[There was a video here]

James Franco's paintings of a nude Seth Rogen are not exactly his — they're based on a series of drawings by Pinups magazine editor Christopher Schulz that were released in 2011. On today's Today show, Franco admitted that the renderings were not his idea, but explained that they should have been, so he felt justified to take them for his own.

"Some other artist took it upon himself to do these sketches of Seth in the nude," said Franco, declining to mention Schulz by name. "Seth didn't pose for them. But this artist depicted Seth, and he wouldn't have gotten much attention for these sketches, except that he put Seth's face on it. And so I felt like, oh here he is appropriating Seth's personality and his persona for his art to get attention for his art, and I thought, well, if anybody should paint Seth naked, it should be me, so I took his sketches and did paintings."

Cool guy, cool logic.