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If you’re an emerging director, chances are you’ll hear a word of encouragement from Dave Franco.
Jeremy Saulnier certainly did after the actor saw the filmmaker’s breakout self- and crowd-funded revenge thriller, Blue Ruin (2013), starring his childhood best friend Macon Blair. When Blair himself took a crack at the director’s chair a few years later, Franco also reached out to compliment his Sundance-winning I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. The Palo Alto native admits his generosity is partly motivated by a desire to get on talented directors’ radars for future roles, but it’s mainly about softening the industry’s competitiveness.
“We don’t tell each other enough how much we enjoy each other’s work. There’s such a competitive spirit within the industry that I just want to put out some good vibes, especially if it’s someone’s first time putting out a movie,” Franco tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Idiots’ Aug. 28 theatrical release. “So I guess I play the long game sometimes, but it doesn’t normally lead to collaboration. More often than not, it has led to friendship.”
In Blair’s case, Franco’s overture in 2017 led to both friendship and eventual collaboration. The writer-director quickly returned the favor by sending Franco his road comedy script called The Shitheads. Franco soon realized, however, that he was too young to play the then-40-something Mark Southard, an aging slacker who, along with another underachiever named Davis Hench, winds up transporting a reprehensible trust-fund teen named Sheridan to rehab.
