By Ryan Pearson, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Dave Franco says the drive-in premiere for his directorial debut was "perfect" but admittedly "a little weird."
The 35-year-old actor found himself at the center of Hollywood's evolving response to the coronavirus pandemic Thursday as he premiered his directorial debut "The Rental" to more than 1,300 people at the Vineland drive-in theatre in Southern California.
Joined by stars including wife Alison Brie, Dan Stevens and Sheila Vand, he took off his mask to pose for photographers in the center of a massive parking lot, then answered questions via Zoom from his car after the film ended.
It beat a traditional, more buttoned-up red carpet event, Franco said.
"It didn't feel like there was a spotlight on me or the cast. It felt more like this communal experience where everyone was just excited to get out of their homes and, you know, let loose with a group of fellow movie lovers. It was perfect," he said in an interview Friday.
Franco says Brie calmed him down about the shortcomings of an outdoor screening: patchy audio over the FM radio and ambient light drowning out darker sections of his horror thriller "The Rental."
"Trust me, it is not what I do. I am a crazy perfectionist. I annoy everyone around me because I won't stop until it's perfect. And so it was hard for me to let go, but it was nice having Alison next to me — she forced me to let go," he said.
His movie is set to be released via video-on-demand and at drive-ins and traditional theaters on July 24. But the nation's largest theater chains have been adjusting their reopening plans regularly in response to health officials. Franco says that like many in Hollywood, he's tracking Christopher Nolan's "Tenet," scheduled for release July 31.
"Obviously that's the giant movie that everyone's focused on and that all the theaters are really trying to open in time for that film. So we've just been kind of stepping back and monitoring … If they're not opening for 'Tenet,' they ain't opening for us. … I'm happy to creep behind Christopher Nolan all day."
Franco is hoping to hold another premiere event closer to the film's release — maybe even in a traditional theater. There's something about the big screen.
"Just seeing how many people are flocking to drive-ins around the country, it just proves that the movie-going experience is so special," Franco said. "There's a lot of talk about the future of film being mainly digital. But I think right now we're really seeing how much people love going to the movies."
More than 67 million people watched Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debate. That’s way up from June
An estimated 67.1 million people watched the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a sharp increase from the June debate that eventually led to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race.
The debate was run by ABC News but shown on 17 different networks, the Nielsen company said. The Trump-Biden debate in June was seen by 51.3 million people.
Tuesday's count was short of the record viewership for a presidential debate, when 84 million people saw Trump's and Hillary Clinton's first faceoff in 2016. The first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 reached 73.1 million people.
With Harris widely perceived to have outperformed Trump on Tuesday night, the former president and his supporters are sharply criticizing ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis. The journalists waded into on-the-fly fact checks during the debate, correcting four statements by Trump.
No other debates are currently scheduled between the two presidential candidates, although there's been some talk about it and Fox News Channel has publicly offered alternatives. CBS will host a vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance.
Tuesday's debate stakes were high to begin with, not only because of the impending election itself but because the last presidential debate uncorked a series of events that ended several weeks later with Biden's withdrawal from the race after his performance was widely panned.
Opinions on how ABC handled the latest debate Tuesday were, in a large sense, a Rorschach test on how supporters of both sides felt about how it went. MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes sent a message on X that the ABC moderators were doing an "excellent" job — only to be answered by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who said,... Read More