When Hollywood film star James Franco announced he would guest star on the ABC soap opera General Hospital, entertainment critics were baffled. Was this a joke? Why was the bonafide actor who appeared in Milk and the Spiderman movies stooping to daytime drama?

Speculation about his true intentions swelled until earlier this month when he penned a column in The Wall Street Journal. In it, Franco explains that he's been "obsessed with performance art for over a decade" and this was the materialization of that obsession.

But not everybody's buying it. On Monday, Tracie at the gossip blog Jezebel says, "a role that's supposedly performance art... may very well be part of a gigantic practical joke." Pointing to recent General Hospital clips featuring Franco, Tracie observes that some of his lines sound like "double entendres for gay sex." In one scene, Franco prods one of the show's main protagonists:

What are you waiting for? Why don't you whip that sucker out and blow pieces of me all over this studio... You'll feel so good after. Have you had your fix today?

Is Tracie reading too much into Franco's performance?

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at jhudson at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
John Hudson