Texans honored at the 15th annual Texas Film Awards

AUSTIN, Texas - The Austin Film Society will host the Texas Film Awards for the fifteenth year.

The honorees this year are: Tommy Lee Jones, Kit Carson, Luke Wilson, Christopher Evan Welch, Guillermo del Toro, and Bonnie Curtis.

Boyhood will receive the award for Creative Impact in Cinema.

Jones, a Texas native, joined a star studded panel early in the day previewing the event.

He was joined by recent Oscar winner Patricia Arquette, Oscar-nominated director and founder of the Austin Film Society Richard Linklater, one of the founders of South by Southwest, Louis Black, and Steven Gaydos, the Executive Director of Variety.

For Arquette, Texas has a charm Hollywood can't seem to stay away from.

"I really fell in love with Austin, and it was exciting to come back every year, and part of what I was bummed out about when the movie ended besides not hanging out with these guys every year was not coming to Austin every year," she said.

Arquette fell in love with Austin during the production of Boyhood which spanned twelve years.

'The primary selling point of Austin is the people in the Austin filmmaking community are proving that you can kind of chart your own course. You make the films here you find the money, largely independent money but you have base here you have studios you have talent," said Gaydos.

That same allure will be attracting thousands to this coming week's South by Southwest Festival. Organizers say this award's program serves as the unofficial kickoff.

"It's a culture that unlike Hollywood or New York, is dominated by fans, I'm a fan, I'm up here with some remarkable filmmakers and I've gotten to be really lucky I got to start South by Southwest which kind of worked out pretty well," said Black.