Billy Bob's Filmography

ARMAGEDDON (1998)

Movie Quote
TRUMAN:  Damage? Total, sir.  It's what we call a global killer. The end of mankind.

Plot
A massive asteroid is headed straight for Planet Earth, and mankind's only hope rests with a scruffy crew of deep-core oil drillers.  These non-astronauts have only 18 days to train for space travel and a snowball's chance in hell of landing safely on the asteroid surface.  If they make it, they must drill into the asteroid, plant a nuclear device, and detonate it before the asteroid collides with Earth.

What Billy Bob Gets To Do
Dan Truman is the stalwart, focused NASA Project Director who must transform the roughneck drillers into astronauts who can endure the rigors of G forces and space madness in order to travel by space shuttle to the surface of the asteroid.  Maintaining his stoic dignity in the face of roughneck hijinks, Truman keeps his hand steady on the tiller at Mission Control . . . until the government panics and moves in to take over the operation.  Truman then has to pull an end-run around the military in order to buy the drillers more time to complete their mission.  Director Michael Bay originally envisioned the character of Dan Truman as a flashy space cowboy when he asked Billy Bob to play the part.  Billy Bob delivered Truman as a straight government man, right down to the dark suit.  No "asteroid the size of Texas, Mr. President," no host of bizarre demands from our heroic drillers, no rapidly approaching deadline to collision, not even the release of a rival asteroid film several weeks before ARMAGEDDON's release could dampen Billy Bob's sincere, standout work.  It was Billy Bob who came up with the idea of giving Dan Truman a leg brace from an old injury to preclude Truman's own dreams of astronaut glory.  Even though he only needed that rather uncomfortable brace for one scene, he wore it the entire time that he played the character.  While Truman didn't rate his own action figure the way Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Steve Buscemi, and Liv Tyler did, he consistently rated as one of the best-liked characters in studio audience testing and established himself as an international screen presence.  Dan Truman is his most popular character among his Japanese fans.  By the way, the term "global killer" is also a nickname Billy Bob's fans use to describe his megawatt smile.

Backstory
ARMAGEDDON was the number one box office champ of 1998 and garnered four Oscar nominations (visual effects, sound, sound effects editing, and song) along with a host of plaudits from genre awards around the world (including the unwanted Golden Razzies, but BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN swept that dubious contest that year).  The producers enlisted a host of actors with solid indie pedigrees, like Owen Wilson, Peter Stormare, and Steve Buscemi, as well as major stars Bruce Willis, Liv Tyler, and Ben Affleck, and such supporting reliables as Keith David, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Patton, Ken Campbell, William Fitchner, Jason Isaacs, Jessica Steen, Eddie Griffin, and (in a scene restored in the Criterion release) '40s matinee tough guy Lawrence Tierney as Bruce Willis' ailing father.   There are plenty of great blink-n-you'll-miss-'em appearances by the likes of Udo Kier (he was Andy Warhol's Dracula many moons ago), Grace Zabriskie,  Shawnee Smith, Gedde Watanabe, Michael Bay (as a NASA geek), and the always cute li'l Erik Per Sullivan.  Charlton Heston narrates, which is as it should be.  We've gotta admit that hearing Heston narrate the opening shot of planet earth made us want to shout, "Get your filthy, stinking paws off our planet, you damned, dirty asteroid!"

Awards (for Billy Bob Thornton)
Blockbuster Entertainment Award (Favorite Supporting Actor, Sci-Fi) - 1999 - Nomination

Awards (for ARMAGEDDON)
The list is about the size of . . . never mind, here's the IMDb awards link.

Relevant Links
IMDb Link
alien.sciflicks.com A good sci-fi flavored page for ARMAGEDDON fans
Hilarious parody script!
Filming location site
Bomis Links to several ARMAGEDDON sites
Downloadable eye candy for you Dan Truman fans from Desktop Themes Cinema
An Italian site
petesmoviepage.com: Pete is the Lord of the ARMAGEDDON Webring

Related Merchandise
There was a line of toys (including a replica of the armadillo drilling vehicle), but Billy Bob did not become an action figure.  We also recommend the glossy softcover of Mark Cotta Vaz's Visions of ARMAGEDDON (which includes some nice snaps of BBT), available from Hyperion Books.  There's also a novelization of the script by M.C. Bolin.  There are two soundtracks:  the one chock full o' songs (called ARMAGEDDON: The Album), includes Aerosmith's Oscar-nominated I Don't Want To Miss A Thing. Trevor Rabin's alternately anthemic and rapid-fire score, which won the BMI Film Music Award, is found on the CD ARMAGEDDON: The Original Motion Picture Score.