A rendering of one of SBIFF’s drive-in theaters
know, to send a message about optimism and in gratitude. The online stuff is all paid for. You pay, you get passes and single tickets for online, but the drive-in, which is costing us quite a lot, will be free. It feels like the only way to go. The great tributes this year, honoring such artists as Carey Mulligan, Bill Murray, and Sacha Baron Cohen — those will all be exclusively online. How do you feel about that? Are you cer-
When did you come up with the idea for the drive-ins? RD: After 24 hours of crying on my pillow and just being distraught, we started talking about the drive-in in Goleta. I love Goleta—I mean, I live in Goleta — but the drivein there is landlocked, and landSBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling locked didn’t feel festive. That’s when we started talking about the waterfront, and one of the staff—I believe it was Mickey [Duzdevich, senior pro- tain that, after a year off, people will come back grammer]—came up with the idea of contact- to the theaters in person when it is safe to do so? ing the college. And City College was great; RD: All throughout history, we’ve always gravithey jumped right in, even before the city tated to live theater, we’ve always gravitated to issued the permits. It was surreal. communal experiences, and that cannot be erased by one year of the pandemic. No, it’s too So you plan to build two drive-in theaters at the ingrained in our psyche. beach. How will that work? RD: It’s going to be free. It’s a happy, happy The 36th annual Santa Barbara International solution being that it always had to be free. Film Festival begins on Wednesday, March 31. We just felt it was the right thing to do, you For tickets and information, visit sbiff.org.
PAUL WELLMAN FILE PHOTO
always knew that it would be a hybrid, and that the virtual aspect was going to be part of it, that was the least desirable of the options. We wanted connectivity, but we hoped to save the in-person experience in some form. One of the quixotic ideas was to use local parks. We had gone through the renderings and the pricing in using Alameda Park and other venues like that with tents and flooring and socially distanced seating outdoors. We worked closely with the city on this. It was around Thanksgiving or early December when we started to understand that there was no way our plan was going to succeed and that we needed to think of something else. I didn’t like the idea of retreating.
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MARCH 25, 2021
THE INDEPENDENT
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