Welcome to the Academy Awards. I just got mine. You're going to get yours soon, I hope.

Q. Mr. Coburn, can you talk about how much this means to you considering the physical problems that you had with arthritis before and how your career was on hold for such a long time?

Coburn:

Well, it means I can move again. I mean the worse part about the arthritis was that I couldn't work, and now I can. And hopefully, this will bring more work my way. AFFLICTION was a very special kind of film. Paul Schrader is a genius. I think he writes a script that is so transparent that it just – pow. It just disappears in the movie. There's no words. I mean, we didn't have to improvise anything. It was right there. Everything that we shot was written. And it looks like it's real. I mean, that's his genius and his directing genius as well. But it was – I hope it means that I'll get more work. And I hope that Paul gets more work too. I hope I'm in some more of his films.

Q. Did you worry your career was over when you had the arthritis?

Coburn:

There was a time when I figured, well, what am I going to do? And then I decided very quickly that I had to do something about it because nobody else knew anything about it. Doctors said, hell, we don't know what it is, we don't know how it starts – how does it begin? You have to go back and drop these. I figured that if they don't know anything about arthritis, they're just making a lot of money in the Arthritis Institution. They keep saying we need some more money for the research. I found a way of doing it. I actually did, and I did it. I did it myself with the help of some of my friends. But it's a long trip, and you have to be willing to take it on yourself, and there are things you can do.

Click here to read his interview on national TV -- where he attributes MSM to his come-back.

Q. Yeah. What is next? What's the next film for you?

Coburn:

I'm working on it right now – in fact, for the last two or three weeks, I've been working on it – Hallmark Hall of Fame up in Santa Barbara, called "Atticus". It will be out at Christmastime, maybe the fall. I don't know when, but it's – it's another father-son relationship kind of thing. But he's not as down as Old Pop Woodhouse.

Q. Mr. Coburn, you approached that stage, you raised your hands. At that precise moment before you got to the microphone, what was going through your mind? After all of these years you're finally standing on Oscar stage?

Coburn:

Whoopee. It was nice. It was very nice. I mean it was thank you very much. I mean it's just to be nominated with four other extremely talented men, and to win, I mean it's -- you can't describe the feeling. You can't really describe it because it's not even an emotion, it's something that has not really settled in yet. It's kind of a flash, and it zips down you, and I was – well, I was moved so much I could hardly talk up there. I'd like to do it again because I could probably say the right things. Anything else?

Q. First off, I'm already one up in my Oscar pool thanks to you. What was it like to work with Kris Kristofferson for the first time since PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID?

Coburn:

That was a kick. He doesn't have any eyebrows. You know he doesn't have any eyebrows. He played Billy the Kid, and I played Pat GARRETT, and I got to shoot him, and it was Peckinpah film. It was nice seeing him. I've seen him a few times since then, but we haven't worked together. It was fun. Mel Gibson (sic) always creates an atmosphere of fun. It was good. Thank you.

Q. Mr. Coburn, congratulations.

Coburn:

Thank you.

Q. You say you do some films for love, some for money. How difficult is it for you to find a film project that you do for love, and do you have any pet project that you would like to see come to the screen?

Coburn:

No. I really don't. I don't have anything. I don't have anything on top. Hopefully something will – this will generate something. We always kind of hope for that anyway.

Q. How difficult is it to find?

Coburn:

A good script, good stories are very difficult to find. You can find a lot of build-them-up-and-blow-them-up kind of movies. They seem to be very popular, but they're really boring to do because all you're doing is setting up an explosion. I mean they don't tell any stories. Give them a gun and shoot it off. They have big guns. Everybody carries around guns. It doesn't matter how high technology it is, you have to shoot them with guns still. There's a lot of things I can do. I'd like to do a comedy with good writing. Good-written comedies are always fun.

Q. I don't need the microphone. You've waited a long, long time for this. Do you think it's sweeter now than it would have been 20 years ago?

Coburn:

I don't know. I really don't know. I actually haven't been waiting for it. It's just that since this little film that we made came out, that there hasn't been any kind of waiting going on at all. When it was first shown, I think it was in Telluride. That's the first time I had seen it. It had been shown at several festivals, and they started saying that's really an Academy Award nomination kind of thing. I started thinking really, well, what about that. And I guess it was.

Q. What did you do to prepare this morning?

Coburn:

This morning?

Q. Yeah, I mean anything ritualistic?

Coburn:

No. I just got up, had some toast and some coffee, read the paper, sat down and waited for my wife to dress. That took the time. But the result was extraordinary, and I don't mind waiting for that.