This weekend kicked off the annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival and ComingSoon.net was there covering the events and talking to the stars about their upcoming projects.
The first night of the SBIFF, we talked to Sandra Bullock who was the recipient of the American Riviera Award and unfortunately it doesn’t look like we will be seeing much of her after award season.
“I’m not going to do anything producing or acting wise. I have other thing I’d love to do that are away from the camera so I’m going to concentrate on those for right now,” Bullock told ComingSoon.net.
“I just don’t want to open a script a read something right now. I mean who knows, next week it could change, but right now I have no desire to get away from this moment. I just want to enjoy this moment – let life happen and when it’s all done see what happens.”
Bullock has already taken home the Critics’ Choice Award, Screen Actors Guild Award and Golden Globe for Best Actress in The Blind Side and was nominated last week for an Oscar. She doesn’t think her winning streak will last, however.
“I’m so not winning an Oscar,” Bullock said. “Nine times out of ten I always pick who’s going to win and I already know who’s going to win. I’m not going to say, but nine times out of ten, I’m right.”
“I have to say, all the ladies in our category, we don’t care who wins,” she added. “Someone’s going to win and the rest of us will be really happy for whoever won. We’re just happy to be here. And we like the company we’re in.”
The following night, James Cameron was presented with the Modern Master Award, but the director was surprised when his longtime friend Arnold Schwarzenegger walked out on stage to honor him with his award. The crowd cheered as the Governor stepped up to the podium and you could see how taken aback Cameron was and how he had no idea Schwarzenegger was going to be at the event. The Governator came out cracking jokes and had the audience laughing hysterically.
“Today I’m here to honor a great man. It’s a great immigrant story. Someone who came to Hollywood and made billions of dollars, became a big, big hero and became admired by millions of people… but that’s enough talking about myself. I got carried away! Sorry about that!”
“His movies have made billions and billions of dollars world-wide. As a matter of fact, he made so much money that all of this money together could have wiped out the State’s budget deficit!” he continued.
After Cameron was given his award, he sat back down for a Q&A with film critic Leonard Maltin and the director gave this advice to people pursuing a career in moviemaking: “You have to have something to say,” explaining that film school is fine, but you have to learn “from the school of life. You have to create your own luck. You have to bang on doors.”
Here are a few more interesting tidbits that Cameron told the audience:
–The Wizard of Oz still continues to be his favorite movie.
– He grew up watching Ray Harryhausen films and loved Mysterious Island and 20 Million Miles to Earth.
-“Arnold used to love to go out with half of his face ripped off and go into a diner at 7 a.m. in the morning after we’d wrap and order an egg sandwich or something.”
-“When I’m writing I’m writing to direct.”
– “There are 42 shots in CG in [Terminator 2: Judgment Day]. Cut to 19 years later and there are 2600 in ‘Avatar.'”
– “‘The Abyss’ was the toughest shoot that I’ve done. I love the physical challenge. I love the physicality of shooting a scene. I would literally go home and fall asleep with a fork in my hand being so exhausted from shooting underwater for 10 hours a days, six days a week.”
Later this week, we’ll have more from the SBIFF so stay tuned.
