The actors in James Franco's brilliant debut novel include a McDonald's
drive-thru operator who spends his shift trying on accents; an ex-child
star recalling a massive beachside bacchanal; hospital volunteers and
Midwestern transplants; a vampire flick starlet who discovers a cryptic
book written by a famous actor gone AWOL; and the ghost of River
Phoenix. Then there's Franco himself, who prowls backstage, peering out
between the lines--before taking the stage with fascinating meditations
on his art, along with nightmarish tales of excess. "Hollywood has
always been a private club," he writes. "I open the gates. I say
welcome. I say, Look inside."
Told in a dizzying array of styles--from lyric essays and disarming
testimonials to hilariously rambling text messages and ghostly
footnotes--and loosely modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous's Twelve Steps
and Twelve Traditions, Actors Anonymous is an intense, wild ride
into the dark heart of celebrity.