Sandra Bullock wrote and directed a movie. Most people, even her super fans, probably don’t even know, because it’s never been released on DVD. It’s a short film called Making Sandwiches, starring Bullock, Matthew McConaughey, and Eric Roberts, and it screened at a few festivals, quietly going away by the end of 1998, never to be heard from again.
A few people have seen it, but most of us will never get to see even a frame of it: No pictures or trailers have been released, not even on Youtube. Here’s hoping it’s one of those oddities that will show up randomly on Youtube or eBay or Craigslist someday, but odds are Sandra herself has the only known copy in existence, especially after thirteen long years.
Sandra Bullock Wrote and Directed a Short Film in 1996 That Has Still Never Been Released
The thirty-minute short, which also stars Sandra’s Speed and All About Steve co-star Beth Grant, had the following tagline: “Two slices… with the world of possibility between them.” Only one review has ever been posted of this film on IMDB, which says the following: “Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey make sandwiches in a small kitchen while watching television, where Eric Roberts, in drag aping his sister, reports on the weather. Short and weird.”
It’s that word “weird” that has made this little movie a lost treasure, especially for us Sandra fans. It’s not some three-minute experimental film; it’s a thirty-minute movie with two big stars, re-uniting after A Time to Kill. Will this movie finally re-appear one day, like Danny Boyle’s Alien Love Triangle, made in 1998 but finally released for one public screening in 2008 in Wales? Odds are that it won’t, but anything is possible.
In an interview with Reader’s Digest, Sandra said she directed the movie simply to educate herself about writing and directing a movie, and she came away from the experience deciding she didn’t have the talent to exceed in either of these disciplines. While Sandra has produced multiple movies over the last thirteen years, starting with Hope Floats, she has never since written or directed any films, and it’s unlikely she ever will.
Sandra has been notably her best when she’s hired as the actress, and only the actress. Take 2009 for example. She only acted in The Blind Side, the film that was her biggest success ever and netted her the Academy Award for Best Actress. What’s the film she produced in 2009? All About Steve, the movie that netted her the Razzie for Worst Actress. Sandra is acting and not writing, directing, or producing in her two upcoming films—Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Gravity—which bodes well for both.
The Film Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and Later Played at the Austin Film Festival
Despite her proclamation to never write and direct a film again, this short oddity Making Sandwiches languishes out there in the universe like an undiscovered love letter from youth. Shot in Ventura, California, in 1996, the movie debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997 and had its Texas debut in 1998 at the Austin Film Festival. After that 1998 screening, it hadn’t been seen or heard about since, until an August 2011 interview with The Help star Octavia Spencer brought up the short film and Sandra for being triggers to jump-starting her career.
Spencer appeared in A Time to Kill as Sandra’s nurse, then Sandra hired her for a small part in Making Sandwiches. “She wasn’t meant to have more than a few lines in the short film, but as everyone will soon find out, you just give Octavia Spencer a few lines,” Sandra said. Spencer had apparently signed on just to help in the casting of the short film, but soon found herself sharing scenes with Sandra and Matthew McConaughey. She said her work in Making Sandwiches launched her career, because the tape got her an agent.
Wait. So there is a tape of Making Sandwiches somewhere out there, possibly collecting dust at the bottom of a talent agent’s bottom drawer somewhere? For those of us Sandra fans, Making Sandwiches remains the “lost” Sandra Bullock movie, the one least likely to ever surface for our viewing pleasure, but if it ever does get a release, officially or unofficially, it will be an event almost as exciting as the newest Sandra Bullock feature. So, come on people, start checking your drawers, cabinets, local garage sales, craigslist and eBay forums, and let’s find this movie. It has to be out there somewhere… right?
- BEST SCENE: N/A
- BEST LINE: N/A
- NEXT UP: Sandra delivers one of her best performance in the effective, under-rated 1998 drama Hope Floats
