9 Awesome Movies That Started Out As Short Films

Sling Blade is the movie that launched Billy Bob Thornton to stardom, and the one responsible for strangers asking if he’d like some “French fried potaters.” The movie is a touching, dark drama about a mentally disabled man who is released years after killing her mother with a sling blade.

The movie started life as a short written by and starring Thornton, which saw his character Karl Childers in a mental institute being interviewed by a reporter. Brat Pack star Molly Ringwald played the reporter, and the short is shot in stark black and white. The short is also a little darker than the movie, with Karl coming across as a less sympathetic figure. The late great J.T. Walsh appears too, playing the same creepy inmate he'd go on to play in the movie.

For fans of Sling Blade the short is fascinating alternate look at the material, but the movie really built on the foundation of it and made it something special; mmm-hmm.