Billy Bob Thornton

I just don't tell them we're rolling.

I really don't.

In Sling Blade, the guy Rick Dial, who played the guy that ran the fix-it shop, the kind of big guy, I went to school with him since the third grade.

And I always thought, this guy could be an actor, you know.

And when we did the first scene with him there in his shop, when Jimmy Hampton brought me over there and said, this is Carl, he's going to work here, all that stuff, you know, I just went to Rick and I said, dude, and Brent Briscoe, who played Scooter, the guy that could never fix anything, and I said, look, Rick, the camera crew, they don't have their shit together.

You know, I said, they're going to have to get some marks and do a bunch of stuff, so this is not on us.

So we're going to run this scene, but we're not really filming it, just...

Say the dialogue.

If you fuck something up, don't worry about it.

He was letter perfect.

Once we started saying action and shit, then all of a sudden it got a little different.

Most stuff in Sling Blade was the first take.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I hate it.

I don't even – usually when I'm directing, I don't direct much anymore.

But when I do, I just kind of say, you know, you guys go whenever you're ready, you know.

But then you have ADs and PAs out there on their radios and shit, and they're all screaming shit, and it's like –

Yeah, and don't disrupt the flow here.

Just let the cats do it, you know.