[Ed. Note: This post is my contribution to Jette Kernion and Blake Ethridge's Alamo Blogathon, an online tribute to one of the world's greatest movie theaters. For those who don't know, the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown will be closing its doors at its original location on June 27.]
I can't remember the first time I heard about the Alamo Drafthouse. I'd been reading Aint it Cool News since late 96 and therefore always associated all of the cool events Harry wrote about to the Alamo (even when they weren't). It seemed to be this all-encompassing idea that contained everything filmically cool in Austin; the Mecca for move geeks worldwide. Years went by; I finished school and went broke. Although Austin was my destination in the year 2000 (I even sent Tim an email suggesting a series of films such as showing all of Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series back to back (much before Criterion stole my idea and released a box set)), it took me five years to figure out how life works and save up enough money to go. In those dark days where I lived with a 2-hour commute that cost me six bucks a day just to get to a job working on a website that never saw the light of day and slowly churning through the slow process of working for the government, Austin and the Drafthouse were shining beacons of freedom and hope. In rural northern Virginia, I was a big fish in a small pond. I got tagged as a "movie guy" for knowing the difference between Bill Paxton and Bill Pullman. I didn't dare mention Keith David or David Keith. My tastes ran to the mainstream accepted classics, occasional guilty pleasure nostalgia trips back to the 80s, and whatever Netflix could fit into my dirt road mail box.
A well-paying soul-sucking job lulls you into hypnosis. A co-worker once told me it gets easier after the first year. I took that as a death sentence. I blinked and the 12 months that I told myself I'd succumb to in order to get back on my feet became 18. I, along with a group of equally disenfranchised workers, constantly talked about leaving but none of us ever did. While I was staying late to finish progress reports and politically-driven infinitesimal intranet site changes, a world of cool film events and opportunities passed me by half the country away. There was no straw that broke my complacent back. I just decided one day. I couldn't find a job over the phone; everyone told me it was a bad idea; I didn't care. I quit and booked a flight for a week in town to look for an apartment.
My first Alamo experience: Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3-D on Friday the 13th at midnight. I walked right by it the first time, seeing the sign but figuring the door led to Mondo Tees instead. The second time around the block, the line flowed out the door. I waited, thinking "it's upstairs!?" I didn't know you could buy tickets online. It was sold out. I was turned away.
My first Alamo show: Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3-D on Saturday the 14th at midnight. I got in this time, along with a couple from Oklahoma who'd driven down just for that show. Oklahoma? For Friday the 13th? I'm definitely in the right place. The seats weren't the best I've ever sat in, but the tables gave me unparalleled legroom and the wait staff were like ninjas, silently popping up in front of you to deliver your order. The theater had kind of a poor-man's version of stadium seating but not enough to save you from a giant sitting in front of you. The hallway into the theater was plain and somewhat dingy. The bathroom was tiny with college riff-raff graffiti on the walls. This was the famous Alamo Drafthouse?
The crowd was pretty rowdy that night, quickly devolving into occasional witty commentary amidst the gimmicky 3-D and my messy queso fries. The theater was nothing like I envisioned it but somehow even though it looked much worse than I expected, the effect was much better. People didn't come here to stare at the painting on the ceiling or marvel at the gold trim around the lamps, they came here for the movie, to have a good time. I left invigorated and excited. I was home.
After I moved here, I relegated my Alamo exposure to the well-publicized special events such as Peter Bogdanovich's appearance playing Paper Moon and seeing Metropolis with a live score supplied by a local DJ; films I was already familiar with like Sherlock, Jr. with score by local band White Ghost Shivers or Aint it Cool events like free screenings of Hustle & Flow (waiting outside in the blistering June sun, realizing the curb side of the sidewalk was 10 degrees cooler than the building side) and Me and You and Everyone We Know. One night I went to an all-night horror marathon hosted by Harry Knowles. The first words out of his mouth were that he didn't do anything for the night except agree with a list put together by the Alamo. Although he played a somewhat advance screening of Three Extremes that night (my first exposure to both Takashi Miike and Chan-wook Park (Tim declared Oldboy's dismal local business a blight on the face of Austin that he would rectify by bringing it back for a limited run because it was the best film he'd seen in a number of years. I went to see it and it blew my mind.), most of the films were vintage "classics" like Bob "A Christmas Story" Clark's Viet Nam zombie parable Deathdream and Mario Bava's Schock. I remember a tall guy with long hair getting up and telling us how cool evil children were, and that Devil Times Five was a pretty damn good entry in the genre. He noted to be on the lookout for a young Leif Garrett as one of the kids and told us that while all the other kids seemed to have a particular theme to their evil craziness (one girl was like a nun, one boy was obsessed with army stuff, etc.) Garrett's thing seemed to be "bad vibes." Later in the night, a girl with tattoos on her arms got up and introduced a film that "rocked at this year's South By" called The Roost. It was the low point in an otherwise memorable night. As the morning sun rose and people tore into their breakfast buffet food, the tall guy with long hair announced that Quentin Tarantino was returning to Austin in the fall to do another festival. Then we watched Devil Fetus: definitely the craziest film I'd seen in all my life and with one of the most memorable prologue sequences ever committed to film.
It was QT6 that really indoctrinated me to the church of the Alamo. I'd thought about going to Weird Wednesday before but had never been (when John Singleton mentioned that Hustle & Flow director Craig Brewer's next movie was borrowing heavily from a film called Gator Bait, I noticed it on the calendar but didn't go because the idea of going downtown at midnight on a Wednesday sounded like too much trouble). I'd read all about previous QT fests on AICN so this was the event that I was really waiting for. My call went through to AFS about a half hour after tickets went on sale and I secured one (while waiting on the stairs in the badgeholders line for the event, somebody at the top of the stand-by line who'd been waiting for four hours told me that they sold out in about a half hour. I often wonder how close I was to not getting in and what movies I'd be watching now if I didn't go) and attended every screening that week. To say it changed my life is probably too grand a proclamation to make without several qualifiers, but in terms of cinematic tastes and movie-going habits and how I saw the theatrical experience, it had tremendous effect. I'd had a taste of the old run-down scratchy prints with the horror all-nighter but nothing like some of the films Quentin played. I'd never been so aware of the actual film running through the projector. How the reels were dirtier toward the heads and tails than in the middle, how some reels had really faded color and others looked pristine (and what the hell was this IB Tech he kept mentioning?), and mostly the thought of how many times that print must have been shown to get that way. That week opened my eyes to film as a physical medium and communal experience.
I also couldn't believe some of these films existed. How did a movie like Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle, with its animated cockmonsters and sex-hungry Tarzoon constantly flashing his junk thanks to wardrobe malfunctions, ever get made? Much less with voice talent like Bill Murray and John Belushi behind it. How the hell could I have called myself a film fanatic without seeing Alain Delon's Tony Arzenta out for bloody revenge against Richard Conte with cool hitman precision in No Way Out? What the fuck is Fight For Your Life and where did it ever play without inciting riots!? A new world was opening up to me. A world where the limits and boundaries that I thought I knew where obliterated through the magic of low budgets, independent distribution, and crazy-ass audiences in drive-ins and grindhouses throughout the 70s. Suddenly the term "Spaghetti Western" meant more to me than Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. I found myself a beginner once again; a minnow wandering the Pacific absorbing everything with sponge-like enthusiasm.
QT6 also made that tall guy with long hair into Lars, who first impressed me by telling a couple of loud women to stop talking during the movie (and a couple months later would surprise the hell out of me by approaching and asking if I had a website). Toward the end of the week, he got up to introduce Quentin but mentioned that if we liked the kind of movies he was playing that they were showing them every week for free. I started going downtown on Wednesdays. My first Weird Wednesday was The Bees, starring John Saxon as a scientist trying to turn a bunch of super-intelligent pissed-off bees gay. His classic speech at the end about how we must learn to live with the bees from now on because they were a superior species lives on in the delicate folds of my mind. After getting into the jam-packed screening of Werewolves on Wheels, I decided to make every Wednesday a weird one. Slaughter Hotel introduced me to Rosalba Neri's unbelievable sex. Convention Girls taught me that not all exploitation films exploit. Black Angels told me that I can eat my cigarettes and still get hiiiiiiiiiiigh. The Candy Snatchers let me know that Coors was the breakfast of champions while Psycho from Texas reminded me that yesterday was a long time ago. Sweet Sugar, Abar, the infamous Toys Are Not for Children, Kingdom of the Spiders, Group Marriage, The Losers, Deliver us from Evil, SNAKES!!. The list goes on. Wednesdays are now the highlight of my week. If I miss one, I feel guilty the next day.
The woman with tattoos on her arms became Kier-La during the first Fantastic Fest. After the first screening she met me outside the door and asked how it ended. She had been watching from the booth upstairs but had to miss the end of the marionette epic Strings and wanted to know the conclusion. I'd be lying if her blue eyes and direct eye contact had nothing to do with me showing up at her Music Monday series the next week. The first thing I saw was a documentary on the AM Radio DJs that conveyed the open frontier of airwaves back in the day. There weren't many people there but one guy was wearing a t-shirt that said "mono" and several of them reminded me of Philip Seymour Hoffman in Almost Famous. I remember watching The T.A.M.I. show while eating an Alamo burger and seeing James Brown decimate all that played before him then laughing as The Rolling Stones tried (unsuccessfully) to top him. I lent Kier-La a DVD featuring a 7-minute doc on old soul drummers meeting hip-hop DJs and she kept it for a year without watching it. She showed Candy and The Magic Christian and amazing documentaries about musicians I didn't know. People kept getting up in front of me to dance while watching Urgh! A Music War and I didn't mind because the music was so good. She played Times Square and let me see what 42nd street really looked like back then. She played Air Guitar Nation and even though nobody came I crushed on her just a little bit more because it's such a great movie.
I went to the first (and last) annual Turkeython and watched Blood Freak on Thanksgiving weekend. I got into Butt-numb-a-thon 7 through the standby line and saw Drum (in between films, Tim recognized me on the stairs, making a good day even better). I watched Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinksi pull a boat over a mountain in Fitzcarraldo. I went to a Black History Month's worth of films that led me to fall in love with the blaxploitation genre. I snuck into private QT screenings and saw a double feature of The Girl from Starship Venus with The House on the Edge of the Park. I saw Boogaloo Shrimp with Breakin' and The Barbarian Brothers with Double Trouble. Chuck Norris shared eye contact with me in this theater. Richard Rush unleashed The Stunt Man on me in this theater. Eddie Muller showed me film noir in this theater. The Monster Squad got back together, Troll 2 cast were overwhelmed with fanboy praise, Lovecraft fans chanted Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Ftagn! and Jamaa Fanaka talked about filmmaking and sexual prowess. All in this theater. All in front of me.
I've been a proud Alamo Downtown regular for just under two years now. I've seen 361 movies there. I'll see three more. |
