Q+A: Billy Bob Thornton

Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS MORRIS

Who: Billy Bob Thornton and the Boxmasters

When: 7 p.m. Friday

Where: Green Valley Ranch's Ovation Lounge

Tickets: $22.50 to $42.50; 617-7777

"Sling Blade" (1996)

"The Apostle" (1997)

"Primary Colors" (1998)

"A Simple Plan" (1998)

"Daddy and Them" (2001)

"Bandits" (2001)

"Monster's Ball" (2001)

"Bad Santa" (2003)

"The Alamo" (2004)

"Friday Night Lights" (2004)

"Bad News Bears" (2005)

"The Ice Harvest" (2005)

"School for Scoundrels" (2006)

"The Astronaut Farmer" (2007)

"The Edge of the World" (2003)

"Hobo" (2005)

"Beautiful Door" (2007)

Born deep in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, Billy Bob Thornton grew up to become an international celebrity.

Thornton has appeared in more than 50 films, including "Sling Blade," "Monster's Ball" and "Bad Santa." He won an Oscar for screenwriting and was nominated as best actor for "Sling Blade," which he also directed. He also was nominated as supporting actor in "A Simple Plan."

Although he has been an actor for almost 30 years, he has been a singer and songwriter even longer.

He will perform with his group, the Boxmasters, on Friday at Green Valley Ranch, playing songs from several of their albums, including the latest, "Beautiful Door."

Thornton, who'll turn 52 on Saturday, recently talked to the Sun from his home in Los Angeles.

Q: Do you miss the rural living in Arkansas?

Yeah, I miss it. I grew up in the south central part of the state, southwest of Little Rock. I get back as often as I can. My mom lives in Little Rock, but she started visiting here more so I don't go back as much. Really, that's all I have back there anymore is my mom.

How rural was your upbringing?

I was born in Hot Springs, but raised in Alpine, which had a population of 110. I was raised at my grandmother's house. She didn't have running water or electricity until 1963 or '64. I was 8 or 9 before she got indoor plumbing and electricity, so my early years were spent kind of like a hillbilly. So when I first moved to California people always wanted me to go camping with them. I said, "Listen, point me to the nearest Four Seasons, I don't want to camp. I spent the first part of my life camping. I'm over that."

When did you realize your life was going to lead you in the direction it has taken?

When I was in school I couldn't do algebra. Didn't even know what it meant. I remember my algebra teacher in high school saying , "You're going to need this someday. You may become an engineer." I said, "I guarantee you I'm not going to be an engineer."

I guess what influenced me the most was seeing Elvis and the Beatles and those kind of people. Back then movies and music were so mixed together. We grew up watching Dean Martin and Elvis and people like that all doing movies and music and everything, so it was all kind of one thing to me. I knew that's what I was going to do, music and movies. It was either that or pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals. I was a pitcher growing up, got pretty far. I made it to the Kansas City Royals' camp, but while I was there I got my collar bone broken. So from there I went roading - I worked for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Lighthouse, a band out of Canada.

Was music always important to you?

I was in a band from the time I was a little kid. To give you an idea of how schizophrenic my music upbringing was, I was listening to Hank Williams and Jim Reeves and then the Beatles and the Kinks and the Animals and then I, very early on, became a fan of the early Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart and the Bonzo Dog Band. When you play a Captain Beefheart record and a Hank Williams record on the same day, it kind of screws you up.

Who had the biggest influence on you?

As a songwrit er I probably was more influenced by the folkies, Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, John Prine and Kris Kristofferson, Musically, I probably was more influenced by the Stones, Beatles, Cream, people like that.

Tell us about your upcoming concert.

My band, the Boxmasters, and I will open the show .

How do you open for yourself?

We come out and do an opening set of 45 minutes, playing rockabilly music. Then we'll take a 20- or 30-minute break and come out and do our regular show, which is sort of hippie folk-rock. We'll play songs from all four of our records, including two or three off the new one, "Beautiful Door."

Tell us about the new CD.

It's a record about life and death, living and dying and how important both things are and about feeling those things personally. Normally I don't write many political things, but there are two or three anti-war songs. The guys in our band, we support the troops. We can't hold those guys accountable, and they're the ones dying, as well as a lot of other innocent people. Those songs, like the title cut "Beautiful Door" and "Hope for Glory" and "I Can Tell You," those are really songs about the effects of war and how the people who really aren't interested in it are the ones who die and the ones who start the wars and perpetuate them are the ones who don't die.

You've made some fascinating films in your career. Which filmmakers influenced you?

You know, growing up in rural Arkansas we didn't even have a movie theater - until we moved into the town of Malvern, which had a population of about 10,000 people. When I went to a movie theater, I'd go see Don Knotts movies and Dick Van Dyke movies. So I wasn't one of those guys like Martin Scorsese, who was like a film buff. But I was that way with music, however - I read every liner note. Music was my first passion. Movies came later for me.

How do you decide on which film to do?

In the beginning, before you get famous, you do what they offer you to make a living. But once I started making choices, when you read a script and are offered a project, it just kind of tells you if you would fit or not. I'm sort of a character actor who became a leading man. It's kind of a unique career in that sense. Most people are one or the other, but because I started out playing extreme characters, the audience will accept me playing the guy in "Simple Plan" or "Sling Blade," but also they'll accept me in "Monsters Ball" or "The Man Who Wasn't There." It's pretty great to be able to go between commercial films and independent films.

But bottom line, for me it's really about the writing. If it's a good script and a character I haven't played before, those have a lot to do with my decision-making.

Will you direct again?

Eventually. But these days it's really difficult to get a studio to give you any sizable budget to make a period piece drama. You notice what's No. 1 at the box office is "Saw 3" or comedies. If you have a comedy with bathroom humor or a horror movie , you've got a No. 1 movie these days, if it's marketed widely. To go in and say you want to make a movie, the kind I want to make, they look at you kind of funny.

Do you have a project in mind?

Yeah. There's this story that happened back in the '20s in between the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and the trial - a guy named Floyd Collins was a dirt-poor farmer in Kentucky, in an area where there were a lot of caves. People who had caves on their land would fix them up, make it safe for people , and they would charge people to go through these caverns, which were tourist attractions. Floyd got trapped in a cave he was working on and he became the No. 1 media story of the time.

Didn't Kirk Douglas star in a movie based on that incident?

Yes. "Ace in the Hole," directed by Billy Wilder. A great movie. A book called "Trapped, the Story of Floyd Collins," was written about the incident. It's not like an exciting book, just a documentation of what happened, but it's still a real interesting story.

It was kind of a slow news time and Floyd became a huge story. People came from all over the world to the cave where he was trapped for 13 days. It became a circus. He ended up dying down there. They actually put his body on display for years and years in a glass coffin. Everybody, including his own family, tried to capitalize off it. His dad used to go around in tent shows and tell the story of Floyd Collins.

Why do you want to make a film about the incident?

Well, normally you'd make a film about the media, showing how the media is more out of control than ever. The reason I want to make it, it's not so much the media anymore, it's the people. People want to see other people suffering for their own entertainment. That's why we have these reality shows today. So it's sort of an early version of a reality show, before television. I just want to show that it's really about human nature, about how these tragedies become our entertainment. You just can't blame the system anymore. You have to kind of hold the people's desires accountable.

Do you have any other projects coming up?

I have a movie coming out Sept. 14 called "Mr. Woodcock," which is dark comedy with me and Susan Sarandon and Seann William Scott where I play the gym teacher form hell. It's a New Line production, very funny.

Then the next movie I'm probably going to do, though I'm not completely signed on, is a movie called "Tulia," with me and Halle Berry again and directed by John Singleton, who did "Boyz n the Hood." Basically it's a true story that took place in Texas in '99. It's about a corrupt local sheriff and all these arrests that took place. Basically it's a civil rights case kind of movie. Halle and I would play lawyers in it. It's really a terrific script.

You seem to turn out more movies than any other actor in the business these days - two or three a year. What drives you?

I just love it. I love singing, I love acting, I love making movies. I'm 50 years old now and I want to get as many in as I can. And also I've got kids. My boys are 13 and 14. I have 3-year-old daughter. I don't make the kind of money Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson make. I'm still an actor who works from movie to movie.

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