Billy Bob Thornton

And my oldest son, Willie, was actually on my lap most of the time while I was writing on paper because I don't know how to type.

And so I just wrote it on, you know, paper, like a tablet, like that, you know.

And eventually, you know, we made that little short.

And then these guys that made the short wanted to make it into a feature, but they had this whole other idea about it, about...

They wanted to show what happened when I was a kid and show me murdering their mother.

I said, yes, wrong thing to do.

So I made it myself.

And I directed a documentary on widespread panic, the band out of Athens, Georgia, and Colonel Bruce Hampton.

But that's the only directing experience I'd had.

And I didn't know shit about it.

But I knew the story.

And I got Barry Markowitz, my DP, and got some guys and asked John Ritter, who I was working with at the time, you wanna play a gay guy from St.

Louis who moves to a little town in Millsburg?

And he goes, yeah, I'll do it.

None of us thought this thing was gonna do what it did.

I thought my mom and my brothers and people like that would see it, and that was it.

And it became iconic.

Fucking huge.

How weird was that?

Very weird, very weird.