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Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we go down south to talk about Billy Bob Thornton! To do this, we bring in devoted Billy Bob fan, friend, writer, director, and producer Nicholas Gray of Uncompromised Creative.

We have a super-sized B-Side collection today: (deep breath) Homegrown, Daddy and Them, Waking Up in Reno, The Badge, Levity, Chrystal, and Jayne Mansfield’s Car.

Conor makes the observation that Thornton may be a leading man trapped in a character actor’s body, Nicholas marvels at the nuance of Jayne Mansfield’s Car, and I mention liking movies that start with an original sin of sorts. We talk about how Burt Reynolds helped Billy Bob break into the business, the long cultural legs of his film Sling Blade,...

AMC Studios has entered into multi-year overall deals with Rolin Jones, Gina Mingacci and Ray McKinnon.

Under the deals, all three will develop and produce new series for AMC Networks’ Entertainment Group as well as other content companies. The deals expand AMC Networks’ ongoing or previous creative partnerships with Jones, Mingacci and McKinnon.

“Our writers and producers are the center of everything we do and achieve, and I could not be happier to welcome (back) this massively talented triumvirate to AMC Networks,” said Sarah Barnett, president of AMC Networks’ Entertainment Group and AMC Studios. “Rolin, Gina and Ray are exceptional. I look forward to making incredible television with these brilliant humans, all of whom are incapable of doing anything that isn’t something special.”

Jones was the co-creator and showrunner of HBO’s upcoming “Perry Mason” series as well as the Season 1 executive producer and showrunner of “The Exorcist” for Fox.

Tarence Ray and Tom Sexton from the Trillbilly Worker’s Party take Joe and Josh on a cinematic journey through the South.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011)

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (2009)

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Deliverance (1972)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Boogie Nights (1997)

In Bruges (2008)

The Birds (1963)

Cleopatra (1963)

The Blind Side (2009)

Moneyball (2011)

Next of Kin (1989)

Speed (1994)

Gravity (2013)

Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)

Hustle and Flow (2005)

Black Snake Moan (2007)

Dolemite Is My Name (2019)

Black Snake (1973)

Mandy (2018)

Sling Blade (1996)

One False Move (1992)

The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

George Washington (2000)

Prince Avalanche (2013)

Halloween (1978)

Halloween (2018)

Halloween: H20 (1998)

Halloween (2007)

Joe (2014)

All The Real Girls (2003)

Chrystal (2005)

The Accountant (2001)

O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)

Wild River (1960)

The Ladykillers (2004)

The Ladykillers (1956)

Baywatch (2017)

Tin Men (1987)

52 Pick-Up (1986)

Gremlins (1984)

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Mad Max (1978)

Mad Max 2 – The Road Warrior (1980)

Alien (1979)

Aliens (1986)

Fire Down Below (1997)

Coal Miner’s Daughter...

Though Ray McKinnon won an Oscar for his 2001 short "The Accountant" and went to Sundance with his 2004 film "Chrystal," starring his late wife Lisa Blount and Billy Bob Thornton, he's best known for his work as an actor. He's a familiar face from features like "That Evening Sun" and the upcoming "Mud," and shows like "Sons of Anarchy" and "Deadwood," in which he played a pivotal first season role as the kind-hearted but slowly deteriorating Reverend Smith. Sundance Channel's meditative, lovely new series "Rectify," which is created, written and executive produced by McKinnon, seems clearly shaped by those experiences on both sides of the camera. A drama about a man named Daniel Holden (Aden Young) who's released from death row after 19 years when DNA evidence leads to his sentence being vacated (without clearing him of the crime), the six-episode show is emphatically intimate, closing in on the first week in Daniel's life back home,...

Lisa Blount, best known for her role as Debra Winger's friend Lynette in "An Officer and a Gentlemen," has died. She was 53.

Blount was found dead in her Little Rock, Arkansas home by her mother on Monday, says the New York Post. A police report said Blount was clutching a cell phone and blood was seeping from her nostrils. Her husband, actor/producer Ray McKinnon, was out of town at the time of his wife's death.

Lisa Blount, an Arkansas-born Academy Award-winning producer and actress, was found dead in her Little Rock home Wednesday by her mother. She was 53. There were no signs of foul play, and Blount appeared to have died on Monday, Pulaski County Coroner Garland Camper told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. The paper also reports that Blount's husband, actor and director Ray McKinnon, was out of town this week.Blount was nominated for a Golden Globe for playing Debra Winger's friend, Lynette Pomeroy, in 1982's An Officer and a Gentleman. In 2001, the live-action short film she produced, The Accountant won an Oscar.

AMC is developing a legal drama with actor-writer-producer Ray McKinnon that would star "The Shield's" Walton Goggins.

McKinnon, perhaps recognized for his roles on HBO's "Deadwood" and CBS' 2008 mini "Comanche Moon," created and wrote the AMC project, titled "Rectify"; he also will serve as exec producer with Mark Johnson (AMC's "Breaking Bad"). Goggins and Stephen Kay are co-executive producers.

" 'Rectify' takes us to the crossroads of two incredibly compelling worlds," said Christina Wayne, AMC's senior vp scripted series and miniseries. "Ray McKinnon's script beautifully weaves together the legal drama surrounding a wrongful conviction into a great character-driven family drama, and in that sense, it is totally unique."

McKinnon also wrote, directed and co-starred opposite Billy Bob Thornton in the 2004 film "Chrystal." McKinnon and Goggins also appear together in the movie "I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down."

McKinnon is repped by attorney Bill Skrzyniarz. Goggins is...

AFI Fest 2004 has rolled out an eclectic roster for its 18th annual Los Angeles International Film Festival, ranging from The Assassination of Richard Nixon, directed by Niels Mueller and starring Sean Penn, to Yesterday, directed by Darrell James Roodt. In addition to Assassination, this year's special screenings include Tim Daly's Bereft, Christophe Barratier's Les Choristes, Ray McKinnon's Chrystal, Robert Lepage's Far Side of the Moon, Asia Argento's The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, Terry George's Hotel Rwanda, Daniel Anker's Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust, Ariel Vroman's Rx, Mark Wexler's Tell Them Who You Are, Nicole Kassell's The Woodsman and Yesterday.