While a student at the University of California, Frank first had the idea for what would become the script for
Little Man Tate in 1981, thinking that, in the aftermath of the
Iran hostage crisis there was "a slight petulance to world events at the time" and envisioning "an eight year old who was making more sense of the world than
Ted Koppel." After graduation he worked as a bartender while attempting to sell the script, which eventually led to his hiring an agent, and subsequently being hired by
Paramount Pictures in 1984. It would take several years before the script was produced, with Frank's first filmed work being the 1987 film
Plain Clothes, which he would later describe as "terrible."
Little Man Tate was ultimately made in 1991 as the directorial debut of
Jodie Foster. In the years to follow, Frank's filmography included scripts for
Dead Again,
Malice, ''
Heaven's Prisoners, and Get Shorty. The last earned him his first award nominations with both the Writers Guild and the Golden Globes. He credited the success of Get Shorty
with reviving his interest in the job after a bad experience on Malice'', and was particularly pleased as a longtime fan of
Elmore Leonard's novels that he felt had not received satisfactory film adaptations previously. This success led to his being asked to work on another Elmore Leonard adaptation,
Steven Soderbergh's 1998 film
Out of Sight starring
George Clooney and
Jennifer Lopez. The film was not a commercial success but earned critical plaudits. He performed
second unit directing duties for one segment of the film, an area of filmmaking he had contemplated moving into for some time. He also worked in the burgeoning
superhero genre, making two films with director
James Mangold,
The Wolverine (2013) and
Logan (2017). For the latter, he received his second Academy Award nomination. Frank said that he viewed the novel as exploring "the cost of genius", a theme that he had first intended to explore in
Little Man Tate but "didn't quite get there with it." Frank won the 2021
Emmy for
Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. ==Filmography==