Billy Bob Thornton and Dwayne Johnson Discuss 'Faster'

Billy Bob Thornton and Dwayne Johnson Faster Press Conference

Billy Bob Thornton: "I didn’t know Carla before the movie. She’s such an easy person to work with. She blends into a scene so easily. I was very fortunate in that case, because Carla was cast not too long before we started the movie, so we didn’t have any time, really."

"I think Carla is one of those actors who sometimes is overlooked as a really terrific actor. Not that people don’t respect her and think she’s great, but sometimes when somebody’s really good in the part and they don’t try to eat the walls off, they can be overlooked because they’re so good you don’t notice it because you buy them in the part. I think Carla is one of those. She was terrific. Couldn’t be a nicer person, and I have to say one of the hardest things on this movie, people said, 'What was hard about doing this movie?' and I’m trying to think about it, because there wasn’t really anything hard to me about doing this movie other than reminding myself that I was in this very intense, dark movie and why that character was, because everybody on this movie was so nice I couldn’t believe it."

"Dwayne’s the nicest guy you’ll ever run into. This guy, George Tillman, you don’t see directors like this ever. At some point during a movie, always, you want to pull the director aside and say, 'Listen! You didn’t create this thing, you understand me? Those creeps over at that studio hired your old bones to come out here and resurrect your ass, so you know, whatever.' And this guy, every day I’m like, 'Would you yell at me or something?' And the writers are like, 'Hey, you got any ideas?' And I’m like, 'Am I in Disneyland?' So that was the hardest thing about it, when people like Carla and Dwayne and Moon Bloodgood, by the way, who played my wife and Aedin [Mincks], the little kid, and Oliver [Jackson-Cohen] – just everybody, they were just fantastic. I know a lot of these people don’t get mentioned sometimes."

"I do have to say this one thing about the little boy that played mine and Moon’s son. He came up to me when we first got there, I didn’t even know the kid yet, and walks at me and he goes, 'Hey! I loved you in Bad News Bears!' And I said, 'Well, thank you.' I’m getting used to that from kids, and you’re always glad that it’s Bad News Bears and not Bad Santa. But he walks up and he said one of the weirdest and funniest things I ever heard anybody say to me on the set, which was, 'Hey, do you watch the Capital One commercials with those Vikings?' and I go, 'Yeah, I do. I love those things, they’re very funny.' 'You know the fat kid?' 'Yeah.' 'That’s me!' Just a little anecdote."

How important were those family scenes for you?

Billy Bob Thornton: "First of all, once again the writers actually thought to put something like that in there to give us other aspects of the guy’s life. That was really important to George. That was a big thing for him to get those scenes right. Thing is, there wasn’t much of it, but what there was there, he got the most out of it. If you get a good kid, it’s always kind of amusing and sweet. It was easy just to lay there and talk to the kid about baseball, and you look at him and you can imagine he’s probably not very good, so it was pretty easy to feel something for the kid is all I’m saying. And George really wanted to make sure that even though there’s a brief thing there – I mean, we had a lot of discussions about how to be around the kid and everything – and of course as usual, from the top brasses, 'You can’t smoke around the kid!' But I can do heroin around the kid? His mother can puke in the bathtub? But yeah, we went through a lot of stuff with the kid."

Billy Bob, you used the term “real.” You never know what kind of world you’re releasing a film into because it takes a while to put together, but considering the recent Ronni Chasen shooting - and hearing other audience members’ gleeful reactions to the shootings depicted in this film - do you think films have a responsibility to also depict the consequences of violence?

Billy Bob Thornton: "In our current state of affairs, especially in the entertainment business, we’re living in a time when we’re making, in my humble opinion, the worst movies in history because they’re geared toward the video game playing generation. In these video games, which I’m on my son about constantly, are people killing for fun. I think traditionally in movies, there’s always been some kind of lesson in the violent movies. Even Peckinpah’s movies – inadvertently, Sam Peckinpah created this movie and a lot of other movies with slow motion blood and things like that, which we don’t really have in this – those things at their core were morality tales. This movie doesn’t say, 'Oh, here’s this fun guy and we’re going to do this tongue-in-cheek character right out of a video game who likes to destroy things, and you can laugh about it.' This movie actually shows what prisons create, what murder creates. It shows this perpetual violent string of events. This thing creates that, which creates that, where does it all end, my guy trying to start over, but at the same time I still gotta get this one last mess over with. This really is about something, because I totally agree with you. If you’re just showing a movie that has violence for violence’s sake, I don’t believe in that either."

"But, also, we are in a time when we can have the most violent things you’ve ever seen and they’re hugely popular and everything, and at the same time the very people going to see these movies are somehow so hyper-moral and all this kind of thing. There seems to be like, they’re butting their heads, or there’s some hypocrisy going on. That’s all I’m saying. I believe that in this case, nobody here ever intended to just go do a violent movie because it’s fun. These are dark characters who are in trouble and sorry you had to see it right after all that, because that was someone I knew also - and it’s really not a good thing."

How old is your son?

Billy Bob Thorton: [Deadpan] 52. The one with the video games, he’s 17. He’s not so bad about it, but just every now and then I’ll see one that’s kind of like, 'What’s this?' and then I find out that it’s something that some company I worked for in a movie sent him."

Dwayne, how long did it take you to bulk up for this role? Do you plan on sustaining the weight?

Dwayne Johnson: "I think it was about three and a half months of training, but it was maybe 10 or 12 pounds of training. Again, I think in prison culture, when those guys train and you watch them train, we had the great fortune of sitting down with a couple of individuals who had served a lot of time in maximum security prisons for a variety of crimes including murder, getting into their psyche, their thought process, and their perspective on what it’s like to take another man’s life. But them training itself from prison in a prison yard, it’s a raw type of training. So probably about three and a half months."

"And really quickly too, I want to mention what Billy was talking about, it’s really so nice to be part of the movie and part of a story that is rooted and grounded in today’s world of dazzling special effects and CGI. I can appreciate those movies - I’ve done them myself – but it was nice as an actor to be part of that type of rooted, grounded reality and have all the action, attention and motivation across the board, whether it’s physical, killing, communicating with a son, whatever it may be, fueled by emotion. Everything was just fueled by emotion, so it was very very nice and refreshing."

Do you want this to be a one-off character or is there room for a possible sequel? Maybe he can go looking for redemption?

Dwayne Johnson: "I’m so happy with the movie and how it turned out, and the movie that we created and made, that we’re putting out there. I think the material does lend itself possibly coming back a second time. I think audiences will dictate that, and we have great writers and if the story’s right, then I’d never rule anything out, open and flexible to it."

Any chance The Rock will return to the WWE, even just for a cameo or to guest host?

Dwayne Johnson: "I would love to, it’s just a matter of finding the time. But I’m always communicating with those guys, always communicating with Vince."

Do you enjoy playing a good guy or a bad guy more?

Dwayne Johnson: "I just enjoy the material, so if the material’s moving, whether it’s a good guy or a bad guy or if it’s ambiguous."

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Faster hits theaters on November 24, 2010.

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