Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapated Screenplay 1996

The Contenders:

The Crucible
The English Patient
Hamlet
Sling Blade (winner)
Trainspotting

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1996

The Contenders:

Ralph Fiennes: The English Patient
Tom Cruise: Jerry Maguire
Woody Harrelson: The People vs. Larry Flynt
Geoffrey Rush: Shine (winner)
Billy Bob Thornton: Sling Blade

I Call it a Kaiser Blade

Film: Sling Blade
Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television.

If you go back far enough in the archive of this blog, you’ll find a response where I say I hope to watch Sling Blade by the end of that year. I think it’s some time in 2012 or 2013. Well, here we are approaching a decade later and I’m just now getting around to it. Best laid plans, spirit is willing, whatever. I’m here now.

I vaguely remember when Sling Blade came out, because everyone thought Billy Bob Thornton was someone who wasn’t so much acting as more or less a real-world version of the banjo kid from Deliverance given a starring role. It really is that deep of a performance, so it’s worth mentioning that Thornton not only had a career long before this, but that he also wrote the play on which it was based, adapted his own play, and directed. I’m reminded of how shocked my mother was when Daniel Day-Lewis walked on stage for his Oscar for My Left Foot. Mom was unaware that he wasn’t physically afflicted and was similarly unaware of his rather robust career before that role.