Billy Bob Thornton notices all of the Landman clips going viral online.
The Taylor Sheridan hit show that no one saw coming will soon return for a second season. For some viewers, Landman is the very first time that the curtain has been pulled back on the oil industry. That was part of the motivation for the show, which had more than 14.9 million people tune in during the first four weeks of it’s run.
That’s pretty impressive, and I’m sure Season 2 will do similar numbers.
Part of the magic that Landman created with it’s inaugural run? Viewers were hit with viral moment after viral moment. The first one that spread like wildfire online was a risqué father-daughter scene that was shared between Billy Bob Thornton’s Tommy Norris and Michelle Randolph’s Ainsley. Then other, non-risqué yet still eye-opening scenes followed suit.
Like when Taylor Sheridan used Billy Bob Thornton’s Tommy Norris to completely disassemble the clean energy industry. It was a monologue for the ages, and you’ll never look at windmills the same again:
“Do you have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix that much concrete or make that steel, and haul this sh*t out here and put it together with a 450 foot crane? You wanna guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that thing or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it.
And don’t even get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Tesla battery. And never mind the fact that if the whole world decided to go electric tomorrow, we don’t have the transmission lines to get the electricity to the cities. It would take 30 years if we started tomorrow. And unfortunately for your grandkids, we have a 120-year petroleum-based infrastructure. Our whole lives depend on it.
Hell, it’s in everything… that road we came in on, the wheels on every car ever made, including yours, tennis rackets, lipstick, refrigerators antihistamines, anything plastic, your cell phone case, artificial heart valves, any kind of clothing that’s not made with animal or plant fibers, soap, hand lotion, garbage bags, fishing boats, you name it… every f***ing thing. And you know what the kicker is… we’re gonna run out before we find a replacement.
And believe me, if Exxon thought them f***ing things were the future, they’d be putting them all over the goddamn place. Getting oil out of the ground is the most dangerous job in the world, we don’t do it because we like it, we do it because we’ve run out of options. And you’re out here trying to find something to blame for the danger besides your boss. There ain’t nobody to blame but the demand that we keep pumping it.”
Yeah, that went mega-viral last November.
Now that we’re nearing the premiere of Landman Season 2 (on November 16), Billy Bob Thornton has been doing interviews here and there talking about the first season, and what fans can expect from the next one. When he sat down with Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience, the two got to talking about how believable Thornton is as oil-fixer Tommy Norris.
Rogan pointed out one scene in particular – the windmill scene – that he loved. Thornton said that he was amazed at how widely that clip was shared, and told the podcast host that he has actual oil guys come up to him in real life and thank him for that scene:
“That scene, it became huge. It was all over the internet. When I run into an oil guy, wherever it is – mainly Texas – they always bring that scene up and thank me. (They say), ‘Thanks for showing people what this is.’
When I did that scene, I was committed to it. Taylor is very good about writing gigantic monologues for me. When something makes sense to you, dialogue wise, it’s easy to do a long monologue. If you don’t know what it means, it’s harder to do the monologue.”
Thornton went on to add that he knows the clip was politicized. Those against clean energy took the video and ran with it. From Bill Bob’s point of view, that scene wasn’t trying to lift up one political party while stepping on the other. Instead, it was just something that Taylor Sheridan loves to do… show people underneath the hood:
“I do get questions, because of the nature of the show, people try to politicize everything. The fact of the matter is that Taylor, with that show, is not taking a side. He’s just saying, ‘Here’s a look behind the curtain at how this works.'”
You can hear more from Billy Bob Thornton in the interview below:
The Joe Rogan Experience – Billy Bob Thornton
