Conversations with Billy Bob Thornton

hi everyone how are you good Saturday so far as Jessie mentioned I'm Stacy Wilson Hunnam a Hollywood editor for New York Magazine and Fulcher and I'm supremely honored to be here today to speak to one of my favorite performers of all time mr. Billy Bob Thornton standing ovations not everybody gets those so that's what the night welcomes very much so thank you for being here I wanted to know when was the first time you felt artistic did you have a sense of being an artist when you were a kid and if so was that a moment where you act order where you wrote something or perform music when was that moment I guess I think when I had a band when I was about eight or nine we heard all kind of music where you play independent well what happened was well I mean I'm old enough to have actually seen the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and February of 64 and I was I was eight and when I saw that my buddies and I all said looked at each other and said we'd like to do that you're in a third and I don't think I'm alone and I think a lot of people felt that way and so we had a band but instead of being the beatles like you know most of the little kids around town they all wanted to be the beatles which we did too and then the Rolling Stones but we were going to be different so we wanted to be the day of Clark Five and so we played Dave Clark Five songs a problem with it was is we really have any instruments and so we would use we used to make guitars out of cigar boxes and put rubber bands on and we would do that and use with a bass player who used a broom so my favorites to have I think that was my first venture into the art arts community and but I mean from the time I was a kid all I wanted to do was this kind of thing you know I saw what my what the the men and my family were doing like working at sawmills and things like that I thought that's probably not for me but I think when you're raised in the middle of nowhere like I was it causes you to dream you know and so you know we didn't know anything about the rest of the world we just knew about the little valley therefore really oh there were a hundred and ten people and so we thought the world was this magical place that we'd probably never see and so it makes you dream a lot so you start writing and I used to get in trouble in school because I was write short stories and usually about the people in the room you know a teacher who ever was when you said have been listening to the teachers lesson right right but it actually helped me later on because I had a drama teacher named Maudie Treadway and she's a very big woman kind of stern if you've ever seen the ghost in mr. chicken the you know the banker the little skinny nervous guy you know his wife the big yeah well Monty Treadway looked exactly like her and so she caught me writing short stories in the class and the only reason I was in drama was because I didn't get any good grades anything else I thought and drama how hard can that be we're not alone another serving both actors I can't go anywhere and so anyway back to you I mean you led to such a small community but you sought a drama program it's actually kind of that's once we moved no I was there until I was about nine in the whole place we moved into a town of about 9,000 which was like Paris to us so when I moved there that's when that's when they had stuff like that no in that little town they didn't have any anything like that sticks and rocks which little boys enjoy let's say it was crazy and what was the what was the first performance that you gave as a kid was there a play that you were in in high school or the first time you were actually on the stage and you remember thinking wow this is fun in the third grade they did a play in the classroom and it was the three Billy Goats Gruff and I played the middle billy goat and I guess it's what drove me because who the hell wants to be the middle there we go and so I learned a long time ago try to be you know the the main Billy guy I am forgetting moment suppose the central characteristic of the middle Billy good I can't remember oh gosh I don't want remember they all tried to cross the bridge in the show old trick them all but I can't remember but I did that play and then I did a the first actual play I did was also an elementary school and we did a we did a couple of plays that year we did a Christmas play where I had one word of dialogue and my word was hark and I had a I had a you know burlap sack on and on a staff or whatever you know it and I stepped out there was so nervous I stepped out and said harp so that was the that was the first first look big one there and then we went to Thanksgiving play and I think that the reason I've always had a real soft spot in my heart for character actors is because in the Thanksgiving play there was a kid who was really popular I wasn't very popular and there was a kid who had the lead in the play the Thanksgiving play was about a kid who's having a nightmare because he ate too much at Thanksgiving and so he has a nightmare and all this stuff from the Thanksgiving on me all eating is like running around them and scaring him and all this stuff and the way they made us look like these things because we didn't have much of a budget you know and they just put like sandwich boards on he's like a big big construction paper on both sides of you and I played an apple so it was just like an apple thrown onto this thing and I'm looking around and it's like first of all I'm jealous of the guy who's the main kid who's having the nightmare right and then I thought well at least everybody else is equal we're all just pieces of food but then I start thinking about it and it's like wait a minute there's a turkey there's some gravy there's all this stuff and I'm an apple this is awesome it's an awesome thing to eat on Thanksgiving to know exactly we can apple with their turkey that's right and then of course you know years later you cut to Hollywood in the early 80s and I'm still playing Apple please you were getting paid at that point so before you got serious as an actor in moved to LA it sounds like you actually wanted to pursue baseball I wanted to I was a kind of a local baseball hero I was a pitcher I was a jump pitcher and I my senior year we won a 1 in the state all-star tournament and my record was eight and one led the league in strikeouts I was pretty good and I ended up having to tryout with the Kansas City Royals and I got injured in their camp got my collar ball broken and then I then I started working after I recuperated I was working as a roadie for a sound company and got to work for a lot of Heroes mind like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and pure Prairie league and Ozark Mountain Daredevils you know people like that was that your first sort of close exposure to entertainment I was kind of well I've been playing in bands before I had by the time I was 16 we'd opened for gosh Hank Williams jr. and Black Oak Arkansas and ZZ Top and Ted Nugent before it was even called Ted Nugent was just the Amboy Dukes so that tells you how old I am that's been around a while so one of your most key relationships early on and still today's wood Tom Epperson your writing partner and the trivia moved to LA together and I would love to know what that experience was like going from your southern community to this very cold harsh place known as Los Angeles and you settled I think in Culver City is that right and try to cobble together jobs we were in palms oh yeah we were on motor Avenue and we got a well first of all we didn't go to LA we went to New York first in 1977 had a TV set in the back of Toms Buick and $1000 that all belong to Tom and so we we just drove to New York and we pulled in there at that at noon and left at 10 o'clock that night in sheer terror and we spent the night at a Howard Johnson's out on the New Jersey Turnpike and in New Brunswick New Jersey and decided this wasn't for us that was a year Son of Sam was and that's all over the news you know we just weren't used to it I mean I've been to Dallas in Memphis but that was real scary and so we went home and I actually had this girlfriend that I had had a tearful goodbye with back home and I said I mean I was really melodramatic I I said well I'm going away to seek my fame and fortune and I'll probably never see you again and so two weeks later we still show back up at home and I saw her and she was already seeing some other guy and he had to move on I mean you did well after all it has been two wins that's right no we crashed checks they said to me I thought you were going somewhere and so then after that Tom and I went we snuck into LA I had an aunt and uncle who lived in Lakeside California down by San Diego there and we went and stayed with them I got a rock and roll band from Lemon Grove and we used to play Mexicali and Tecate and Tijuana in places like that and so we spent about a half a year in San Diego we thought we'll ease our way make it rain or yeah but ultimately we came back out in 1981 we got into LA we've gone back to Arkansas first and Houston I was playing music down there and then eventually got here and found this place on motor Avenue that was a converted Motel so it was just one room with a bathroom there's no kitchen or anything and it's right we thought it was a sign because we're on motor Avenue that starts at 20 Century Fox and ends at MGM which was MGM at that time and MGM used to have not only the big sign with the lion which is so iconic but they would put a big sign up of whatever movie they had out at the moment that was their big movie and the movie was called rich and famous it had it was with uh Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen and if I'm not mistaken George Cukor directed it who's you know way on in years at that point and so we thought well it's a sign I mean look at this yeah and Tom had been an English teacher I was 24 I guess 23 or 24 and Tom's four years older than I am and he had been a freshman English teacher at the University back home so he was too good to get a job as you know exactly and so I got a job at Shakey's Pizza Parlor on Washington Boulevard and our place that we were staying in was $90 a week you paid by the week and I brought home $96 a week and they used to give you for working there they gave you a personal sized pizza every day and you know when you take your lunch break so I wouldn't take my lunch break you know and or I'd take it I just go outside and have a smoke but I saved the pizza because it's all we had right so I would stack every ingredient we had on the pizza and cook it to us it kind of burnt to get through all that and Tom would Tom would wake up when I got home like 1:00 a.m. that was the only thing you can see where what is that and that's what one night and I'd sneak a few other Frasor but Paul is not pulling his weight it sounds like he was just talking for a while and he was a little sleeping in the bed we only had one bed I slept on the floor and so on Fridays Fridays are $6 that were left over we would go to Lucky supermarket and I don't think they have Lucky's anymore than I have and we'd go to lucky use and we'd buy a little bottle of generic rum and a box of Entenmann's powdered doughnut and every Friday pretty and and we would write you know we start writing screenplays and typewriters did you write longhand or Tom had a typewriter I can't type I still can't type I wrote everything by longhand but what we used to do would drink the rum turn it little tape recorder on well a little tape recorder and we would turn it on and we would talk the stuff out you know and record it all which I'm really happy about because it got me started on a path of doing things more stream-of-consciousness you know and I think it helped me out as an actor and writer and everything else you still have this tape Tom has one of them here's that here's the tape of whom we first got into la because we've put it on in the car to see what our reaction was and he's got one of us pulling into New York that we sound terrified I was actually squealing I mean where did you where did you enter through Brooklyn but that's where it's not a family's very active I mean we're worried we came in we came in through I think the Lincoln Tunnel I believe we came through a tunnel what's the one where you come into Chinatown is Holland Holland oh okay so we came in through the Holland Tunnel okay so when we first saw the Statue of Liberty because in all the pictures it's quite right in the school books thank you I think it's made out of concrete because it's white you know and I saw it it was green and I'm on the tape I'm screaming it's green same thing you and New Yorker does not meant to be about not a sense so so we during the Shakey's era were you actively auditioning were you trying to act and also right at the same time and then make pieces I was yeah I didn't have an earring like that I got into an acting class through the only connection to a guy we had I hear a guy named Jeff Lester who was an actor who knew a woman who taught with Tom a substitute teacher when he was working as a substitute and her daughter was in LA trying to become an actress and all this and her boyfriends this guy Jeff who's still one of my best friends to this day and he got me in an acting class he said cuz Tom it was Tom's idea about the acting class he said you know you're in drama in high school I said yeah but I didn't do anything he said well you know you could give it a shot and and Jeff said you should come audit our class you know and I didn't know you even know what that meant I know he's gonna do a taxes and in an odd word it is I still don't understand again and so but it makes you feel like you got some power already yeah I didn't know out of this class but but yes so I got in this acting class the teacher was a guy named John Whitlock he taught in San Francisco and LA and I owe a lot to him and Marty Treadway the teacher in school and I got in this class and it was at crossroads of the world over at Cherokee and sunset there and a little theater and I got into that acting class and the first thing I did was he told me to come back prepared what you know because I just went and talked to him for a few minutes I didn't need to stay for this class the first time you know I just kind of walked around the block and stuff and I was nervous to do it and he said come back with a scene or a monologue oh I couldn't do a scene I didn't really know anybody and so I thought well I'll do a monologue you know I used to listen to Andy Griffith do these comedy things you know where he would do Cinderella and stuff like that but doing record things kind of set them on their ass you know and so I looked it through a bunch of Tom's Shakespeare books and I thought you know what I'll do a fellow only I'll play all the characters and I'll do it from Iago is point of view from his jail cell so he can tell the story I just had this idea and I went in there and the next week on a Wednesday night and I got out there and I started doing it and I played everybody's a modern day person you know and like you know Desdemona was kind of a valley girl he did all the voices and did all the voices yeah and and so I did that and after about 45 minutes he stopped me and why you go for 45 minutes wasn't very good nice guy and and people were laughing they were digging it you know but he said to me he said how much more this is there I said I don't know maybe half an hour so he showed it and you'd memorized all of this no I would always blog okay I read a solo which I'd never read before I read a sellout I go oh yeah okay I get it you know and because if you put that stuff in the ordinary language this is a soap opera I mean absolutely and so anyway so he said well look I'm gonna have to stop you right now let some other people get up here you know and it's like a four hour class right and but he said I want to talk to you after class and I thought oh great I've already done it and so other people got up there and did their thing and I did notice that they were pretty quick about it so after class he said he said what he said where did you come from he saw what are you what I don't even you know and he said where did you get the idea to do this thing and I said I don't know I just read this thing and thought you know I could do that and and he said well next week I want you to come back and I want you to finish it but after that just remember that scenes and monologues are three to five minutes long so you can't do that anymore I know frogs do that's a good piece of advice right and so I did you know I came back and I finished that and then he told me actually at that time he said you can do this you know and I didn't have much encouraged by growing up you know so anytime anybody encouraged me I was always you know I became a you know wrapped student and I'm going yeah and he was one of those guys who had to let us stay at his house sometimes and he was always out of town so we're house at four I'm a stuff like that and then I started doing auditions here and there and they used to have these I don't they still do or not but they used to have these showcases where you'd pay like fifteen bucks or twenty bucks or whatever and you go in and see a casting director or could be a director and things like that and I used to have one over at the big Methodist Church at the corner of like Franklin and Hyland there and I would go to those and you know you must drop a few dollars you go in and meet those people and everything and and then I gotten a theater group called the West Coast ensemble and they did a lot of one-act plays and when I got in it it was just had barely started and it was on Santa Monica Boulevard there near Cahuenga and and then it moved to El Centro Street and then the casting directors who came to see her plays got their car broken into more often and and then it ended up at at Argyle and Hollywood Boulevard is where it ended up being I was in that theater group for years and that's essentially where I made my way was people seeing me in those plays at was Costa Noble and at what point did you and Tom start to write one false move and how did that project come about uh we wrote a script called hands of another which was a sort of a police thriller and we never got much play on it except for we knew a guy who was an actor and I'm Don Blakely and Don he was a really cool guy and Tom worked in a mail receiving center by that point up at Laurel got religion I only got a job it was right next to Greenblatt's and it was one of these private mail receiving centers so it looks like you got an address on Sunset Boulevard you don't live and belen used to come in there we got to know him and eventually I started working at the place and he knew a girl named Brooke Simon's who worked for an Australian film company showed her a script we'd written and she really liked it and she couldn't get it made but she gave it to there was an agency here called Smith Freedman it became Susan Smith and associates and she showed it to them and a woman named it was a Mary Cross was a literary agent she signed us based on the script and we written the script one hands of another they started sending it out and Mary Cross had an assistant named Sandra Lucchese and Sandra's still a big agent over at Gerst to this day and but they sent it around and we eventually sold it to David Geffen for ten thousand dollars which to us is like a billion dollars that's incredible and so that's how kind of everything started rolling you know from there once we sell that script I got a little bit of something and then Fred roofs who was a casting director and the camera producer was very helpful he'd seen me in a play and a one-man show actually he sort of said yeah it's great let's also let this guy act because there isn't always a thing where they want the writers to also appear Susan Smith wouldn't hire I mean sign me as an actor she was real me and but I mean I liked her you know but she was like I was scared of her let me didn't send talent agent there's a function completely yeah that real wild and she had some great clients yes she had Tom Hulse and Peter Coyote and Kathy Bates and Brian Dennehy and all these people and she came to see me in a one-man show because I wanted her to sign me up as an actor and and she came to my one-man show and after the thing she looked at me and she goes she was very direct and she looked at me and she said I don't get it and I like a whole thing he didn't get nothing yeah I don't get it and I'll never forget this either she said you see I have people like Imogene Coca I really think Coca no I didn't get that but but anyway I mean I like them and gene Coca just fine but I still don't know what the hell I'm so why not find anything Coco was sort of in the twilight of her I said Virginia yeah and so she said although I have a friend no Mary Cross said I have a friend who's an agent who you should go see and I went auditioned in the agencies of office for a woman named ro diamond road diamond and Suzie Schwartz and they were called century artists and I did this scene that I written with a friend of mine and they really liked it and they signed me up and and right away I discovered that I was horrible at auditioning it's a horrible process for most people I didn't it didn't I never got stuff to auditions how much of this sort of I don't get it do you think was connected to the fact that you were from the south you had an accent you brought with you this kind of energy that they weren't used to well I was doing some pretty weird stuff okay so just the whole package yeah I mean it was I mean in the one-man show I did the character from Slingblade and and along with a lot of other people you know that I did and and she years later at the Academy Award party Susan came up to me and she said I'm so sorry she said I completely get it and and and and by the way there was this girl in my theater group this is weird I just I just remembered this there was this girl that I liked in our theater group but she was really fancy it was like she was like a beauty queen and all this and she was like a concert pianist and the opera singer and all these things and she kind of went out with me if you could call it that a couple of times and and she actually said to me I don't I don't get it you know I can't see you anymore said us don't get you and and she wrote me a letter in about 1998 or so after you'd lend the Oscar yeah funny how people become so much hurry yes yeah and so so always tip your waiters you're on right and and so it was actually during when I've been nominated for one for Simple Plan is right in that time and so I get this letter from her that came to my managers office and I opened up my right no I recognize this gal and there's like this three or four pages letter and it was an apology to me but she was saying if I had only known it's like wait a minute I mean I thought that was creepy is hate me just say if I'd known you're going to become a big deal I would have treated you differently I that's Hollywood a letter actually said that and I was like good grief hey that Hawaii didn't does that existed oh well you came out on top that's all that matters so from 93 to 95 you had a series regular job on hearts of fire television series Rose what was it like to have a steady TV gig at that time but also were you writing at the same time and this is you know probably around the time that you are consuming the Slingblade short were you doing this kind of in your off hours now that you didn't only have to make $96 a week I assume you were probably a little bit you know less stressed about the money at that point rewriting kind of in your free time yeah yeah we kept Tom and I kept writing and before hearts of fire I had done it three episodes of evening shade with Burt Reynolds and before that Fred Roose came through and he got me on this or he had become an audition for Jane Jenkins and Janet her Stinson who were always very kindly and I got a part on this series called The Outsiders based on the movie in the book you know the se handbook for me and I got a part on that show is like the first or second year of Fox as a network like 90 I think somewhere in there like 80 well yeah I think it's maybe even 87 maybe 86 or but somewhere in there it was in the late 80s and so that lasted one season which was about 20 episodes or so and so I had done that and I made 25 hundred dollars a week and I couldn't believe it I was like I've never I never dreamed I'd make this money in my lifetime because I mean I was single I loaded a friend of mine in his back room and his wife and in Glendale and I had a had a hot rod 1956 Chevy hot rod dead ball you know and and I mean as a full-on racecar how to raise cam at full race camera illegal phone ahead so anyway I bought it from race car driver out in Hemet there yeah and so anyways so I did I did that for a little bit and then this thing happened with uh with evening shade and that's how I got in hearts of fire Harry Thomason Linda bloodworth-thomason to audition for Charles Nelson Reilly and I did one singing on it and they liked me and had me back to play the main guests are a couple times and then ultimately got on hearts of fire which they also produced and is that where you and John Ritter became friends yes on the show right and you worked with him of course in swing blades and Bad Santa right right right yeah he was he was amazing he was a he still making a lot yeah he's one of those guys that he was so much more than what the public thought he was as an actor you know I think that's why Slingblade was so meaningful there we have to see him do something so directly and actually Bad Santa - is absurd of that oh he was unbelievable in that united movie he was you know when he was playing he used to do a character his brother Tom has a real bad gag reflex and and he would throw up at the drop of a hat and and John used to do this character that he invented he would just do it around the set he would do this character named Chuck hurley hurley Chuck Hurley was not nice to fire that oh yeah okay and Chuck Hurley was a guy who was on the verge of throwing up all the time so he would do that all the time well he would make his brother Tom throw up by doing that and uh and uh so in Bad Santa he's really playing Chuck Hurley very funny now that I'm yes you're right he did how that look on the face we know but Raj no John I miss you so Slingblade obviously was a short first what inspired you or at what point did you decide you wanted to adapt it into a future and also direct it because you hadn't directed the short but obviously had gotten some acclaim and in circles and people thought like oh this is a great look for this in a larger way who encouraged you to actually take the plunge I knew I was going to do it myself okay I I only didn't direct a short because I didn't have any money to make it short and a guy came along George Hickenlooper and he said look I know these guys that will give us whatever it was ten thousand dollars or something to make this and the other thing was written out the character I did it for him you know he saw it I think maybe in the theater once and and you know that we did that one and then the only thing I brought to the table in terms of the actors and that was JT Walsh you know if I knew and JT was one of the greatest you know he was one of the greatest character actors they ever invented to the point where I auditioned for a movie one time I went in to see Lily zanuck I think it was he was producing this thing and I went in to audition for this role and JT was out there you know and the part was perfect for JT it wasn't really perfect for me and a lot of menacing people he sure did real scary and I went into the Lilly zanuck and I said you know I'm really not the guy for this part I said the guy sitting out in the lobby there JT that's the guy you oughta cast in this thing and she goes well never never come up against this before an actor saying that you hired around exactly and sure enough duty plumbing thorough it was a movie and I may be getting this mixed up with another movie but I think it was Lili zanuck but it was somebody like that anyways the movie was about I think Kurt Russell was in it it was about a truck driver getting after great like that yo oh yeah he was really wasn't he great inner a great movie well you're very kind of friend him well he was just a truce I mean I know he would have probably got in anyway it was like a it was like they call it a preemptive strike it's like instead of being and you know it's like well no I auditioned too and he got it it's like I'll give it to him very very smart very smart so obviously I which made more time to just talk about Slingblade for like ten hours but we don't so let's let's flash forward to Oscar night where your name is called I watched your speech again this morning and it was interesting to see after they said all the nominees for adapted screenplay your name got the most applause and the most yelled from the audience so it's almost as if you were sort of the presumptive winner did you feel that during the course of the awards season that everyone was rooting for you no you didn't know cuz you seemed genuinely surprised the same Karen I didn't feel that yeah you know uh honestly here's what I thought I didn't think I'd win for the screenplay I thought I'd win for Best Actor I really did think I was and the reason I thought that was because and I thought you know Geoffrey Rush and I went through that whole thing together about the air competition it was really tough and he and I were out together is sort of like the newcomers you know and they would have us in interviews together and everything like that and but I figured well Geoffrey was only in the movie for like 20 minutes or something you know I mean he did an amazing job under man playing him in the early part right there's like three different people or something like that and I thought yeah there's no way you know because he's barely wasn't the movie that long and only for that reason because he did an amazing job I mean I remember thinking I'm glad he went in the whole movie yeah so it's like so I actually I thought it would be the other way around and I was really proud to get it for writing because I mean you know how often does that happen I definitely think it made the business see you as wow this guy can write and he can act whereas if you just wanted for the acting maybe they wouldn't have seen right exactly multi-talented guy I think it worked up ya know so then obviously the next year you had mentioned a simple plan around the same time you collaborated with your friend Bill Paxton right but then also the same year I was so I was trying to member what year came out but you were an Armageddon which is a sharp departure from human work you had been doing what was it like you when for writing Slingblade and I'm working with Michael Bay and you can't get you really cannot get much more divergent and your experiences making movies than those two those two experiences what was it like to be on that set and all that you know summer blockbusters Bruce Willis it's just that Aerosmith song this sort of like every every possible sort of you know checklist first summer movie was checked on that movie was it very well obviously yeah it was a you know honestly I've done a couple of bigger movies you know the sense that that I didn't think you know they weren't my favorite ones and it's not really my bag but I actually kind of tear up when I see Armageddon open to it even though I mean the I mean the maybe in all these kind of movies but this may be a little outlandish you know that you're going to blow an ass like that but that doesn't matter I mean you can look back through movie history and you know what it really surrealism for the moment yeah I mean it just happens that way but I had just after after sling buy a few other movies that were you know a little more independent like you know and then and then I did primary colors of Mike Nichols and right after that was Armageddon and the way it came about is my manager I'm still with to this day he was on an airplane with Jerry Bruckheimer and he and Jerry were talking about this movie Armageddon you know he was about to produce and my manager said well you know what you ought to do instead of getting all these actors who are normally in these big blockbusters you ought to get some real actor actor guys to play like all these people you know and Jerry's like you know what I actually let's kind of want him thinking he goes I'd like to do that and then my manager says for instance so anyway so I I got offered the part for more money than I could have ever dreamed and it wasn't gigantic I've never been with those actors he makes twenty million dollars maybe that's never happened to me but for me at that time it was you know a big deal to get that kind of money and so we had a table read through over at four seasons and I'm sitting there with Owen Wilson I knew Owen before anybody knew he was you know and and we just hang out the silver spoon what used to be Theodore's over there Santa Monica Boulevard and get drunk and and so I'm sitting there Steve Buscemi and we'll Patton and Owen and we're waiting to start the thing you know and I'm looking at Owen and he's looking at me and and shimmies looking over at me and we'll and and this is funny because machine he's really funny everything he's always made me laugh and and but in total seriousness he looked at all of us and then he and he looks over at me he goes hey man is what the hell are we doing here I know I said yeah I know I have no idea but it is what made that movie actually a great ensemble is I mean you have your Bruce Willis and Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck kind of the key you know top man characters but to populate it with these characters I think actually gave it some you know gravitas and we'll pass it around forever and oh yeah yeah you guys thought it all knew each other from auditions well yeah we did yeah I mean yeah I know Sonny Steve and then I knew Owen just from you know my manager hooking us up saying hey there's this kid coming to town from Texas and I was like a couple years under Bottlerocket so he was probably - yeah exactly and I'd met him just after bottle rocket which I loved and so yeah we started hanging out and then looking ahead a few years Monster's Ball which is such as I mean what a dark dark piece of art it's a hard movie to watch and also just because we lost Peter and Heath but also just it's hard to watch that movie and walk away with anything other than wow life is really hard for people what was it like being on that set with Mark your director and Lee Daniels as a producer and just the raw grittiness of that story it's it's it's hard to absorb I think but in a good way in similar took one blade I think in a lot of ways you're seeing the slice of life people have just been down problem and life has not given them a chance and obviously your character offers a ray of hope for her it was it was you know what it felt making a movie felt like it looks and feels when you watch it it really did that was probably I'd say Slingblade in a simple plan and monstrous ball and the man who wasn't there a movie I did with the Coen brothers I'd say those four movies more than anything felt like you're in that world I think when I you think okay always and monstrous ball was particularly heavy yeah you know and we're shooting in Louisiana and it was really hot and humid and it just it felt like making you know like a Tennessee Williams thing or whatever you know we really felt like we were in the South doing that to stuff you know and it was people always say you know the famous scene with me and Halle Berry Halle they say that must have been difficult and not whatever and actually the most difficult scene in the movie to do was when he kills himself that was the day that felt really bad around the set and he looked like a ghost that day and at the top of the movie - so it really I think that's what's so disarming about the story is that this terrible thing happens in act one I think or the end of Act one the very brave storytelling for that I think what happened so early there's a scene in that movie where I go in there I'm mad at him and I get him in the bathroom at the prison and I start beating him around the head the shoulders and I was so my father in that movie and I essentially just played my father my body language way I looked everything about it and so in that scene Heath and I are in movies at their best should feel musical and that movie was very musical and when I went in that bathroom Heath and I were exactly in the pocket there wasn't anything - there was nothing to do with acting at that point and I hit him so hard that he was crying and he wanted me to and I just remember being as angry as a human could be at him and he was angry at me and afraid of me it was if it's very very real and there you know I've got a few scenes over the years when it's over you don't see any reason to do it again you know and it was at a moment where mark Forster said okay we got it I mean he's not going to make me do that again over and over again we did two takes of it but it was the usual junk it's like you know somebody's whining about you know I want to move the tweeny over by the baby your order and you guys are like I think we got and you couldn't have done a more different movie in Bad Santa following monsters ball probably a good palate cleanser you know a little lighter completely absurd and ridiculous yeah did did you have a sense working with Terry Zwigoff on this movie that you were creating a cult classic and obviously he was known for these types of kind of absurd rogue kind of storytelling but did you have any sense of what this would become when you were making it we thought it was going to be very good you know we didn't know it was going to become that popular you know I think six million dollars that's a lot of money it was a very relatively small budget yeah absolutely yeah no it was that we thought we were doing the right thing and I remember I read it and call my manager buy a third of the way through and I said why wouldn't you do this I mean this is I've never seen anything like this because it started a whole bunch of other ones like it dude I mean it was kicked it kicked off a whole new sort of genre within comedy now where you could just do whatever you wanted have a very local lead character who we somehow still love yeah exactly and Debian had a few years so I know Fargo was a big kind of turning point for you but not necessarily something that you saw yourself doing television series right and you'd work with the Cullens of course on a few movies what what did you think when no how they approached you you know to play Lorne Malvo and did you have any reservations of jumping into this world that was sort of sanctioned by the Cohens but it wasn't really their world I mean Ethan joel had said we give our stamp of approval to Noah's interpretation of this but it's still a lot of pressure I think on everybody involved oh yeah there's no question about it I mean you know you want when you're taking on something that you know iconic like that you know it makes you nervous and and I come from an older time when TV wasn't a cool thing to do you know and so I was one of the last people who had to be told it's like no you don't understand he's really cool I do been a consumer of TV over the years you know Sopranos in a lot of these prestige programs and uh no I I watched Andy Griffith and Hogan's Heroes and stuff like that and sports I usually watch sports right you're probably playing music to when you do you have free chest up like that so I wasn't really clued into all that kind of stuff and once they told me that it was okay to do that I because I loved the script and Noah I met with Noah over there at the office and and he said look yeah here's here's what we're going to do it and when I read this script he'd done an amazing job of keeping the spirit of the Coen Brothers original and yet creating a new animal and that's what I thought was impressive the novelist he comes to the business a row such a different storytelling perspective that he's probably a good person to have attempted this absolutely and I thought yeah I got to play this guy and your haircut was really was pretty much yeah yeah that was a mistake and then I looked at myself in the mirror I'm like god I look like Alfred E Newman's Mad Magazine but then it's like Javier Bardem and no country where it's like the most absurd looking villain but it makes him scarier there's known about this like kind of childlike veneer but exam know you have a huge knife in your pocket can you really look at it you know I looked like a little bit like without the beard a sort of Neil Young early on you know second the 70s and you received an Emmy nomination for that role was it surprising to you to see after the fact kind of how the show took off and it did win Best miniseries that year was it was it surprising to see that kind of a swell of reaction and support with the show God did you watch it every week when it aired I didn't watch it every week I have a hard time watching things yeah the only movie I watch I can watch that I've been in over and over it has been it wasn't there and the reason this is because I think maybe because it's in black and white takes place before it is a me and there's something that doesn't I feel comfortable watching it because that's really more Who I am is that guy yeah but and you don't want to watch yourself because you're critical of your performance there is just an uneasy feeling I I think it's it makes me I always think things are going to go wrong and I think things are going to go wrong in retrospect demon even though you know they haven't you're still thinking - I think if I watch this even after it's one everything and I got a Golden Globe and stuff and I think they're going to come take my golden glow away if I watch good it's like it's like leave well-enough you know what it's like it's like you got some kind of thing balancing on something here that's just barely teetering on this fence I just step away you know let it be you know I don't like to watch things again because I think somehow I'm going to change the past the space-time continuum if you will and let's get to Goliath since that's the most current project we're talking about congratulations on the Golden Globes speaking of awards for that so I heard that when you first were approached with the project and read the script you had some changes that you wanted to make to to the script or possibly to your character what were the adjustments that you felt David E Kelly's work needed for you to want to do it well I think in the initial meeting I saw I mean it's like anything when you look at in the beginning it's I don't know this hard to figure out how to say this all right most scripts when you read them you look at it and you go wow the first time you read it you know you go wow I love this thing and I got to play this part and that's what I felt and but then later on you know there are things in there that you see and you go yeah you know I don't really talk this way but I'll change that later oh yeah I always do you know and so I didn't realize that you know then you're dealing with like a big network television God you know and they don't really want you to do that what is hard to as a writer you have an eye for a script in a way that maybe most actors don't I mean you're maybe more critical or you see things that come off of the other well I think a lot of actors do I think I think actors are I think really good actors are good writers somehow you if they don't write you know but yeah I think I think I think everybody I think I always encourage actors who haven't written to write whether it ever gets done or not doesn't matter I just think it helps you as an actor but you know and to their credit they let me do it you know they you know when I wanted to make it more in my voice they said yeah yeah go ahead you know and so I I did and so I just said the same stuff only the way I would say it you know and I think I think it's a good lesson you know early on in your careers when you could look at things and and go why ice not my best right there it's when you don't have the power to say I don't talk this way and I remember doing a movie in the 80s that I look at it now and I go Callie I mean overacting is like the last thing on my list you know it's just something I want maybe you're getting a little keep the direction that you didn't feel comfortable at that well the scared of death and I was a big director and he's telling me to do stuff and I'm like yeah okay you know and you know you do it because you're starving to death you wanted the part and you you do what they tell you isn't an actor who doesn't have credits oh my god everybody I mean everybody can look back at their early stuff and they go I can we said and done that you know but and you know what it was is I was playing a bad guy and I don't like to play bad guys with a with a loud snarl I don't like to do that because if you've ever met any bad guys and I have I've been in some questionable trades in my time and you know I've known them you know known some bad guys the scarier ones are probably the quieter one yeah well they're just I mean they just tell you that's why I didn't get auditions when I was coming up they either want me to play a hillbilly or a killer and sometimes both at the same time and uh and the tendon I always got two things the two things they told me how come I didn't get the part I wasn't southern enough and anyway I'm not southern enough what are you talking about god it's like I don't even that means how could you how did you get to that good more than other than you that's a funny I can't think of anybody well I mean I have to when I'm not playing a southerner I have to make sure my diction is perfect because you know I can get into my southern accent very easily and so and I figure out what it was right away which was you know Hollywood sometimes has this perception of people and you know and yes and so what they wanted was for me to talk like this here well this Leone over there overall you're free it's Big Daddy essential that's right right they want you to do that and if you look at you know what you can look at you can look at so many movies that won Oscars for Best Picture and see because you know movie business wasn't created by like some guy from Georgia you know I mean and and so they made movies about guys from Georgia for a long time but people from Georgia weren't making the movie so and it still happens and then they cast a guy from the Bronx and there a girl from Australia in the movie about Alabama and the next thing you know you have well honey I got to tell you one more day and we are we out of here you know it's like until now I'm not getting the part because you southern I'm not southern enough and then I didn't get the part for being a killer because I didn't stand on the desk and froth at the mouth and all that kind of stuff I would go in there and I would look at the casting director and say hey listen you got about two seconds and if you're not out of here I'm going to cut your neck okay whatever it was you know a scare or okay it's like I would just go and say hey I'm gonna kill you and you know and they were like well can you give me a little more I'm a little more what I just thought I was going to kill you what more do you want so it must have been quite a nice feeling to be working with ray McKinnon and Walton Goggins on crystal when you're collaborating with southerners who are from the areas about which they're writing and they're and they're not Hollywood people they're people like you from those small communities telling those stories I mean that must have been and also daddy in them and these other movies that you directed we're actually you can populate the world with authentic people from from those areas I mean it's it's still it's hard and it's also hard to get funding because they want known people but you know southern actors aren't too many of you out there know it's true it's a there's a I mean you know I grew up with a you know a little bit there's some prejudice against you know actors himself and you know like I don't know if there still is but I do know this actor there's so many great actors from England and there's so many great actors from Australia they're wonderful but we got plenty of Texans and they got plenty of English and they got plenty Australians so I've always figured it this way I don't need just to show off or whatever it is or just because you have a name I don't need to go play an Australian and learn the accent and I don't need to go to England and play an English person because they got plenty of them and I always my standard joke is if they're doing a movie about Charles de Gaulle and get a Frenchman you know and but if you're doing a movie about the Alamo get me in Dennis Quaid thank God they did but that's the way I see it I mean I just figure you you have strengths and you do it because if you are doing and I'm not saying don't do accents I'm not saying that I'm not saying it can never happen and there's not a right time for it but just to do it because you're one of the top ten actors or whatever and they won the studio wants all these people in the movie but it's a movie about you know somebody from another country it's like come on guys you know mate if you really got to have the name make them the buddy or whatever it is but do something where you can keep things authentic because I've watched actors before where they open their mouths bigger as the character just to make sure the accents right and it's you know I can hear I mean I'm sure most of you too when we're watching monitors and it takes me out of it cuz I'm so aware like where the accent go oh it came back and then it sort of you know trails off and then well you know it's like anything it's like in writing I don't write Star Trek movies I would have a clue you know I don't know how to write a science fiction movie so I write these creepy old movies if you know and I do know about you know and I and nobody sees most of them and they did see a couple of them I mean that's what I do and that's all I can be getting your strength early on yeah that has served you gotta know who you are that's the main thing is an accurate well that's a good segue to our audience questions Patrick would like to know what do you do to stay sharp craft wise in between assignments and I assume you mean acting of nothing I mean I firmly believe that you're either an actor or you're not an actor and I believe that once you I believe if you can tell someone your process then you're probably not as as good as you could be because then you have figured out some formula to be an actor you know and I don't think there is a formula so all I do is observe life you know I mean look I got enough fears and hopes and dreams and stuff like that to know what to do when you're playing a character and I think the more you use your own life the more you observe other characters and the more you stay a fan see that's what we're losing fans are now people who want to hate you and there was a time when fans are people who wanted to love you right and so I think that I think the audience the public and performers themselves ought to remember to be a fan it makes you happy and when you're happy I mean you don't have to trust me you don't have to be like a pitiful alcoholic who can't get off the floor to write something or be an actor and I've done that too you know but but it's not necessarily necessary all you do is look around you know be interested in everybody else you know and maybe not live in a bubble yeah and and that's how I stay sharp is just lazy you stay connected to your friends your family and what's going on in life and you know because that's really what you're supposed to be doing you don't need to you know let's say you're in you're in West Hollywood and you're going to Santa Monica you don't have to go through Glendale to get there you just go straight to Santa Monica I make mace a lot of fun duskie would like to know what work are you most proud of acting directing riding and why or the a particular roller or movie that you made what I don't know they're all different I mean you know selling what I'm proudest of I think I'm the proudest of I'm the prime the proudest of do what we just talked about I've always kind of known who I was you know so that way I could just keep doing things that I ought to be doing as opposed to you know trying to go out for a thing I mean I turned down some movies before you know then I could have made a lot of money on just because I knew it wasn't me and I knew that at the end of the day people are going to say hey that's not him I mean they even talk to me about playing a superhero one time before to God and a buddy mine ended up doing it and I and they said that yeah you could play this cuz he's not supposed to be you know some like you know which super heroine us I can't tell you why we have that but I I just said man you know I don't know I kind of not my back and is it because you've known life without anything you don't have a fear of losing out on an opportunity because you've already sort of been through the rough times I think so and also I love the days when you know I've had hills and valleys in my career during the and during the valleys you know you start dreaming again you know and I think it's one of the most important things you can do is dream and and you if you get to the top of the heap and just go okay I'm going to take the money and do whatever movie that offer mean I enjoy being a movie star you quit dreaming and once you quit dreaming as an artist that kills you very true this is from I think just that forgive me if I'm pregnant now thank you Bill Tom Brady's wife oh it is here this is a very VIP event which of your performances has left a lasting mark on you more than any other she says thank you and God bless [Music] I'd say probably uh I had to say Slingblade I mean you know just because it really gave me a life you know beyond it was my creation and yeah i think i think it led to mark i mean i have a hard time getting out of that guy you know it's like i think about it all the time as someone other than me but it's like a it's like yeah you know that was a no something else oh it was real and that in the character in a simple plan I never wanted to quit Mike in that movie yeah I watched it again recently it's so good I love really good really good you must have been devastated about Bill passing yeah yeah that was not fun very roughly vada were born there a few of us born the same year bill and meeting and Bruce Willis and Costner you know we're all within a few months of each other and actually Denison and and Costner and I went to Bill's funeral together and that was a not the memorial over at the studio but the actual catalog to family and that was a that was not anything that any of us have come to grips with yet I still kind of act like it didn't happen really tough it was an interesting one from Jesse and it having such an iconic scene in tombstone help you get exposure when you were first making the swing blade short uh I don't know actually I got noticed from tombstone like years later it became a big bus movie for rock bands they loved that's one reason I love it is really like after gig we put it on while they're on the bus yeah a lot of people watching on the bus great it's really great it's but it was one of those movies that just kind of stuck around and there's so many lines in it that were that have been remembered and so yeah I think simply because you know it's like hey Johnny Tyler where you going with that shot guy on your mellow lives but I you know and I just come off another movie where I've been injured severely so I was on quite a bit of vicodin making Kingston into my riding horses with on vicodin III didn't have to ride a horse onto stone uh but uh I did stay away from them because I'd been injured on a horse in a movie that I did previously uh yeah and I had six broken ribs a broken collarbone a bruised pelvis and a concussion and I got pneumonia and went and plus side gains like sixty pounds to do all this stuff which is already hard enough on me and I ended up being just busted to pieces so I was yeah when I did tombstone I was still pretty messed up from that and so I look back on that time you know sometimes your experience is not necessarily what you see on the screen no absolutely not and speaking of days would like to know which onset experience was your favorite and why or least the people you're around or the setting and the tone of the production without a question a movie called bandits I did with Bruce Willis and I Blanchett shot my home state of Oregon oh yeah you're Oliver I'm hoping Klamath Falls and and then we looked over to the Columbia River Gorge and that movie of shot and order starting up in Portland and coming all the way to Century City and very rare for me shooting very very rare and that well that's back when they would give you actual big money for a movie you know and they spent the money to do it and that movie became a huge on DVD and stuff like that but when it came out it didn't making money because its release date was 9/11 2001 right so it ended up putting it out a week later I think it was but they'd already decided to do that but then when when it came out and of course the president was saying don't know them all or anything like that and but one way or the other the locations and Kate and Bruce and all our friends and Barry Levinson's one was entertaining directors you'll ever run into and so it was a long shoot for five months and a lot of location a lot of innovations yeah and just beautiful locations we had more fun making that movie it was just it was absolutely the best I think time for one more for Michael and Michael would would like to ask who do you most admire as a writer this could be any type of writing uh I have to name a couple I admire Erskine Caldwell and the earth can kalyanam Erskine Caldwell was a writer from Georgia wrote god's little acre so uh yeah novelist uh Faulkner and Steinbeck and Earth's King Caldwell and Flannery O'Connor those are the writers I admire most I I don't know much about screenwriters although I always liked William Goldman I thought William Goldman is a terrific screenwriter but yeah I think those kind of people though you know not always yeah they're I like novels and read a lot of biographies to I I'm always interested in how people can sit down and write a biography about someone had to interview like everybody there were new and stuff that must be hard on food your favorite biography which is your favorite poverty I read one recently on Spencer Tracy I think the guy's name is James Curtis it's just called Tracy or Spencer Tracy something like that it's like nine hundred and something pages and I think every actor ought to read this book it's so good oh you know it's tiring to read this book but but you see I think every actor will see the insecurities we all have you know I mean actors you're still kids inside I don't care if you're 80 or 16 you know actors or kids who needed some kind of acceptance and approval you know from people and and if they had something to say they were desperate to say it even if they hadn't found a way to say it yet and I think you know actors you're a rare breed a person you know and and I think that's the one one of the really great things about actresses they I think we never quite lose that child in us you know it then the child and you beat you up sometimes but at the same time I think it keeps us alive you know and keeps us dreaming well that's why everyone's here today and we're so honored that you joined us thank you very much thank you [Applause]

Channel: SAG-AFTRA Foundation

Views: 69,128

Rating: 4.8495822 out of 5

Keywords: SAG Foundation, SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Acting, Actors, Billy bob Thornton, stacey wilson hunt, new york magazine, goliath, amazon, sling blade, fargo, Q&A, Interview, Career, Retrospective

Id: j8TyHjXIy4o

Length: 72min 17sec (4337 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 11 2017