VARIOUS: Actor turned director Billy Bob Thornton walks the Red Carpet at Berlin Film Festival for his 'Jayne Mansfield's Car'

Record ID: 220764

  • Title: VARIOUS: Actor turned director Billy Bob Thornton walks the Red Carpet at Berlin Film Festival for his 'Jayne Mansfield's Car'
  • Date: 14th February 2012
  • Summary: BERLIN, GERMANY (FEBRUARY 13, 2012) (REUTERS) ( ** BEWARE FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY **) EXTERIOR BERLINALE VENUE RED CARPET AT VENUE BIG SCREEN WITH FANS WATCHING US ACTRESS ANDIE MACDOWELL ON RED CARPET MACDOWELL POSING FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS (SOUNDBITE) (English) FESTIVAL DIRECTOR DIETER KOSSLICK, SAYING: "We are very happy because film festivals are also living partly on reco
  • Embargoed: 29th February 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Germany
  • Country: Germany
  • Reuters ID: LVABCW523XVPOCJ78H3IHTJS8RPI
  • Story Text: When actor-director Billy Bob Thornton was a boy, his father took him to the scene of car crashes to survey the wreckage. Now he has turned his unconventional childhood into a movie.
    "Jayne Mansfield's Car" is a dark family comedy that explores how war affects men and how fathers and sons so often fail to communicate.
    The picture, warmly applauded at the Berlin film festival on Monday (February 13) ahead of its world premiere, is the first feature Thornton has directed for over a decade. He also stars. "It's such a great honour, I mean, just to be accepted into the festival alone is pretty amazing. So my expectations are just to have a great time and hope the audience reaction is good and anything else that happens would be gravy," Thornton told Reuters at the Red Carpet.
    Jayne Mansfield's Car, a reference to the actress killed in a car crash in 1967, is set in 1969 in southern United States where Robert Duvall's character Jim Caldwell and his middle-aged children live a materially comfortable life.
    Son Carroll, played by Kevin Bacon, is a drug-taking hippie and anti-war protester who is a constant source of shame to his gruff, conservative father.
    Brother Jimbo is more like his father, while child-like oddball Skip (Thornton) lies somewhere in between.
    Jim's ex-wife dies in England, where she had remarried and had another family, and when they turn up on the Caldwells' doorstep to attend her U.S. burial, chaos ensues.
    The male characters, including the visiting father played by John Hurt, are all defined by their experiences of war - World War One, World War Two and the Vietnam conflict.
    The figure of Jim, cold, cruel and unable to express his feelings, was partly inspired by his own father, 56-year-old Oscar winner Thornton said.
    Scenes in which Jim takes his grandson to see the aftermath of car crashes are based on truth, Thornton added.
    The comedy in the film stems from the Caldwells' failure to communicate -- Jim only lets down his guard after his tea is spiked with LSD -- and the interplay between upper class English visitors and straight-talking American southerners.
    "That accent makes me hornier than Frank Sinatra," Skip confesses to his English half-sister, before trying to organise an unconventional sexual encounter with her.
    But amid the laughs there is a serious side to Jayne Mansfield's Car, which had a budget of around 12 million USD and was funded by Russian money.
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