Biography
While still recognizable for his recurring role as Captain Crane on
The A-Team, former character actor Carl Franklin is now one of Hollywood's most versatile writer/directors. After a string of mind-numbing television roles forced him to go behind the camera in 1986, he has worked in every genre from war film to family drama and has been the force behind such different works as
One False Move (1991),
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), and
One True Thing (1998).
Franklin grew up in Richmond, CA, a working-class suburb of San Francisco. His father died before he was born, and he was raised by his mother, a homemaker, and his stepfather, a carpenter. As a teenager, Franklin excelled in school and dreamed of becoming a lawyer or teacher. He earned a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied history and began hanging around the theater department in an effort to meet girls. He soon caught the acting bug and moved to New York City immediately after graduation.
Franklin began his acting career on-stage at the New York Shakespeare Festival, performing in Cymbeline, Timon of Athens, and Twelfth Night. He went on to appear at New York's Lincoln Center and Joseph Papp Public Theater, and Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage. Franklin made his film debut in the comedy
Five on the Black Hand Side (1973), before finding steady work on television. From 1974 to 1973, he guest-starred on
The Streets of San Francisco,
Good Times,
The Incredible Hulk,
The Rockford Files, and Trapper John, M.D. He also starred opposite
Stacy Keach on the short-lived detective show
Caribe and with
Roddy McDowall on the doomed sci-fi series
Fantastic Journey. After a two season stint on
The A-Team from 1983 to 1985, Franklin grew increasingly unsatisfied with acting. While continuing to appear on shows like
MacGyver and
Riptide, he attempted to write and produce a film independently, mortgaging and losing his house in the process. Then, in 1986, at age 37, he enrolled in the American Film Institute's directing program.
At AFI, Franklin discovered his own style while studying the films of celebrated European and Japanese directors. His master's thesis,
Punk (1989), an intense 30-minute short about a downtrodden African-American boy dealing with his budding sexuality, impressed filmmaker Roger Coreman, who hired Franklin as an apprentice at his production company, Concorde Films. Like Coreman's previous protégé's,
Martin Scorsese,
Francis Ford Coppola, and
Peter Bogdanovich, Franklin learned ways of fast-paced low-budget filmmaking, writing screenplays in under two weeks and shooting them only days later. Often working on location in the Philippines or Peru, he wrote, directed, and produced (and sometimes even acted in) a series of limited releases and straight-to-video flicks, including
Nowhere to Run (1989), Eye of the Eagle 2: Inside the Enemy (1989), and
Full Fathom Five (1990).
After completing his tenure at Concorde, Franklin wrote and directed
One False Move (1991), an independent crime thriller about three Los Angeles drug dealers who seek refuge in Arkansas after a murderous drug deal. The film starred
Billy Bob Thornton,
Cynda Williams, and
Michael Beach as the outlaws and
Bill Paxton as the Arkansas sheriff awaiting their arrival, but had little commercial value at the time. As a result, its distributor, IRS Media, gave the film a minor and ineffective advertising campaign. Yet, rave reviews and positive word-of-mouth quickly made
One False Move a surprise hit.
Gene Siskel and
Roger Ebert voted it the Best Film of the Year, and Franklin's work earned him a New Generation Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, and an MTV Movie Award for Best New Filmmaker.
The success of
One False Move put Franklin on the short list of Hollywood directors. Producers brought every type of script to his attention -- Disney even asked him to remake
That Darn Cat (1965). For his next project, he settled on the HBO miniseries
Laurel Avenue (1993), a drama about a working-class African-American family in St. Paul, MN. The well-received series starred John Beasley and
Mary Alice, and featured cameos by Franklin's daughter, Caira, and son, Marcus. He went on to write and direct
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), his heralded adaptation of African-American crime novelist Walter Mosley's novel. The film featured Oscar-winner
Denzel Washington as a private detective in 1940s Los Angeles, with
Tom Sizemore,
Don Cheadle, and
Jennifer Beals in supporting roles.
Devil in a Blue Dress was a critical favorite, but failed at the box office.
Looking to do something completely different, Franklin then signed onto direct
One True Thing (1998), an adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anna Quindlan's autobiographical story of a New York journalist (Renee Zellweger) who is forced to return home when her mother (
Meryl Streep) becomes fatally ill. He followed up this adventurous move with another, directing the high-profile courtroom drama
High Crimes (2002), starring
Ashley Judd, Jim Caviezel, and
Morgan Freeman, before reuniting with
Denzel Washington for the thriller
Out of Time (2003). ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide