The Bad Santa Line That Perfectly Sums Up Billy Bob Thornton's Landman Character

Terry Zwigoff's "Bad Santa" is likely the most cynical, criminal, and foul-mouthed Christmas movie ever made. It's so savage and vulgar that even gory Christmas horrors pale in comparison. It's the one film that parents of young kids instantly forbid and child-lock the television for whenever it comes on during the holiday. It's also a stone-cold classic: hysterical, brutally honest, and touching in an unexpected way.

There are two reasons for that: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's no-holds-barred screenplay and Billy Bob Thornton's repulsive, startling, and self-centred performance as the lead Willie, a low-life criminal and alcoholic, who dresses up as Santa each year to rob the malls where he performs at during the day. But despite all of his appalling and self-destructive tendencies, Thornton manages to dig up and find the character's heart, making him not only likable but relatable, too. By the end of the film, he turns Willie into a sympathetic loser who goes through so much s*** (from physical and emotional abuse to prison time) that it's practically a miracle he's still alive.

That's just the thing: he can take an extreme amount of beating (both literally and figuratively) from life without backing down and getting up every single time, no matter how hard the blow was. As Rocky Balboa famously said: "It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." And Thornton did such a fantastic job as this miserable and pathetic man who somehow always gets back up despite the odds that it caught Taylor Sheridan's eye, making an impression on him that he hasn't forgotten since. Thus, it's no surprise that he wrote "Landman" with the actor in mind to play the lead, Tommy Norris, and likened his resilience to "Bad Santa's" Willie.

Although Zwigoff's movie and Sheridan's series couldn't be more different, the intensity and charisma that Thornton brought to both roles are what make them truly memorable and outstanding. Norris is a hard-edged and powerful man, while Willie is a weak-willed, sad drunk, yet they're both incredibly tough and resilient individuals in their own right. Naturally, that's due to Thornton's magnetism and ballsiness as an actor, which Sheridan loved and recognized early on. In an interview with Deadline, the writer-creator elaborated on why he knew that Thornton would be the perfect candidate to play "Landman's" protagonist. He said,

"Well, he was from the world, right? Maybe not the oil world, but he is from, from rural America. His family's from Texas. He feels true to this place. There's a fierceness to him, a fearlessness as an actor that lends real way to his words. He feels like someone who just won't back down. There's a line that he says in Bad Santa that made an impression on me. I'm paraphrasing it, but he says something along the lines of, 'I'm really good in a fight because I'm not scared of getting hit.' And so that's a perfect embodiment of Tommy in Landman of that character, right? He's a fighter, not because he's necessarily a good fighter, but because he's just so resilient and isn't scared of getting hit."

If you've seen the first season of "Landman," you can't really argue with that statement. Whether it's drug cartels, ruthless lawyers, ex-wives, or oil billionaires who want to pile through Tommy, he always comes up with something to stand his ground. He's a cockroach in a cowboy hat you can't kill, regardless of how hard you're trying to. That kind of resilience is inherently a part of Thornton's acting repertoire (as seen in the first season of "Fargo" or "Goliath" besides "Landman" and "Bad Santa"), making him a fascinating actor to watch if given the right material — and Sheridan's latest Paramount+ hit and Zwigoff's classic are certainly two of the best examples.