Word: thorntons
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...echo of Oscar-buffs around the globe, scratching their chins and asking each other, "'Billy Bob' who? Is there a 'Billy Bob' here?" If you listened real hard, you could even hear "Clueless" Cher Horowitz piping, "This is California, not Kentucky!" All the same, Southern-born filmmaker Billy Bob Thornton has cut himself a big slice of the Hollywood pie. "Sling Blade"--nominated for Thornton's script and for his own starring performance--was, for some, the biggest surprise in a nomination field full of offbeat choices...
...offbeat is "Sling Blade," really? In some ways, Thornton's Southern-gothic thriller is an unlikely hybrid of "Forrest Gump" and "Pulp Fiction," the tent-poles of the Oscar race two years ago. That is, "Sling Blade" inhabits some fairly original territory, but doesn't deliver on all of its promises...
...list, which featured seven nominations apiece for "Fargo" and "Shine" and five each for "Jerry Maguire" and "Secrets & Lies." Best actor nominees included Ralph Fiennes for "The English Patient," Tom Cruise for "Jerry Maguire," Woody Harrelson for "The People vs. Larry Flynt," Geoffrey Rush for "Shine," and Billy Bob Thornton for "Sling Blade." Best actress nominations ventured into slightly different territory with Kristin Scott Thomas for "The English Patient," Brenda Blethyn for "Secrets & Lies," Diane Keaton for "Marvin's Room," Frances McDormand for "Fargo," and Emily Watson for "Breaking the Waves." Other attention-getting movies were not ignored, however...
After various gigs as a musician, including drummer in a ZZ Top-knockoff band called Tres Hombres, Thornton figured he and Epperson could strike it rich in New York City (that visit lasted all of 10 hours) and then Los Angeles. Together they wrote Thornton's eye-catching role as the white-trash murderer in One False Move. In this heralded heist film, shot in Arkansas in 1991, Thornton is never scarier than when he smiles--the picture of boll-weevil evil. He's good at that. "Billy can organize all the madmen inside himself," says John Ritter, the Three...
Karl, a poignant, complicated character, came to Thornton on the set of a cable movie, 1987's The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains. "It was hot," he says, "and I had a conductor's uniform on with a collar up to here. My part wasn't going well because the director wanted me to overact. At lunch I was thinking how everyone else on the set was a real actor and I was a nobody. I started making faces at myself in the mirror and started talking in that voice. I looked so goofy, I just went, Eeeewegh. Then...