The 1997 movie Billy Bob Thornton “couldn’t believe” Johnny Cash wanted a signed copy of
As a musician himself, Billy Bob Thornton has called several legendary musicians close friends over the years, and his bond with Johnny Cash began under the most unlikely circumstances.
If he hadn’t made it as an actor first, then you can bet the Academy Award-winning screenwriter would have moved heaven and earth to succeed in the music business. Fortunately, as a wealthy, well-known, and successful thespian, he’s been able to have his cake and eat it, too.
During his extended stay at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles, the abode’s Whisky Bar became Thornton’s favoured hangout. It also happened to be the go-to place for rock royalty, which is how he ended up befriending ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and buying a house from Slash.
Getting pissed and buying your new home from one of the most iconic guitarists in recent history is a strange way of doing business, but it’s still not as strange as Thornton’s first conversation with Cash. He’d never met the ‘Man in Black’ before, but around 1998, he received an unexpected phone call.
“He called me and wanted to know if I would autograph a copy of U-Turn,” the Landman star recalled. “He loved that movie. Cash was an edgy guy; he loved anything kind of offbeat. And I couldn’t believe he even called me, let alone wanted one of my movies.”
Sean Penn may have loathed every second of working with Oliver Stone on the director’s 1997 crime thriller, where he plays a drifter who becomes caught in the crosshairs between Nick Nolte and Jennifer Lopez’s married couple after he’s hired by both to kill the other, with Thornton playing a mechanic, but it became the conduit for the latter to meet one of his idols.
He’s not even one of the leads, and the film isn’t very good, but for reasons that were known only to the seminal singer and songwriter, he couldn’t get enough of U-Turn, although it’s enough to make you wonder if Thornton was first on the list of calls he made that day.
After all, Penn takes top billing in the picture, and Thornton’s name is listed below Nolte, Lopez, Powers Boothe, Claire Danes, and, in a curious coincidence, Joaquin Phoenix in the credits, so maybe the ‘Man in Black’ was simply working his way down the cast list until he found someone willing to scribble a disc and fire it his way.
Either that, or he was aware of the actor and filmmaker’s musical proclivities and saw him as something of a kindred spirit. If that were the case, then he was right on the money, with Thornton and Cash growing closer in the years leading up to his death in 2003, even if he never got over his nervousness.
