nrvous, org.

It was interesting timing. As soon as Franco decided his Hollywood career wasn’t enough, his Hollywood career exploded—which meant that his intellectual pursuits got picked up on the radar of the A-list Hollywood publicity machine. Which was, of course, baffled by all of it. Plenty of actors dabble in side projects—rock bands, horse racing, college, veganism—but none of them, and maybe no one else in the history of anything, anywhere, seems to approach extracurricular activities with the ferocity of Franco.

But whatever his personal feelings, Wylie has decided to embrace the brave new world of virtual books – sparking a bitter backlash from some of the world's largest publishers and prompting talk of nothing less than the demise of 500 years of publishing history. The reason? A deal between the American agent and Amazon to sell electronic versions of works by an array of literary superstars.

Under a new digital-only imprint, Odyssey Editions, Wylie has arranged to sell 20 contemporary classics such as Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Martin Amis's London Fields exclusively through Amazon.com – and in so doing cut the recession-hit original publishers of those books out of a potentially lucrative source of income.

That guy. You know him. Utterly geeky, yet walking hand-in-hand with an impossibly beautiful Japanese girl. Holding the native populace in awe with a barely coordinated swoop of his chopsticks and his “nihongo jozu.” The dude whose crash-and-burn pickup line actually worked. Yeah, that guy. Beginning in 1998, he had a name. He was Charisma Man.