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A LIFE IN MONSTER
MINIATURE:
The Plastic World
of Young Billy Bob Thornton
by Ted Newsom
c. 2009
The ubiquitous video of performer Billy Bob Thornton waxing
surly with a flustered Canadian DJ became an internet must-see last week, but his
non sequitur "answers" actually gave a great deal of insight
into his psyche, for those willing to mine for it. The entire embarrassment
can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJWS6qyy7bw
Respected Toronto-based musician, music historian and
broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi interviewed Thornton and his band the Boxcutters to
promote their support of a Willie Nelson tour (The Boxpackers have since
packed it in and gone home). Rather than answer Ghomeshi, Thornton mumbled
"I don't know" to such
toughies as "How long has the band been together?" Apparently
angry at Ghomeshi for saying in passing that Thornton's main claim to fame was
his success in films, he left much of the interview to his openly-shocked
fellow Boxleitners, then launched into left-field autobiographical anecdotes
which seemed to have nothing to do with music, or morning coffee, or reality.
BILLY BOB: Uh… Uh… I subscribed to a magazine called Famous
Monsters of Filmland. The publisher [sic; he was the editor] was
guy named Forrest J Ackerman, who passed away recently [December 4, 2008].
INT: Do you remember what you were listening to musically, when
you were a kid?
BILLY BOB: They had a contest, where you could build your own
model, and it could be like a King Kong, or it could be anything… they made
these plastic models in those days, that you could buy and then put together.
But this was like a thing you could create your own world of it. Make
telephone poles and make the railroad tracks and everything. And uh.. I
actually did enter it once. I didn’t win anything. But I gave it
a shot. It was a big deal for us kids in those days.
Thornton, 53, is a "monster kid," a child of the
horror movie boom of the 1950's's and '60s. As he said, there was indeed a
contest in 1964, co-sponsored by Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine,
Universal Studios, and Aurora, which manufactured plastic models of Dracula,
The Mummy, Godzilla, etc.
Willie Joe Sasskatoon, owner and sole proprietor of the
Hide-de-Ho Hobby Shop in Thornton's home town of Malvern,
Arkansas, remembers the contest, and the young would-be
monster-maker. “Li'l Billy Bob was a handful for a li'l runt,” the
nonagenarian wheezes. “But that li'l pepper jes' loved his modelin'.”
Sasskatoon recalls the moment the mini-Thornton, then eight,
became intrigued at the striking art decorating the Aurora models. “They was
done be a fella name of James Bama, and li'l Billy Bob drooled over 'em. Fact
is, he named his band after 'em: the Boxcovers.”
“He used to hang out with fellas who all musta loved them
little monsters as much as Billy Bob. They'd tell me they'd have Friday night
modellin' parties. I guess they'd all sit around and put the things together,
then tear 'em apart, then put 'em together
again. All's I know is, he and his pals used to buy about twenty tubes
o' plastic glue every Friday and by the next Monday, they'd be back for
more.”
During the contest, Billy Bob's intriguing customization of
these models struck Sasskatoon. “You look at 'em and you see where the boy
wuz at then, and where he wanted to be, and what kind of a feller he become.
“He'd come staggerin' in here after one of them weekends and
talk no sense at all. He'd jus' mumble and roll his eyes. He had pret' near
every one of them monster models, but he'd keep comin' back for more glue
every week, like clockwork. I'd ask, 'You bust it?' and li'l Billy Bob'd say,
'I dunno. Why dint I win nuthin'?' He was a regular card.
“I'd ask what he was gonna do when he grew up and he'd get
this glassy look and say, 'Modelin'. Oft as not, then he'd curl up in the
corner of the store with one of the copies of Argosy. From the looks of him
nowadays, I'd say he's still modelin' like a sumbitch.”
Although the young
Thornton did not win anything in the contest, the now-wizened Sasskatoon
vividly recalls Billy Bob's crowing glory. "The company came up with a
special model, Big Frankie, which I reckon looked a lot like the actor who
played 'im in pictures, Peter Lorre, or either Brian Keith, or mebbe Van
Heflin. It weren't like the little guys, which was all about seven,
eight inches high. This was a big 'un, two foot high. L'il Billy
Bob put his soul into makin' his version real special. He musta gone
through twenty tubes of glue on that. Some folks liked his Phantom of
the Opry or King Kong, but for my money, Billy Bob Thornton's version of Big
Frankie is his piece of ass resistance."
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