Cinema is Dope

Took some pictures today of the original Alamo Drafthouse Downtown marquee that is now featured at Alamo South Lamar. Enjoy the pics!

::: Drafthouse Marquee @ South Lamar
via Flickr slideshow

I stopped by South Lamar to see “Hairspray” which is the closest I could get in movie spirit to the “Boogie Nights” screening (via Adam Shankman) the Rolling Roadshow is doing tonight. I got a ton of odd glances as I was seated before the film super early reading “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” The pre-film music video assortment was so damn good, that it quite often greatly distracted me from reading. The video that featured a female singer trying to sing all suave on a carnival ride electric small pony was a riot!!!

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Freddie Avalos posted pics of the famous original Drafthouse Downtown marquee being taken away this Thursday morning.

::: Last Night at the Alamo

Over at his blog Dentler (SXSW, Fantastic Fest) has posted his thoughts and pics from last night.

Source: Slackerwood

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Wiley (News of the dead) has twenty three classic images from the closing of the Drafthouse last night. Love the touch of the yellow Alamo hard hats!

::: Last night of the Alamo Downtown
News of the dead

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Over at the official Drafthouse blog (link) they have just posted a link to a new set of pictures they have posted to Flickr (courtesy of Dave Garaway). These images (view set here) are some truly fascinating images from day one of the original Alamo Drafthouse Downtown being built (and Tim looking like a much younger version of the demented grandpa from Silent Night, Deadly Night “if you see Santa Claus boy…“).

For those like me that can’t make it tonight for the farewell, Jette has pointed me to David Hill’s immortalization of the location with a near complete panoramic tour of the entire venue (view here). Bonus points if you can find Tim and Karrie in it ;-)

To the annoying night club next door. Buddies you will be owned by an EARTHQUAKE tonight (cue evil laugh).

Alamo Downtown Blog-a-Thon official listing via Slackerwood (www.slackerwood.com).

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I don’t even live in Austin but I have hundreds of fave memories of the joint. I distinctly remember walking up those stairs the first time and just feeling at home. Then again home to me has always been strange and wonderful single screen cinemas.

Top Ten Personal Memories.

#1 Getting Tim rip roaring drunk and wrestling him in front of his frightened staff, then threatening to burn the mangy old black curtains. Well I thought it was funny.

#2 Getting Udo Kier absolutely sozzled on vodka/redbulls before his Q&A eventually carrying him back to the Driscol on my back. Pouring Udo drinks at the bar while a strange and busty chick came up to Udo
and ‘accidentally’ let her boobs fall out onto the bar. Udo didn’t even blink. Marvellous!

#3 Tim graciously let me get Bo Svensen in for the NIGHT WARNING’ event, we decided to show Bo a montage of scenes from his films and ask him to narrate his memories of the films… Bo’s classic reply while watching the clips. “I was in these movies???”

#4 Tim doing one of the greatest opening monologues for the World Premiere of our film THE DEVIL DARED ME TO - and making the entire audience shotgun a lonestar. Unbelievable.

#5 Watching the crowd go gaga and catch the fever when Tim and Harry let me play the Stunt Rock trailer for it’s first ever BNAT screening. It began a revolution that saw the band Sorcery expecting a big comeback from it.

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The last movie theatre that I loved that is no more was the legendary Northpark 1 & 2 in Dallas. This is where I met AFI Dallas programmer James Faust for the first time at a midnight screening of Pulp Fiction, where the sound system was jacked up to the 9’s in apocalyptic surround sound. Seeing a movie inside Northpark 1 was just an amazing experience. The local legend was always that George Lucas himself brought out a special team from Skywalker Sound to install the sound system there. Whether that was true or not I may never know. What I do know is outside of the Melia movie theatre in Sitges it as by far the richest and most visceral sound systems of all times to experience a movie in. Seeing a movie there made gave the movie going experience a whole new meaning and depth you couldn’t find in the haphazardly large movie chain theatres (that just never cared if the film was out of focus, the sound to soft, etc.,). I especially remember one day going to see the first screening of Robert Zemeckis’s Contact. I had a full day ahead of running errands and trying to get caught up. However, that AMAZING opening sequence where we crawl backwards through space and history combined with the amazing trip through space at the end was just jaw dropping to experience in Northpark 1. Those sequences were an absolute rush. I had chills sitting there experience those moments. I wound up spending the entire day there watching Contact, again and again until its very last showing that day.

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So me and Jette are doing the Alamo Downtown Blog-a-Tho­n. The main post for this is at her site on Slackerwood (www.slackerwood.com) with links to all those participating and their stories. The communal collection of imagery can be found on Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/tags/alamoblogathon).

It certainly wasn’t the most ideal place by any stretch of the imagination one would think a movie theatre could thrive in, but the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown did. Give any other movie chain big or small the same space and I doubt it would last a month. For Tim and Karrie League, showing movies weren’t enough. They wanted to bring movie magic to audiences that packed their theatre. Continually they worked over the years to cultivate the movie going experience to be richer and more diverse. The fruits of their labor were the expansion of other theatres but more importantly an expanded movie going consciousness and renewed love of cinema in all that went through its doors throughout the years. It brought people together, gave little heard of films a chance to shine and gain new fans and most importantly provided movie going experiences of a lifetime that were simply priceless and wouldn’t work in any other setting but there in its theatre with its Austin crowds. The downtown location maybe moving but the original location on Colorado will live on in movie lore history and our movie loving hearts.

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