Why Landman's Billy Bob Thornton Never Wanted To Direct Again After His Biggest Western Flop

If you've ever seen "Sling Blade," the 1996 directorial feature debut of Billy Bob Thornton, you know the man isn't just a phenomenal actor but a damn good writer and director, too (his first screenplay was "One False Move," a forgotten gem of a crime flick, starring Bill Paxton and himself). "Sling Blade" is old-school, smart, and sensitive — it's poetry in motion in a way that very few films are. It couldn't be made today for several reasons (some legit, some questionable), but at the time, Thornton received the recognition for it that he deserved. It brought him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, but more importantly, he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

His career as a writer-director (in addition to being a busy actor) couldn't have had a better start. He was ambitious and creatively rich, having his own singular cinematic vision that had the potential to turn him into the type of actor-director that Clint Eastwood had become before him. But as it often happens in Hollywood, his next movie (as a director) went through so much trouble and turmoil — which ended up making it a box office flop — that Thornton kind of lost the spark and only directed a single movie in the next ten years. But who could blame him after making a stellar adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's classic novel, "All the Pretty Horses," most of which was cut in the edit by Miramax's then-studio head, Harvey Weinstein?

In retrospect, it's no surprise at all that Harvey Weinstein could destroy several careers and people's lives just as easily as he did certain movies he produced. Unfortunately, Thornton's "All the Pretty Horses," written by Ted Tally, was one of those casualties. He clearly poured his heart and soul into it, clocking the movie at a demanding runtime of 2 hours and 42 minutes, which Weinstein objected to and had it cut down to less than two hours just so it could run two or three times more in a few more theatres, raking in more cash. In a recent interview with Deadline, Thornton shared how much of a disappointment and heartbreak that was for him, never getting his original cut of the feature out to the public. He said,

"The public will probably never know what that movie was. Matt Damon to this day says in its original form, it's maybe his favorite movie he was ever in. Daniel Lanois did the original score. It's beautiful. Maybe the best score I ever heard. And the studio thought it was too sparse. If you saw the movie and heard that score, you would go, okay, I get it.

It was two hours and 42 minutes. That was my cut. They cut it to an hour and 59 minutes. They cut essential things. Somewhere in my storage unit, I've got my original cut with Dan's music. Roger Ebert used to say, you've got to put this out. And I said, I'd like to. I don't know how to go about it. I don't know what the rights are. I don't know anything."

As dire as that might sound, the sheer fact that Thornton still actually has the original version is the kind of sparkle of hope that cinephiles like me die for. Because that suggests there's a chance... and in this day and age, there might be a streaming service willing to resurrect this long-forgotten film in its initial form. Frankly, I'm somewhat baffled that it hasn't been done already. Featuring the fantastic cast of Matt Damon, Penelope Cruz, Henry Thomas, Sam Shepard, and Robert Patrick in their heydays, Thornton's Director's Cut would be more than alluring to a certain audience — like Paramount+'s where old-school macho dramas like "Yellowstone" and epic historical Westerns like "1883" thrived like nothing else. God's willing, we'll one day see "All the Pretty Horses" as it was intended, honoring the original vision that Billy Bob Thornton dreamt up for it on the big screen.