Danny McBride embraces the South in his shows: ‘I love flawed, broken people.’

A decade ago, Danny McBride felt creatively stifled living in Los Angeles.

He missed the South. Born in Statesboro, he grew up in Virginia and graduated from college in North Carolina.

So he and his wife, Gia Ruiz, uprooted their family, which included two young kids, to Charleston, South Carolina, a city he fell in love with after he shot HBO comedy’s “Vice Principals” there.

He also moved his production company, Rough House Pictures, and filmed HBO’s beloved “The Righteous Gemstones” for four seasons in the Charleston area.

The Rome International Film Festival, which runs through Sunday, is honoring McBride with its sixth annual Flannery O’Connor Award, given to filmmakers who possess a flair for storytelling in the spirit of the celebrated American novelist from Milledgeville.

“I remember reading her stuff in high school,” McBride said in a phone interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Her tone was unlike most of the other stuff we were being spoon-fed. Her short story ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ was so cool. Her stories tend to have dark humor and broken characters, people you find yourself rooting for.”

He said he designs characters in his stories “using similar techniques. I love to set stories in the South, too, and I have my own brand of dark humor. I love flawed, broken people that the audience maybe will still get on board with.”

Indeed, his HBO anti-hero trifecta includes the egotistical pitcher Kenny Powers in “Eastbound and Down,” his deeply insecure vice principal in “Vice Principals” and spoiled Jesse Gemstone in “The Righteous Gemstones.”

“It’s easier to tell stories about stereotypical underdogs or inherent do-gooders,” McBride said. “It’s more difficult to create characters who are rougher. I like to challenge myself to find relatability in people who seem unrelatable.”

He has written more than 80 television episodes, always trying not to repeat himself and to experiment with storytelling techniques.

For instance, he cited the Season 4 flashback episode of “The Righteous Gemstones,” featuring Bradley Cooper as a Gemstone con man during the Civil War who kills a chaplain and takes on his identity. “It was completely different from anything we had done before,” he said.

He also co-wrote the “Halloween” sequel trilogy with David Gordon Green. “It was a lot of fun,” he said. “I am always looking to write something that keeps myself entertained.”

McBride took a year off after finishing “Righteous Gemstones” to write his first book of short stories cheekily dubbed “Thrilling Tales of Modern Men.”

It features 10 stories about desperately unhappy, imperfect men, McBride’s specialty. There’s Greg, a divorcee who decides to become a full-time magician and spends a month dangling in a box at a mall. There’s Mike, a washed-up sitcom star who takes revenge on a coyote who killed his dog. There’s underemployed Seth, who finds the unexplained appearance of a boat sitting in a field outside his bedroom a source of rage.

The book sold well enough to turn him into a New York Times bestselling author.

“It’s awesome,” McBride said, then added jokingly, “I make my kids call me that. ‘Dad! It’s time for dinner!’ ‘No. Now you call me New York Times bestselling author!’ I try to flex it in every situation!”

Although he didn’t write any of the stories with the intention of turning them into a TV or movie project, he is open to the idea. He said he had fun recruiting some of his favorite acting buddies to read the audiobook version, including Sam Rockwell, Eric Andre, John Goodman and Walton Goggins, who grew up in Lithia Springs.

“It was a version of casting,” he said. “All my friends showed up and did a great job.”

McBride said he is looking forward to seeing Rome for the first time. His friend Jerusha Hess, co-writer of “Napoleon Dynamite” and director of “Austenland,” won the award last year and helped select McBride for this year’s prize. She will speak with McBride on stage Saturday evening at the DeSoto Theatre after a screening of two episodes of “The Righteous Gemstones.”

“Danny is such an auteur with a wild, oddball sensibility,” Hess said. My husband (fellow filmmaker Jared Hess) and I are so drawn to that voice. He feels like a relative. He feels familiar to us, like a raunchier Southern version of what we do here in Utah."

McBride’s next project is a film version of the 1960s toy “G.I. Joe” with two of his “Gemstones” writers, Jeff Fradley and John Carcieri. And look who’s starring in it: the aforementioned Cooper.

“Action is a genre I’ve never done before,” McBride said. “Audiences are pretty savvy differentiating good and bad versions of IPs like this before. I hope we make a good version!”

They are currently scouting locations to shoot the movie.

Georgia, he said, is in the mix.