Owen Egerton

Not so long ago, while dancing with a puppet taped to my crotch in front of over a hundred naked people during the film Nude on the Moon, it occurred to me that the Alamo Drafthouse is different than other movie theaters. Last week I wrestled a man in a kiddie pool of fake blood before a showing of Invasion of the Blood Farmers and not long before that I lost my voice and shirt while belting outPurple Rain out at the Ultimate Mix Tape Sing Along. None of these events were out of the ordinary. This is a regular week at the Downtown Alamo Darfthouse.

After a decade the Original Alamo Drafthouse on Colorado Street will close its doors. Whether mocking movies with the Sinus Show, throwing sing alongs, or hosting the Red Carpet Oscar parties with my wife Jodi, I’ve had the privilege of working and playing at the Alamo for most of those years. It’s been some of finest times of my life. The new downtown Alamo located at the Ritz on 6th street is set to open in September. This not the end of the Alamo, but it is the close of a chapter. And it’s been an incredible chapter.

Ten years ago Tim and Karrie League cleared out an old warehouse and built a movie theatre. A movie theatre that shows any kind of movie you can imagine. Classics, art-house gems, kung-fu, Hollywood eye-candy, musicals, documentaries, the horrifying, the bizarre, the brilliant. Good movies. Bad movies. And my favorite: movies so bad they’re good.

But the Alamo wasn’t just a movie theatre. It was also a play house. Let’s beer, wine and food. Let’s put couches in the back, lets add a stage and spotlight, lets get everyone to stand up and dance, lets repel from the ceiling, lets set things on fire… including me on more than one occasion, lets invite everyone to sleep over and watch movies till dawn, build a mechanical bull in the lobby, bob for beer, hire burlesque dancers, fly in 70’s child stars, movie directors, snake handlers. Let’s fill the place with roses, fog, mini fireworks.

And the play kept going and growing so that the theatre that was a restaurant and playhouse became a kind of laboratory. Experimentation and risk were the rule of the day. What if we offer not just pizza and beer but some of the finest dining in town? What if we play a movie Amadeus and have a live orchestra perform Mozart’s music before the film. What if we invite local genius like Graham Reynolds to write a new score for a 1920’s silent film? What if we let the audience bring in any film or video they want and we’ll put it on the screen? What if we hire three comics to make fun of Hollywood blockbusters? What if we hand the place over to Quentin Tarantino or Harry Knowles for a weekend? The answer was always, “Let’s try it.” Some ideas were brilliant success. Others, not so much. Like blowing pepper in people’s faces to help feel the sting of smoke of the inferno happening on the screen or adding frog legs to the menu while showing the Muppet Movie… these ideas weren’t very popular. But you see, that’s part of the fun. If we don’t fall down every now and then, we’re not dancing fast enough.

And like any good lab, surprises happened. Mel Gibson and Peter Jackson show up unannounced to watch their film, girls grab the microphone and propose to their lovers, Jesus and Santa take a an audience caroling down 6th street, a 200 person cha-cha train snakes out the back door of the Alamo and through the surprised 4th street crowds.

But it was more than a laboratory… after one of the sing-alongs an Alamo fan came up to me and my cost host Henri Mazza and said, “I don’t go to church, but if I did, I’d want it to be like this.”
What a statement. It stuck with me. We sit together, we sing, we participate, we break bread and drink wine… quite a bit of sometimes, we’re inspired, occasional convicted, and often absolved. And during those films that touch us deepest, we are in wild silent awe together.

Warehouse turned theatre and restaurant and playhouse and laboratory and church. All in one place. Holy, strange, fantastic things have happened at 401 Colorado.
The new Ritz location promise to be best Alamo built yet. I believe it. But mark the day, the Original is closing its doors. And on that last night I plan to sneak up to my favorite seat in the front row and gaze. Not at the screen but back the seat and at all the faces glowing, watching, experiencing the film. For ten years it’s been the best view in Austin.