From the "Errr... what?" files, days-old news that James Franco will be guest-starring on ABC's daytime soap opera General Hospital, for a two-month stint beginning in November. Strange, sure, and a bit of a step down from the Spider-Man flicks for which Franco remains best known to mainstream audiences. But this is a guy who's always marched to the beat of a different drummer, as evidenced by everything from his choice in projects (Milk, an upcoming Allen Ginsberg biopic) and squirmy disregard for interviews to his low-fi directorial debut, The Ape, which was about a corporate drone and would-be writer struggling with his roommate — a raunchy, talking gorilla with a penchant for loud Hawaiian shirts. Studio films like Tristan + Isolde and Pinepple Express notwithstanding, this route to mid-aged stardom — very loosely the same sort of flirtation-rejection that Johnny Depp engaged in with Hollywood for years — is the much more interesting path to take. And make no mistake, Franco has the chops to be a perennial Oscar nominee.