Thornton directs, cowrites, stars in film

Billy Bob Thornton had been working steadily in the film business as an actor ("Tombstone," "On Deadly Ground") and screenwriter ("One False Move"), but it wasn't until 1996, when he wrote, directed and starred in "Sling Blade," that the Arkansas native really hit the big time. Thornton won an Oscar for that screenplay, and since then he's been a solid on-screen presence in everything from big-budget disaster movies ("Armageddon") to comedies

("Bad Santa"), film noir ("The Man

Who Wasn't There") and racially charged dramas ("Monster's Ball"). In "Jayne Mansfield's Car," which the 58-year-old Thornton stars in, directed and co-wrote (with longtime friend Tom Epperson), he plays a wounded World War II vet trying to deal with a disapproving father (Robert Duvall) and dysfunctional family. Newsday contributor Lewis Beale caught up with Thornton by phone from Boston, where he was filming a murder mystery called "The Judge."

You haven't directed a film since making "All the Pretty Horses" back in 2000. Why return to directing now?

I'm not really a director for hire; I only direct stuff that's my idea. Directing takes a year and a half out of your life, and I guess I only direct when there's some story I want to tell, and that story had been rolling around in my head for a couple of years.

The film says a lot about sons wounded physically and psychologically by war, and how their fathers deal with those issues.

The idea was to do a movie about fathers and sons and the lessons fathers pass on to their sons, and in this case the tragedies of war. The movie is about communication or lack of communication between people. I kind of represent the guy in the movie nobody listens to.

You co-wrote this with your old buddy Tom Epperson, with whom you co-wrote the critically acclaimed 1992 movie "One False Move." You hadn't worked together in a long time. What was that like?

Tom and I hadn't written together in quite a while, and we talked about writing something together. Tom and I are different kinds of writers; I write more in stream of consciousness, where he is more structured and thought out. I tend to be better with character and dialogue than I am at structure. We complement each other's strengths. I'm the kind of guy who won't write for three weeks; whereas, Tom will write a page or two every day.

You're also one of the stars of the upcoming film "Parkland," about the events surrounding the assassination of JFK. I'm just wondering: Do you believe in the single-bullet theory?

This movie is about losing a leader and the pandemonium that accompanies that. It doesn't really deal with a conspiracy, but I've just read too much and thought too much about it, and I've always felt it was unlikely that Oswald was just some guy that did this. I think it went deeper; there had to be other agencies involved. If you see the Zapruder film, it seems [JFK] was shot from more than one direction.

One of the films where you really made a mark was "Bad Santa," where you played a foul-mouthed, drunken department store Santa. But you've said that typecast you for a while. True?

The reality of the situation is that yes, it spawned a lot of other movies that tried to be irreverent, and I was offered several similar movies like that afterward. Before that, I wasn't known as a guy who did comedy, and after that it became a thing for a number of years. It didn't affect me, because after doing a few comedies I went back to what I was doing before.

You're also one of the few film actors who actually has a legitimate side career as a musician, and front a band called The Boxmasters. How would you describe your sound?

We're big fans of old-fashioned country music, as well as the sort of Buffalo Springfield, Byrds of the late '60s, and fans of the British invasion. If you mix the Kinks with the Byrds, and throw in a dash of Johnny Cash, we're essentially a '60s rock and roll band.

Do you ever get that kind of "oh, he's just some rich acting dilettante playing at being a musician" criticism?

In the beginning, I got that. It's kind of died away over the years, because I keep doing it. There are still people out there, and they can think what they want; it doesn't stop me from writing songs. We have a nice little cult following; those are your fans, and we do it for them. Believe me, the songs I write, if I wanted to make a bunch of money, I would do a whole different kind of music.