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Sling Blade: A Screenplay. Time Period Modern Era - the Present. Type Thing. Related Media Benton Campus Interior. Sling Blade. Billy Bob Thornton. Login to the CALS catalog! Track your borrowing. Rate and review titles you borrow and share your opinions on them. Get personalized recommendations. View All Services. Entries Media All. Bruce Hampton Ret.
Vic Chesnutt Terence as Terence. Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob Thornton play screenplay. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. A partially handicapped man named Karl is released from a mental hospital, about 20 years after murdering his mother and another person.
Karl is often questioned if he will ever kill again, and he shrugs in response saying there is no reason to. Now out of the mental institution, Karl settles in his old, small hometown, occupying himself by fixing motors. After meeting a young boy named Frank, who befriends him, Karl is invited to stay at Frank's house with his mother Linda, who views Karl as a strange but kind and generous man. However, Linda's abusive boyfriend, Doyle, sees things differently in the way rules ought to be run- normally insulting Linda's homosexual friend Vaughan as well as Karl's disabilities, and having wild parties with his friends.
As Karl's relationship with Frank grows, he is watchful of Doyle's cruel actions. Sometimes a hero comes from the most unlikely place. Rated R for strong language, including descriptions of violent and sexual behavior.
Did you know Edit. Trivia Billy Wilder once told Billy Bob Thornton that he was "too ugly" to be an actor, and that he should write a screenplay for himself, where he could exploit his "less than perfect" features. After this movie launched Thornton's career, he publicly discussed his conversation with Wilder, which was at a cocktail party where he was working as a waiter.
He got a call from Wilder, who invited him over to his house. Wilder said he didn't recall their conversation, but was glad that he heeded his advice. As a gift, Wilder gave Thornton a paperback copy of this movie's script with his autograph, and a personal message inscribed on it. But whenever the camera is aimed at the Frostee Cream, there is a lot of traffic on the road reflected in the window.
Billy Bob Thornton points out in the DVD commentary that this is because the local police had another pressing issue the day they filmed Jim Jarmusch , and they couldn't be there to stop traffic. Quotes Karl : I like them French fried potaters. Crazy credits The opening credits start about 18 minutes into the film. Alternate versions The Director's Cut runs 12 minutes longer than the original theatrical releases.
User reviews Review. Karl soon understands the wounded look in Frank's eyes, because he meets Linda's boyfriend Doyle country singer Dwight Yoakam , who likes to lounge in the living room, drinking one longneck beer after another and ruling the roost with loud, boorish opinions.
His criticisms of the boy are especially cruel. Karl watches, and listens, and thinks. There is another key character in the story: Linda's boss, Vaughan John Ritter , a homosexual who accepts his sexuality but seems sort of apologetic about it, and who is also Linda's best friend. It's hard to understand why Linda stays with the venomous Doyle; maybe it's a version of battered-wife syndrome, and she can't imagine leaving. Only Vaughan and her son make life bearable.
Karl settles into the household and begins to savor the taste of freedom. He is not too sure how some aspects of the world work, and stands in front of a door for hours before he thinks of knocking. He repairs everything he puts his hand to, he makes new friends, and in one superb adventure, he orders and eats french fries for the first time, and his delight, masked behind his usual gruff manner, is boundless. We see Linda's life from the outside, through Karl's eyes, which view it in a very literal way and try to make sense of it.
And we see it from the inside, through the eyes of Vaughan, the homosexual, who like Karl is only a witness, but feels the pain. One of the movie's many pleasures is Ritter's performance as Vaughan; the character has a complexity and sensitivity that seem to have come right out of his small-town time and place.
The movie's ultimate destination is not hard to guess, but we feel a certain satisfaction when it arrives there. And by then we have come to know Karl with a real understanding and fondness. He is a character unlike any other in the movies, an original, and in creating him, Thornton has made a place for himself among the best new filmmakers. As an actor, he creates a difficult character and finds exactly the right way to play him.