FRANCO TELLS PLAYBOY WHY HE BOMBED AT OSCARS

James Franco knew he was going to bomb as a host on this year’s Oscars telecast well before the show ever went on the air, he suggests in the current edition of Playboy. “For three or four weeks we shot the promos and the little film that played in the opening,” he said. “In the last week, when we really started focusing on the script for the live show and did a run-through, I said to the producer, ‘I don’t know why you hired me, because you haven’t given me anything. I just don’t think this stuff’s going to be good.'” In the end, he said, he felt “trapped” by the script and decided just to play a straightman to his co-host, Anne Hathaway. “That’s how I was trying to do those lines,” he said. Franco insisted that his complaints about the script and his own suggestions were ignored and that he finally decided simply to follow instructions. “I just didn’t want to fight anymore, even when they said, ‘You’ll come out as Marilyn Monroe. It’ll be funny.’ Me in drag is not funny,” he said. “I just didn’t want to argue anymore.”