The Buckingham

Golden Globe-award winning actor James Franco attended New York University as a graduate student getting his master’s in fine arts.  It seems though that he expected special treatment for being a well-known actor, writer, and director.  After missing 12 of 14 of his “Directing the Actor II” classes, his professor Jose Angel Santana gave him a D.

The grade of “D” caused the professor to lose his job, and now he’s suing the school to get it back.  Santana maintains that he only treated Franco as he would any student and that the school’s standards of integrity got warped by his attendance.  He further attacks the school’s ethics by accusing another professor, Jay Anania, of giving Franco a passing grade in exchange for the chance to work on his movie William Vincent.

Franco took other classes in pursuit of his master’s degree and treated the classes the same way he treated Santana’s class, but somehow he still managed to pass those courses.  A conflict of interest arises from the involvement of John Tintori, the graduate film department chair, in one of Franco’s films.

The former NYU professor suffered open ridicule from the public and even his own colleagues.  Franco made spoke out to the media, claiming the professor only gave him the failing grade because he did not like having a celebrity in his class.  He feels it was unfair to receive such a grade after claiming to have done the work and done well.

So far evidence is pointing toward some shady business going on in NYU.  All of Franco’s other professors have at some point or another been involved with projects he has worked on and those same professors gave him passing grades.  Considering the numerous degrees the actor has attained from other schools, it can’t help but make one wonder how deserved those achievements were.