hollywood that his name became a verb: “You got Tobacked.”

Not a single one of the 38 women in the story felt comfortable at the time reporting their alleged incidents to the police. “I felt like a prostitute, an utter disappointment to myself, my parents, my friends. And I deserved not to tell anyone,” said actress Adrienne LaValley in the Times story. Toback had allegedly met with her in a hotel room before trying to grind against her leg. She “recoiled,” and he came in his trousers.

Another actress, Starr Rinaldi, says that there was no good way out in an encounter with Toback, who she says “always wanted her to read for him” in a hotel or his flat: “The horrible thing is, whichever road you choose, whether you sleep with him or walk away, you’re still broken. You have been violated.”

As the Times points out, Toback’s name showed up in “his own special universe” of the #MeToo movement on social media, with many women hashtagging him in their posts last weekend. Even more have included #JamesToback in #MeToo posts since the Times story broke.

Toback, who is 72, denies the allegations in the Times article, and says that this behavior would have been “biologically impossible” for at least the past 22 years due to diabetes and a heart condition. His latest movie, The Private Life of a Modern Woman, starring Sienna Miller, was released September 3.

The L.A. Times story follows, of course, the massive New York Times investigation into decades of alleged sexual harassment and assault carried out by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein—whose behavior also allegedly followed set patterns. Like Weinstein, there were rumors and whispers. It’s yet another tale of yet another man (allegedly) abusing his influence and power to prey on the ambition of women. And as long as women keep speaking out, there will be more of them.

Related Stories:
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–An Explosive Report Alleges Decades of Sexual Harassment by Harvey Weinstein
–Jennifer Lawrence Calls Harvey Weinstein Allegations ‘Inexcusable and Absolutely Upsetting’



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James Cameron Just Doubled Down on His Troubling Comments About 'Wonder Woman'


Last month director James Cameron received some (justified) criticism when he called the titular character in Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman film an “objectified icon.”

“All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywood’s been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided,” he said. “She’s an objectified icon, and it’s just male Hollywood doing the same old thing! I’m not saying I didn’t like the movie but, to me, it’s a step backward.”

Jenkins herself responded to Cameron’s comments on Twitter, writing,”[His] inability to understand what Wonder Woman is, or stands for, to women all over the world is unsurprising as, though he is a great filmmaker, he is not a woman…. If women have to always be hard, tough, and troubled to be strong, and we aren’t free to be multidimensional or celebrate an icon of women everywhere because she is attractive and loving, then we haven’t come very far, have we?”

Of course, Jenkins hit the nose on the head with her response. Wonder Woman was directed by a woman, removing the male gaze that is often present with female characters in action films. Yes, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is physically beautiful, but her attractiveness isn’t commodified in a gratuitous, tongue-wagging way.

Unfortunately Cameron still doesn’t view it this way. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he doubled down on his comments, essentially saying Gadot’s conventional beauty prevents Wonder Woman from being progressive.

“Yes, I’ll stand by that,” he said. “I mean, [Gadot] was Miss Israel, and she was wearing a kind of bustier costume that was very form-fitting. She’s absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. To me, that’s not breaking ground.”

Cameron says his original comments were in the context of talking about a female lead in one of his own popular franchises, The Terminator: Sarah Connor, played by Linda Hamilton. He says Hamilton’s portrayal of Sarah in 1991 was a breakthrough because there wasn’t “anything sexual about her character.”

“[She] was about angst, it was about will, it was about determination,” he said. “She was crazy, she was complicated…. She wasn’t there to be liked or ogled, but she was central, and the audience loved her by the end of the film.”

Here’s the thing, though: Gadot’s Wonder Woman is complicated, too. The fact that she’s wearing a tight uniform—which was just the Wonder Woman costume—doesn’t negate the nuanced character development we witnessed on screen.

It’s troubling that Cameron still contends Gadot’s Wonder Woman was treated like a sex object because many critiques of the film point to the contrary. Yes, Hamilton’s performance in The Terminator was groundbreaking, but so is the fact that we finally saw a female superhero on film not manipulated by the male gaze. She wasn’t an object, plain and simple. Jenkins made sure of that. It’s extremely possible for female characters to be “hot” and angsty and complicated all at once.

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