Billy Bob Thornton went on Canadian radio the other day to talk about his band. But when the host had the audacity to mention that Billy Bob Thornton was also an actor and Oscar-winning screenwriter, the interview was basically over as far as Billy Bob was concerned.  But instead of saying what he was mad about, he simply chose to act really weird prior to the inevitable meltdown.  Here’s the exchange starting at 5:17 of the interview:

INTERVIEWER (Jian Ghomeshi): And that was true for you Billy Bob?  Sort of a combination of Stones and Monkees and buck Owens?

BILLY BOB: …I just liked baseball when I was a kid.

INT: …Heh. And you almost became a professional baseball player, right?

BILLY BOB: I dunno.  …Maybe.

INT: You didn’t love music when you were a kid?

BILLY BOB: Uh… Uh… I subscribed to a magazine called Famous Monsters of Film Land.  The publisher was guy named Forrest J. Ackerman, who passed away recently.

INT: Do you remember what you were listening to musically, when you were a kid?

BILLY BOB: They had a contest, where you could build your own model, and it could be like a King Kong, or it could be anything… they made these plastic models in those days, that you could buy and then put together.  But this was like a thing you could create your own world of it.  Make telephone poles and make the railroad tracks and everything.  And uh.. I actually did enter it once.  I didn’t win anything.  But I gave it a shot.  It was a big deal for us kids in those days.

INT: Uh… and uh, where was the music in all that?

BILLY BOB: Uh… music?  No, it was a monster magazine.

INT: …Right.  But given that you seem to be quite passionate about music, I was wondering about your-

BILLY BOB: Would you say that about Tom Petty? [6:55 of the video]



And as you can see in the video, it only gets worse from there, with Billy Bob insulting the entire country of Canada, etc..  Eventually, Billy Bob’s band was supposed to play a song, which they did, instrumentally, because Billy Bob refused to sing.

But that’s only half the story.  The real fun part will be when all of Billy Bob’s people have to try to spin this in a way that makes it somehow not his fault like Christian Bale’s people did.  Only problem is, people expect a cinematographer to be professional – no one expects a radio DJ to be professional.  Not only did the guy not do anything wrong… what were you expecting?  If he’s not playing cow sounds over you every time you talk or covering you with seltzer and bringing up things that happened 20 years ago, it’s a success. So stop acting like a prick.  And can we skip the part where we have to pretend to care about your band for any other reason than because a famous movie star’s in it? At least this guy was faking it well. Morning radio is like a retirement community for people who still think it’s prime time for Vaudeville.

[source = globeandmail]