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"So I just called him," says [Billy Bob Thornton]. "Him" would be the president of the United States, with whom Thornton shares a home state, Arkansas, and some mutual friends, Harry and Susan Thomason, producers of the "Hearts Afire" TV series in which Thornton co-starred.
Thornton has been nominated as best actor by both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Screen Actors Guild for his performance in "Sling Blade," and the entire primary cast has been nominated by the latter as best ensemble. This is especially gratifying because Thornton wrote most of the characters, including the gay Dollar Store manager played by John Ritter and the abusive, alcoholic good ol' boy played by Dwight Yoakam.
Caption: BPI Billy Bob Thornton, left, plays a mentally retarded ex-convict in "Sling Blade.' Oscar nominee Thornton wrote, directed and starred in the drama, which is playing in the York area.
A few weeks ago, Billy Bob Thornton, the director, writer and Oscar-nominated star of the acclaimed new drama "Sling Blade," needed career advice of the sort you can't really get from a manager, an agent or even a fellow actor.
Should he follow up his award-winning performance as the mentally retarded ex-convict Karl Childers in "Sling Blade" with the much-coveted role of the snaky, James Carville-like campaign manager in the film version of "Primary Colors"? That, of course, is the best seller in which a Bill Clinton-like character has Clinton-like misadventures on the cam paign trail.
"So I just called him," says Thornton. "Him" would be the president of the United States, with whom Thornton shares a home state, Arkansas, and some mutual friends, Harry and Susan Thomason, producers of the "Hearts Afire" TV series in which Thornton co-starred.
"He told me to to go for it," says Thornton. "Said it sounded like a real good opportunity."
In his Arkansas drawl, Thornton makes both the opportunity to star in a Mike Nichols movie and the conversation with the chief executive sound like something everyday. ("I figured I better take advantage 'cause I might not be that good of friends with the next president," he jokes.) But Thornton understands that what is happening to him is something way out of the ordinary.
"I am overwhelmed," he says. "Never, ever thought it would have happened like this."
Thornton has been nominated as best actor by both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Screen Actors Guild for his performance in "Sling Blade," and the entire primary cast has been nominated by the latter as best ensemble. This is especially gratifying because Thornton wrote most of the characters, including the gay Dollar Store manager played by John Ritter and the abusive, alcoholic good ol' boy played by Dwight Yoakam.
If his uncanny portrayal of Karl, the thick-voiced child-man who returns to the little Arkansas town where he killed his mother and her lover two decades earlier, does get honored, says Thornton, it will be only "because I've had plenty of time to work on it."
He first came up with Karl's distinctively dopey look and throat-clearer of a voice 15 years ago after becoming frustrated on the set of a TV remake of "I Was a Fugitive on a Chain Gang" in which he had about four lines. Thornton thought the director was asking him to overact. Dressed in an itchy, old-fashioned railroad conductor's outfit, he was disgusted that he had placed himself in such a demeaning position.
"So I was back in my dressing room, making faces at myself in the mirror, my collar all buttoned up, and I just looked like such an idiot. And all of a sudden, this voice came out, and I just did that whole opening monologue, just like you hear it in the movie. I didn't really write it; it just came out of me. I swear it did."
The monologue has Karl, head bowed, eyes on the floor, matter-of-factly telling a high school newspaper reporter how he came to find his mama and the neighborhood bully all tangled up in each other, and knowing from the Bible reading his daddy gave him, how wrong that was, how he took this old knife, a sling blade, and killed them. And how he's been in this institution for 20 years now and isn't unhappy with that, but how he reckons he has to leave and go somewhere else on account of the doctors say he's fine.
"Sling Blade" impressed distributor Miramax enough to mount the Academy Award campaign for Thornton and give a green light to his next film, an autobiographical story of a young white musician who plays with black musicians "who could have owned the world if they could ever have gotten out of town."
Caption: BPI Billy Bob Thornton, left, plays a mentally retarded ex-convict in "Sling Blade.' Oscar nominee Thornton wrote, directed and starred in the drama, which is playing in the York area.
Copyright York Daily Record Mar 14, 1997