Dreams take Flight

Thornton and Madsen Look to Soar with The Astronaut Farmer

Oscar-winner Billy Bob Thornton earned my immediate affection is less than thirty seconds. "You guys [the University of Washington] won in basketball last night," he commented as he and his The Astronaut Farmer costar Virginia Madsen took their seats before our afternoon interview. "I love it when anybody beats Stanford or [California], I can't stand either one of those teams."

Our mutual love for basketball (and our even more mutual hatred for teams out of California) aside, we were all at the downtown Seattle Alexis Hotel to talk about their new family adventure. What followed was a friendly conversation that went far beyond the realm of just this one picture and entered into cultural hot-button territories and the political realities of the day.

Yet that doesn't mean we forgot to talk about the picture in question. For one thing, what was it that drew Oscar-nominee Madsen to such a project in the first place? More, what did she think of her character Audie Farmer giving her husband Charles (played by Thornton) the unabashed support he needs in order to achieve his dreams of launching into space using a rocket ship he's built in the family's barn?

"Well, I think she doesn’t give him that support, either, at certain point in the picture," responds the actress. "When we first meet the Farmers I think it has been working really well, and [this dream] has been a whole part of the dynamic of our family. This is, too me, I'm something I'm teaching my children about. This isn't just his dream it's our project; that it is a wonderful magical thing we have going on in our lives."

"But, at one point in the story it does start to go wrong, and that's why there is conflict. And, if I'd have been [supportive] for the whole movie I probably wouldn't have done it. That's just not realistic."

"One thing you can say about movies," adds Thornton, "it's got to be done but it's kind of ridiculous to even talk about [them]. Really, what they are all about is what somebody gets out of them their selves. Whatever your angle on it is, they can make you angry, they can make you want to discuss something with people, they can move you, they can cause you to do something you weren’t going to do before. There are a lot of things movies can do for you."

"But, the fact of the matter is, there always has to be some kind of angle when you discuss movies. Once I did a five-hour interview with Playboy and I talked about my family and about music for three hours and I talked about sex for ten minutes, and then the whole article is about sex. So, if you write any type of dramatic work, you have to some conflict and raise some questions otherwise there is no movie."

So what does all this have to do with The Astronaut Farmer? "The core of this one, as in good movies I have loved over the years, they are really symbolic of something rather than being just about reality," says the actor. "Usually the movies that are just about reality make me want to jump off a building because we got enough of that."

"You know, I don't want to go to the theater to be disgusted by hideous violence," says Madsen in affirmation. "That isn't my idea of a good time."

"When we're on a movie set," continues Thornton, "we are doing this thing that is either going to make people feel good or think or whatever. We're out there making something that is supposed to allow people to escape, and when we were young we loved to go to the movies and we looked at them as something we wanted to love as opposed to something we wanted to question."

All of which correlates nicely to this particular picture, The Astronaut Farmer having an old-school Hollywood feel impossible not to notice and it is certainly not the kind of entertainment Thornton is usually associated with. "I think the only two PG-rated movies I've done have both been astronaut movies," laughs the actor. "But that is very, true. I did want to do a movie like this, I did want to do a Field of Dreams type of film, to make that kind of movie."

But just because it is engineered to appeal to a broad cross-section of Americana, that doesn't mean it doesn’t have an opinion on the current state of things. "It kind of sneaks in through the backdoor," explains Thornton. "If you do a big broad topic and than slam it down people's throats - let's say you do a movie about racism, well racists aren't going to go see it and all the people who are [going to] are already convinced racism is bad - so that doesn’t work. You have to be subtle."

"My example there is Monster's Ball. That movie, we got letters saying people's lives had changed. We got [one] about a wedding and the parents had disowned their children because it was a black man and white woman who were going to get married. They wouldn't pay for the wedding. They wouldn't do anything. Yet, they go see Monster's Ball thinking it is about a guy who kills people in an electric chair and they discover it is a little bit more than that. After, we got a letter from the parents saying they were now going to pay for their kid's wedding."

"I truly believe when you are trying to affect 250-million people with something you are going to fail. But, if you do it in little bits at a time you are going to do okay. And this movie, it has some knocks to the system, sure, but I think it does it in a humorous and subtle way."

It was with Thornton's mentioning of the Oscar-winning Monster's Ball that the conversation took a brief turn. For some, that particular movie caused a bit of a controversy, some members of the African American community feeling Halle Berry's Academy Award came from the taking off of her clothes and not because of her acting.

"What's interesting about that to me," states an emphatic Madsen, "is that I've been butt-naked in movies and no one has ever complained I was being objectified. I could go into a whole conversation about that because when I ever did hear about that in regards to [Halle] I would jump all over people who would say [it] because she certainly was not objectified. The story might have been about that, but her performance was not about that at all."

"When you do a sex scene like that," responds Thornton, "it is about pain. It has nothing to do with sex. It has everything to do with these people. These are two very bad parents who had bad parents who also bad parents, and that is what that movie is about. So, if anybody wants to talk about that they got nothing to do. They need to get a job."

"And I think there other issues underneath that, not just 'Halle got an Oscar because she was naked.' If that's all they saw from that movie than they weren't looking very closely."

"And you just don't get that," interjects Madsen. "You just don't get nominated for taking your clothes off. And, if you're ever nude [in a movie] than you will not get a nomination. You're career is damaged by that. And [her nomination] changed a lot of things because they actually looked past [the nudity] to the dramatic content and the level of achievement in her performance. As a woman and as an actress that was fantastic."

And, hey, if anybody has a problem," adds Thornton with a wry grin, "I was nude in that sex scene, too. I didn't get an Oscar and look what I did to her."

If the figures in Mosnter's Ball are examples of bad parents, it must have been nice for Thornton and Madsen to be playing such caring and wonderful ones like Charles and Audie Farmer. They challenge and teach their kids in ways the school system just can't, and in the case of their oldest child Shepard they even trust him be the one responsible for both launching his father into space and to bring him home again.

"That was so great," agrees Madsen. "In the case of Shepard, I thought it was so great that he wasn't this dysfunctional grunge, Goth, disaffected youth. More often than not, teenagers are not always depicted in a realistic way. I know that I loved my mom and dad when I was a teenager. I know my brother did. It does exist. We hardly ever see that [in film] anymore. We see more of the negative side of teenagers."

"And, sure, there is a place for that. I'm not knocking that. I'm just saying, I loved the fact ours seemed more real."

As for Charles, although everyone in the picture is intent to tell him otherwise, viewers can't help but notice he's probably the least crazy person in the entire film. "This society doesn’t encourage dreamers or artists or anything like that," says Thornton. "This movie does. Some people want to be safe. I grew up with this one guy who was a guitar player and he was unbelievable. He's still back there in my hometown because he took the safe job at the factory, he's going to be there forever, he's going to get his pension and he's a sad guy."

"Listen, I'd rather be not quite as safe, and my kids look up to me. My kids think it is cool that their dad is an actor and a musician and stuff. They don't need me to be an accountant to feel like I could take care of them."

But doesn't there have to be a line between being a selfish dreamer and yet still being a caring father figure? "And that's addressed in the movie," responds the actor. "We have to changes in the movie. One is when [Audie] says, hey, how come you didn't let us in on the fact we're going to be broke if you get killed, and the second change is where I say, hey, you're right, I've already hurt you guys enough."

"But that's also where she says [Charles] is still doing this. She notices I am a broken person, and that this wasn't going to do the family any good. Like I said before, I'd rather be happy. It doesn’t matter how many years you live. You could live until 95 and be bored and depressed and stuff, or you could live until 62 and feel like you've done all that you should do, and that's the message you should pass on to your kids. You should go for your dreams, no matter how big or small they are, otherwise I don’t know what you're doing here anyways."

"And it is important that you are showing your kids that you are fulfilled," interjects Madsen, "or at least trying to be. That you would strive for something. Not everybody's dream is as big as a rocket. I don’t know if there is anything like an ordinary dream but we can have smaller dreams, too, that they should go for, and when they do they are showing their kids that is what they are doing."

"And kids are inspired by that. It's like when they have a teacher is school who is just hating their job and they are just sitting there learning nothing. When they have a teacher who, when they are talking about Rome they tell stories of when they were there and they love their work, those are the kinds of teachers who are inspiring. They're reaching for something. They're striving to teach the children, and maybe that's their dream. And kids respond to that, and they respond to that at home, too."

One of the things resonating so strongly in The Astronaut Farmer is the sense of exploration, that pioneering spirit which America once exemplified but now seems lost. "You're right," answers Thornton. "[America] has lost that spirit. Movies about that topic; about space, exploring, stuff like that; if they would really take that seriously than they would become what the Western used to be."

"The Western was about the road to the frontier, about exploring new lands, pilgrimage, things like that. Instead of making so many goofy sort of movies about space maybe if they made some more about the exploration maybe that might be nice."

And would these actors actually want to go into space themselves if the opportunity arose? "Oh I'd go," exuberantly states Thornton, Madsen shaking her head in energetic agreement right next to him. "I'd love to go."