James Franco's pseudo-hipster pretentiousness art project–including his gigs on General Hospital–made the Talk of the Town section of this week's New Yorker Magazine. Among the titbits:

Several hours before taping began, Franco, in a neatly pressed tuxedo, with slicked-back hair, a dull pancake-makeup glow, and a glaze of coffee on his teeth, sat in a director’s chair, trying to explain. Asked about the layers of performance, he said, “It’s kind of hard to tease ’em all out.” He took a sip of coffee, and said it all began with “Erased James Franco,” a conceptual film piece he’d made, two years ago, with an artist called Carter, in which Franco had re-created performances from his feature films. He and Carter talked about making another movie, in which he would play a character who is an actor on a soap opera. “I said, ‘What if I really did that? Wouldn’t that be interesting?’ ” Franco said. “My manager represents Steve Burton”—the Mafia hit man on “General Hospital”—“and we called them and said I’d like to be on the show. They were very happy. They said, ‘You can do anything—what kind of part would you like to play?’ I wanted their full treatment, so all I said was that I wanted to be an artist and I wanted my character to be crazy.” He took another swig of coffee and shifted about elegantly in his chair. “They asked if they could call the character Franco—that was their idea. It was a beautiful idea.”

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Film star James Franco talks to SOAPnet.com about his return to General Hospital,  how the idea for the museum location shoot came about, his mother, Betsy Franco, making her television debut and memorizing lines.

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James Franco is set to make his debut on The View this Wednesday June 30th, according to SOAPnet. It shouldn’t surprise fans that’s the day he returns to General Hospital as Jason's (Steve Burton) nemesis Franco.

TV Guide Magazine's Michael Logan chatted with James Franco on what is up with his alter ego's bromance with General Hospital's Jason Morgan (Steve Burton).

TV Guide Magazine: Let's talk about your character. What drives Franco? What's his obsession with Jason really all about?

Franco: Franco is an artist who works with death. He works in a lot of different ways. He does graffiti, performances, photographs. He creates installations based on murder scenes featuring murders he possibly was involved with. He's interested in pushing the boundaries of art — both aesthetically and ethically — and he will go way too far. There are a lot of artists working today who go too far.

After a interesting conversation on how far an artist will go for their work, the actor finally gives an insight as to why his character is obsessed with Jason.

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