James Franco Did Something Bad, Maybe, I Guess, Possibly?

James Franco won a Golden Globe last night for his portrayal of Tommy Wiseau in The Room, in one of the most seen-by-me-as-I-was-waiting-for-Family-Guy-to-start moments of the evening. Franco invited Wiseau on stage and then basically had to push him away from the mic to give his acceptance speech. It was pretty funny. Well, okay, it was funnier than whatever video of a squirrel biting some dude’s scrotum Alfonso Ribera was playing on America’s Funniest Home Videos, not like, actually funny.

Well, Ally Sheedy made some vague accusations about James Franco. Like seriously vague. So vague I don’t even know what they are. And then she deleted them, but someone posted a screenshot of it, along with an ad for an off-Broadway play they were in together.

James Franco directed an Off-Broadway play in 2014 called The Long Shrift starring Ally Sheedy. The following was her reaction to his win tonight and the fact that he was even let into the award show at all. Also, Christian Slater is a beater. #GoldenGlobes #TIMESUP pic.twitter.com/RrvYnr3RjD

— 🇺🇸🇭🇹 Only4RM 🇭🇹🇺🇸 (@Only4RM) January 8, 2018

Here’s the thing about this: Ally Sheedy didn’t accuse James Franco of anything. She vaguely mentioned that she doesn’t like him. All the headlines of “James Franco Accused of Sexual Misconduct” are ignoring that there’s no accusation here. Maybe there will be, I don’t know. I’ve never met James Franco. Eventually there was one tweet containing something like an allegation of misconduct.

That doesn’t sound great, but there are a bunch of ways that scene could have played out, and they vary from “attempted sexual assault” to “mild faux pas.” For example, if they were talking about the weather in his car and he whipped his dick out and forcefully tried to push her head down to it, that’s sexual assault. If she was giving him a handjob and he playfully motioned that he wanted a blowjob, that’s not actually anything. She doesn’t say.

She also mentions he hit on a seventeen-year-old. We know James Franco hit on at least one seventeen-year-old pretty publicly in 2014. Personally, and I know this may shock some people, but I don’t care. James Franco can hit on 17-year-olds as much as he wants. The age of consent in New York is 17. That means the state of New York sat down to write their laws, deliberated, consulted experts, and decided it’s perfectly fine for James Franco to hit on seventeen-year-olds.

Now you can disagree, you can call it creepy or whatever and that James Franco shouldn’t hit on seventeen-year-olds. That’s fine, too. But it doesn’t make him doing it sexual misconduct, it’s just a moral judgement.

Now, maybe more allegations about Franco will come out. But I’m not about to throw out my Freaks and Geeks boxed set over what amounts to vague innuendo at this point.