In an extreme case of sour grapes, Jose Angel Santana has filed a lawsuit against James Franco for defamation. This is on top of the lawsuit he's got going against NYU for allegedly firing him over giving the actor a "D" in his class. Santana claims that Franco defamed him by saying in interviews that he skipped 12 of his 14 directing classes because "I didn't feel like I needed to waste my time with a bad teacher."
Someone should probably clue Santana into the difference between defamation and an unsavory opinion, because under Santana's logic, any and all of us who used RateMyProfessors.com could have theoretically been sued for libel.
Santana slammed Franco, saying, "Whoever was in Clint Eastwood's chair at the Republican National Convention was more present than Mr. Franco was in my classes."
Ooooooh, burn. Except not really, since Franco's still working and Santana isn't. Santana claims Franco acted like a bully and made "disparaging and inaccurate statements" after Franco received a "D" in the class, and said, "[Franco] uses the bully pulpit of his celebrity to punish anyone who doesn't do his bidding."
He said that Franco wasn't punished for embarrassing the university (because, let's face it, you can't kick someone out of school for saying they have a bad teacher or two), and was instead given passing grades from other professors even though he barely showed up for classes.
Frankly, we're going to side with Franco here; as much as he comes off as kind of a pompous jerk in interviews, his reasoning for skipping out seems solid: "I decided to do 127 Hours instead of going to acting class. I've been in eight years of acting class. I didn't feel like I needed to waste my time with a bad teacher and that I should go and work with [director] Danny Boyle. I felt like that was the right decision."
We think so too but we also think, "Man, it must be nice to pay for classes at NYU and then not go. Want to pay some of our loans, James?"
source, photo