Ep. 122 – In Conversation with: Carl Franklin

The B-Side: A Film Stage Podcast

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we’re honored to chat with director Carl Franklin, whose seminal noir One False Move is now available from The Criterion Collection as a Director-Approved Special Edition Blu-ray. Our B-Sides today are One True Thing, Out of Time, and Bless Me, Ultima. We talk to Franklin about his early days as an actor, how he got the directing bug (he made his short Punk while at AFI, working with Don Cheadle for the first time), what he learned making movies with legendary producer Roger Corman (and the other producer on one of the films who allegedly stole 80k of a 200k budget!), and the extremely underrated HBO mini-series Laurel Avenue from 1993. There’s also some discussion about Devil in a Blue Dress of course, working with Denzel Washington (and how the above-the-line numbers on Out of Time distort what the working budget actually was), and why a sequel to Laurel Avenue sadly did not get made just a few years back. There’s also a little bit on the pleasant making (and not-so-pleasant post process) of Bless Me, Ultima, adapted from the seminal novel by Rudolfo Anaya. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter and Facebook at @TFSBSide. Also enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor.