Billy Bob's Filmography

U-TURN (1997)

Movie Quote
DARRELL:  Ya think bad, then bad's what ya get.
BOBBY:  That's a pretty decent philosophy you got there.
DARRELL:  Yeah, well, no charge.

Plot
Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn) owes thousands to some scary folk in Las Vegas.  He's got the scratch to pay off the debt, but only after losing two of his fingers.  Unfortunately, Bobby's journey to Vegas is derailed when he blows a radiator hose in his red 1964 (and a half!) Mustang convertible, forcing him off the highway and smack into the craziest damn town imaginable:  Superior, Arizona.  When the local (and only) mechanic (our Billy Bob) rips him off, Bobby needs money badly to get him back en route to settle his debt.  In short order, a wealthy man (Nick Nolte) hires him to bump off his young wife, and the young wife (Jennifer Lopez) seduces Bobby into bumping off her husband.  Could things get any worse for Bobby?  Well . . . yeah.  Little does he know that he's filming this picture in the same town where Christopher Walken unleashed hell in THE PROPHECY.

What Billy Bob Gets To Do
But none is quite as triumphantly bent as Billy Bob's greasy, rotund Darrell, the auto mechanic who's not quite as dumb as Sean Penn thinks he is.  To gain 50 pounds worth of Billy Belly for the part, Billy Bob drank two Dr. Pepper and butter pecan ice cream floats each night before going to bed at night.  He gets to rip off Sean Penn in true grease-monkey fashion, while demonstrating just how twisted a game of Twister can be with the right costuming.  Judging from the above snapshot, we think he's an autumn.

Backstory
John Ridley adapted the screenplay from his novel, Stray Dogs (a title which Billy Bob actually said he preferred).  Director Oliver Stone packed this fish-out-of-water black comedy set in the spooky Arizona desert with a host of amazing character actors:  Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Claire Danes, Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Bob's future father-in-law Jon Voight, Julie Haggerty, and J-Lo, all ganging up (with Billy Bob) on poor shnook Sean Penn.  We don't know what kind of cactus Mr. Stone was smoking when he directed this delirious misadventure, but it features a lovely and disturbing score by Ennio Morricone and one of the better scorpion perfs I've ever seen in a movie that didn't involve nuclear radiation as a key plot point. By the way, the town of Superior, Arizona, actually exists (and THE PROPHECY was really shot there), and that gas station Darrell works at, Harlin's, still stands.  

Awards (for U-TURN)
Thank you for shopping the Golden Raspberry Awards

Relevant Links
IMDb Link
Official Sony DVD Page
Official Sony VHS Page
El Darrell! Official Sony Spanish Subtitled VHS Page
Movieweb review
MRQE links to U-TURN reviews
Bomis links to several U-TURN Sites
Vacation in beauteous Superior, Arizona, home of the World's Smallest Museum!

Related Merchandise
The score to U-TURN was composed by the great (and still inexcusably Oscar-lorn) Ennio Morricone.  It has Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire and Peggy Lee's It's a Great Day, plus a deeply haunting theme for Jennifer Lopez's femme fatale character Grace.  Wonderful music for the open road, as long as your car is in peak running condition.