In the aviary we call Hollywood, Billy Bob Thornton stands out as one weird duck.
To most Americans, he is, in descending order of recognition, the ex-husband of Angelina Jolie and the guy in "Bad Santa" and "Bad News Bears." For the art house crowd, he is the serious talent who wrote, directed , and starred in "Sling Blade" and did fine turns in "A Simple Plan," "The Man Who Wasn't There , " and "Monster's Ball.
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He's also the guy who sang some backup vocals with his best friend, Dwight Yoakam, on Warren Zevon's final album. The guy whose eponymous band opened for Willie Nelson on the road a couple of years ago. The junk pitcher in his teens who remains a serious baseball addict and is, in his own words, to the St.
Louis Cardinals what Jack Nicholson is to the Lakers.
"What about the J.D.
Drew thing?" he asks as he leaves a recent interview for his new movie, "Astronaut Farmer," which opened Friday .
A reporter replies that Red Sox Nation is deeply concerned about the right shoulder of the player the Sox acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers for a breathtaking $70 million.
"He hits .273, 18 to 20 home runs, hurt half the season," Thornton, 51, pronounces. "He breaks a nail and he's out for 20 games.
" Thornton followed Drew in St. Louis and LA and doesn't like what he saw. "You could get three guys for that kind of money.
"
The reporter's thinking this guy should work with Theo.
Then he's gone, a slight figure in patterned white cowboy boots, jeans , and a buttery leather jacket over a sweatshirt of indeterminate design. His head sits large on narrow shoulders.
No rug over his thinning gray hair as often appears on screen. Just a small tuft below his lower lip in the manner of desperados and card sharks.
The man's whole face says desperado.
There's a hint of criminal intent in the eyes and something in his smile that makes you reach for your wallet. You wonder what he'd do if he thought no one were looking. You wonder about his temper too.
The man has been married five times.
What he is on screen is a sly actor of great range with major comedic gifts. He may not match Charles Grodin, who walks off with a scene simply by shifting his eyes, but his deadpan delivery can be lethal.
Thornton shines as a character actor playing against a star.
"The politically correct answer is Brando, Spencer Tracy, those guys , " he says. "I used to do that.
I thought about it one time and said, I'm really lying. My influences were Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness. The guys who changed up.
I watched their movies. That's what made me want to do it.
"Gary Cooper was always Gary Cooper," he continues.
"You're watching the actor. It's the persona. You're never completely in the movie.
I still know there are people who haven't seen my movies or think they haven't and say, 'What have you been in -- oh, was that you?' I kind of like that."
Mike and Mark Polish, the writing-directing twins responsible for "Astronaut Farmer," were looking for a chameleon to play Charles Farmer, who, when his rancher father died, dropped out of the astronaut program to save the spread.
Thornton was their first choice.
"We wanted an actor who could play a man who worked the land you'd believe and also possibly be in the NASA program," says Mike, who directed and co-wrote the film. "He was maybe one of the astronauts in 'The Right Stuff' but not one of the original seven.
Billy Bob had so many fine performances. He could switch all the time."
In the age of irony, the Polish brothers ask us to accept Thornton as a family man who builds a rocket in his barn.
A man whose grin carries no calculation, no whiff of scam. It is, for some, like asking Peter Lorre to play a priest.
Two days after they gave him the script, Thornton called to say he wanted the role.
Was it the seditious joy of playing against type?
"Every actor has their list of things to do," he explains. "A war movie, a western, a film noir.
I'd done the Coen brothers, comedies, 'Bad Santa,' played Davy Crockett. I've always wanted to have my Jimmy Stewart movie, my 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,' the kind of movies they made in the '40s.
I love movies about the common man against the system."
That's the official line , anyway. But will it play?
"Are people going to buy him in this after 'Bad Santa'?" asks Mark Polish. "That's a real question mark for him.
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For what it's worth, the brothers reveal that in early audience testing, older women in particular like Thornton as a loving father and good family man. So he's doing something right. His wife is played by Virginia Madsen, the soul of the movie according to the brothers Polish, who grows more magnificent on screen each year.
Another question: Are serious cinephiles going to buy him if he keeps making this kind of movie? This PG, wholesome kind of thing? When asked what he's most proud of, he cites the small films like "Sling Blade," which won an Oscar for his screenplay, not low common denominators like "School for Scoundrels" or "The Alamo," a bomb in which he got good reviews as Crockett.
What he wants to do is write, direct , and star in a movie about Floyd Collins, the man who was trapped for about two weeks in a cave in Kentucky in 1925 before dying there. The public became addicted to the drama and the scene above the cave became a media circus.
"You remember Baby Jessica?
" he asks about the Texas child who in 1987 was rescued from a well . "It was one of those kind of things. The reason I want to make the movie is because of all this reality television.
It's my contention that it's not really the media. It's so easy to say it's the media but the fact is, it's human nature that wants to watch other people suffer for your own entertainment."
Which leads us to Thornton's brief hallucinogenic ride down the media highway with Jolie.
("He was the first of this tabloid age to go through this," says Mark Polish.) He says he doesn't think about it much anymore. He says they have remained friends all along.
Talked to her a couple of weeks ago: "We laugh about the whole thing."
Fine, but what about the vials of each other's blood around their necks?
"The whole thing about the vials of blood -- there was never a vial of blood," he says.
"She bought these lockets when she was traveling -- tiny glass things -- you put a picture in them. Instead, we literally took a pin and poked our fingers and put that on them. That was it.
That's all it ever was. You'd have thought we were wearing mason jars full of blood around our necks.
"The media seems more interested in couples in Hollywood than individuals," he adds.
"When you're in a high-profile relationship, you get a whole lot more attention. You get attention even when you don't have a movie out. These days, I'm not even in the papers unless I have a movie out.
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Through all this, there was always his music, which is a huge part of his life. Thornton's fourth album comes out this spring. He writes his own songs and sites his sound somewhere in Americana.
He's been playing drums since he was 9.
"I'm kind of in the music business," he says. "In terms of people I'm around, I'm not even in the movie business.
I hang out with people like Tom Petty and Tom Waits and Dwight."
If Thornton is something of a space cadet, consider his roots. His mother has been a practicing psychic for decades.
"She used to speak at medical conventions on parapsychology and stuff," he says. "These days, she still sees people she's seen over the years who are friends. "
Does he believe in her powers?
"I have to. I've seen proof of them. Oh, yeah, I saw some proof yesterday.
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Like what?
It is at this moment that a PR lady ushers in another reporter. The moment is lost, the psychic proof with it.
Too bad, because the thing is, Billy Bob Thornton knows all this weird stuff.
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