The Man Who Wasn’t There, which was set in 1949 and filmed in black and white, was beautifully shot by Roger Deakins and beautifully edited, written, and directed by Joel and Ethan. The film has that whole film noir thing. During the filming of The Man Who Wasn’t There, I had the flu for the last two weeks, and if you ever see the movie again, in some of the barbershop scenes, which were shot toward the end, you’ll notice that I’m a little stuffed up and my eyes are puffy. But that was one of my favorite movies that I’ve ever been in. Angie always loved that character Ed Crane.
It was largely ignored in the United States because it is in black and white, and a lot of people won’t watch black-and-white movies. I think black and white is heavier than color. It gives the film a heavier mood. If you watch the old black-and-white movies, they have a different feeling about them, and I wish they made more of them. To me, black and white seems more like reality than a color movie, even though real life is in color. Somehow, black and white makes me feel like I’m in the story more. It’s just got something. It’s sweaty, it’s got depth and character. Think about all the great black-and-white photographs over the years. Usually you don’t see those famous photographs of people in color. They’re usually black and white, and there’s a reason for that.
I’ve seen pictures from the set of The Man Who Wasn’t There in color before, and it always upsets me because I just want to think of it in black and white. And there was a great cast of characters, terrific actors. The Coen brothers have a bunch of actors they like to use in their movies, and they know who’s right for the parts. I loved working with Fran McDormand and James Gandolfini, but all the actors in the movie were outstanding.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
A Singular Vision
NOW, I’M NOT ONE WHO SHITS ON COMMERCIAL FILMS BECAUSE they’re commercial. I mean, some of them are good. Once again, it’s not about how much money is spent, or whether it’s independent or commercial. It’s, is it good or not? You could say that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a commercial film, but it happened to be a good commercial film. I think Witness was a good commercial film. I think Rocky was a good commercial film. That was Stallone’s vision. No one knew who he was.
Once art becomes anything other than a singular vision—and I’m not saying it has to be one guy or one girl, it can be a trio of people or whatever, I’m sure you’ve collaborated with people before—but one way or the other, art has to come from people who are headed toward the same goal.
When they started testing everything—okay, look, you can test a tube of toothpaste and have people taste it and go, “Yeah, it’s a little gritty, and it’s not quite as sweet as this other one.” Okay, fine, do that. You got to put the stuff in your mouth. But art by nature is a vision, a singular vision.
Let’s take Edward Hopper, he’s one of my favorites. Edward Hopper is doing a painting. Let’s suppose that in that painting you have a director, a producer, and a studio just as you do in movies. In this scenario, Hopper is the writer and actor, and he shows his painting to Bud and Carl, the producer and the director. They say, “Yeaahhhh, Edward, it’s nice, real nice, I like that, it’s kinda moody. We’re just afraid that it’s kinda lonely for what we’re going for here.”
And Edward Hopper responds, “Well, that’s the point. The goddamn painting is called Loneliness. It’s a woman sitting on the edge of her bed in a seedy motel with a motel sign outside and a diner on the corner. And you’re supposed—”
“Yeah, yeah,” the producer interrupts, “we get that, but the problem with it is, we don’t really know what she’s thinking. We want the people who come to our art shows to know what the painting means. We want them to know what she’s thinking. So let’s just say she’s not sitting on the bed, just motionless like that, staring at the wall. What if she’s looking out the window at that diner? Then we think maybe she’s waiting on someone to show up at that diner.”
Hopper says, “Well, the point of this is, we don’t know what she’s thinkin’.”
“Why would you want a painting where nobody knows …” and a big argument erupts.
Hopper storms out of the room saying, “Fuck you guys.” But those guys put up the money, so the next thing you know there is no Edward Hopper. His name’s on it, but the producer’s and director’s names are on it too. Now the painting is a lot brighter, the colors aren’t muted like other Edward Hopper paintings. It’s red and blue and the diner’s brighter. She’s looking out the window with the suggestion of a smile on her face, so you know she’s probably waiting on some dude who’s coming to the diner, who she’s in love with. Now you got a painting!
It shouldn’t be that way. And that’s what I’ve been dealing with ever since I tried to be any kind of an artist. I use Edward Hopper’s paintings as inspiration for my production design when we make movies. Sling Blade was made based on the look of an Edward Hopper painting and the feel of an Edward Hopper painting. That’s what I always try to do.
But the fact of the matter is, Edward Hopper didn’t have to go to Denver, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Dallas and have a bunch of people in stretch pants say they didn’t like his painting, or tell Picasso the eyes were off-center. “Why are the eyes not together? We think you ought to put the eyes on the same level like real people’s eyes are.” The next thing you know, there wouldn’t have been a Picasso. Unfortunately, we work in a business where they can actually tell you how they want you to end a movie. Art no longer exists when the audience is the judge before it’s finished, or before it’s put out to the public. How is it art? It can’t be. They’ve already screwed it up. If the people can create what they want to see, who cares? I’m not saying that you’re supposed to like everything, I’m saying you should have the opportunity to like or dislike something based on a single vision because if it’s not that, it’s not art. There’s bad art, good art, mediocre art, kind of good art, all kinds. That’s the beauty of it. If the audience has already become the artist, then it’s not art.
When I finished Sling Blade and sold it to the distributors, they wanted me to cut the movie down to under two hours. Now, I’d already made a deal with the people who financed it that I had final cut, so the distributors couldn’t do anything about it, but I called Martin Scorsese to ask his opinion.
Scorsese is the kind of guy who really studies films. He grew up as a rabid fan of filmmaking—the technical part of it as well as the artistic part of it—and he’ll sit down and talk about movies, he knows them all. Scorsese happened to be a fan of One False Move, which was a critical success as an independent film but didn’t make me a household name. He said, “If you ever need anything, call me,” so I called him.
First, I talked to the lady who ran his company, telling her, “I finished my first theatrical movie as a director and they want me to cut it down. I think it needs to stay the way it is. Am I crazy? Would you look at this? If you think I should cut it down, I would do that—I would listen to someone like you—but I just don’t want to do it randomly.”
She told me to send it, and I did. I didn’t hear for two or three weeks, so I just thought he hated it—this was before I knew people didn’t call you back for three weeks. But he finally called and said, “Don’t cut a frame of this. I happen to think this movie is great the way it is, but I’m not kissing your ass or anything. I’m telling you not to cut this for a whole other reason. Right now, you’re under the radar, nobody knows who you are. This is the only time in your career where you’re ever going to be able to make a movie exactly the way you want it.”
This is exactly the opposite of the way I thought it worked. I thought you could do anything you want once you get famous, but the truth is, once you get famous, they’re gunning for you every minute and you never get to do it your way again.
When you’re a famous guy, working with the big boys and making bigger movies, everybody tries to control you. Scorsese was absolutely right. I’ve never done anything exactly the way I’ve wanted to do it since.
<
br /> CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Things Are Fucked Up at the North Pole
WHAT’S GREAT ABOUT BAD SANTA IS THAT IT HAD AN INDEPENDENT film feel as well as a commercial movie feel about it. I think the independent feel it had was a tribute to Terry Zwigoff, who is a great independent filmmaker. But just by nature the movie had a commercial appeal. It also had the late, great John Ritter, who did an amazing job, not to mention Brett Kelly—the kid—Lauren Graham, Bernie Mac, Tony Cox, all the other great characters and terrific people.
When Geyer Kosinski, my manager, first sent me the Bad Santa script, I thought, Wow, this is either going to ruin me or it’s going to be amazing. I’d read about a third of it, then I called him and said, “I have to do this movie.” I laughed on every page, it was hysterical. It was the most well-reviewed comedy of that year and made a shitload of money. It’s been a very successful movie over the years. Every holiday a lot of people include it on their list for watching. I have people say, “Every year we watch It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and Bad Santa.” It’s an odd pairing, but I guess some people were tired of the commercialism of Christmas.
There was a lot of carousing going on during that period of time. At the time I was living with my buddy Harve Cook, my video playback guy and one of the producers on this Willie Nelson documentary we did. Harve is a black guy with long dreadlocks from Minneapolis, but his family is from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and we had a two-year Lost Weekend here at the house. I was single. It was after Angie and I had split up. We’d have thirty, forty, fifty of the cast and crew here on school nights, when we had to be at work at seven in the morning. It was probably the craziest time I ever had. It’s also when I met Connie. Her sister Carrie was the makeup artist on the movie, and Connie came to visit her. A couple years later, Connie got pregnant with Bella, so funny enough, I always think how Bella really came about because of my meeting Connie on the set of Bad Santa. Today Connie, Bella, and Willie and Harry, my sons, are the center of my universe.
But the truth is, comedy sets are not always fun, happy places. Bad Santa was actually kind of a dark set a lot of the time, but I think a lot of the humor actually came out of that. I loved playing the character, and we’re talking about doing a sequel. People say, “Ah, sequels are always bad,” but they’re not always. It depends on how you approach a sequel. The best thing about Bad Santa is it was a movie that didn’t follow any rules. Certain people said that we’d ruined the name of Jesus and Santa Claus. Well, first of all, I’ve read the Bible, and I promise you that it doesn’t mention Santa Claus anywhere, so you’re getting your stories mixed up. Santa Claus has nothing to do with Jesus other than for some reason they made some arbitrary birthday for Jesus and tied Santa Claus into it. Second thing is, Bad Santa is not about Santa Claus or Jesus. I play a thief who dresses up like Santa Claus in order to get jewels and shit. If I dressed up like Richard Nixon, would they have been offended? I don’t understand it. A thief will dress up like whatever he’s got to dress up like. I like Bad Santa not just because it’s irreverent, but because, in darkly comedic fashion, we both made a statement about the commercialism of Christmas and showed that even the lowest shit on earth can actually have a heart when he sees himself in a kid. It’s like, “Wow, I was one of those things one time, wasn’t I?”
We want to do a sequel because it’s a holiday movie, I enjoyed doing the first one, and people found it to be a good alternative to a corny Christmas movie. Why not do it again? Like I said, I’m not against movies for entertainment’s sake—not every movie needs to be earth-shattering. I was a big fan of The Ghost and Mr. Chicken with Don Knotts, so clearly I don’t mind being entertained. My point is that even if you’re going to make entertainment films, make good ones. You can make a $100 million movie that’s good and you can make a $1 million movie that’s good. Bad Santa was successful, so as long as we’re all inspired, why not get the team back together to do it again?
Plus, people like to see me play a cynical fuck. I’ve had eight-year-olds come up to me and say, “Bad Santa!” and I’m like, “God, you let your kid watch that?”
ROBERT DUVALL ON BILLY BOB THORNTON
I asked my wife the other night to give me her commentary on Billy Bob. She reflected for just a brief moment and then said with quiet conviction that he is very intuitive with actors when he deals with them and he does so in a very offhand way, obviously with great understanding. I find my wife to be extremely smart about such things. What she said struck a corresponding conclusion within me.
Although he is quite disciplined in his framing of scenes, he still—as I saw it—works in flashes, extremely personal flashes. Other directors work this way I’m sure, but I haven’t always been aware. His flashes are unique to him and right on the money.
We are all one of a kind, but Billy seems to be one of a kind and more.
The common denominator of truth is pretty much in evidence in his work—throughout!
He asks for no rehearsals. He says rehearsals are for “pussies.” If he then goes beyond two takes, it is indeed unusual. So in a sense he ends up shooting the rehearsal anyway.
He tries to stay away from preconceptions as much as possible. I feel it’s better to come in and start from zero and then see where it goes from there. I think Billy would agree with this.
As a fine actor himself, I’m sure he ducks when he sees the milkman coming. So many directors will milk the crap out of a scene until there is nothing left. They continue to overlook what they are looking for, and after forty or fifty takes, it’s a bit of a joke! Boys like Kubrick made outstanding movies but often had one or two performances that pretty much sucked! Too many takes.
Not so with directors like Coppola, Altman, or Billy Bob.
Actors will say, what is it like to work with this director or that one? The one conclusion that keeps being repeated is that the preferred directors are the ones that “leave you alone.”
When decent, intelligent direction is given, you listen. He gave me a brilliant piece of direction toward the end of Jayne Mansfield’s Car. It came out of nowhere, but it was spot-on!
Billy’s set at times is like adult day camp. Fun and games in and around the set is his approach. One time he stopped shooting and said something to the effect of, “Come on, guys, we’re getting too serious here. Filming should be fun, and we are here to do that.” He seems extremely relaxed as a director even in the most serious situations, and believe me, that attitude permeates the entire set!
Billy is a triple threat—writing, acting, directing—I don’t know what kind of training he ever had, nor do I care. He has a deep cultural understanding of who he is and what he comes from—language!—and he understands the journey from ink to behavior about as good as anybody.
Maybe he just looked in the mirror one day and said, “Hey, Billy, let’s just go and do it.” Let’s get out of here before the milkman comes!!!
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
On the Front Porch: Conversations with Daniel Lanois
Part 1
DANIEL LANOIS: I always felt that All the Pretty Horses was a daunting task because of the thickness of the book. How do you go about taking such a complex adventure and try and rein that into a digestible cinematic experience, without having an intermission?
BILLY BOB THORNTON: If I had had my way and if you had had your way, it probably would have had an intermission. The original cut of that movie was the one with your score in it and that is the thing I felt we made. That’s the movie we made that I was proudest of. Matt Damon, to this day, still calls it a masterpiece. The people who saw that original cut with your score in it have said the same thing.
I wasn’t the one who had to rein it in. Ted Tally wrote the script and that’s something I’m not good at. I’m not good at adapting other people’s stuff. I never was. I got my bag that I kind of do, and I feel I can do what I do pretty well, but I could never take someone else’s book and write a screenplay based on it. This sounds really s
hitty maybe but I don’t know that I’d be interested enough to. I have too much stuff I want to say, myself. So I don’t know that I would ever choose to be someone who adapts. Which is ironic because I have an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, based on other material—but it was my own material. It was based on the short film that I wrote as well as the stage stuff I did with that character.
I don’t think I could have reeled in All the Pretty Horses. Directing it was a different thing because I had the script already and I had a clear vision of how to direct that script, but it was Ted Tally’s script so the credit all goes to him in terms of how you pare that book down into a movie. It was still a daunting task to direct something that big.
I was told, and we may as well talk about it because we’ve never done that other than amongst each other, at night, with a bottle of whiskey—I was told by the studio people, without mentioning any names, that a producer had watched the movie with his wife and his wife felt that the music was too sparse. I had a screaming argument with him on the phone. He said that we were going to have a different score. I said, “Honestly”—and I’m not just saying this, I’ve said it to everybody ever since—“that was the best and the most haunting musical score for a movie I’ve ever heard in my lifetime. Ever.” And to this day it is. That’s why I’ll beg you someday because that would be a great thing for us to put in a movie, that score on some movie, and we’ll find the right one where we can make it and the lawyers won’t fuck it up.
The Billy Bob Tapes Page 16
