While you’re toiling away trying to pay off the debt you incurred while getting your MFA, James Franco and Jenna Jameson both have novels coming out. Not surprisingly, Franco’s unreadable, metafictional Actors Anonymous and Jameson’s attempt to cash in on her porn-star past by putting her name on a co-authored Fifty Shades of Grey ripoff both fall really flat. Jameson’s Sugar promises “more plot curves than the heroine’s world-famous figure,” while Franco’s book is exactly what you’d imagine, except maybe a little worse (think: concussed David Foster Wallace fanboy mixes booze and cough syrup before trying to write a novel about how difficult it is to be an actor).
There’s no use kicking the dead making-fun-of-Franco horse with another theatrically negative review, so we’re just going to post a handful of quotes from his book and Jameson’s, to see if you can tell their writing styles apart. If you get through this quiz without deciding that one or the other is unworthy of ridicule, then by all means pick up the book.
1. “FART? How about SHIT on your face, you mealy-mouthed, sycophantic fucking pussy that kissed my ass every time I saw you?”
2. “So, you don’t like anal, huh?”
3. “You also need love.”
4. “Playing out fantasies is good, but I wouldn’t want to risk trench mouth.”
5. “I’m just a stupid little girl who wants to be an actor.”
6. “Their girl-on-girl scene called for some serious acting.”
7. “Porn stars have to eat like everyone else, besides I’m part Italian. This spaghetti sauce is my grandmother’s recipe.”
8. “We were liberated cunts and legs in the winter wind, whipping, flapping, and flying.”
9. “I kept the handjob thing going with Juan.”
10. “Texting back and forth with her BFB — Best Fuck Buddy — wasn’t helping, either.”
11. “He told them to suck his cock, and everyone yukked.”
12. “Was it possible to come simultaneously in two orifices?”
13. “She was very wet and very pink, putting him in mind of a Georgia O’Keeffe canvas he’d come close to acquiring.”
14. “This may be news to you, Mother, but these days nearly everyone owns a flogger and a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.”
15. “Then I spit it all in the toilet. There was a turd in there.”
Click over to page 2 to check your answers.
1. Franco
2 .Franco
3. Franco
4. Jameson
5. Franco
6. Jameson
7. Jameson
8. Franco
9. Franco
10. Jameson
11. Franco
12. Jameson
13. Jameson
14. Jameson
15. Franco