|
| |
Billy Bob Thornton
1-Nov-2004
Written by: Preston F. Kirk
I arranged for him to be a neighbor & then was in
I am a PR consultant with my home office in Spicewood, TX about 15 miles from the remote site of the "Alamo" movie set (largest in North America), and about 35 miles from downtown Austin, Texas). When my wife and I -- part-time actors on stage and in Ind. films -- got a call to be extras in the Disney epic, I suggested to the casting agent that we were vacating a fabulous house our insurance firm had rented for 10 months for us (our own house had been damaged) that the gated community on Lake Travis with its golf course, swimming pool, club, marina and workout room would be an ideal place for Billy to escape the busy Austin scene. Billy Bob could actually get to the set more easily on the country roads, i.e., keep the perceived wild man busy and out of the nightclub scene. I got the builder of the $1.4 million home to send me literature and a website tour and the casting director sent it to the producers. The next thing I knew, Billy Bob Thornton was my "neighbor" about eight blocks away up the hill. We met at the exercise room where his personal trainer brought a huge set of new handweights. The room has a combo lock, but the largest weight was purloined. In conversations, I discovered he liked the bucolic Hill Country setting...longed to go fishing, but the night shooting for the film prevented that...and he even invited me to share my poetry with him as consideration for lyrics for his band. To my surprise, he is gracious, outgoing and a man, like me, of small stature. On the set -- downtown in the historic Driskill Hotel and Paramount Theatre, we learned what a serious actor he is...that he often writes in the very wee hours of the morning. (These were the Washington, DC, 1835 scenes.) My wife, Ronda, was positioned in the Paramont Theatre opera box with Billy Bob (as Davy Crockett). "Sorry about the loss of your handweight." His gentle, smiling response: "That alright. I couldn't even lift that big one." As the day went on, the set turned into 16 hours and the evening of multiple takes approached midnight, we learned it was Billy Bob's last day on the set. He had been shooting "The Alamo" for four or five months. He made jokes (instead of delivering his scripted lines) about an "uncle that had been impacted (constipated) for five weeks." He also made a farewell speech from the Opera box to the 160 or so costumed, weary extras and the crew that literally moved many crew members to tears. His impromptu soliloquy was along the lines of "there is nothing more that I would love to do than to stay here working with so many new friends I have made all these months. I love Austin, but I love my kids even more and it is time I went back to Arkansas to visit them. I am going to miss this." As I watched the countless interview with him before the movie was released, it was now easy to separate the "B.S. personna" of the man from the serious actor-musician-father -- perhaps a flawed artist in many ways, but surely a lifeforce that embraced the challenge of portraying an American hero and Texas legend as accurately as possible. I think "The Alamo experience" changed him in ways that only his family and closest biographer will ever comprehend.
Rating: 7.29
Votes: 17
Rate It
Discuss This Story
Pages Updated On: 30-Aug-2008 - 08:00:00
All of the stories are personal opinions and not verified to be fact by TheCelebrityCafe.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
