Billy Bob Thornton Gets Down & Dirty With "Manure"

Billy Bob Thornton is reuniting with his Astronaut Farmer (love that movie!) filmmakers Mark and Michael Polish for a new titled Manure. Yes, Manure. Sounds like a blast, and Thornton is just the one to do it.

“There are a lot of words to use here, there are a lot of jokes to be had, but we won’t go there,” Thornton told ETOnline. “When you think about it, when you’re selling anything, like if you’re on the news, or you’re like an actor going down the red carpet, you’re always kinda selling manure in a way, you know what I mean?”

Good that he has a sense of humor about it anyway.

Read more Manure…

It’s a comedy about the manure industry in the 1960s. Thornton plays a slick salesman enlisted to help save his company when the owner dies in a tragic fan accident and his cosmetics salesgirl daughter (Tea Leoni – haven’t seen her in a while) is forced to take over the biz. An all-out war ensues when clean-cut Kyle MacLachlan and his team of salesmen try to corner the market with their fancy “fertilizer” and marketing techniques.

“The salesman world is pretty interesting,” said Thornton. “Whether it’s like Bible salesmen or vacuum cleaner salesmen, whatever it is, it’s a really interesting life. So [The Polish Brothers] decided to take all the humor and all the weirdness that goes along with being a salesman, and what’s the ultimate one? Well, you know what it is.”

The Oscar winner even has a little experience with sales, having tried out a job as a vacuum cleaner salesman in his early days. “I was about 19 or 20, and it didn’t work out for me. At the time I had hair down to my waist, and you know, I was, like, this skinny rock and roller.”

Image: The Astronaut Farmer, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2006