A Quote by Billy Bob Thornton
The independent film business is pretty much gone. Now you can do it in a format where you actually get to develop a character over a period of time.
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I love the long-form format of television. I love being able to develop a character, over a long period of time.
You get to know a character that you play on-stage in a pretty profound way over a length of time. I don't want to sound highfalutin and say you become the character, you just start bringing more and more of yourself to the part until the character and actor, it's hard to tell them apart. It's some weird amalgam. In film, because of the period of time, I don't know that you ever get that deep into it.
There is nothing like being able to develop a three-dimensional character over a long period of time. Sometimes you aren't able to fully portray a character because you only have a couple of scenes to do it in, and you don't get the full life and background of that character.
I wanted to branch out into American television, specifically because you get to develop a character for a longer period of time and you get to develop a relationship with the audience.
There was a golden era in film-making in Hollywood back in the 1970s, and although there is some great independent film-making in America, it's actually very hard to get independent films made in the United States. It's much more feasible from Europe.
It's a challenge to work a character's arc into a format in which you only have a very limited amount of time to grow and develop a character.
'Hell Freezes Over' happened, and the Eagles decided to get back to work. We've toured pretty much since then, and I've been around the world a couple times. I had never really gotten any momentum going in a solo project during that period of time - Eagles was pretty much a full time job.
When you get into a film, it is one story and one set development of a character, and you are able to delve into one character for a short period of time and discover everything about them.
The other main difference between film and television is that you have the opportunity to flush out a character, over a longer period of time. Whereas with a film, you're confined to two or three hours, or whatever it may be.
For me, the challenge of a period film is that, unlike a contemporary film where the character can be very free-form when it comes to the acting, there's a burden to acting in a period film because you have to stay within the character's historical background and the gestures of certain periods.
On the other hand, you get other films that are spread over a much longer period of time and it's entirely exhausting. But there's always light at the end of the tunnel with a film.
Every time you jump to another format in the 'picture business,' meaning film, television, commercials, the people in the other format go, 'Ah, yeah, you made a lot of features, but you don't know how to do TV' or the commercial people go, 'Oh, you can't do 30 seconds.'
The wilderness is gone, the buckskin man is gone, the painted Indian has hit the trail over the Great Divide, the hardships and privations of pioneer life which did so much to develop sterling manhood are now but a legend in history, and we must depend upon the Boy Scout movement to produce the MEN of the future.
Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also - if this isn't too grand a word - our tragedy.
Independent film is almost nonexistent right now, because all the distributers that used to love to put out these little art films are all out of business right now, because it costs so much to open a movie.
The chasm between independent film and commercial film is now so wide. You either have to be super-famous and get a first-time director or writer's indie script off the ground, or you're a newcomer and go and put a cape on for four years.
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