A highly rated American drama released in 1996, Sling Blade starred Dwight Yoakam, J. T. Walsh, John Ritter, Lucas Black, Natalie Canerday, James Hampton, and Robert Duvall.
It is the tale of Karl Childers, now a grown man, released from a psychiatric hospital where he has been since the age of 12 for the murder of his mother and her lover. He returns to his childhood town, and although being mentally handicapped, gets a job fixing small motors at a local repair shop.
“I was raised in a place where a guy who was kinda deformed, and couldn’t talk plain, was made to live out in back of his parents’ house. They fed him like a dog,” said Thornton said about Sling Blade, which he directed, wrote, and starred in.
The film, which earned Thornton the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, was based on his own short story – Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade – which was itself semi-autobiographical.
Thornton remembers part of the inspiration for the story came from his childhood and a boy with polio who was mistreated and labeled as the “devil’s child” because of his deformities.
“The mother thought he came out the way he did – and he struggled, just to walk – [because] she was scared by a snake when she was pregnant, and it caused him to come out like that – he was the devil’s child. It turned out he had polio. That’s all it was. That’s where I got the setup for where Karl [Childers] comes from.”
However, Childers was a blend of other people Thornton had known while growing up. “I’ve told the story a billion times about how I was making faces at myself in the mirror and came up with the character, which is also true, but that’s such a surface thing.
“That’s not really what it’s about. The humble, politically correct thing to say about Sling Blade is that ‘oh, I worked in the theater on the character, and developed it over the years,’ but the deeper thing is that I’m the kid in Sling Blade.
“Ninety percent of the stuff in Sling Blade really happened. I’ve seen way more than I want to see in my lifetime, and I think Sling Blade was a way for me to regain some security and some innocence about my past, and the things I’ve seen. That’s what appeals to me about Karl. I feel more comfortable being Karl than I do myself. I like being Karl. I like it a lot.”
Thornton wrote the Sling Blade script largely by hand, drawing on the unique blend of humor and tragedy characteristic of Southern writing. Despite Hollywood’s general disinterest in such challenging material, Thornton managed to get the film made on a modest $1 million budget, with financing from the independent production company Shooting Gallery.
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Sounds interesting. I plan to check it out. 🙂
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I saw it back when it came out, and now, my interest in Billy Bob is renewed thanks to Land Man and 1883, I plan to watch it again. Momo hasn’t seen it so it will be new good to her. During the filming of Landman, he was all over Fort Worth for months: stockyards, Sundance Square, BBQ joints, everywhere. There was an older boy in our neighborhood, us kids in our gang were around 9, and he was probably 18-20. He acted a bit like Karl. He didn’t attend school and always wanted to join our group of ratty kids, so we let him. It didn’t take long for us to realize this guy was missing some main components. He rode his bike in front of a Mrs. Bairds bread truck; it didn’t turn out well for him or the nice bike. It’s probably BB best movie..just my opinion.
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Not sure why this movie was on my mind. Funny, it was my mother’s favorite. I took her to see it again. I recall being shocked by John Ritter’s role. He nailed it.
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Great movie! Have watched it many times.
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I am foggy on if I saw it or not, but do remember my Mom and sister raving about it. My library probably has it. It reminds me of “To Kill A Mockingbird,” in it’s theme. There are some things which certainly have changed for the better, and movies like this are a big part of that.
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