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# Two Overexposed Cultural Figures Get Just a Little More Overexposed
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/two-overexposed-cultural-figures-get-just-a-little-more-overexposed/
- Published: 2013-02-26T21:26:26.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:18:27.000Z
- Description: Think of the most overexposed figures in creative culture. I’ll give you a few hints: One stared at people for months straight in a major museum, had an opera made about her life, and is creating a museum devoted to her chosen medium. The other has turned his life into performance art, dabbled as a
- Author: Kyle Chayka
- Tags: Opinion, James Franco, LOL, Marina Abramovic, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:51 (2012, 2013, part 1)

![Illustration by Hyperallergic](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/02/franco_illo640.jpg)

Illustration by Hyperallergic

Think of the most overexposed figures in creative culture. I’ll give you a few hints: One stared at people for months straight in a major museum, had an opera made about her life, and is creating a museum-like institution devoted to her chosen medium. The other has turned his life into performance art, dabbled as a sculptor, and written a vanity short story collection, alongside a stint working on a soap opera.

Have you guessed yet? It’s Marina Abramović and James Franco! And now, one is making a movie about the other. But it’s probably not in the order you think. Abramović is shooting a movie about the illustrious life of Franco. The performance art doyenne told [*Elle*](http://www.elle.com/news/culture/james-franco-marina-abramovic-film?ref=hyperallergic.com) that she thinks Hollywood’s faux bad boy and the art world’s eternal mosquito is “the most interesting actor of the moment.”

Sure, Franco is doing a lot, and that’s cool. But when you’re falling asleep in graduate school, writing inane poetry, and tossing off weird acting stunts, maybe it’s time to cut back on your to-do list. At least Abramović acknowledges that Franco’s cross-genre experiments haven’t all been great — “he’s crossing all kinds of borders and not always with great success,” she said.

There’s no word yet as to whether or not Abramovic is actually *starring* in the new bio-pic, but that’s something that might actually make us go and see the movie.