Thomas Jane of ‘Boogie Nights’ talks about his new western ‘Frontier Crucible’

Thomas Jane in ‘Frontier Crucible.’ Photo courtesy of Well Go USA.

Actor Thomas Jane (“Boogie Nights”) chatted about starring in the new western film “Frontier Crucible,” which will be in theaters and on digital on December 5th, 2025.

The synopsis is: A desperately needed wagon full of medical supplies falls victim to an Apache attack.

The only man who can guide it through to its destination is Merrick Beckford, but in order to get there, he’ll need to enlist the help of a trio of dangerous outlaws hell-bent on survival.

When they accidentally kill an Apache scout, all bets are off, and survival is the name of the game in director Travis Mills’s western thriller.

‘Frontier Crucible’

On doing this western, he exclaimed, “We had a blast. We didn’t have any trailers. We were stuck out in the middle of nowhere for a month. The nights were freezing cold. The days were cloudless.”

“So, we had the sun beating down on us, and we had a lot of blood. So, there was a lot of washing the blood out, it became a nightly ritual. So yeah, we had a blast,” he noted.

On playing his character, he said, “I am a western fan. I love westerns. I’m always looking for a good western tale.”

Thomas Jane praised co-star Myles Clohessy for being “a good actor” and he stated that he “had fun.”

Lessons learned from this screenplay

“The characters that you’re playing are always an exploration of parts of yourself,” he observed. “You don’t have anything else to work with. The good actors dig in and try to reveal something about themselves that they might not have known themselves.”

“So a character will give you an opportunity to explore,” he admitted. “Not necessarily to find or nail down, but you want to explore.”

“You have a safety net since it’s just a story; it’s fiction. It’s just a character. The really good ones have a way of kind of getting inside of you.”

“If you let it, they can change you. They can make you think about life in different ways. That’s why I try to give everything I got to the roles that I play because I never know what I’m going to learn and what I’m going to get out of it,” he acknowledged.

“Then, hopefully I can become a better person at the end of it. That’s the idea,” he added.

‘Boogie Nights’ and ‘Magnolia’

Jane recalled being a part of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia.” “Those are great. I’m very grateful for ‘Boogie Nights’ because it gave me a career. That was a really, really fun time,” he said.

“We were all young and we were just starting out and we got to hang out with Burt Reynolds,” Jane said. “Burt would tell stories about what it was like to be an actor in the ‘50s. Acting is an oral tradition. You learn from the guys who came before you.”

“It has been that way for 2,000 years. So, there are no books. You can read some books, but you can go to some classes,” he said.

“The craft of acting is passed on from actor to actor,” Jane said. “So, ‘Boogie Nights’ was a place where we all got to sort of sit at the feet of Burt Reynolds, and he actually taught acting in Florida.”

“I didn’t know that,” he admitted. “So, he had an affinity for trying to pass on what he had learned to younger actors, and I remember literally sitting at his feet.”

The digital age

On being an actor in the digital age, Jane said, “It’s always evolving. The career and the business is always evolving. You have this revival.”

“Sundance became a thing in the ’90s, where these little heartfelt movies about quirky characters were getting a lot of attention,” Jane noted. “As a result, Sundance blew up and all the studios started coming and buying the movies. So, I would go to Sundance and I had a few movies there and that was the business.”

“Everybody wanted to get into independent film. A lot of neat movies were made, and a lot of garbage, and then, it changed. Cable came along, and then HBO and cable became a very big thing,” he said.

“Out of HBO, all these other cable stations grew. Then, the blockbusters and the superhero movies moved in and they took over. Later on, when streaming came along, it changed the whole game,” he added.

Thomas Jane on the disadvantages of the digital age

“Streaming is bad for the business and for actors because they don’t get paid,” he said. “You used to get residuals on movies and DVD. Every time your film ran on television, you would get a few bucks. It was part of the deal. It’s how actors made a living, writers, and directors too. It’s how we made a living in between jobs.”

“So, you didn’t have to take some crappy jobs or wait for your next job. You could pay the rent with the residuals. Once streaming came along, they didn’t do that anymore,” he explained.

“They were like, we don’t have a contract. We’re not cable. We’re not broadcast TV. We don’t have to pay you anything, and somehow, we never changed that. So, now you don’t get residuals from streaming, even though it’s watched by 10 times more people than cable ever did,” he elaborated.

“So, streaming changed the game,” he admitted. “Actors who were supporting actors could make a living but now they can’t. So, I think that it’s going to have an effect on the business and the kind of stories that get told.”

“Hopefully, something will change again and allow artists to make a living doing what they do,” he said. “It’s a problem for the consumer, and for people who want to be entertained, and for people that want to work.”

“They can’t make a living being an actor for a lot of folks, whereas they used to be able to make a living doing commercials,” he said. “If you booked a commercial, that would pay your rent for a year. You would make $50,000 or $100,000, and back then, that was a decent living.”

“You could put your kids through school,” he said. “That was a business. It was a cutthroat, and it really tough to get a job in a commercial. I came out of that. I got my SAG card doing a Coca-Cola commercial.”

“I played a chicken who was lost on the way to a costume party, and then we ended up at a cafe drinking Coca-Cola,” he added.

Success

On his definition of success, Jane said, “Success means doing things that you love and giving it your best. It means giving it your best. It means no matter what people think of it, you know in your heart, that you’ve given it everything that you have to give.”

“If you do that, you’ll learn. You’ll learn from all the mistakes and the successes that you have. If you give everything you’ve got to whatever you bring to life, you’ll become better. The people around you will become better and you will have success,” he elaborated.

Closing thoughts on ‘Frontier Crucible’

For fans and viewers, he remarked, “I like the throwback period western, and this is a homage to that. If you like character pieces, emotional chess, or westerns, you will enjoy the film.”

“I love the way it was shot. They did such a great job recreating what a western used to look like. So, we’re proud of the way this movie looks,” he concluded.

To learn more about Thomas Jane, follow him on Instagram.