James Franco Is Too Pure to Watch Porn

James Franco doesn’t watch porn anymore.

That’s it. That’s the news.

Now, when you watch Franco in his new show The Deuce, an HBO series set in the 1970’s about the rise of the porn industry, you can tell all your friends, “Franco doesn’t even watch porn. What does he know?”

Well, he may not watch it anymore. But he used to watch it. Obviously. Here’s what he told US Weekly at the show’s premiere:

“I don’t know if you believe me or not. I watched it in my day. I certainly watched it as research for this show. [But] I don’t watch porn,”

No, James. I do not believe you. Because everyone watches porn. I’m watching porn as I type this. It’s very awkward because I’m at a Starbucks and left my headphones at home.

Why doesn’t James watch porn anymore? Because he’s taking a moral stand, of course:

“I have no moralistic stand against it by any means, but in unregulated capitalism, I think that’s one of the main points of our show,” he continued. “There’s always these people, a select few who sort of come out on top and the rest are just thrown under the bus.”

“My friend Rashida Jones came out with a documentary called Hot Girls Wanted a couple of years ago and I think the main point I took away from that film is that these young women [in porn] are not protected. They have union. It’s just completely unregulated,” Franco told Us of the moment his view on pornography changed. “They go out to Florida and they’re just sort of ground up in a matter of months and just discarded, and nobody is there to protect them. There’s no laws to protect them and that is very much the case in our show as well.”

“I have no moralistic stand against it, but let me take a moralistic stand against it.”

Is porn a dirty industry? Sure. But if it were cleaner, it’d be called Hollywood.