There are few actors as versatile and interesting as Billy Bob Thornton; that’s just a plain and simple truth. I think I first took note of his for an indie feature he co-starred and co-wrote called ONE FALSE MOVE (1992), which I can’t recommend more highly. In the years after that he moved from acting to writing to directing on such varied works as TOMBSTONE, DEAD MAN, SLING BLADE (for which he won an adapted screenplay Academy Award), U TURN, THE APOSTLE, PRIMARY COLORS, ARMAGEDDON, A SIMPLE PLAN (for which he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar), PUSHING TIN, MONSTER’S BALL, INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, and one of his most iconic roles, as Willie in BAD SANTA, the sequel to which has just been released.
In the 13 years since BAD SANTA, Thronton has continued to give us consistently solid work in film like FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, BAD NEW BEARS, THE ICE HARVEST, EAGLE EYE, FASTER, and WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT. But perhaps his most talked about work in the last few years was as Lorne Malvo, the cold-blooded, smart-as-a-whip bad guy from the first season of FX’s “Fargo.” In addition to BAD SANTA 2, Thornton has also just launched his latest series for Amazon, called “Goliath,” in which he plays a disgraced lawyer turned ambulance chaser, seeking revenge on those who tore him down.
I’ve already let it be know that I really wasn’t a fan of BAD SANTA 2, but I also know that just because you don’t like a movie doesn’t mean you can’t have a few fun conversations with actors you truly admire and it and other parts of their career. I was fortunate enough a few year ago to meet Thornton while he was out promoting THE ASTRONAUT FARMER in 2006. But there was something about talking to him this time that just had me in stitches. There were literally times in this interview where I was howling with laugher. Thornton is without a doubt one of my favorite working actors in the last 15 years, and I’ve loved watching him move between leading and supporting parts effortlessly. With that, please enjoy my talk with Billy Bob Thornton…
Billy Bob Thornton: Steve?
Capone: How are you, sir?
BBT: Not bad. Yourself?
Capone: Good, good. I’m in Chicago right now, and it was funny to see that most of this film is set in Chicago, even though I’m pretty sure none of it was shot in Chicago.
BBT: A lot of those exteriors were, the big wide shots, a lot of that was shot there, but you know how it is these days. You go where it’s cheaper. So yeah, we shot a lot of the interiors in Montreal. That’s why you guys gotta get on that Illinois governor to implement a really good tax thing, because I’d love to shoot in Chicago. I’ve only shot in Chicago once, I think. We did a movie called THE ICE HARVEST over in Highland Park.
Capone: With John Cusack, sure.
BBT: With John, right. We shot over in Waukegan too.
Capone: So what did it take to get you interested in playing this character again, or is this something you’ve been pushing for for a while?
BBT: I don’t know that I pushed for it, but I knew that we would do it some day. First of all, the public kind of demanded it. Everybody’s like, “When’s there going to be a BAD SANTA 2?” So we knew people wanted it after the first one was such a success, then it became iconic. We were like “Well, we should probably do a sequel to this.” There was some studio red tape to go through for several years, because the studio changed hands. So once all that got cleared up, we set about getting different scripts written. We had two or three different stories, and we had several writers that went through it and did passes on it. When we finally thought this is the one right here, we perfected it, and by that time, it was 13 years later [laughs]. So that’s just the way it went.
We were never going to make a sequel immediately, like the next year or something. I think in a lot of ways, it really helped us, because if you do a sequel to a comedy right away just because it was successful, then you end up having to go really broad because “What else do we do to make this different?” I think that’s why they end up that way. Maybe not all those sequels are great, but we wanted to do just another movie. We wanted to keep the spirit of the old one, and yet come up with a new story and new stuff, and we weren’t through with Willie. Willie’s a broken, abused, neglected child who sees himself in Thurman. He’d never admit he loves the kid, but that’s probably all he’s got, and Willie actually does have a beating heart and a little hope; That was even shown in the first one. So now in this one, you get to show where Willie came from and why he is the way he is.
Capone: You mentioned not wanting to compete with the first film, but Mark [Waters, director] told me you were the one who kept bringing up ideas to pay homage to the first film and get a little more of it into this one. Can you talk just about why you wanted to do that?
BBT: Right. Because the fans of the first one are going to want to see it again. They don’t want you to just go off the rails, and also just to do something outlandish and whatever. They want you to stay in that world. Our job was to stay in that world and keep the spirit of that first one, yet do something to elevate it in certain ways. This one has more a story and brings it a little closer to an actual Christmas movie, because you feel bad that Willie had this mother monster character [growing up], and it turns out he's the lesser of the two evils. Probably the bane of Willie’s existence is he does have hope. If he didn’t, he would just totally go in the gutter, but he’s still around. The way the movie starts, he obviously doesn’t want to be around much longer, but he probably really does. I think this kid Thurman somehow is this weak little beacon out there that keeps Willie thinking that maybe he should stick around.
Capone: One of the things that weirded me out the most about this film is seeing a 20-something-year-old Brett Kelly [who plays Thurman] with basically the same face, the same hair, that weird personality. I’ve seen him in a few things since the original film, but it still cracked me up to see what he turned into. How did you come up with this version of him?
BBT: The idea was, within his limited capacity, that he had grown some. At least he has a trade. He can make a sandwich now, and he still loves Willie. But you see that Thurman doesn’t really believe that Willie is Santa Claus. He says it in the movie. He says, “I know that, but you’re all I got.” So yeah, Thurman’s on the—I don’t know if it’s Asperger’s or whatever it is he’s got, but he’s definitely challenged in some way. But he’s still an innocent in a lot of ways, and he wants to believe in Willie and he wants to believe in Christmas and he wants to believe in everything. I think a lot of people are that way, me included. I still want to believe in all of it.
Capone: Casting Kathy Bates as your mother is one for the ages. You two have these epic insult battles here, but you also have a couple of moments where she, though trickery, brings out a little bit of heart in Willie. Give me your best Kathy Bates story and tell me about what having her around was like.
BBT: Well, Kathy and I have known each other a long time. We worked together 20 years ago in PRIMARY COLORS. Of course, Kathy’s a good actress and a good person. Real easy for me to be around, and the great thing about her is she’s real honest, both in her acting and as a person. I always liked that about her. In terms of stories, she and I have had sort of parallel careers in terms of playing all these different kinds of characters over the years, so we both have an understanding when you go into these characters, you have to go in 100 percent. You can’t do 70 percent of it; you have to jump in there.
So once we got in there, we were the characters; we just went and did it. We didn’t discuss a lot about what we were going to do, other than the fact that I was probably raised as a carny kid, like a drifter. She was the Fagin to my Artful Dodger. There are a couple of times when she and I get a kick out of each other, because we insult each other all the time, but when one or the other insults someone else, particularly Marcus, then the other one gets a kick out of that because we’re cut from the same cloth. I think when I say something nasty to Marcus, she belly laughs at it. She thinks it’s funny. It’s like “Yeah, that’s what my son should say.”
Capone: To play this character, does it require you to enter a certain headspace where you remove filters and levels of self control, and all the things that keep the rest of us in check. Can you feel yourself stripping those things away to play Willie?
BBT: You know what? The answer to that is so disappointing for most journalists and young actors and everything else. All this stufff—whatever people have to do to make their acting, that they’re doing their job—it’s okay by me. All the Meisners and the Actors Studios, whatever it is. The fact of the matter is, some people can do certain things, and other people can’t. That’s my opinion. If you wanted to play a very technical acting parts, like if they wanted me to play Charles de Gaulle, I would have to really study to become a Frenchmen. But I figure the best thing to do is get a Frenchmen. That’s the way I look at it. So I just take parts that I know I’m the best guy for the job.
I’ve had a lot of life experience. My life is very eclectic. Poor, sad, depressed, happy, joyous, all kinds of things—crazy. I’ve had it all and seen all kinds of people and gone through all kinds of stages myself, so I just always put that into it. I’ve had my Willie moments in life. When I first came to California, I was destitute for several years, so I try toput my own life experience into every character I play.
I’ll put it to you this way: Everybody wants there to be a formula and everybody wants there to be a way—acting tricks that can help you play different parts. But if a guy is going to play a street person, and he has his security guy take him downtown, put him in a cardboard box, and he sits a block away, he’s got his cellphone to call his assistant, and he spends the night down on the nickel there in downtown L.A., he’s not going to know what it’s like to be a street person. I kind of do. I’ve been out there and been in really bad situations and been in some pretty good situations.
How does Willie get women even though he’s like a slob, he’s drunk all the time, he’s profane. I’m not exactly a Calvin Klein model and I did alright. Sometimes girls like the guy who doesn’t give a shit if he’s got mustard on his t-shirt. If you just know those things, then you don’t have to dissect it and figure out how to play it and make this happen. You just hold a camera and you do it. I’m not one to pontificate about all of my various methods and strategies.
Capone: You basically just say “I can either do it or I can’t.”
BBT: Exactly! Like I said, if they call me to play Winston Churchill, I’ll just say “Get a little pudgy British guy. I’m the wrong guy.”
Capone: I wanted to ask about Mark Waters coming in as the new director. How did you know he was the right guy, because he has a long, successful career of doing PG and PG-13 movies?
BBT: We met with a few people, and he just seemed to have the best take on it, Once we met Mark, because I had that same concern too about his other movies being “lighter fare,” you’d say. But after meeting with him, Mark is a dark little shit. He’s got a really wicked sense of humor. Some of the stuff he was saying, I was actually saying, “Nah, I don’t know. We better not do that.” I knew he knew how to shoot a movie, but he actually turned out to have the right sensibility to do it. I think people get pigeonholed, and I never like to do that to people. I put John Ritter in SLING BLADE [laughs]. So you have to see what the person really is and not just what’s evident out there in public.
Capone: I’ve also talked to Mark about the tone of the film, and he said that was actually one of the hardest things to get right, to not just have it be a free for all, but to also give it a little bit of heart.
BBT: Well, with Tony and Brett, it was easy. They’ve been there. The others jumped on a moving train, so there were days when we absolutely had to—just to give you an example with the various people who wrote on it and with Mark. In the earlier drafts of the script, Willie talked too much. And actors aren’t known for taking dialogue away from themselves [laughs], but I said, “Look, Willie’s not real proactive. He’s not the kind of guy who does a page and a half monologue. Willie reacts to things. He’s not proactive, he’s reactive.” So that was one of the things we had to reign in a bit, and a lot of the dialogue I would futz with, because I just know how the guy talks.
And there are rules within BAD SANTA. There are certain things. People say, “Well, can’t you just do whatever you want?” Well, not really. There’s a world that this lives in that you have to stick to. I mean, Willie will say and do anything, but it depends on what the circumstances are, and who it’s with, and where it is. Sometimes, I’d had to say “That’s not really in line with what we did the first time. We need to do something else here.”
Capone: Is there a key to delivering the perfect, divesting insult?
BBT: Let’s see here… let’s explore this one. A lot of it’s in the eyes, not that you purposely do it, but if you really mean it, there’s a look in your eye where people just know that it’s like “Oh, yikes.” Some of it’s in there with the distain and the confidence you exude when you do it [laughs]. Willie’s just over so many people. Everywhere he goes, he’s just intolerant of what Willie considers idiots. If Willie were a little more together, he would be Jack Nicholson in FIVE EASY PIECES. You know, when Jack Nicholson does the sandwich scene in the diner. That’s the more well-bred version of Willie [laughs].
Capone: I could not have enjoyed this more. Thank you so much, Billy Bob. It was great to talk to you. Best of luck with this and on the Amazon series too
