Billy Bob Thornton

Shortly into the first episode of Landman, Billy Bob Thornton’s protagonist, Tommy Morris, is talking with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Ainsley, at a college football game. He's just met her quarterback boyfriend, and Tommy asks her if they’re being careful having sex. She replies yes and that they have one rule they stick by. Apologies in advance. “As long as he never cums in me, he can come anywhere on me,” she says. Thornton holds a comic frozen stare and excuses himself to get a Dr. Pepper. It’s funny and crude and has been seen by millions on YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels. But it does nothing to move the story along.

The success of the late Cormac McCarthy reached new heights in the spring of 2007, when mainstream audiences became familiar with his work through the Coen Brothers' film adaptation of No Country for Old Men, which would go on to win Best Picture, followed by the surprising choice of McCarthy's post-apocalyptic book The Road as the next selection in Oprah Winfrey's vaunted Book Club. The reclusive McCarthy did his first television interview ever with her that summer, to the shock of long-standing fans of his work.