Clint Eastwood’s favourite Billy Bob Thornton movie: “It had a soul to it”
Other than their shared status as Academy Award-winning filmmakers, Billy Bob Thornton and Clint Eastwood haven’t travelled in the same circles or entered each other’s orbit too often, only once kind of working together on James Keach’s 1995 drama, The Stars Fell on Henrietta.
It was a family affair, with Eastwood producing a film he wasn’t acting in or directing for the only the second time, which may have had something to do with his then-partner, Frances Fisher, being part of the cast and his daughter, Francesca, making her acting debut. However, Thornton appeared as part of the supporting cast and claimed to channel the four-time Oscar-winning icon’s spirit once, sharing that “there’s a certain sort of Clint Eastwood” in his performance as Lorne Malvo in the first season of Fargo.
One fathoms that if they ever found themselves in the same room, they’d probably end up discussing westerns. The Gary Cooper starrer western High Noon is Thornton’s favourite movie of all time, and nobody apart from John Wayne has ever become as intrinsically linked to the genre as Eastwood. Naturally, there is plenty of common ground between the two, despite their lack of a professional partnership.
Thornton proved himself a dab hand at filmmaking when he adapted his short film Sling Blade into a feature-length directorial debut, nabbing an Oscar for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ and landing a shout-out for ‘Best Actor’. To bolster the connection further, Eastwood saw his fledgling efforts and was coloured impressed. There’s arguably nobody who’s pulled double duty on both sides of the camera better, and definitely not for longer, than Eastwood, which is why he’s so often cited as the pinnacle, and any actor with designs on directing tends to view him as the benchmark.
“The other night I was watching Sling Blade,” he informed Robert Denerstein, “I thought the directing choices were very interesting. The movie had a soul to it. Unfortunately, sitcom-type directing is coming into the new generation. They’re raised on it.” In typical old man fashion, he didn’t like what those whippersnappers were up to, but Thornton was an exception.
The picture’s creator, writer, director, and leading man has frequently cited Sling Blade as the single most important movie of his career, because it is. Before it was released, Thornton was a struggling character actor who’d been in a few movies but hadn’t quite made a name for himself. After sowing his own luck and reaping the rewards, it became the making of him, and he hasn’t looked back since.
It’s easy to see why a slow-burning, unfussy, unhurried, impeccably acted, and character-driven drama set in rural America would appeal to Eastwood, because he’s been telling those types of stories for the last 50 years. Whether Thornton caught wind of his praise remains unknown, but for someone who grew up watching his films, he’d have worn it like a badge of honour if he did.
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