How can you ruin your reputation in a whole country and cost yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, with social media?
Well, you could be Bill Bob Thornton, who is pulling out of his Canadian tour dates with his band, the Boxmasters.
Why?
Well, Billy Bob (it’s difficult to take anyone with who retains that moniker as an adult seriously) had a bit of a trantrum on camera during an interview with Jian Ghomeshi, host of the CBC radio show Q. Ghomeshi mentioned – horror of horrors – that BB had a previous career in acting. BB’s response was to reprise Joaquin Phoenix’s disastrous Letterman appearance, answering “I don’t know” to questions as obvious as how long the band has been together, and going on a long monologue about a toy building magazine he read as a child when asked what his musical preferences were.
Watch the whole trainwreck interview here:
After bad-mouthing Canadian audiences – and just clearly being a petulant jerk during the interview – Billy Bob was booed at his first Canadian show.
Now, he’s pulled out of all the remaining Canadian dates:
Billy Bob Thornton — who hit a sour note during a disastrous CBC radio interview Wednesday — has cancelled his band’s remaining Canadian shows.
Whatever the impact of those shows, and whatever the impact of BB’s performance on Canadian fans and audiences … the bigger impact is probably south of the border, where the YouTube video is also getting major attention. Many of the comments on the Q blog are obviously from Americans. The YouTube video already has almost 1.2 million views.
Way to go, Billy. Life is lived in public these days … and a moment’s bad temper can color people’s impressions of you for a long time.
Just ask Michael Richards, AKA Cosmo Kramer.