SBIFF honors Tommy Lee Jones

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

After watching a montage of film clips that spanned several decades, Tommy Lee Jones sat still, waiting for the questions he knew were coming.
“How does it feel to see your whole life like that?” asked Pete Hammond, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.


“That wasn’t my whole life, but it feels good,” Jones answered.
In a true, slow voice, Jones told the crowd tale after tale about his storied acting career before receiving the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s American Riviera Award last night at the Arlington Theatre.
His answers were thought out, concise and in a nearly packed theatre they entranced the crowd.
It didn’t matter whether he was telling a story about one of the most historic moments in college football history — a 29-29 tie between Yale and Harvard in a 1968 Ivy League Championship that he played in — or a robotic horse and camera he destroyed while directing “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,” he kept the crowd’s attention.
Hammond walked the crowd and Jones through a brief history of the man’s career one film clip at a time.
He asked Jones, 61, about his early roles in films like “Love Story,” but spent a particular amount of time asking Jones about his experiences in New York working on stage plays.
“It was a very, very happy time,” Jones said.
When asked if he ever considered returning to the stage, Jones said it would have been and still would require too large of a cut in pay.
Jones said he went to Hollywood after being in New York for about eight years. After trying out for large roles, he said the directors would tell him he was good enough, but not famous enough.
“I was bumping up against a ceiling,” Jones said, “and that was lack of fame. Fame to them meant television and movies.”
Hammond wondered how Jones prepared himself to play roles like Howard Hughes in “The Amazing Howard Hughes” and Mooney Lynn in “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
Hughes had stories for both, but they involved an intense amount of studying in both instances, he said.
While Jones noted that he doesn’t always like the characters he plays, there’s little doubt he manages to play them well.
In “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Jones said he could relate, but it was clear playing the role of Loretta Lynn’s husband was important beyond his own satisfaction.
“The chance to take a nonstereotyped look at what is called hillbillies was a privilege to me,” Jones said.
He has been nominated for three Academy Awards; his most recent is for his performance in “In the Valley of Elah.”
Film Festival Executive Director Roger Durling said he created the American Rivera Award when he became the festival’s director five years ago, and he couldn’t imagine a more appropriate actor to receive it than Jones.
“I’m deeply honored to have one of the greatest actors alive here sharing the stage at the Arlington,” Durling said.
Jones, who first visited Santa Barbara in the early ’70s to play Polo and owns a home here, said he’d never thought he’d be sitting on the stage at the Arlington receiving an award.
“Santa Barbara’s been an important part of my life for 30 years,” he said.