Billy Bob’s memoir more of an offbeat promo

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This article was published 02/06/2012 (5244 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BILLY Bob Thornton’s new memoir is not your typical Hollywood memoir.

Then again Billy Bob Thornton is not your typical Hollywood celebrity.

He’s a skinny, quirkily-tattooed, only perversely charismatic 57-year old. The public persona he’s created for himself is neither ruggedly heroic nor rom-com endearing. To many people he’s just plain weird.

Thornton is probably most notorious for his brief marriage to Angelina Jolie. His role as “beast” to Jolie’s “beauty,” although a cruel and inaccurate tabloid-fed caricature, was partly of his own devising.

Sling Blade brought him movie fame in 1996. His eerie portrait of a mentally challenged and potentially dangerous southerner was so riveting that it earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor.

That he wrote and directed the movie and won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay has been largely overlooked because of the disconcerting, indelible roles he’s played since.

The title role in Bad Santa (2003) is a great example — as are lead roles in Monster’s Ball (also 2003), The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), and A Simple Plan (1998) to name just a few.

In Canada Thornton is even more notorious for a 2009 CBC Radio interview with Jian Ghomeshi that went viral on YouTube. Ghomeshi had violated a pre-broadcast agreement to not mention Thornton’s movie accomplishments in an appearance with his band the Boxmasters.

Feeling betrayed, Thornton reacted by remaining glumly silent or providing non-sensical responses to his host’s seemingly good-faith inquiries. In the ensuing kerfuffle he was vilified for being weird and truculent and for hating Canadians. He had called us “mashed potatoes without gravy.” Oh, the horror!

Thornton places his music foreground throughout The Billy Bob Tapes. Lyrics from the songs he’s co-written introduce each chapter. His verses are not as inane as Bieber-esque pap or rap doggerel, but he’s no Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen.

The song lyrics aren’t the only things that set this memoir apart from the usual Hollywood bio-puffery.

Many if not most celebrity autobiographies or memoirs are dictated into a tape-recorder and then “shaped” by a ghostwriter. Thornton’s co-author is detective novelist Kinky Friedman. Yeah, the guy who earlier fronted the band the Texas Jewboys, famous for the country song They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Any More.

Too bad he didn’t bring that sense of humour to this enterprise.

Friedman invited Billy Bob’s friends over for bull-sessions that got Thornton to reminisce. The resulting stories and opinions were taped and transcribed “unedited” into this memoir. It’s a lazy man’s way of writing a book — and it shows.

Except for the rampant profanity, The Billy Bob Tapes is not as raw and revealing as you might expect. Thornton doesn’t often name names or reveal scandalous, intimate details. His account of his two-year marriage to Jolie, for instance, is chaste and respectful — disappointingly so.

Although he’s troubled (dyslexic, obsessive compulsive, with creepy fears and obsessions), Thornton is clearly a gifted, serious artist and valued friend to many. Jolie provides a gracious and genial testimonial — as do Dwight Yoakam, Robert Duval and others.

They are not enough to keep Thornton from being his own worst enemy.

He spends over 30 pages ranting against the Internet, blockbuster movies, doctors and anti-smoking laws. He’d have been better served had he told more detailed, insightful stories about acting, writing and directing his movies.

Movie stars usually “write” books strategically. Thornton is, in this respect, pretty typical. This memoir was compiled to coincide with the release of his latest movie project, Jayne Mansfield’s Car.

That makes The Billy Bob Tapes an offbeat promo piece rather than a satisfying revelation.

 

Gene Walz is a retired film studies professor at the University of Manitoba.