Billy Bob Thornton appeared in a film based on a novel.
A Simple Plan is a 1998 American neo-noir crime thriller film adapted by Scott B. Smith from his 1993 novel of the same name . Billy Bob Thornton . He appeared in several major film roles in the 1990s following Sling Blade , including Oliver Stone 's neo-noir U Turn ( 1997 ) , political drama Primary Colors ( 1998 ) , science fiction disaster film Armageddon ( 1998 ) , which was the highest-grossing film of that year , and the crime drama A Simple Plan ( 1998 ) , which earned him his third Academy Awards nomination . Primary Colors is a 1998 film based on the novel Primary Colors : A Novel of Politics , a roman à clef about Bill Clinton 's first presidential campaign in 1992 , which was originally published anonymously , but in 1996 was revealed to have been written by journalist Joe Klein , who had been covering Clinton 's campaign for Newsweek . U Turn is a 1997 modern western neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Oliver Stone , and based on the book Stray Dogs by John Ridley .