Tim League (Photo credit: Annie Ray).
This year, the Australian International Movie Convention brought Tim League – Founder/CEO of Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, distribution label Drafthouse Films and Austin film festival Fantastic Fest – to the Gold Coast as guest speaker.
League is known for his zero tolerance policy on mobile phones, as well as for his social media savvy and highly curated program.
He spoke to IF about expanding beyond Texas, distributing Wake in Fright and why location is key.
You opened a cinema in California with your wife in 1994 which flopped. You then moved to Texas and founded the Alamo Drafthouse. Why did one fail and the other succeed?
So many reasons. We were pretty young when we started our first theatre in Bakersfield. We were 23 and didn’t really have any movie theatre experience and we didn’t have any business experience. So in part it failed because of us (laughs). It was in a bad part of town, it wasn’t the most sophisticated town in the world, and we were trying to show art films. It was a bad location for what we were trying to do. We realized that pretty quickly, ran it for two years and then split Bakersfield to come to Austin and start all over again.
Why Austin?
Austin is no longer a cheap city but back then in ’97 it was relatively affordable. It had a really great film scene. Richard Linklater stayed in town, Robert Rodriguez stayed in town and built a film society and film culture here. There’s a good film school at the University of Texas. There was room for us –there wasn’t a theatre like us, and I had some family here. As opposed to our first theatre, we made a good decision on location.
How rapidly did you expand and open other branches?
We were just running the single-screen theatre for three years. Then we had an opportunity to open up a second location, also in Austin, so we did that. We really didn’t expand very quickly. Over the course of four or five years we opened a third and a fourth [cinema], but it was really about six years ago that we started to expand more rapidly. That’s around the same time we started getting into film distribution. We have a small boutique indie film label, and so the idea of expanding the theatre chain was also in service to the idea of picking up smaller films, foreign-language films, documentaries. We even picked up a classic Australian film – we distributed Wake in Fright in the United States.
Did the decision to start your distribution label Drafthouse Films come before the expansion?
It was around the same time. It was the idea of moving beyond being an Austin company and becoming more of a national brand, driven in part by this idea of championing small independent films and foreign-language films, which dovetails in with the distribution company.
Where are you outside Austin?
We have 25 theatres now. We just recently opened up in San Francisco and in Brooklyn, New York. We’ve got theatres in Michigan and Virginia, Kansas City. Our base is in Austin still but we’re starting to branch out. Hopefully opening up in LA the first part of next year.
What distinguishes the Alamo Drafthouse brand from your competitors?
At first it was that we served beer and wine and cocktails and food. That was unique twenty years ago. What’s become another unique factor is that we are run by and employ a lot of hardcore movie nerds, movie fans. We’re built on that idea. So with every market we move into, we relinquish a lot of the control to local creative managers that program to their tastes and sensibilities. That idea of being a part of film culture is who we are and it is fairly distinct in terms of our competitors.
Other than food and drink becoming more common, how else has the exhibition sector in the States changed in your time?
Well, we saw the dwindling of 35mm and moving into digital. Although we’re still strong believers in 35mm, we have digital at pretty much all of our markets. Just recently, there’s been a big shift in the States in terms of film zones, this arcane process whereby films are allocated to a theatre and a zone is defined by a three mile radius around that theatre. So generally you couldn’t build within three miles of that theatre otherwise you’d have to split the product from each of the studios. Recently there was a federal class action investigation about unfair trade practices surrounding this particular process and the studios and the major exhibitors have abandoned it. So now anybody can open a theatre anywhere and get all the product. That’s probably going to open up the door for a lot of independents to move in and explore new markets that weren’t available to them before.
There’s only one cinema in Oz that has a laser projector, with a second coming. Is laser something that you’re looking at?
We haven’t installed any yet. We’re looking at it for a theatre we have under construction right now. We’re evaluating the cost, which is starting to go down in the States. I like the idea of it. I’ve seen the presentation at CinemaCon and I like it. I also like the idea of eliminating the routine cost of bulb replacement. Allegedly some laser projectors should be able to last for upwards of ten years. And it’s a very nice bright uniform light, so I am intrigued at this point but I’m not always an early adopter. If it’s expensive technology I want to make sure it’s tested and true and it’s going to stick around and be supported. I’m at once cautiously optimistic about it and a little bit disappointed that this wasn’t the initial wave of the digital revolution. I don’t want to be replacing my projectors on this type of a cycle. We made a big investment to go digital and the idea of doing another replacement is not making me that happy (laughs).
Is there a premium offering at your cinemas?
Not really. We’re starting to do some cinemas with recliners and more luxury features, but our brand, even though we have food and drink, we want it to be a relatively affordable option. I personally have a hard time with the ticket price associated with the premium offering. It’s not who I am. I’m not a very fancy guy. I like good food and great beer and wine, but I also like for it to be reasonably priced. I’m no stranger to luxury dining but that’s not really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to be a fresh: quality but at a reasonable price. So our ticket structure is always in line with a traditional theatre. And our food is relatively competitive in terms of casual dining.
Is there a flagship cinema?
South Lamar in Austin I think would be considered our flagship. It was the fourth [to open]. It’s where we do a lot of our unique programming. That’s the theatre I tend to spend the most time in. We have a really cool bar concept that’s associated with it. It’s called The Highball. It’s got a big dancefloor, a stage, plus seven differently-themed karaoke rooms. A great local beer selection.
Do people visit the bar even if they’re not going to movies?
For sure. That’s the goal. I like to have a bar at each of the theatres and I like to play around with different themes. There’s a separate entrance if you just want to roll up. A lot of people don’t even realise that it’s using the same liquor licence and is basically the same business as the Alamo Drafthouse. They’ll come and see a live music show and not even see a movie. I also want to have that there for folks who want to grab a drink beforehand, or talk about the movie afterwards.
What are you working on in terms of refurbs across all cinemas? You’ve floated the idea of gender neutral bathrooms in the past.
We’re in Texas, probably not the most progressive state, so to do a large-scale gender neutral bathroom project we had to take it up to the state level to get a permit, because the codes are written for binary, for men and women, in terms of how many toilets you need. So we’re opening up our fifth theatre in Austin, which will have a large gender-neutral bathroom configuration, and that’s part of our spec moving forward. I personally get involved in all the various bar concepts, because a lot of the time they’re different every time. In Brooklyn, for example, we acquired this 1870’s German wax museum collection, so the bar is built around displaying a sort of museum-bar with cocktails that are themed to some of the exhibits.