Rick Moody
Lyon, France - May 2009
Born	(1961-10-18) October 18, 1961 (age 50) New York City, New York, US
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, essayist, composer
Nationality	American
Period	1992 - present

Rick Moody (born Hiram Frederick Moody III, October 18, 1961) is an American novelist and short story writer best known for the 1994 novel The Ice Storm, a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, which brought widespread acclaim, became a bestseller, and was made into a feature film of the same title.

Life and work[link]

Moody was born in New York City and grew up in several of the Connecticut suburbs, including Darien and New Canaan, where he later set stories and novels. He graduated from St. Paul's School in New Hampshire and Brown University.

He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in 1986; nearly two decades later he would criticize the program in an essay in The Atlantic Monthly.^[1] Soon after finishing his thesis, he checked himself into a mental hospital for alcoholism.^[2] Once sober and while working for Farrar, Straus and Giroux, he wrote his first novel, Garden State, about young people growing up in the industrial wasteland of northern New Jersey, where he was living at the time. In his introduction to a reprint of the novel, he called it the most "naked" thing he has written.^{[citation needed]} Garden State won the Pushcart Editor's Choice Award.

In 2006, Arizona State Senator Thayer Verschoor cited complaints he had received about The Ice Storm as part of the reason he supported a measure allowing students to refuse assignments they find "personally offensive." Verschoor said that "There’s no defense of this book. I can’t believe that anyone would come up here and try to defend that kind of material," although eventually numerous professors did just that.^[3]

His memoir The Black Veil (2002) won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. He has also received the Addison Metcalf Award, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Conjunctions, Harper's, Details, The New York Times, and Grand Street.

The Diviners was released in 2005. Little, Brown and Company, the publisher of The Diviners, changed the cover after the galleys came out because women reacted negatively to it. The original cover showed a Conan the Barbarian-type image in technicolor orange; the new cover uses that same image, but frames it as a scene on a movie screen.^[4]

The Diviners was followed in 2007 by Right Livelihoods, a collection of three novellas published in Britain and Ireland as The Omega Force.

The Four Fingers of Death was released July 28, 2010 by Little, Brown and Company.

In addition to his fiction, Moody is a musician and composer. He belongs to a group called the Wingdale Community Singers, which he describes as performing "woebegone and slightly modernist folk music, of the very antique variety."^[5] Moody composed the song "Free What's-his-name," performed by Fly Ashtray on their 1997 EP Flummoxed,"^[6] collaborated with One Ring Zero on the EP Rick Moody and One Ring Zero in 2004, and also contributed lyrics to One Ring Zero's albums As Smart As We Are, Memorandum, and Planets.^[7] In 2006, an essay by Moody was included in Sufjan Stevens's box-set Songs for Christmas.

When asked by the New York Times Book Review what he thought was the best book of American fiction from 1975 to 2000, Moody chose Grace Paley's The Collected Stories.^[8]

In 2001, Rick Moody co-founded the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award with Ethan Hawke, Hannah McFarland, and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh.^[9]

Moody is a co-host, along with One Ring Zero's Michael Hearst, for the 18:59 Podcast series.^[10]

Moody has taught at the State University of New York at Purchase and Bennington College, and currently teaches at New York University. He lives in Brooklyn and Fishers Island.

Praise[link]

Rick Moody speaking at the International Forum on the Novel in Lyon, France - May 2009.

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Literary critics have praised Moody's writing.

The Washington Post reviewed Moody’s most recent collection of novellas Right Livelihoods. In response to the novella "The Albertine Notes" they describe it as “one of the best stories to appear in the new millennium; it underscores that Rick Moody is one of our best writers.” Irish literary critic Val Nolan, writing in The Sunday Business Post, called the story “a symbolic reaction to the crisis of instability in American identity today” and remarked that the collection as a whole “brilliantly reflects the unease and baroque insecurities of the post-9/11 nation."^[11]

His 2005 novel The Diviners received praise in multiple reviewsTemplate:From whom?: “In this affectionate but unflinching cautionary tale about vanity, ambition, and life's unlikely paths, Rick Moody delivers a masterpiece of comedy that will bring him to a still higher level of appreciation.”^{[citation needed]}

Of the novel The Ice Storm (later produced as the movie starring Sigourney Weaver), Hungry Mind Review commented that it “works on so many levels, and is so smartly written, that it should establish Rick Moody as one of his generation's bellwether voices."^{[citation needed]}

Reviews of Moody’s novel Purple America continued in this vein.^[ambiguous] Salon commented: "Reading Purple America can feel like dancing a quadrille with four very different partners. On we go, propelled from consciousness to consciousness by Moody's prodigious gift for ventriloquism and large, supple vocabulary."^{[citation needed]} Details was also positive: "You come up gasping on the last page."^{[citation needed]} And Booklist states: "Closely interknitting his narrative with the lyrical, soaring monologues of all the key players, Moody effortlessly moves from one striking passage to the next....it's the characters' voices, so full of urgency and distress, that are unforgettable."^{[citation needed]}

Michael Chabon and Thomas Pynchon gave high praise for the memoir, The Black Veil, the former calling it "a unique blend of wrenching emotion and human playfulness," the latter saying Moody "writing with boldness, humor, generosity of spirit, and a welcome sense of wrath, takes the art of the memoir an important step into its future."

The Review of Contemporary Fiction, in their June 2003 issue, says of Moody's writing:

"Within Moody's fictional treatments, the reader is necessarily one step removed from experience. We are engaged within a tight fuselage-world of the rendered text, an intricate and highly original language system wherein lurks characters sustained by the exertion of words, like the music sustained by the exertion of piano keys. Indeed, Moody's characters are like word-chords whose considerable tribulations and emotional woundings are never the central fact of the text, but rather convincing casings, occasions to press ink on paper. Voices emerge--language projections that ignite from plot moments, from brutal experience set to the available music of language, characters finally as sonic events who inhabit a geography of print."^{[citation needed]}

Esquire describes Moody as “that rare writer who can make the language do tricks and still suffuse his narrative with soul."^{[citation needed]}

Lydia Millet, in a 2001 article for The Village Voice, described Moody as "equipped with subtle but powerful typographic tools—the vibrant and pervasive Bernhardian italic phrase, pregnant with meaning, the elegant Joycean em dash denoting dialogue—Moody strikes me as a self-styled avenging angel of highbrow literary cool. Underneath the Clark Kentish exterior lurks a crypto-Superman schooled in semiotics and steeped in pop culture, one eyebrow permanently raised at the unsightly stupidity of the masses."^{[citation needed]}

Criticism[link]

Novelist and critic Dale Peck unfavorably reviewed Moody's The Black Veil in The New Republic, a review so harsh it has become infamous in literary circles.^[12] Peck began the review with the sentence "Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation,"^[13] arguing that Moody's writing is "pretentious, muddled, derivative, [and] bathetic" and claiming, "I am not convinced that Moody's books are about anything at all."

Works[link]

Novels

• Garden State (1992)
• The Ice Storm (1994)
• Purple America (1996)
• The Diviners (2005)
• The Four Fingers of Death (2010)

Fiction collections

• The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven (novella and stories, 1995)
• Demonology (stories, 2001)
• Right Livelihoods (novellas, 2007)

Nonfiction

• The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions (2002)

Satire

• Surplus Value Books: Catalog Number 13 (Illustrated by David Ford) (1999)

As editor or contributor

• Joyful Noise: The New Testament Revisited (co-editor, with Darcey Steinke, and contributor) (1997)
• The Magic Kingdom, by Stanley Elkin (introduction to the Dalkey Archives trade paperback reprint) (2000)
• A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by Joseph Cornell (contributor) (2001)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy (introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition) (2002)
• Lithium for Medea, by Kate Braverman (introduction to the Seven Stories Press trade paperback reprint) (2002)
• Twilight: Photographs by Gregory Crewdson (text) (2002)
• Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible (contributor, short fiction envisioning a modern-day Jonah) (2004)
• The Wilco Book (contributor) (2004)
• The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (introduction) (2006)
• The Flash (contributor) (2007)
• The Rumpus (Music blogger) (2009)

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rick Moody

Writing

• David Ryan (Spring-Summer 2001). "Rick Moody, The Art of Fiction No. 166". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/509/the-art-of-fiction-no-166-rick-moody. 
• Moody reads "Twister" from The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven (Audio) at Salon.com (2000)
• Salon "Writing in the dark", an essay at Salon.com (2001)
• Short Story: "Fragment from an Untelevised Revolution" on Fictionaut

Music

• Selections from Rick Moody and One Ring Zero and performances on WNYC's The Next Big Thing, at Transom.org
• Musical pieces by Moody and collaborators, at UbuWeb

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2012)

John Wesley
John Wesley by William Hamilton
Born	28 June [O.S. 17 June] 1703 Epworth, Lincolnshire, England
Died	2 March 1791(1791-03-02) (aged 87) London, England
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Christ Church, Oxford
Occupation	Preacher and theologian
Known for	Founder of the Methodist movement
Title	Reverend
Religion	Christian (Anglican and Methodist)
Spouse	Mary Wesley (née Vazeille)
Parents	Samuel & Susanna Wesley
Signature

Part of a series on Methodism
John Wesley
Background Christianity Protestantism Pietism Anglicanism Arminianism Wesleyanism
Doctrines Articles of Religion Prevenient Grace Governmental Atonement New Birth Imparted righteousness Christian perfection Assurance Conditional preservation of the saints Works of Piety Works of Mercy
Key people John Wesley Richard Allen Francis Asbury Thomas Coke William Law William Williams Pantycelyn Howell Harris Albert Outler James Varick Charles Wesley George Whitefield Countess of Huntingdon Bishops · Theologians
Largest groups World Methodist Council AME Church AME Zion Church Church of the Nazarene CME Church Free Methodist Church Methodist Church of Southern Africa Methodist Church of Great Britain Methodist Church in Ireland Methodist Church in India United Methodist Church Wesleyan Church
Related groups Holiness movement Moravian Church Salvation Army United Church of Canada Uniting Church in Australia
Other topics Connexionalism Saints in Methodism Homosexuality and Methodism
Methodism portal	v t e

John Wesley ( /ˈwɛzlɪ/; 28 June [O.S. 17 June] 1703 – 2 March 1791) was a Church of England cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, as founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield. In contrast to George Whitefield's Calvinism, Wesley embraced the Arminian doctrines that were dominant in the 18th-century Church of England. Methodism in both forms was a highly successful evangelical movement in the United Kingdom, which encouraged people to experience Jesus Christ personally.

Wesley's teachings, known as Wesleyanism, provided the seeds for both the modern Methodist movement, the Holiness movement, Pentecostalism, the Charismatic Movement, and Neo-charismatic churches, which encompass numerous denominations across the world. In addition, he refined Arminianism with a strong evangelical emphasis on the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith.

Overview[link]

Wesley helped to organize and form societies of Christians throughout England, Scotland, Wales, North America and Ireland as small groups that developed intensive, personal accountability, discipleship and religious instruction among members. His great contribution was to appoint itinerant, unordained preachers who travelled widely to evangelise and care for people in the societies. Young men who acted as their assistants, known as "exhorters", emulated the twelve apostles after the ascension of Jesus.^{[citation needed]}

Under Wesley's direction, Methodists became leaders in many social issues of the day, including the prison reform and abolitionism movements. Wesley's contribution as a theologian was to propose a system of opposing theological stances. His greatest theological achievement was his promotion of what he termed "Christian Perfection", or holiness of heart and life. Wesley held that, in this life, Christians could come to a state in which the love of God, or perfect love, reigned supreme in their hearts. His evangelical theology, especially his understanding of Christian perfection, was firmly grounded in his sacramental theology. He continually insisted on the general use of the means of grace (prayer, scripture, meditation, Eucharist, etc.) as the means by which God sanctifies and transforms the believer.

Later in his career Wesley was a keen abolitionist.^[1] He spoke out and wrote against the slave trade. He published a pamphlet on slavery titled, Thoughts Upon Slavery, (1774). To quote from one of his tracts against the slave trade: "Liberty is the right of every human creature, as soon as he breathes the vital air; and no human law can deprive him of that right which he derives from the law of nature".^[2] Wesley was a friend of John Newton and William Wilberforce who were also influential in the abolition of slavery in Britain.^[3]

Throughout his life Wesley remained within the Church of England and insisted that his movement was well within the bounds of the Anglican tradition.^[4] His maverick use of church policy put him at odds with many within the Church of England, though toward the end of his life he was widely respected and referred to as "the best loved man in England."^[5]

Youth[link]

Samuel Wesley

John Wesley was born in 1703 in Epworth, 23 miles (37 km) northwest of Lincoln, the fifteenth child of Samuel Wesley and his wife Susanna Wesley (née Annesley). His father was a graduate of the University of Oxford and a Church of England rector. In 1689 Samuel had married Susanna, twenty-fifth child of Dr. Samuel Annesley, a Dissenter pastor. Wesley's parents had both become members of the established Church of England early in adulthood. Susanna bore Samuel Wesley nineteen children, but only ten lived. In 1696 Wesley's father was appointed the rector of Epworth.

At the age of five, Wesley was rescued from the burning rectory. This escape made a deep impression on his mind, and he regarded himself as providentially set apart, as a "brand plucked from the burning" quoting Zechariah 3:2.^[6] As in many families at the time, Wesley's parents gave their children their early education. Each child, including the girls, was taught to read as soon as they could walk and talk. In 1714, at age 11, Wesley was sent to the Charterhouse School in London (under the mastership of John King from 1715), where he lived the studious, methodical and—for a while—religious life in which he had been trained at home.

Oxford and Savannah, Georgia[link]

In June 1720, Wesley entered Christ Church College, Oxford. He was ordained deacon in 1725 and elected fellow of Lincoln College in the following year. He received his Master of Arts in 1727. He was his father's curate for two years, and then returned to Oxford to fulfil his functions as fellow.

In the year of his ordination he read Thomas a Kempis and Jeremy Taylor, and began to seek the religious truths which underlay the great revival of the 18th century. The reading of Law's Christian Perfection and A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life gave him, he said, a sublimer view of the law of God; and he resolved to keep it, inwardly and outwardly, as sacredly as possible, believing that in obedience he would find salvation. He pursued a rigidly methodical and abstemious life, studied the Scriptures, and performed his religious duties diligently, depriving himself so that he would have alms to give. He began to seek after holiness of heart and life.

The year of his return to Oxford (1729) marks the beginning of the rise of Methodism. The Holy Club was formed by John's younger brother, Charles Wesley, and some fellow students, including George Whitefield. The holy club met weekly and they systematically set about living a holy life. They were branded as "Methodist" by students at Oxford who derided the methodical way they ordered their lives.^[7]

On the 14 of October, 1735, Wesley and his brother Charles sailed on The Simmonds from Gravesend, Kent for Savannah in the Province of Georgia in the American colonies at the request of Governor James Oglethorpe. Oglethorpe wanted Wesley to be the minister of the newly formed Savannah parish.

It was on the voyage to the colonies that the Wesleys first came into contact with Moravian settlers. Wesley was influenced by their deep faith and spirituality rooted in pietism. At one point in the voyage a storm came up and broke the mast off the ship. While the English panicked, the Moravians calmly sang hymns and prayed. This experience led Wesley to believe that the Moravians possessed an inner strength which he lacked.^[8] The deeply personal religion that the Moravian pietists practised heavily influenced Wesley's theology of Methodism.^[9]

They reached Savannah on 8 February 1736, where Wesley saw Oglethorpe's offer as an opportunity to spread Christianity to the Native Americans in the colony. Wesley's mission, however, was unsuccessful, and he and his brother Charles were constantly beset by troubles in the colonies.

On top of his struggles with teaching, Wesley found disaster in his relations with Sophia Hopkey, a woman who had journeyed across the Atlantic on the same ship as Wesley. Wesley and Hopkey became romantically involved, but Wesley abruptly broke off the relationship on the advice of a Moravian minister in whom he confided. Hopkey contended that Wesley had promised to marry her and therefore had gone back on his word in breaking off the relationship. Wesley's problems came to a head when he refused Hopkey communion. She and her new husband, William Williamson, filed suit against Wesley. Wesley stood trial and faced the accusations made by Hopkey. The proceedings ended in a mistrial, but Wesley's reputation had already been tarnished too greatly, and he made it known that he intended to return to England. Williamson again tried to raise charges against Wesley to prevent him from leaving the colony, but he managed to escape back to England. He was left exhausted by the whole experience. His mission to Georgia contributed to a life-long struggle with self-doubt.^{[citation needed]} He went back to England to earn money for a church.

Conversion; open-air preaching[link]

John Wesley's house, near-by Wesley's Chapel, City Road, London. (February 2010)

Wesley returned to England depressed and beaten. It was at this point that he turned to the Moravians. Both he and Charles received counsel from the young Moravian missionary Peter Boehler, who was temporarily in England awaiting permission to depart for Georgia himself. John's famous "Aldersgate experience" of 24 May 1738, at a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, in which he heard a reading of Martin Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans, and penned the now famous lines "I felt my heart strangely warmed",^[10][11] revolutionised the character and method of his ministry.^[12] The previous week he had been highly impressed by the sermon of Dr. John Heylyn, whom he was assisting in the service at St Mary-le-Strand, an occasion followed immediately by news of the death of his brother Samuel.^[13] A few weeks later, Wesley preached a sermon on the doctrine of personal salvation by faith, which was followed by another, on God's grace "free in all, and free for all."

A memorial plaque commemorating the place of John Wesley's "Aldersgate experience".

Though his understanding of both justification and the assurance varied throughout his life, Wesley never stopped preaching the importance of faith for salvation and the witness of God's Spirit with the belief that one was, indeed, a child of God.

Wesley allied himself with the Moravian society in Fetter Lane. In 1738 he went to Herrnhut, the Moravian headquarters in Germany, to study. On his return to England, Wesley drew up rules for the "bands" into which the Fetter Lane Society was divided and published a collection of hymns for them. He met frequently with this and other religious societies in London but did not preach often in 1738, because most of the parish churches were closed to him.

Wesley's Oxford friend, the evangelist George Whitefield, was also excluded from the churches of Bristol upon his return from America. Going to the neighbouring village of Kingswood, in February 1739, Whitefield preached in the open air to a company of miners. Later he preached in Whitefield's Tabernacle. Wesley hesitated to accept Whitefield's call to copy this bold step. Overcoming his scruples, he preached the first time at Whitefield's invitation sermon in the open air, near Bristol, in April 1739.

Wesley was unhappy about the idea of field preaching as he believed the Anglican Church had much to offer in its practice. Earlier in his life he would have thought that such a method of saving souls was "almost a sin."^[14] Wesley recognised the open-air services were successful in reaching men and women who would not enter most churches. From then on he took the opportunities to preach wherever an assembly could be brought together, more than once using his father's tombstone at Epworth as a pulpit. Wesley continued for fifty years – entering churches when he was invited, and taking his stand in the fields, in halls, cottages, and chapels, when the churches would not receive him.

Late in 1739 Wesley broke with the Moravians in London. Wesley had helped them organise the Fetter Lane Society, and those converted by his preaching and that of his brother and Whitefield had become members of their bands. But he believed they fell into heresy by supporting quietism, so he decided to form his own followers into a separate society. "Thus," he wrote, "without any previous plan, began the Methodist Society in England." He soon formed similar societies in Bristol and Kingswood, and wherever Wesley and his friends made converts.

Persecutions; lay preaching[link]

From 1739 onward, Wesley and the Methodists were persecuted by clergymen and magistrates for various reasons. Though Wesley had been ordained an Anglican presbyter, many other Methodist leaders had not received ordination. And for his own part, Wesley flouted many regulations of the Church of England concerning parish boundaries and who had authority to preach. This was seen as a social threat that disregarded institutions. Ministers attacked them in sermons and in print, and at times mobs attacked them. Wesley and his followers continued to work among the neglected and needy. They were denounced as promulgators of strange doctrines, fomenters of religious disturbances; as blind fanatics, leading people astray, claiming miraculous gifts, attacking the clergy of the Church of England, and trying to re-establish Catholicism.

Wesley felt that the church failed to call sinners to repentance, that many of the clergymen were corrupt, and that people were perishing in their sins. He believed he was commissioned by God to bring about revival in the church, and no opposition, persecution, or obstacles could prevail against the divine urgency and authority of this commission. The prejudices of his high-church training, his strict notions of the methods and proprieties of public worship, his views of the apostolic succession and the prerogatives of the priest, even his most cherished convictions, were not allowed to stand in the way.

Unwilling that people should perish in their sins and unable to reach them from church pulpits, following the example set by George Whitefield, Wesley began field preaching. Seeing that he and the few clergymen cooperating with him could not do the work that needed to be done, he was led, as early as 1739, to approve local preachers. He evaluated and approved men who were not ordained by the Anglican Church to preach and do pastoral work. This expansion of lay preachers was one of the keys of the growth of Methodism.

Wesley Statue at Indiana Wesleyan University

Chapels and organisations[link]

As his societies needed houses to worship in, Wesley began to provide chapels, first in Bristol at the New Room, then in London and elsewhere. The Bristol chapel (1739) was at first in the hands of trustees. A large debt was contracted, and Wesley's friends urged him to keep it under his own control, so the deed was cancelled, and he became sole trustee. Following this precedent, all Methodist chapels were committed in trust to him until by a "deed of declaration", all his interests in them were transferred to a body of preachers called the "Legal Hundred."

When disorder arose among some members of the societies, Wesley adopted giving tickets to members, with their names written by his own hand. These were renewed every three months. Those deemed unworthy did not receive new tickets and dropped out of the society without disturbance. The tickets were regarded as commendatory letters.

When the debt on a chapel became a burden, it was proposed that one in twelve members should collect offerings regularly from the eleven allotted to him. Out of this grew the Methodist class-meeting system in 1742. In order to keep the disorderly out of the societies, Wesley established a probationary system. He undertook to visit each society regularly in what became the quarterly visitation, or conference. As the number of societies increased, Wesley could not keep personal contact, so in 1743 he drew up a set of "General Rules" for the "United Societies." These were the nucleus of the Methodist Discipline, still the basis.

General Rules: It is therefore expected of all who continue therein that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation,

First: By doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind . . . ;

Second: By . . . doing good of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to all . . . ;

Third: By attending upon all the ordinances of God

As the number of preachers and preaching-places increased, doctrinal and administrative matters needed to be discussed; so John and Charles Wesley, along with four other clergymen and four lay preachers, met for consultation in London in 1744. This was the first Methodist conference; subsequently, the conference (with Wesley as its president) became the ruling body of the Methodist movement. Two years later, to help preachers work more systematically and societies receive services more regularly, Wesley appointed "helpers" to definitive circuits. Each circuit included at least thirty appointments a month. Believing that the preacher's efficiency was promoted by his being changed from one circuit to another every year or two, Wesley established the "itinerancy", and insisted that his preachers submit to its rules. When, in 1788, some objected to the frequent changes, Wesley wrote, "For fifty years God has been pleased to bless the itinerant plan, the last year most of all. It must not be altered til I am removed, and I hope it will remain til our Lord comes to reign on earth."

Ordination of ministers[link]

Life-size statue at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, America

As the societies multiplied, they adopted the elements of an ecclesiastical system. The divide between Wesley and the Church of England widened. The question of division from the Church of England was urged by some of his preachers and societies, but most strenuously opposed by his brother Charles. Wesley refused to leave the Church of England, believing that Anglicanism was "with all her blemishes, [...] nearer the Scriptural plans than any other in Europe".^[15] In 1745 Wesley wrote that he would make any concession which his conscience permitted, in order to live in peace with the clergy. He could not give up the doctrine of an inward and present salvation by faith itself. He would not stop preaching, nor dissolve the societies, nor end preaching by lay members. As a clergyman within the established church he had no plans to go further. "We dare not", he said, "administer baptism or the Lord's Supper without a commission from a bishop in the apostolic succession."

When in 1746 Wesley read Lord King on the primitive church, he became convinced that the concept of apostolic succession in Anglicanism was a "fable".^[16] He wrote that he was "a scriptural episkopos as much as many men in England." Many years later Edward Stillingfleet's Irenicon led him to decide that ordination could be valid when performed by a presbyter rather than a bishop. Nevertheless, many believe that Wesley was consecrated a bishop in 1763 by Erasmus of Arcadia,^[17][18] and that Wesley could not openly announce his episcopal consecration without incurring the penalty of the Præmunire Act.^[19]

In 1784, he believed he could not longer wait for the Bishop of London to ordain a minister for the American Methodists, who were without the sacraments after the American War of Independence.^[20] The Church of England had been disestablished in the United States, where it had been the state church in most of the southern colonies. The Church of England had not yet appointed a United States bishop to what would become the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. Wesley ordained Thomas Coke by the laying on of hands although Coke was already a priest in the Church of England. Wesley appointed him to be superintendent of Methodists in the United States. He also ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as presbyters. Whatcoat and Vasey sailed to America with Coke. Wesley intended that Coke and Asbury (whom Coke ordained) should ordain others in the newly founded Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States.

His brother Charles grew alarmed and begged Wesley to stop before he had "quite broken down the bridge" and not embitter his [Charles'] last moments on earth, nor "leave an indelible blot on our memory." Wesley replied that he had not separated from the church, nor did he intend to, but he must and would save as many souls as he could while alive, "without being careful about what may possibly be when I die." Although Wesley rejoiced that the Methodists in America were free, he advised his English followers to remain in the established church, and he himself died within it.

Doctrines and theology[link]

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John Wesley by George Romney, 1789

The 20th century Wesley scholar Albert Outler argued in his introduction to the 1964 collection John Wesley that Wesley developed his theology by using a method that Outler termed the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. In this method, Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture; and the Bible was the sole foundational source of theological or doctrinal development. The centrality of Scripture was so important for Wesley that he called himself "a man of one book"—meaning the Bible—although he was well-read for his day. However, he believed that doctrine had to be in keeping with Christian orthodox tradition. So, tradition was considered the second aspect of the Quadrilateral.

Wesley contended that a part of the theological method would involve experiential faith. In other words, truth would be vivified in personal experience of Christians (overall, not individually), if it were really truth. And every doctrine must be able to be defended rationally. He did not divorce faith from reason. Tradition, experience and reason, however, were subject always to Scripture, Wesley argued, because only there is the Word of God revealed "so far as it is necessary for our salvation."^[21]

The doctrines which Wesley emphasised in his sermons and writings are prevenient grace, present personal salvation by faith, the witness of the Spirit, and sanctification. Prevenient grace was the theological underpinning of his belief that all persons were capable of being saved by faith in Christ. Unlike the Calvinists of his day, Wesley did not believe in predestination, that is, that some persons had been elected by God for salvation and others for damnation. He understood that Christian orthodoxy insisted that salvation was only possible by the sovereign grace of God. He expressed his understanding of humanity's relationship to God as utter dependence upon God's grace. God was at work to enable all people to be capable of coming to faith by empowering humans to have actual existential freedom of response to God.

Wesley defined the witness of the Spirit as: "an inward impression on the soul of believers, whereby the Spirit of God directly testifies to their spirit that they are the children of God." He based this doctrine upon certain Biblical passages (see Romans 8:15–16 as an example). This doctrine was closely related to his belief that salvation had to be "personal." In his view, a person must ultimately believe the Good News for himself or herself; no one could be in relation to God for another.

Sanctification he described in 1790 as the "grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called `Methodists'." Wesley taught that sanctification was obtainable after justification by faith, between justification and death. He did not contend for "sinless perfection"; rather, he contended that a Christian could be made "perfect in love". (Wesley studied Eastern Orthodoxy and particularly the doctrine of Theosis). This love would mean, first of all, that a believer's motives, rather than being self-centred, would be guided by the deep desire to please God. One would be able to keep from committing what Wesley called, "sin rightly so-called." By this he meant a conscious or intentional breach of God's will or laws. A person could still be able to sin, but intentional or wilful sin could be avoided.

Secondly, to be made perfect in love meant, for Wesley, that a Christian could live with a primary guiding regard for others and their welfare. He based this on Christ's quote that the second great command is "to love your neighbour as you love yourself." In his view, this orientation would cause a person to avoid any number of sins against his neighbour. This love, plus the love for God that could be the central focus of a person's faith, would be what Wesley referred to as "a fulfilment of the law of Christ."

Wesley believed that this doctrine should be constantly preached, especially among the people called Methodists. In fact, he contended that the purpose of the Methodist movement was to "spread scriptural holiness across England."

Advocacy of Arminianism[link]

Wesley entered controversies as he tried to enlarge church practice. The most notable of his controversies was that on Calvinism. His father was of the Arminian school in the church. Wesley came to his own conclusions while in college and expressed himself strongly against the doctrines of Calvinistic election and reprobation.

Whitefield inclined to Calvinism. In his first tour in America, he embraced the views of the New England School of Calvinism. When in 1739 Wesley preached a sermon on Freedom of Grace, attacking the Calvinistic understanding of predestination as blasphemous, as it represented "God as worse than the devil," Whitefield asked him not to repeat or publish the discourse, as he did not want a dispute. Wesley published his sermon anyway. Whitefield was one of many who responded. The two men separated their practice in 1741. Wesley wrote that those who held to unlimited atonement did not desire separation, but "those who held 'particular redemption' would not hear of any accommodation."^[22]

Whitefield, Harris, Cennick, and others, became the founders of Calvinistic Methodism. Whitefield and Wesley, however, were soon back on friendly terms, and their friendship remained unbroken although they travelled different paths.

In 1770 the controversy broke out anew with violence and bitterness, as people's view of God related to their views of men and their possibilities. Augustus Montague Toplady, Rowland, Richard Hill, and others were engaged on the one side, and Wesley and Fletcher on the other. Toplady was editor of The Gospel Magazine, which had articles covering the controversy.

In 1778 Wesley began the publication of The Arminian Magazine, not, he said, to convince Calvinists, but to preserve Methodists. He wanted to teach the truth that "God willeth all men to be saved." A "lasting peace" could be secured in no other way.

His system of thought has become known as Wesleyan Arminianism, the foundations of which were laid by Wesley and Fletcher.

Personality and activities[link]

Statue of John Wesley at Wesley's Chapel City Road, London. (January 2006)

John Wesley travelled generally on horseback, preaching two or three times each day. Stephen Tomkins writes that he "rode 250,000 miles, gave away 30,000 pounds, ... and preached more than 40,000 sermons[.]"^[23]

He formed societies, opened chapels, examined and commissioned preachers, administered aid charities, prescribed for the sick, helped to pioneer the use of electric shock for the treatment of illness,^[24] superintended schools and orphanages, and received at least £20,000 for his publications but used little of it for himself.

After attending a performance in Bristol Cathedral in 1758, Wesley said: "I went to the cathedral to hear Mr. Handel's Messiah. I doubt if that congregation was ever so serious at a sermon as they were during this performance. In many places, especially several of the choruses, it exceeded my expectation."^[25]

He is described as below medium height, well proportioned, strong, with a bright eye, a clear complexion, and a saintly, intellectual face. Wesley married very unhappily at the age of forty-eight to a widow, Mary Vazeille, and had no children. Vazeille left him fifteen years later, to which Wesley wryly reported in his journal, "I did not forsake her, I did not dismiss her, I will not recall her."

In 1770, at the death of George Whitefield, Wesley wrote a memorial sermon which praised Whitefield's admirable qualities and acknowledged the two men's differences: "There are many doctrines of a less essential nature ... In these we may think and let think; we may 'agree to disagree.' But, meantime, let us hold fast the essentials..."^[26] Wesley was the first to put the phrase 'agree to disagree' in print.^[27]

Wesley died on 2 March 1791, in his eighty-seventh year. As he lay dying, his friends gathered around him, Wesley grasped their hands and said repeatedly, "Farewell, farewell." At the end, he said "The best of all is, God is with us", lifted his arms and raised his feeble voice again, repeating the words, "The best of all is, God is with us."^[28]

Wesley was entombed at Wesley's Chapel, which he built in Greater London, in England. The site also is now both a place of worship and a visitor attraction, incorporating the Museum of Methodism and John Wesley's House.

Because of his charitable nature he died poor, leaving as the result of his life's work 135,000 members and 541 itinerant preachers under the name "Methodist". It has been said that "when John Wesley was carried to his grave, he left behind him a good library of books, a well-worn clergyman's gown," and the Methodist Church.^[29][30]

Literary work[link]

Wesley was a logical thinker and expressed himself clearly, concisely and forcefully in writing. His written sermons are characterised by spiritual earnestness and simplicity. They are doctrinal but not dogmatic. His Notes on the New Testament (1755) are enlightening. Both the Sermons (about 140) and the Notes are doctrinal standards. Wesley was a fluent, powerful and effective preacher. He usually preached spontaneously and briefly, though occasionally at great length.

As an organiser, a religious leader and a statesman, he was eminent. He knew how to lead and control men to achieve his purposes. He used his power, not to provoke rebellion, but to inspire love. His mission was to spread "Scriptural holiness"; his means and plans were such as Providence indicated. The course thus mapped out for him he pursued with a determination from which nothing could distract him.

Wesley's prose Works were first collected by himself (32 vols., Bristol, 1771–74, frequently reprinted in editions varying greatly in the number of volumes). His chief prose works are a standard publication in seven octavo volumes of the Methodist Book Concern, New York. The Poetical Works of John and Charles, ed. G. Osborn, appeared in 13 vols., London, 1868–72.

In addition to his Sermons and Notes are his Journals (originally published in 20 parts, London, 1740–89; new ed. by N. Curnock containing notes from unpublished diaries, 6 vols., vols. i.-ii., London and New York, 1909–11); The Doctrine of Original Sin (Bristol, 1757; in reply to Dr. John Taylor of Norwich); "An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion (originally published in three parts; 2d ed., Bristol, 1743), an elaborate defence of Methodism, describing the evils of the times in society and the church; a Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1766).

Wesley adapted the Book of Common Prayer for use by American Methodists. In his Watch Night service, he made use of a pietist prayer now generally known as the Wesley Covenant Prayer, perhaps his most famous contribution to Christian liturgy. He also was a noted hymn-writer, translator and compiler of a hymnal^[31]

In spite of the proliferation of his literary output, Wesley was challenged for plagiarism for borrowing heavily from an essay by Samuel Johnson, publishing in March 1775. Initially denying the charge, Wesley later recanted and apologised officially.^[32]

Legacy[link]

"Remembering John Wesley", Wroot, near Epworth

Today, Wesley's influence as a teacher persists. He continues to be the primary theological interpreter for Methodists the world over; the largest bodies being the United Methodist Church, the Methodist Church of Great Britain and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Wesleyan teachings also serve as a basis for the holiness movement, which includes denominations like the Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and several smaller groups, and from which Pentecostalism and parts of the charismatic movement are offshoots. Wesley's call to personal and social holiness continues to challenge Christians who attempt to discern what it means to participate in the Kingdom of God.

He is commemorated in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on 2 March with his brother Charles. The Wesley brothers are also commemorated on 3 March in the Calendar of Saints of the Episcopal Church and on 24 May in the Anglican calendar.

Wesley's legacy is preserved in Kingswood School, which he founded in 1748 in order to educate the children of the growing number of Methodist preachers. Also, one of the four form houses at the St Marylebone Church of England School, London, is named after John Wesley.

He was recently listed at 50 on the BBC's list of the 100 Greatest Britons.^[33]

In 1831, Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut was the first institution of higher education in the United States to be named after Wesley. The now-secular institution was founded as an all-male Methodist college. About twenty unrelated colleges and universities in the U.S. were subsequently named after him.

In film[link]

In 1954 the Radio and Film Commission of the Methodist Church in cooperation with J. Arthur Rank produced the film John Wesley. The film was a live action re-telling of the story of the life of John Wesley, with Leonard Sachs as Wesley.

In 2009 a more ambitious feature film, Wesley, was released by Foundery Pictures, starring Burgess Jenkins as John Wesley, with June Lockhart as Susanna Wesley, R. Keith Harris as Charles Wesley, and Golden Globe winner Kevin McCarthy as Bishop Ryder. The movie was directed by award-winning filmmaker John Jackman.^[34]

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	Saints portal
	Methodism portal
	Arminianism portal

• Alexander Knox (1757-1831)
• Christian radicalism
• Methodism
• Wesleyan Church
• Wesleyanism
• Wesley Mission
• Wesley Institute

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Abraham, William J., Wesley for Armchair Theologians, 2005
• Blackman, Francis 'Woodie', "John Wesley 300: Pioneers, Preachers and Practitioners", 2003, ISBN 976-8080-61-2
• Collins, Kenneth J., The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace, 2007
• Maddox, Randy L. and Vickers, Jason E. (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley, 2010
• Maddox, Randy L., Responsible Grace: John Wesley's Practical Theology, 1994
• Jennings, Daniel R., "The Supernatural Occurrences of John Wesley", 2005, Sean Multimedia.
• Oden, Thomas, John Wesley's Scriptural Christianity: A Plain Exposition of His Teaching on Christian Doctrine, 1994
• Vickers, Jason E., Wesley: A Guide for the Perplexed, 2009.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Wesley

Wikisource has original works written by or about: John Wesley

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Wesley

• John Wesley at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
• Selected text from the Journal of John Wesley on A Vision of Britain through Time, with links to the places named.
• Sermons by John Wesley
• John Wesley as a British abolitionist
• John Wesley info from the United Methodist Church
• John Wesley and the Anglo-Catholic Revival, by G.W. Taylor 1905 article.
• John Wesley in the Georgia Encyclopedia
• Wesley's Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible produced between 1754 and 1765
• BBC Humber article on Wesley's life
• Epworth Bells newspaper, History of the Wesleys
• John Wesley (1703–1791): Life, Legend and Legacy, an online exhibition at the John Rylands Library, retrieved June 7, 2009.
• John Wesley at Find a Grave
• Carey, Brycchan. "John Wesley (1703–1791)." The British Abolitionists. Visited 25 November 2009.
• Wesley John, "Thoughts Upon Slavery," John Wesley: Holiness of Heart and Life. Charles Yrigoyen, 1996. Visited 5 October 2009.
• http://wesley.nnu.edu/john_wesley/letters/1789b.htm
• Official web site for feature film Wesley: http://www.wesleythemovie.com
• John Wesley : Doing All The Good He Could
• Llanelli Community Heritage John Wesley Blue Plaque :http://www.llanellich.org.uk/Blue-Plaques/john-wesley.html

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Tagged since August 2010. Its lead section may not adequately summarize its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points. Tagged since August 2010.

Mark Christopher "Chris" Bauer (born October 28, 1966) is an American film and television actor.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Bauer was born in Los Angeles, California and attended high school at Miramonte High School in Orinda, California. He played on Miramonte Championship football team his senior year, 1984. Later, he attended the University of San Diego, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and graduated from the Yale School of Drama.

Acting career[link]

Television[link]

Bauer has starred in numerous television series including The Wire as port-union boss Frank Sobotka. He also starred in Billy Crystal's 2001 film 61*, as New York Yankees player Bob Cerv. His roles on network television include a recurring role as Fred Yokas, husband of Officer Faith Yokas, on the NBC series Third Watch, lead FBI Agent Dodd on the short-lived CBS series Smith, a Priest on ABC's Life on Mars and as Detective Lou Destefano in the original Sci-Fi channel miniseries The Lost Room. He appears on the episode The No-Brainer of the television series Fringe as Brian Dempsey. He also appeared in an episode of Numb3rs as Dr. Raymond "Ray" Galuski and in Criminal Minds in season 1 as the antagonist.

Chris Bauer plays Detective (later Sheriff) Andy Bellefleur on the TV-series True Blood. He also played Dennis Halsey, a guard on Unforgettable in the fourth episode of the first season, "Up In Flames", and appeared as a rival salesman from the Syracuse branch of Dunder Mifflin on Season 8, episode 22 of The Office (US): "Turf War".^[1]

Film[link]

Bauer played schoolteacher Lloyd Gettys in the 1997 film The Devil's Advocate, and appeared as the masked character "Machine" in the 1999 film 8mm starring Nicolas Cage.^[2] He starred as fetish photographer Irving Klaw in the 2005 Bettie Page biopic The Notorious Bettie Page, and as famous author Ken Kesey in a 2007 Neal Cassady biopic. Chris plays a small role in the 2005 Jim Jarmusch film, Broken Flowers. He also had a small role in Face/Off playing along side Nicolas Cage (as the prisoner 'Dubov' who helps him to escape the oil rig). He is also featured in the movie The Conspirator as a fellow officer following President Lincoln's assassination.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Chris Bauer at the Internet Movie Database

This article about a United States film and television actor or actress born in the 1960s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

James Franco
Franco in October 2011
Born	James Edward Franco (1978-04-19) April 19, 1978 (age 34) Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Alma mater	University of California, Los Angeles
Occupation	Actor, artist, and filmmaker
Years active	1997–present

James Edward Franco (born April 19, 1978) is an American actor. His first prominent role was a lead part on the short-lived cult hit television program Freaks and Geeks; he later achieved recognition for playing the titular character in the TV biographical film James Dean (2001), for which he was awarded a Golden Globe Award. He achieved international fame with his portrayals of Harry Osborn in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy.

Franco has won or been nominated for a number of awards. He has done both dramatic and comedic work in projects and has appeared in an eclectic range of films since the 2000s, ranging from period to contemporary pieces, and from major Hollywood productions to less publicized indie films, as well as fantasy films to biopics and soap operas. Other notable films include Pineapple Express, a 2008 stoner comedy that earned him his second Golden Globes nomination; the 2008 Harvey Milk-biopic Milk; and Danny Boyle's 2010 drama film 127 Hours, about real-life mountain climber Aron Ralston's struggle to free his hand from a boulder. His performance in 127 Hours earned him nominations for many high-profile awards, including the Academy Awards, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2011, he starred opposite Andy Serkis in Rupert Wyatt's successful science fiction film Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise. Since 2009, he has played a recurring role in the ABC daytime soap opera General Hospital.

Franco has hosted Saturday Night Live twice, as well as the 83rd Academy Awards with Anne Hathaway. He volunteers for the Art of Elysium charity. Franco currently teaches a class at New York University about transferring poetry to film.^[1]

Early life and family[link]

Nicknamed "Ted," James Edward Franco was born in Palo Alto, California. His mother, Betsy Lou (née Verne), is a poet, author, and editor, and his father, Douglas Eugene "Doug" Franco (1948–2011),^[2] ran a non-profit agency and a shipping container security company. The two met as students at Stanford University.^[3][4][5] Franco's father was of Portuguese (from the Madeira island) and Swedish descent;^[6] Franco's mother is Jewish, a descendant of immigrants from Russia (her family's surname had been changed from "Verovitz" to "Verne").^[7][8] His paternal grandmother, Marjorie (Peterson) Franco, is a published author of young adult books;^[5][9] his maternal grandmother, Mitzie (Levine) Verne, owns the Verne Art Gallery, a prominent art gallery in Cleveland, and was an active member in the National Council of Jewish Women.^[10][11][12]

Franco's family upbringing was "academic, liberal and largely secular."^[13] He grew up in California with his two younger brothers, Tom and Dave ("Davy"), the latter of whom is also an actor.^[14] Talented at mathematics, Franco interned at Lockheed Martin.^[3] Franco was often encouraged by his father to get good grades and did well on his SATs.^[13] He graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1996, where he acted in plays.^[3][15] In his high school years, Franco was arrested for underage drinking, graffiti, and for being a part of a group that stole designer fragrances from department stores and sold them to classmates.^[16] These arrests led to him briefly becoming a ward of the state. Facing the possibility of juvenile hall, Franco was given a second chance by the judge.^[6] "It was teen angst. I was uncomfortable in my own skin. I was shy. I changed my ways just in time to get good grades," he recalled of his troubles with the law.^[13]

Although the idea of becoming a marine zoologist interested him, Franco had always secretly wanted to become an actor but feared rejection.^[6] He enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as an English major,^[17] but dropped out after his freshman year against his parents' wishes^[3] to pursue a career as an actor, since he would have to have waited two years to audition for their acting program.^[6] Franco instead chose to take acting lessons with Robert Carnegie at the Playhouse West.^[15] Around this time, Franco took up a late-night job at McDonald's to support himself since his parents refused to do so. He was a vegetarian until working there.^[16] While working at the establishment, for his acting classes, he would practice accents on customers.^[6] Knowing that the aspiring actor was doing his best to follow his passion, Carnegie told Franco to pay him what he could and later on pay him back.^[6]

Acting career[link]

Early work[link]

After 15 months of training he began auditioning in Los Angeles, and started professionally acting in 1997 with guest roles on television shows. His first break came in 1999, after he was cast in a leading role on the short-lived but well-reviewed television series Freaks and Geeks.^[18] The program, which ran for 18 episodes and was canceled due to low viewership, later became a cult hit among audiences.^[19] He has since described the series as "one of the most fun" work experiences that he has had.^[20] In another interview, Franco said: "When we were doing Freaks and Geeks, I didn’t quite understand how movies and TV worked, and I would improvise even if the camera wasn’t on me ... So I was improvising a little bit back then, but not in a productive way."^[21] Franco made his film debut in a brief role in the 1999 Drew Barrymore-starring Never Been Kissed and his first major movie was the romantic teen comedy Whatever It Takes (2000), in which he played popular jock Chris. The latter is a modern day remake of the 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac.^[22][23]

He was subsequently cast as the title role in director Mark Rydell's 2001 TV biographical film James Dean.^[24][25] To immerse himself in the role, Franco went from being a non-smoker to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, dyed his dark brown hair blond, and learned to ride a motorcycle as well as play guitar and the bongos.^[24] To have a greater understanding of Dean, Franco spent hours with two of Dean's associates. Other research included reading books on Dean and studying his movies.^[24] While filming James Dean, the actor, to get into character, cut off communication with his family and friends, as well as his then-girlfriend. "It was a very lonely existence," he notes. "If I wasn't on a set, I was watching James Dean. That was my whole thinking. James Dean. James Dean."^[24] Despite already being a fan of Dean, Franco feared he might be typecast if he'd captured the actor too convincingly. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "Franco could have walked through the role and done a passable Dean, but instead gets under the skin of this insecure, rootless young man."^[26] He received a Golden Globe Award and nominations for an Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award (SAG).^[27][28][29]

2002–2007[link]

Franco achieved worldwide fame and attention in the 2002 superhero film Spider-Man, when he played Harry Osborn, the son of the villainous Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) and best friend of the title character (Tobey Maguire). Originally, Franco was considered for the lead role of Spider-Man/Peter Parker in the film,^[30] though the lead went to Maguire. Todd McCarthy of Variety noted that there are "good moments" between Maguire and Franco in the film.^[31] Spider-Man was a commercial and critical success.^[32] The movie grossed $114 million during its opening weekend in North America and went on to earn $822 million worldwide.^[33] He next starred in Sonny, a 2002 release in which he was directed by fellow actor Nicolas Cage. It was Cage's involvement that had attracted Franco to the film.^[34] Set in 1980s New Orleans, Sonny follows the titular character (Franco) returning home after just being discharged from the Army. To prepare for his role, he met with sex workers or people who had previously been prostitutes.^[34] The movie was panned by critics, with the New York Posts Lou Lumenick calling it an "instant candidate for worst movie of the year."^[35] Franco was cast as a homeless drug addict in the drama City by the Sea (2002) after co-star Robert De Niro saw a snippet of his work in James Dean.^[24] He lived on the streets for several days to better understand the subject of the matter^[36] as well as talk to former or still using drug addicts.^[34] Both projects were released in September.

Franco at the Spider-Man 3 premiere, April 2007

Following City by the Sea, he co-starred alongside Neve Campbell in Robert Altman's ballet movie The Company (2003).^[13] The success of the first Spider-Man film led Franco to reprise the role in the 2004 sequel, Spider-Man 2. The movie was well received by critics,^[32] and it proved to be a big financial success, setting a new opening weekend box office record for North America.^[37] With revenue of $783 million worldwide, it became the second highest grossing film in 2004.^[33] The following year he made and starred in the black comedy The Ape^[13] and the 2005 war film The Great Raid, in which he portrayed Robert Prince, a captain in the United States Army's elite Sixth Ranger Battalion. In 2006, Franco co-starred with Tyrese Gibson in Annapolis and played legendary hero Tristan in Tristan & Isolde, a period piece dramatization of the Tristan and Iseult story also starring British actress Sophia Myles. For the former, he did eight months of boxing training and for the latter, he practiced horseback riding and sword fighting.^[38] He then completed training for his Private Pilot Licence in preparation for his role in Flyboys,^[16] which was released in September 2006; the same month, Franco appeared briefly in The Wicker Man, the remake of the seminal horror film. Also in 2006, he made a cameo appearance in the romantic comedy The Holiday.^[25]

He again played Harry Osborn in Spider-Man 3 (2007). In contrast to the previous two films' positive reviews, Spider-Man 3 was met with a mixed reception by critics.^[32] Nonetheless, with a total worldwide gross of $891 million, it stands as the most successful film in the series, and Franco's highest grossing film to date.^[33] In this same year, Franco made a cameo appearance as himself in the Apatow-directed comedy Knocked Up, which starred Freaks and Geeks alumni Seth Rogen, Jason Segel and Martin Starr.^[16] Franco co-starred with Sienna Miller in the low-budget independent films Camille, a dark fantasy dramedy about a young newly wed couple and Interview, where he appears in a voice only role, both 2007 movies that were ignored by audiences and critics alike. Among his other 2007 projects were Good Time Max, which Franco wrote, directed and starred in. The movie premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and centers around two talented brothers who take very diverse paths in life, one going on to become a doctor whilst the other sibling (Franco) experiences unemployment and uses drugs. The actor chose to cast himself in that role because, "It was really just a process of elimination. I was better suited for this role than the responsible surgeon."^[39]

2008–2010[link]

He next starred in Pineapple Express (2008), a stoner comedy co-starring and co-written by Rogen and produced by Apatow.^[20][40] Of Franco's character, Apatow said, "You tell him, 'Okay, you're going to play a pot dealer,' and he comes back with a three-dimensional character you totally believe exists. He takes it very seriously, even when it's comedy."^[41] In her New York Times review, critic Manohla Dargis wrote: "He’s delightful as Saul, loosey-goosey and goofy yet irrepressibly sexy, despite that greasy curtain of hair and a crash pad with a zero WAF (Woman Acceptance Factor). It’s an unshowy, generous performance and it greatly humanizes a movie that, as it shifts genre gears and cranks up the noise, becomes disappointingly sober and self-serious."^[42] His performance earned him a second Golden Globe nomination, for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.^[27] He has stated in some interviews that he no longer uses cannabis (although he has occasionally alluded to his smoking marijuana, most notably during an extended segment on The Colbert Report.^[43]) He was awarded High Times magazine's Stoner of the Year Award for his work in Pineapple Express.^[44] In 2008 he also appeared in two films by American artist Carter, exhibited at the Yvon Lambert gallery in Paris.^[45] On September 20, 2008, he hosted the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL),^[46] and a second time on December 19, 2009.^[47]

Franco starred opposite Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, and Emile Hirsch in Gus Van Sant's Milk (2008).^[48] In the film, he played Scott Smith, the boyfriend of Harvey Milk (Penn). Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, in review of the film, wrote: "Franco is a nice match for him [Penn] as the lover who finally has enough of political life."^[49] For his performance in the film, Franco won the Independent Spirit Award in the category for Best Supporting Actor.^[50] In late 2009, he joined the cast of the daytime soap opera General Hospital on a recurring basis. He plays Franco, a multimedia artist much like himself,^[3] who comes to Port Charles with unfinished business with mob enforcer Jason Morgan (Steve Burton).^[51] Franco has called his General Hospital role performance art. In March 2011, he will reprise his role in two episodes of General Hospital.^[52] In September 2011, Franco will reprise his role as Robert "Franco" Frank for an extended stay.^[53]

2010 was a prolific year for Franco. He kicked off the year by making an appearance on the sitcom 30 Rock where he played himself and carried on a fake romance with Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) in a scheme concocted by their respective agents.^[54] After appearing in the commercial successes Date Night, an action comedy, and Eat Pray Love, an adaption of a novel, Franco played poet Allen Ginsberg in the drama Howl, released on September 24.^[8] The latter, about his most known poem and the trial about the work, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and earned modest reviews.^[32]

His next project was 127 Hours, directed by Academy Award winner Danny Boyle, where Franco portrayed real-life mountain climber Aron Ralston. It was given a limited release starting on November 5, 2010.^[56] 127 Hours centered on Ralston trying to free his hand after it became trapped under a boulder in a ravine while canyoneering alone in Utah and resorting to desperate measures in order to survive, eventually amputating his arm. During the five-week, 12-hours-per-day shoot, Franco would only leave the gully set to use the lavatory and would read books such as academic textbooks to keep busy.^[57] Franco later called making 127 Hours a once in a life time experience.^[55] To date, 127 Hours is one of his most well-reviewed movies^[32] and was also a commercial success, commissioning $57.5 million against an $18 million budget.^[56] His performance earned him universal acclaim from critics. Subsequently, he was nominated for most of the high-profile awards, notably an Academy Award, Golden Globe and SAG as well as winning an Independent Spirit Award.

2011–present[link]

On February 23, Franco made a cameo appearance on NBC's Minute to Win It where the real-life Ralston was participating as a contestant playing for charity.^[58] After having an uncredited cameo in the opening scene of The Green Hornet (2011),^[59] he starred opposite Natalie Portman and Danny McBride in the Medieval fantasy comedy Your Highness^[60] on April 8. In it he plays Fabious, a prince who teams up with his brother (McBride) to rescue Fabious' soon to be bride (played by Zooey Deschanel). In May 2010, he was cast to star in Rupert Wyatt's $90 million budgeted Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a reboot of the Planet of the Apes series^[61] which was released on August 5. Franco has also announced that in the fall of 2011, he will appear on Broadway with Nicole Kidman in the upcoming revival of Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams, which will be directed by David Cromer.^[62] Franco will star alongside Winona Ryder in a film entitled The Stare, which is to be directed by Jay Anania. Production began in New York on May 6, 2011. He was cast as a drug-addicted lawyer in Cherry, which will start shooting the following month in California and also star Heather Graham.^[63] He dropped out of the indie While We're Young^[64] to star in Oz: The Great and Powerful, a Disney prequel to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), as the Wizard, superseding Johnny Depp. Filming began in July.

Franco at the "My Own Private River" Film Society Of Lincoln Center Screening & Q&A 2012

At the end of September 2010, the actor acquired the rights to Stephen Elliott's The Adderall Diaries, with the intentions to adapt, direct and star in it.^[65] It was announced in January 2011 that the actor has planned to not only star in but direct himself in The Night Stalker, a film version of author Philip Carlo's book about the 1980s serial killer, Richard Ramirez. Co-screenwriter to the screenplay, Nicholas Constantine, was initially unconvinced that Franco would be right for the movie, until he learned of Franco's desire to be a director and later watched three of his short films, one of which featured a serial killer, ultimately confirming to the writer that the actor had a darker side.^[66] One of his other upcoming projects, The Iceman, will reunite Franco with Michael Shannon, after the two worked together on the short film Herbert White. The movie is based upon real-life contract murderer Richard Kuklinski, who notoriously froze his victims.^[67] The actor also has plans to direct a film version of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.^[68]

Franco is currently adapting a film version of Cormac McCarthy's 1973 novella Child of God, which chronicles the depraved and violent impulses of a young Tennessee backwoodsman after he is dispossessed of his ancestral land.

He will star as Oscar Biggs/the Wizard of Oz in the film Oz: The Great and Powerful, which is a prequel to the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The movie will be released by Walt Disney Pictures on March 8, 2013 in theaters.

Franco is set to star alongside fellow Oscar nominee Jonah Hill and producer Brad Pitt in the upcoming film currently titled True Story. The film, which is actually based on a true story, will see Franco play Christian Longo, a man who was on the FBI's most wanted list, and had also been hiding under the identity of Michael Finkel, played by Hill, a journalist.^[69]

Other projects[link]

Franco in October 2010

Franco produced and directed a documentary titled Saturday Night documenting a week in the production of an episode of SNL.^[70] The film began as a short for an NYU class but grew due to his two episodes as host, while short stories he wrote for other classes appeared in Esquire and McSweeney's.^[3] In summer 2010, the fictional Franco from General Hospital held an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, while the real Franco held an exhibit at the museum based on his experiences on the soap opera.^[3] One of his short movies, The Clerk's Tale, was screened in competition at the Hamptons Film Festival at the end of 2010.^[65]

On October 19, 2010 Scribner published a collection of short stories called Palo Alto: Stories by Franco.^[71] The book is named after the California city where Franco grew up and is dedicated to many of the writers he worked with at Brooklyn College. Inspired by some of Franco's own teenage memories,^[38] Palo Alto consists of life in Palo Alto as experienced by a series of teenagers who spend most of their time indulging in driving drunk, using drugs and taking part in unplanned acts of violence. Each passage is told by a young narrator.^[72] The book has received mixed reviews; Los Angeles Times called it "the work of an ambitious young man who clearly loves to read, who has a good eye for detail, but who has spent way too much time on style and virtually none on substance."^[71] The Guardian said that Franco's "foray into the literary world may be met with cynicism in some quarters, but this is a promising debut from a most unlikely source."^[73] Writing in the New York Times, reviewer and fellow author Joshua Mohr praised Franco for how, in the story "American History", he juxtaposed historical parts with a present-day social commentary that "makes the we wonder how much we’ve actually evolved in post-bellum America."^[74]

Publishers Weekly reviewed the collection, stating "The author fails to find anything remotely insightful to say in these 11 amazingly underwhelming stories."^[75]

In January, the actor screened his multimedia project entitled Three's Company The Drama, in which he merges video and art to update the former sitcom, at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.^[76] Franco reunited with Milk director Van Sant to make Unfinished, a project that features two movies: Endless Idaho and My Own Private River. Endless Idaho showcases edited outtakes, deleted scenes and behind-the-scenes footage from the 1991 movie My Own Private Idaho, while My Own Private River focuses on the late actor River Phoenix.^[77] The idea for the exhibition was conceived after Van Sant introduced unused footage from the 1991 film to Franco, inspiring him to turn it into something more. Unfinished opened from February 26 to April 9 at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills.^[77]

On February 27, 2011, he and Anne Hathaway hosted the 83rd Academy Awards. The two were selected to help the awards show achieve its goal of attracting a younger audience.^[78] Franco had previously said that he accepted the job for the experience and because it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.^[79] Numerous media viewers criticized Franco for his discontent and lack of energy on stage and the show was widely panned, with some reviewers dubbing it the worst telecast in its history.^[80][81][82] The actor later spoke about his hosting in an interview on The Late Show with David Letterman. He explained that when accepting the job he never had high hopes, adding “It was never on my list of things to do. It doesn’t mean I didn’t care and it doesn’t mean I didn’t try, right?” Regarding allegations that he was under the influence of marijuana while hosting, Franco commented "I think the Tasmanian Devil would look stoned standing next to Anne Hathaway. She has a lot of energy!" He concluded that he tried his best and could have had "low energy" during the telecast.^[83]

In May, Franco made his dance-theater directorial debut at New York's Stella Adler studios, where he narrated all the performances. Entitled "Collage" and described as a "mixed-media piece", the show featured live dance, theater, music, and poetry. Tickets were free but were distributed on a first come, first serve basis.^[84] The actor will also direct two short films for songs ("Blue" and "That Someone Is You") by R.E.M. from their album Collapse Into Now (2011).^[85] Franco continued his career as a filmmaker with The Broken Tower, a 90-minute docudrama shot in black and white about poet Hart Crane, who committed suicide by jumping off the steamship SS Orizaba.^[86] It originally started out as his masters thesis.^[87] After being screened at 2011's Los Angeles Film Festival  – among more than 200 feature films, short projects, and music videos from more than 30 countries to be selected^[88] – it is slated for a 2012 theatrical release.

In the media[link]

Franco being interviewed in 2011

Viewed as a sex symbol, Franco was named the Sexiest Man Living in 2009 by Salon.com.^[89] There has often been frequent media coverage of Franco, particularly regarding his interest in going to colleges. In addition to that, Franco has also claimed to have been strongly misquoted by reports in the media^[90] and news outlets reporting erroneous information about him.^[91] This led to the actor being parodied in an episode of SNL's Weekend Update segment, which an Entertainment Weekly writer deemed "clever".^[92] In a 2011 interview, he stated:

I’ve been perceived as this guy yelling, 'Hey, look at me. I want attention.' I’m not going to school to get articles written about me. I’m just going to school. But the fact that I’m going to school or that someone takes a picture of me sleeping is like, 'We’re gonna jump on that and criticize him for his antics.' What antics? I write. I make movies. I’m going to school. I hosted the Oscars. I take these projects seriously.^[90]

In response to questions regarding his sexuality now that he has portrayed three gay characters during his acting career, he insists he finds plenty more dimensions to the characters than their bedroom proclivities. "Or, you know what," he quipped, "maybe I’m just gay."^[93] Those rumors led to a Gawker article linking him to a New York Post Page Six blind item about a closeted gay actor, nicknamed "the Gay Rapist". Despite the victim of the alleged attack denying that it was Franco, two magazines then contacted Franco's lawyer to alert them that they might run stories suggesting his involvement, but were unable to as at least part of their stories were fabricated.^[90] However, Gawker refused to take their article down as they were simply reporting what another outlet published and instead offered him a chance to make a comment about the speculation on its website. He declined, hoping it would die down. The actor later called the episode very offensive because he has friends who have been raped.^[90]

Personal life[link]

In 2008, he was named as the new face of Gucci's men's fragrance line.^[94][95] Regarding his secular upbringing, Franco told The Guardian that he feels as if he has "missed out on the Jewish experience", but has been told not to worry about that by his Jewish friends. He said in the same interview that he likes "the idea of religion as a source of community." When asked if he was a "believer", he responded "In God? I don't know. Yes. To a certain extent. It's a complicated question."^[13] After meeting on the set of Whatever It Takes, Franco dated co-star Marla Sokoloff for five years.^[96] He was in a relationship with actress Ahna O'Reilly since 2006.^[96][97] He confirmed their separation in an interview for Playboy magazine's August 2011 issue, saying that his interest in education got between them.^[90]

Education[link]

Franco, dissatisfied with his career's direction,^[3] Franco reenrolled at UCLA in the fall of 2006 as an English major with a creative writing concentration. He received permission to take as many as 62 course credits per quarter compared to the normal limit of 19,^[98] while still continuing to act. He received his undergraduate degree in June 2008 with a GPA over 3.5/4.0.^[98][3][99] For his degree, Franco prepared his departmental honors thesis as a novel under the supervision of Mona Simpson.^[3][100] While at the university, the actor studied French, the Holocaust, philosophy of science, and American literature among other things. To continue acting, he would study on film sets.^[13]

He was selected as the commencement speaker at his alma mater, UCLA, and was to speak at the ceremony on June 12, 2009. On June 3, however, a press release announced Franco's cancellation due to a scheduling conflict, making it the second cancellation in a row, after commencement speaker Bill Clinton had canceled the appearance.^[101] On January 26, 2011, Franco and the Harvard Lampoon released a satirical video on prominent comedy website Funny or Die mocking his last-minute cancellation.^[102]

Franco, just before he gets a ride in the Blue Angels No. 7, with Patrick Palma in a two-seat FA-18B, in August 2006

He moved to New York to simultaneously attend graduate school at Columbia University's MFA writing program, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts for filmmaking,^{[94][103][104][105]} and Brooklyn College for fiction writing,^[98] while occasionally commuting to North Carolina's Warren Wilson College for poetry.^[3] He received his MFA from Columbia in 2010.^[106] Franco is a PhD student in English at Yale University^[107] and will also attend the Rhode Island School of Design.^[3] The actor opted against watching the 2011 Academy Award nominees be announced (where he was a top contender) in favor of attending class. "I’m not gonna miss class to go and presume that I’m going to be nominated, but if you want to bring out a camera crew to Yale and wait and see if I get nominated, I’d be happy to step out of class and say I’m very grateful", he commented.^[108]

He has been accepted to the University of Houston for the doctoral program in literature and creative writing but is not going to attend UH after all.^[109] Having previously shown a desire to teach, in March 2011, it was announced that Franco will teach a fall semester course on modifying poetry into short films to ten to twelve third-year graduate film students at NYU. The course will focus mainly on production, meaning that the students will be in charge of creating their own film based on poetry. At the time of the announcement the actor had yet to put together a syllabus, but has until the summertime to do so.^[110]

When asked about his education, Franco said that he loves school and that it keeps him focused as well as grounded. "I go to school because I love being around people who are interested in what I’m interested in and I’m having a great experience... I’m studying things that I love so it’s not like it’s a chore", he told the Washington Post, according to a New York Magazine article.^[111] Franco has also credited his education for helping him "take acting seriously" when his parents did not see it as a successful post-college career.^[6] Franco developed an aptitude for art—painting in particular—during his high school years while attending the California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA).^[15] Franco has said painting was the "outlet" he needed in high school, and he "has actually been painting longer than he has been acting."^[112] His paintings were displayed publicly for the first time at the Glü Gallery in Los Angeles, from January 7, through February 11, 2006.^[15][113] He launched his first European art exhibition in 2011 at Peres Projects in Berlin.^[72]

He enjoys reading on the set of his films. Pineapple Express producer Judd Apatow has said of him: "He's a very education-minded person. We used to laugh because in between takes he'd be reading The Iliad on set. We still haven't read The Iliad. It was a very difficult book. With him, it was always James Joyce or something."^[114]

In an interview with Showbiz411, on September 23, 2010, Franco made the erroneous public announcement that he received a "D" grade in "Acting" class at the NYU Graduate Film School. It was in fact a "Directing the Actor" class. Franco admitted to missing most all of his classes that semester. A professor at New York University alleges that Franco did not earn his grades while attending that school. He states that Franco missed over 80% of his classes and only received high marks and a degree because of his celebrity as an actor.^[115]

Charitable work[link]

Franco has said aiding others is "the key to life, the key to happiness" and, "as an actor, you can get wrapped up in yourself and your career...A little secret is one of the greatest ways to break that is to stop thinking about yourself for a second."^[116] When Franco was at a point in his life where he wanted to give back but was unsure how, he asked his Spider-Man co-star Kirsten Dunst for advice. At the suggestion of Dunst, he started volunteering at the charity Art of Elysium, where she also volunteers, which helps children with serious medical conditions. He said the experience helped save his life. In January 2011, at the Art of Elysium Heaven Gala in Los Angeles, Franco was honored for his work at the hospital, receiving the Spirit of Elysium accolade.^[117]

On March 31, 2011, the actor took part in "An Evening with James Franco", a Washington DC dinner benefit for 826DC, a non-profit foundation created to help neighborhood students reach their goals, as well as provide after-school literature programs and workshops which encourage them to improve their writing skills. Franco became involved with Dave Eggers' 826 National after Eggers asked him to do a conceptual idea for the program, and he directed a documentary for them and has since been a supporter of them. At the event, Franco spoke about how he thought schools needed to be more original with their literature programs. "Writing can do things that video cannot", he added.^[118]

In April, Franco autographed a T-shirt that will be auctioned-off through the Yoshiki Foundation, with the proceeds being donated for the Japanese tsunami relief occurring in 2011.^[119] On June 14, he was honored by amfAR, the foundation for AIDS research, at the Museum of Modern Art. Franco received the Piaget Award of Inspiration for his humanitarian work and contributions to men’s style.^[120]

Filmography[link]

Selected works[link]

• Franco, James. "A Star, a Soap and the Meaning of Art." The Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2009.
• Franco, James. "Just Before the Black." Esquire, March 24, 2010.
• Franco, James (2010). Palo Alto: Stories. Scribner. ISBN 978-1-4391-6314-6. 

References[link]