A young James and Dave Franco playing Super Nintendo in the early 90s
Growing up in Palo Alto, California as the sons of a mother who worked as a children’s book author and a father who worked in telecommunications but was actually a kind of mad math scientist the Franco brothers were infused with the restless creative spirit of their parents.
James and his brother Dave lived like normal young people. They played Nintendo, they got into small trouble, and they witnessed their father carry out science experiments in their backyard. What? Your dad didn’t do that? James told Rolling Stone:
He had this theory that there was gold running through the rivers, and if he figured out how to collect it, he could put it together. He never figured it out, but I remember all these little Tupperware buckets of river water in our backyard, with strainers in them, and they were his experiments.
