Dave Franco Calls His 'Idiots' Motel Scene a "Top-Three Poo Scene in Cinematic History"
Dave Franco has declared a diarrhoea sequence in his new film Idiots — which opened in US theatres on 28 August — one of the greatest scenes of its kind ever committed to film, ranking it alongside Jeff Daniels' legendary moment in Dumb and Dumber.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Franco described the motel-room set piece as a "top-three poo scene in cinematic history." The film was originally titled The Shitheads, a name drawn directly from the scene in question: a character named Sheridan spikes the main characters' generic colas, causing Mark to produce what Franco and his collaborators clearly hoped would be a geyser of diarrhoea worthy of the label.
Franco told The Hollywood Reporter that after wrapping the scene he called his wife, actress Alison Brie, and told her he had just done the craziest thing he had ever done on camera. That is the quote of a man who has spent two decades in front of lenses and still found something on this set that surprised him.
Idiots is directed by Macon Blair, who co-wrote the screenplay with Alex Orr, according to MovieWeb. Dan Reardon and David Gordon Green produced. The film runs a tidy 100 minutes and takes the shape of a road-trip movie, with characters Davis and Mark trying to keep Sheridan under control and get him to rehab, Variety reports. O'Shea Jackson Jr. stars alongside Franco and Mason Thames, per Deadline. Kiernan Shipka plays Irina, a stripper the trio invite to their hotel room, where Sheridan taints Mark's drug supply, according to IGN. The film reunites Thames with Franco, his co-star from Regretting You.
Franco told The Hollywood Reporter he had been pursuing a collaboration with Blair for roughly ten years. The path from that first conversation to a Sundance premiere — Idiots debuted at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and secured theatrical distribution from IFC — is the kind of slow-burn deal-making that defines independent film, where a filmmaker's reputation, a script's hook and a festival audience's reaction have to align before a distributor commits to a release date.
What makes the scene stand out, at least in Franco's telling, is the combination of sheer scale and sincerity. Comparing yourself to Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber is not a small claim — that 1994 sequence, involving a broken toilet and a moment of romantic catastrophe, is arguably the benchmark for the form. Franco is staking the new film's most outrageous moment against a scene that has held the title for more than three decades.
For audiences, the pitch is straightforward: a 100-minute road-trip comedy from a director Franco spent a decade chasing, opening through IFC in theatres on 28 August, and built around a set piece audacious enough that its lead actor phoned his wife the moment the cameras stopped.
