Despite having just passed his 80th birthday, Robert Duvall is still one of the most interesting actors around, and while he’s work rate has slowed in recent years, EW reports that he’s just signed up for a new flick – the Billy Bob Thornton directed Jayne Mansfield’s Car.
While Thornton started talking about the movie mate last year, he didn’t divulge too many details, but Duvall is being looser with his lips, saying, “Its another Southern tale. It puts Tennessee Williams in the back seat – its that brilliant Its about a guy in between WWI and WWII who raises a family after his wife left him for an Englishman and moved to England. When the wife dies, she asks to be brought back to Alabama to be buried, and at that point the character hasnt seen her in 20 or 30 years. The two families – her original family she abandoned and her English family – meet and then things get really interesting.”
Duvall also noted that Thornton will star in the movie, as well as directing and co-writing, something Billy Bob himself hadn’t mentioned (although it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise). Shooting should start this summer, with the hope that Thornton can come up with something as good as Sling Blade, rather than the detritus he’s been starring in for other directors over the last decade. Hiring Duvall is a good start to making that happen.