Robert Duvall Joins Billy Bob Thornton's New Film 'Jayne Manfield's Car'

We haven't heard a great deal about Jayne Mansfield's Car in the couple months since the first details came out. We know that Billy Bob Thornton is directing, and that he co-wrote the script with his One False Move collaborator Tom Epperson.

Now Robert Duvall has announced that he'll be in the film, and he's given up the fact that Billy Bob Thornton will also appear. (No real surprise there.) He's also divulged a bit of story info. Read on for more details.

Speaking to EW, Mr. Duvall said,

It's another Southern tale. It puts Tennessee Williams in the back seat — it's that brilliant... It's about a guy in between WWI and WWII who raises a family after his wife left him for an Englishman and moved to England... When the wife dies, she asks to be brought back to Alabama to be buried, and at that point the character hasn't seen her in 20 or 30 years. The two families — her original family she abandoned and her English family — meet and then things get really interesting.

So the pieces start to come together. Let's revisit what Mr. Thornton said about the film last year:

It takes place in 1969 in Alabama. It's a comedy drama, and it's about human relationships. This one deals a lot with how different generations view war and also it examines the randomness of life and death.

And, just to remind you what the whole point was in the first place, recall that the film was in part a reaction to the state of studio filmmaking in the US of late:

[Movies being made these days] are really not my bag as much. I figured that instead of sitting around complaining that I really don't want to be in a superhero movie or cartoon or a 3D vampire movie and all that kind of thing, I've written movies before, so why not write one.

One obvious question remains: how does the title fit into the story vaguely outlined above. I have no idea. All I can offer is that I'm very happy to see Mr. Thornton getting back into the work of writing and directing.