The upcoming comedy "Idiots," starring Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Mason Thames, and Kiernan Shipka, is set to premiere in theaters on August 28. Directed and written by Macon Blair, the film follows two unqualified individuals, played by Franco and Jackson Jr., tasked with transporting a wealthy teenager to rehab, a mission that quickly devolves into chaos.
Director Macon Blair and the cast recently sat down to discuss the movie's ambitious storytelling, its stellar ensemble cast, and the hurdles of bringing the project to the big screen on a limited budget. One significant challenge Blair faced was the film's original title, "The Shitheads." While Blair admitted he still affectionately refers to it by its former name, the decision to change it to "Idiots" was a practical one aimed at streamlining promotion. "We never had any pressure to change it," Blair explained, "but we just started to do the rolling math of the challenges of promoting the movie and the hoops we would need to jump through. Knowing it's a small movie and it's coming out in the summertime, [we worried] could be shooting ourselves in the foot as far as how we're able to promote the movie." Dave Franco proposed "Idiots," which the team found to be a cleaner, more marketable title that would avoid potential censorship on social media or video-on-demand platforms.
The narrative of "Idiots" unfolds through a series of intense vignettes during a road trip. A pivotal scene occurs at a motel where protagonists Mark (Franco) and Davis (Jackson Jr.) are with the teen they are transporting, Sheridan (Thames). They invite a stripper, Irina (Shipka), to their hotel room, and Sheridan sabotages Mark's drugs. This leads to a chaotic sequence that Franco described as a "top three ‘shit yourself’ scene in cinematic history." Shipka and Thames, who witnessed the scene unfold from another room, reacted with disbelief. "It was an unbelievable cinematic feat," Shipka remarked, while Thames added, "It's just so aggressive man! It broke the camera."
Franco elaborated on the film's comedic approach, stating that the humor is character-driven, with moments of intense action punctuated by bizarre situations. "This isn't a movie where it's a bunch of one-line jokes. It's all grounded in these really bizarre characters, and we're playing it as real as possible and letting the humor come from that," he said. He even shared with his wife, Alison Brie, that it was the "craziest thing" he had ever done on camera.
Immediately following Franco's memorable scene, Shipka and Thames deliver a shocking moment when Sheridan bites Irina, revealing a psychopathic streak. Blair aimed to integrate this darker element seamlessly within the comedic tone. "I didn't want [the cast] to think about it as if they were in a different kind of movie because then it would be all fractured," he noted. Shipka described the experience of filming the bite, saying, "I did not feel the level of bone-chilling sinister until I was in the room. I think that's a testament to the way that Mason is playing that character, because it really does shift quickly from this is just a bad day for this girl, to ‘Oh, no. Something's wrong.'" Thames relished the opportunity to portray a villain, stating, "Playing a villain was really fun. He's pretty crazy, but I want to go further."
Beyond the dark humor and violence, "Idiots" also features more grounded emotional storylines. In the film's opening, Jackson Jr.'s character, Davis, experiences the loss of his job in an emotional scene opposite Killer Mike. Jackson Jr. revealed that the tears he shed were genuine, drawing from personal experiences with family loss and his anxieties as a parent. "Every tear I have in the movie is from a real place," he stated. "And so a lot of it was me just taking the time to talk to [myself] before I went out on camera."
The cast highlighted the unique collaborative spirit fostered by the film's independent nature. Shipka commented on the "authenticity to everybody on set" when making a movie of this scale. Franco added that the limitations of a smaller production often push performers to elevate their game, citing instances where scenes had to be completed in a single take due to time constraints. "Knowing that we're coming in with only a few takes, it makes you come in prepared. You've got to be ready for anything. And so we're all very, very locked in," he said. Thames also recalled the physical challenge of filming a scene with a bloody mouth, pushing through voice loss to deliver a performance that Franco noted gave the moment a "really creepy quality."