tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight, a conversation with academy award winning writer and actor billy bob atherton. he is the star of films like "sling blade" and "primary colors," and he has a new book out with his unlikely rise to fame and his thoughts on the state of american culture. we are glad you could join us. a conversation with billy bob thornton, coming up right now. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

a tavis: [laughs] please welcome billy bob thornton back to this program. he has a new book about his life and career called "the billy bob tapes: a cave full of ghosts." ooooh. [laughs] "a cave full of ghosts," billy bob? >> it is actually a song of hours. i never wanted to write a book, but people have asked for years. and they said, hey, why not just tells some funny stories about growing up, and you can

even tell some stories about how our society is crumbling, and we can go from there. tavis: slummed juicey stuff. >> she was very kind to do that, and people i have known and worked with over a lot of years with a different perspective. so we got her and robert duvall and dwight yocum, people i am close to. tavis: for something you did not want to do, did you find it at all cathartic or therapeutic? >> i did. it was nice. and also, there were a couple of chapters where i talk about the social network and how it is kind of dehumanizing us. tavis: i will get to that, i promise you. i am fascinated by that. i would like to your thoughts about the decay of our civilization and the evolution of our culture.

we will talk about that in a second. let's start at the beginning. i am always fascinated by people's parents. there is so much to learn about our starts. we are who we are because somebody loved us, and the older i get, i'd add to that, or did not. somebody either loved us or did not love us, and that is why we are who we are, so you had a fascinating relationship with both your mother and your father. let's start with your mother first. your mother was a psychic, a pretty well known. she started out, trying to figure this stuff out, but you were teased about your mother and this gift that she had. >> when you grow up in it, you do not find it out of the ordinary, so i was shocked when the kids would say that. they used to call my mother in

which and things like that. i was just talking to her about that the other day. people stopped calling as witches and warlocks. my mom is a big supporter of may, always was and still is, so i got the encouragement from that side of the family. my dad was more hard edge. tavis: in my neighborhood, if you called my mother a witch or something like that, that is like calling it, your mama. you cannot, mama a witch. >> no. i was responsible for a couple of broken noses, and they were not mine. tavis: did you, as a child -- i hear your point that it does not seem strange to you, but what

did you make as a child of living with a mother who was like that could >> well, it was not easy to sneak out of the house. tavis: billly. billy. >> stuff like, "how many did you have tonight?" it really, like i said, it was not that spectacular to me, you know, because we were also wait -- raised in kind of an indian way. my mother's family was part indian, so we were raised and kind of more spiritual than religious way. we went to church, but we were taught a lot of magical things by our great grandmother, so it never seemed extraordinary to me. tavis: how did you, in that particular area, the region, the

bible belt, how did you juxtapose those two things, your mother and this psychic stuff with church and god and the holy spirit? those two things do not reside so well together. >> well, we kinda went to church is because people went to church. my mother never has believed that they preclude each other. i think that is the word, but, you know, year is the thing. after a while, a lot of kids when they go to church, they do not pay much attention to what they are doing or what they are saying or whenever, and when i was a teenager, i read the bible cover to cover, and i started

thinking about the profits, what are profits. it was ok to net profits way back then, but you cannot have any now, and i thought that was a lie. i do not think one knocks the other out. i think you can have a religious life and be outside of the box a little bit. tavis: that is your mother. when you finally hit back, it stopped. >> yes. it is bizarre, because that was around when i was 16, i guess. and it was not his fault in so many ways, but, you know, when

you are a kid, you do not think about, like comedy does not have the capacity to be more than he is. maybe i can talk to him and go to him instead, but instead of that, you grow up in fear, you know? guys my age in the area of the world where i grew up, that was not uncommon, to have a father that was closed off and would hit you and stuff like that. it was kind of, and, unfortunately, but that is the way they were raised, and the father before them was raised that way. that whole sense. when we did "monsters ball," i was playing a character like him, even using some of his watch and mannerisms. the bad guy. it was his father, and i felt

that way about my dad in a lot of ways, and once he died, i had just turned 18, it was four days after my 18th birthday, and i cannot forget, i did not cry at my father's funeral, and i felt guilty about that, and he got sick not too long after he and i have that final altercation, and i felt real guilty because of that too, and when i was in my late thirties, i kind of got it. here was a guy that was raised in this way, and i think he wanted to be more than he was, and i think it ate him up inside, and a lot of things i started feeling when i grew up i knew he felt, but i was raised in a time where we do have talks about these things. we are more open these days, and

my dad and his friends, they were very closed off, and so feelings were something that you bottled up, so i felt real bad for him, and i love my father to this day. you cannot help it. i mean, that is your old man, you know? tavis: do you recall what transpired, what happens, or did it just happened, all of that motion years later, after your father is now gone, given that you did not cry at his funeral, is there something that did bubble up at that time >> well, part of it was it was right around the time my brother died. he was 30, and i had just had a bout when i went into hospital and almost did not make it, and i think something about confronting mortality, thinking

my father died when he was 44 or something like that. he was a young man. which, i did not look at it that way at that time. when you are a kid, someone is in their mid-forties, they are a man, and i was a kid. thinking about how hard life is, and knowing how he had kids he was trying to support and pressure on him, not having a lot of money and everything, i think are just kind of came together right there, and feeling emotional about what happened with me and my brother. tavis: that dance with mortality can open you up to a variety things that you did not heretofore consider. >> yes.

tavis: i ask you about this specifically, because i think when i talk to anyone of being accomplished from arkansas, there is something about being from arkansas, where arkansas and of being a character. you talk about this in the book, growing up in a small town in arkansas. you talk about that. how much does a growing up in that state factor into who you are, those surroundings? >> yes, there is something about it. like the deep south, mississippi and alabama, louisiana, georgia, it has a slightly different vibe from arkansas. arkansas had that thing that those states do not have, which is the actual hillbilly thing. it would be arkansas, kentucky, tennessee, west virginia, so it was a little bit different

there, and it was always known as a place, it would get joked about in hillbilly terms. i think we have a chip on our shoulder a little bit. and there was a lot of great magical stuff that came out of there, too, you know, really smart people who were great artists and things like that, and i think some of us broke out of there because we did have that foundation of some real heavy great stuff, and the insecurity drove us, and i would have not had anything to write about, you know, being an artist or a musician or anything else if it was not for that. tavis: a lot of folks do not want to admit this, but i think it is true, that in security drives us in so many ways, for

you to admit that, a lot of us will not acknowledge that. tell us about that, when you say that in security drove you, and does insecurity still dry you? >> absolutely, no doubt about it, yes. i will be the first guy to say to you, and i may not have said this 10 years ago, but i will tell you that i have struggled with insecurity, and insecurity is not even a word we use a growing up. that is more of a modern day sort of new-age way to put it, you know what i mean? i have always been scared and never thought i was as the as anyone else, and i still do not. in terms of what i would do as an artist, i always had conflicts, but i never believed that anybody would take anything

that i did seriously or care one way or another about it, and i probably feel it as strongly now as i did when i was 20 years old. tavis: but you are so much more accomplished now. it has not dissipated? >> no. it has probably gotten worse in a lot of ways, and i have a period, which was probably about 1995 or 1996 through about 2003. those were the days that i got powell of its a little bit, and i think it has returned since the world has started changing drastically in terms of what they want from people like me, you know? i mean, you can college age. i can put off on, well, i am in my mid fifties now, so i him

feeling the same in security now that i was feeling when i was younger, but i do not think it is that simple. i think it is more to do that here i am, a guy that grew up in the heyday of rock-and-roll and the heyday of the type of movies that i think filmmakers aspire to, and musicians aspire to those types of records, say it through the mid-1970s, and that was really the great time, you know, and that is rapidly changing, so you start to feel less relevant, so it is not age as much as it is we are heading down a path that is really destroying a lot of the magic that we grow up with. you know, there was a time when i could walk down the street,

hollywood boulevard or beverly drive, and somebody would come up to you, and they would say, "excuse me," and you barely hear them, and you turn around and say, "yes, how are you doing?" and they would say, "i am sorry to bother you, but i am a fan of yours, and would you sign this paper?" and you are happy to do that, and people are happy. now, you walk down the streets, and some guy with a camera comes up behind you and says, "that last movie you did sucked. why did you do that?" a at is the kind of reverence they have now. i cannot imagine you, say, walking up to paul newman, , when we first got to town, and poking him in the back and being that irreverent, and i think a lot of the reason is there is too much access.

people feel like, especially since the power has been given over to the audience. basically, there are no stars anymore. the audience is the star, so it is finally a time when everybody got their butt beat in school -- tavis: revenge of the sith nerds. that was a real movie. -- revenge of the nerds. the only time we saw paul newman was in a movie. we did not see him on the street, scratching his rear end, and now they can see you. tavis: what did you mean about society? >> the social network, it is pretty obvious how the system can spot people's weaknesses and desires and play into that and make a lot of money off of people by making the people feel import.

they call it after the people. it is youtube, iphone, myspace, a and whatever it is, and people think we have a chance of anybody can be somebody, and understand that people are making billions of dollars off of the selling of these gadgets. i do not see anything wrong with a cell phone. you have a flat tire, and you are digging in your pocket to look for a quarter for a pay phone, and the next thing, that can cut down on a lot of talking done on the telephone. nothing wrong with computers as things. wonders in communications and business and medicine and everything else, but once it becomes this forum for this platform for everybody in the world to voice their opinion, and they are not all created equal. tavis: and they may think they

are. >> i think it is dehumanizing us, and we are losing the process of life, and there are so many reality shares, and here is the funny thing on his thinking about the other day. i can say something stupid or do something stupid, and it can affect my career in a negative way, and that goes for anybody who is well-known, politicians or anybody, but reality shows are usually created by people doing and saying stupid things. tavis: the more you do, the more -- >> exactly, so you can get famous for doing something stupid and empty, but if you do something stupid and empty in your career, you can lose it. tavis: i had not thought about it that way. so all of this, back to what you said a moment ago, that insecurity that you're speaking about a moment ago that is now

connected with, my word, not yours, a certain uncertainty about what the world now expects a view given all of what you have just unpacked for me, how are you going to figure that out? in your fifties, as an actor? >> i do not know. a lot of people are doing television now. great, a legendary actors are doing movies on cable and stuff now, and you cannot blame them because they are still doing adult dramas and adult comedies on those stations. in the movie business, what used to become movies are now is a genre called the adult drama, and those are pretty much wiped out. so i probably could not get "sling blade" made now, for instance. they do slip through the cracks and manage to find their way, but not very often, and movies

now, you can watch a trailer for a movie on television now, and you are not sure if it is a video game or a movie. you have to wait until the end, and that one is a movie, oftentimes based on a movie, so we are heading towards a time where there will not be anything other than movies that are essentially maybin videogames, and actors can become obsolete, and then the big stars will be people who live in brentwood or wherever it is, and they have a show called, you know, i do not know, pool parties of brentwood, and how many more jobs are they going to put on television? now, i have got nothing against aquariums, and these might be entered stadium, but they have got two shows. one seems like plenty. but they have two, and then they are going to have cabinetmaker

morris. ditchdigger wars. they have got 10 shows about making cakes. tavis: i have to say this quick. you mentioned "sling blade." this is a good place in this book. "the billy bob tapes," it is amazing how easy slip into character. u.d., carl. you slip into that character so easily, and pop back out into billy. >> here is the thing. it is easy in the moment. the hard part is living in life where you met people like that and pieced them together to create that character. i have been doing that so long but it is not like i can go into it because it is an acting exercise. it is because i know the character and have lived it, so somebody asked me one time,

"what was your process as an actor," and it is like going to gobble like a turkey, going out and start thinking about when somebody ran over your puppy, and i said, "you know what? my process started when i was born, and the process is live experience." i believe what makes you an artist, or at least an artist that can communicate the idea is that they want to get across are people who have life experience, and if you can draw on that life experience, that is where it happens. it is simple right there in the moment, but it took years and years of life experience to get that. tavis: i wish i had years and years to talk to billy bob here. a few nights in a row. i have just scratched the surface of this book. what is good about this conversation is it gives you a sense about what the book is. they have cameras going, it just

like we have tonight. it is about his authentic memoir, in terms of training and formulation, the authentic memoir that you would get out of anybody, because you have got this guy shooting straight from the neck and from the lip, i guess, from a heart more expressly. the book is called billy bob thornton, "the billy bob tapes: a cave full of ghosts," with an introduction by angelina jolie unpegged -- jolie. it is the to have you on the program. never enough time. you have got me thinking. that is our show until next time. until then, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. conversation with -- a rock legend, greg allman, on

his best selling memoir, "my cross to bear." that is next time. we will see you then. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where better. her pbs station from viewers like you. -- >> and by contributions to a pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. pbs.