Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade (1994)

Director:

George Hickenlooper

Writer:

Billy Bob Thornton (writer)

Release Date:

23 November 1999 (USA)

Genre:

Short | Drama | Thriller

Plot:

Twenty-five years after commiting a double murder, Karl Childers is going to be released from an institution for the criminally insane...

Plot Keywords:

Nudity | Cross Dresser | Sexist | Mental Hospital | Cult Favorite

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Billy Bob Thornton	...	Karl Childers
Molly Ringwald	...	Teresa Tatum
J.T. Walsh	...	Charles Bushman
Jefferson Mays	...	Gerry Woolridge
Suzanne Cryer	...	Frances
Abby Abernathy
Brent Briscoe
Otto Coelho		(as Otto Coecho)
Abe Dalool
Ron Livingston
Aaron Wheeler
Bill Boll
Chester Dent
Bill Sprague
Joey Bilow

Runtime:

UK:25 min | USA:25 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Canada:18 (Ontario)

Goofs:

Continuity: In the first scene, Charles Bushman moves some checkers around while another man sits in a trance-like state. At this point both of the seated man's hands are on the table. However, when Charles moves away from the table, one of the seated man's hands is now resting on his leg, below the table.

Movie Connections:

Edited into Short 1: Invention (1999) (V)

Some folks call it a 25 minute audition reel

Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade: 5 out of 10

A curiosity piece for Sling Blade fans this short is the opening act of the original film done in black and white with Molly Ringwald as the reporter and a nebbishy mental health director.

Everything else is the same right down to J. T. Walsh's rape stories. The only real surprise is how quickly it is over. (25 brisk minutes) Unlike other viewers I really didn't notice a menacing nuance in this version. It really seemed almost note for note. One might rightly wonder why this short simply didn't appear as an extra on the Sling Blade proper disc. The included behind the scenes docs explain that pretty clearly.

The first doc is of little interest except to see J.T. Walsh chain smoke and hear director George Hickenlooper expound on how he likes short films and how European it is to make one. The second doc proves all that art for art sake stuff a lie.

Hickenlooper shows very lengthy clips from three of his features. The first Heart of Darkness a Filmmakers Apocalypse looked interesting. Even more interesting is how Hickenlooper got a directing credit even though Coppola's wife shot all the footage. The other two features the Killing Box and the Low Life look awful. The Killing box is a vampire civil war hybrid from which Hickenlooper removed the vampires and the Low Life seems like one of those self conscious auto-biographical films that comes out of Project Greenlight.

The real treat is hearing Hickenlooper completely trash his former friend Billy Bob Thorton basically describing him as an unstable maniac. Since Thorton went of to fame and fortune and Oscar gold. (Hickenlooper even attacks Billy Bob's eligibility to win an Oscar for best adapted screenplay) and Hickenlooper was not asked to direct one can only assume a little payback was in order during this "record straightening".

Even funnier Hickenlooper accuses Thorton of trying to turn the short into an audition reel (Why else would you do a short?) while in the next breath explaining he was going to use it to shop a feature film. (And all of this in one of the most self centered promotional docs I have ever seen. It's like a childhood film retrospective at a sweet sixteen party.) The whole mess is imminently skippable except for the morbidly curious.