James Franco has skillfully avoided the subject of his Oscar stint during his current Your Highness press tour, but when he sat down with fellow Oscar host David Letterman to tape an episode of Late Show that will air tomorrow night, the two commiserated about their poorly received kudocasts. After Letterman claimed, “I was so bad that they talked for a while about shutting down the motion picture industry,†Franco replied, “[At least] they didn’t say you were stoned. People said I was under the influence. I’ve thought about it. I think I know why. I love her, but Anne Hathaway is so energetic, I think the Tasmanian Devil would look stoned standing next to Anne Hathaway.†Then again, he’s still not sure how he played onscreen: “Truthfully, I haven’t watched it back. Maybe I had low energy. I honestly played those lines as well as I could.â€
“I never dreamed of being, like, the best Oscar host ever,†Franco continued. “It was never on my list of things to do. It doesn’t mean I didn’t care and it doesn’t mean I didn’t try hard, right? But here’s the hypocritical thing: Leading up to the Oscars, I couldn’t hear enough about how, ‘Oh, people don’t care about the Oscars anymore, it’s dead, it’s old, it’s at the end of a long awards season, who cares about it?’ Well, as soon as you don’t host the way you want to, they suddenly care and they won’t shut up about it! Suddenly, I can’t hear enough about a show they don’t care about!†Maybe he’d hear less about it if he stayed off Twitter? (Bruce Vilanch would certainly appreciate it.)