Billy Bob Thornton’s most unlikeable characters: “That’s the asshole box set”
In his career, morally upstanding characters have often eluded Billy Bob Thornton’s grasp, through no fault of his own. However, it can’t be denied that he excels the most when his characters, whoever they are and whatever they do, embrace their inherent asshole-ness. The man has a way with a sardonic put-down that can’t be beaten, and an air of superiority toward the average idiot that radiates off him, even when playing characters whose lives are in the gutter.
However, despite Thornton being so excellent at portraying jerks, it must be said that most actors crave the ability to use different weapons in their arsenals. Thus, even though most Hollywood executives fell over themselves to cast him as weary assassins, vapid oil millionaires, and corrupt cops, Thornton would break things up with the occasional duty-bound football coach or uber-smart NASA scientist.
Then, in the mid-2000s, Thornton must have decided to stop fighting the tide, and he gorged himself on what he charmingly referred to as the “asshole box set.” Between ’03 and ’07, Thornton inhabited the grizzled, grouchy, borderline sociopathic minds of a collection of contemptible types with startlingly few redeemable qualities.
Thornton’s first trip to asshole-ville was also the best, and it came when he played the iconic Willie T Soke in Terry Zwigoff’s uproarious Bad Santa. As the permanently shitfaced small time thief who gets a job as a department store Santa Claus in order to rob the place, Thornton was in his element. Soke was an abrasive, foul-mouthed, nihilistic, sex-addicted criminal who also happened to be utterly hilarious and bizarrely lovable. Soke pretty much remains an asshole throughout, but he also forms a sweet bond with a lonely kid, so that mitigates his objectionable qualities a bit.
Next up, Thornton played baseball coach Morris Buttermaker in Richard Linklater’s remake of Bad News Bears. This guy was a self-loathing alcoholic, and he wasn’t a million miles away from Soke in Bad Santa. However, at his core, he was sad and this made him act out like an asshole. To Thornton, both these characters came from the same emotional place, which made them “kind of assholes” yet also broken men who “led with their heart.” Soke and Buttermaker were unlikeable, but not in an irredeemable way.
At this time, perhaps somebody in Hollywood felt that Thornton had been too nice in Bad Santa and Bad News Bears, and he needed to push things further on the asshole scale. This is the only explanation for why his next two characters made Soke and Buttermaker look like Mr Rogers.
In School For Scoundrels, a middling Todd Phillips comedy, Thornton played Dr P, a self-esteem teacher who dupes unsuspecting nerds into paying $5,000 to be systematically bullied, humiliated, and denigrated, all under the auspices of coming out more confident on the other side. Dr P is a vicious character, and unlike Soke or Butterface, it’s not because he’s suffering from inner turmoil or trauma. Instead, he’s just a conman who utilises multiple identities to find victims he can exploit.
If that doesn’t sound particularly funny to you, well, you’d be right. School For Scoundrels isn’t a laugh riot, and maybe that’s because Dr P is simply too hateful and villainous for audiences to stomach. The same goes for Mr Woodcock in the appropriately-titled Mr Woodcock. This time, Thornton played a sadistic high school PE teacher who takes delight in tormenting John, a man who grew up being bullied by him in gym class. When Woodcock sets his sights on John’s mum, he does everything he can to convince his family and friends that Woodcock is – and I quote – “the biggest asshole on the planet.”
So, is Mr Woodcock truly the worst asshole of Thornton’s mid-’00s boxset? Potentially. However, he would also be his last, because Thornton realised he had trouble playing characters who enjoyed hurting people purely because they were bad guys. He craved a little nuance and complexity in his roles, and admitted, “The ‘Asshole Box Set’ is right there, so I think I’ve done it. I think after Woodcock comes out, that’s going to be the last one you’ll see from me for a very long time.”
