Apparently, The Legend Of Zelda Helped James Franco Through “Difficult Times” In High School
We say "apparently" 'cause he's either mistaken or full of shit.
James Franco is a busy guy, alright? He doesn’t have all day to sit around talking about video games with you. He has to be outta here in like fifteen minutes so he and Julian Schnabel can drink each other’s urine in a performance art piece, and then after that he has a screen test for the new live-action Spongebob Squarepants movie where he plays all of the characters.
Just another picture of Franco being Franco.
But wait! James Franco does have a bit of spare time to talk about video games with you. Earlier this week, he wrote a column for Vice, in which he reviewed Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives, a three-year-old book on the subject of gaming. In the review, he kinda sorta came out as a gamer? I don’t even know. The relevant passage reads:
“I was a Nintendo Legend of Zelda fanatic. The later incarnations of Zelda – I think one was called Ocarina Of Time – helped me through difficult times in high school, while also making me feel like a loser because I was spending hours playing a children’s game when I could have been out socializing with the cool kids.”
Look, maybe I’m being a bit of a dick about this, but really dude? You think that one of the bestselling and most beloved games ever made MAY have been called Ocarina Of Time? And the five seconds it would take to search Wikipedia for that information are too big a chunk of your day? C’mon — Wikipedia is the lazy copywriter’s friend, man.
Buzzfeed have since called bullshit on the anecdote, pointing out that Ocarina Of Time came out in November 1998, more than two years after Franco graduated high school. I mean sure, there’s a fairly good chance he was referring to A Link To The Past, which has a similar title but came out in 1991.
The following picture of a young James Franco playing Super NES with his brother Dave would support that theory. Awwww, look at young James Franco! I’m pretty sure those controllers they’re holding are Ascii Pads, a fancy SNES add-on you could buy that included features like slow-motion.
Is that the Olsen Twins?
James’s expression seems to say: “Decades from now, I will write a sort of obvious think piece for Vice, in which I explain how video games aren’t as dumb as everyone says and can actually be as deep as books and films! Then they’ll see… They’ll all see…”
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Alasdair Duncan is an author, freelance writer and video game-lover who has had work published in Crikey, The Drum, The Brag, Beat, Rip It Up, The Music Network, Rave Magazine, AXN Cult and Star Observer.