First Look: Drop And Give Billy Bob 20!

There’s a reason Billy Bob Thornton is tackling his third coach role in a year, and it’s not, he assures us, the comfy polyester tracksuits. It’s his dad. After leading a Texas high school football team in Friday Night Lights last fall and bossing around a scrappy bunch of Little Leaguers in this summer’s Bad News Bears remake, Thornton Jr. is donning the whistle once again to play next year’s Mr. Woodcock, “the P.E. teacher we all had growing up, but a little darker,” the Bad Santa star says. His portrayal of the sometimes sadistic Woodcock, Thornton says, was influenced by his dad Billy Ray, “a very good high school basketball coach but also a hard-ass.” The Arkansas-born actor believes the kind of discipline dispensed by men like Woodcock and his father is, regrettably, on the wane. “If you tell a student what to do these days, they just pull a knife on you.” And the best way to prevent that, obviously, is by stepping on them first.