Billy Bob Thornton returned to the director’s chair recently for Jayne Mansfield’s Car, which is opening in theaters this weekend. The film is set in the 1960s and stars Thornton, Robert Duvall, Kevin Bacon, Tippi Hedren and John Hurt.
The dark comedy is his first directorial effort in over a decade, notes USA Today and finds Duvall as Jim Caldwell, a World War I vet trying to keep his family together, despite tension between his sons, who fought in World War II. In an interview with USA Today, Thornton said that the story is inspired by his life and his father, who was fascinated by car wrecks, just like Duvall’s character.
“He loved car wrecks,” Thornton said about his father. "It's about the most personal thing we did together. I wanted that in the movie."
The film, set in the South may have a Tennessee Williams feeling and Duvall would agree with that assessment. "I felt like Tennessee Williams was in the back seat,” Duvall told USA Today. "(Thornton) loved the novelists of the South, and you can tell it in his dialogue. I don't know if it's because we had such an oral history south of the Mason-Dixon line, or it was economics, or what. But you don't get as many Southern storytellers in Hollywood. He's one."
In a separate Entertainment Weekly interview, Thornton said he considered Duvall an “expert technical adviser” on the set. “People always assume it would be scary directing Duvall or one of your heroes, but to tell you the truth when you’re directing a great actor like him it’s not hard at all. It’s pretty easy actually, he’s terrific — you don’t have to do much,” he said about directing the legendary actor.
You can check out the trailer below. The film hits theaters on Friday and you can also see Thornton in Parkland, which opens on Oct. 4.
image: Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images For Relativity Media/image.net