(
)
Hathahate, meet Franco rancor.
When Anne Hathaway and James Franco’s bad-first-date co-hosting act ruined the Oscars two years ago, who would have guessed that, in 2013, they’d be an absolutely perfect match: Congrats, kids, you’re the two most widely hated celebrities in your demographic.
The common thread that is inspiring so much loathing for Miss Perfect Princess and Monsieur Pomo Artiste is that each seems to be working so hard for the approval of the cool kids. But nobody loves a phony, a poseur, a wannabe.
Throughout Hollywood awards season and culminating in her Oscar win, pop culture writers have gone after Hathaway’s smug-bubbly-winsome act like flying monkeys.
Now Franco is angering the townsfolk of Medialand. They’re picking up torches and denouncing him as a charlatan, not to mention a talentless dilettante. He’s a little man behind a curtain, pulling levers and blowing smoke.
Mistaking himself for a spokesman for persons of color, he dissed “Girls” for being “another show about white people.” (“Girls” creator Lena Dunham’s response? “I think someone told James Franco that it’s his duty to have an opinion on everything that happens in culture. We are going to find out that he’s in the CIA, he’s a fireman, and he’s going on the next moon mission with Lance Bass.”)
Gay bloggers grouse that he isn’t a leader for them, either, despite his “Gay Town” art show in Berlin, his Sundance film about gay S&M “Interior. Leather Bar.,” his fondness for playing gay characters in films (“Milk,” “Howl”) and his constant musings in interviews about gay life and whether he might actually be gay himself. (He isn’t.)
It’s like Franco’s become a bizarro-world Jimmy Swaggart: Instead of denouncing everyone who isn’t like him, he’s trying to embrace everybody. Except people don’t need Franco’s tongue in their ear any more than they want some preacher thundering about how they’re going to hell.
Take Franco’s apparently loving spoof of the Houston rapper Riff Raff in the upcoming Harmony Korine film “Spring Breakers” (opening March 15).
Riff Raff thinks Franco is ripping him off, and wants to get paid. (Franco says the character is modeled after a different white-boy rapper, Dangeruss.)
Mr. Raff recently told Fuse, “There’s a deadline for this check, though. Check come in, everyone’s cool and happy. If it don’t come in, then I call in the hounds.”
No one wants to see what kind of hounds Riff Raff can conjure up, but they probably make the flying monkeys look pretty dorky.
Lucky for you L. Frank Baum doesn’t have a posse, because he has to be wondering what you did with his heretofore wonderful “The Wizard of Oz,” playing the Great and Powerful one like a smirking surfer dude.
For everyone’s sake, James: Focus.
Not just on saving your butt, but on the real you. We know there’s a you. You’re a half-bright mellow dude from Palo Alto who somehow stumbled into fame because you look a little like James Dean. Now you’re struggling to feel like you’ve earned a place at the table with the creators. We get it. But James, your Bret Easton Ellis meets Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, Matthew Barney and Rick Springfield shtick is starting to make it seem like maybe you might be trying too hard. Pick a freakin’ persona, and at least stick with it for a couple of years. As it is, you make Madonna look like a model of consistency.
kyle.smith@nypost.com