HotDocs 2012: FRANCOPHRENIA (or Don't Kill Me, I Know Where The Baby Is) Review

I will be brief, as to not waste too much of your time, as it would be doubly a crime for Francophrenia to kill the sum of my 70 minutes viewing the thing, another hour writing about it, and then presumably, your 3 minutes reading it.  The film is an experimental documentary shot on the set of an all-night shoot for the soap opera General Hospital.  A small videographer crew followed around actor (and one-time Oscar host) James Franco to record his down time between takes, his interactions with his fans and the usual tedium that happens on film (or TV) sets while the crew setup up and block out scenes.  Ultimately, however, the cameras did not capture much in the way of interest, perhaps not even enough enough for a General Hospital puff-piece.  The actor handed the hours of footage over to director/editor Ian Olds (Fixer, Occupation: Dreamland) to do whatever he could with it. To mould and massage it into ... something.  The result, including a self-aware but still quite clueless voice-over by Franco to hold the rickety mess together, is so thin a premise (or a statement on celebrity) that it qualifies merely as a home-movie lark at best.  Olds and Franco should have kept this only to show their friends, and not foist it on a paying audience.