If youâve ever been to Austin, TX, youâll know that one of the major go-to stops, aside from all the barbecue and the hippies with cowboy hats, is one of the many Alamo Drafthouse cinemas. Itâs truly a night out for movie fans both casual and diehard, and theyâve become so popular that many have begun popping up across the country. Itâs also become the hub of watching awesome offbeat movies not generally seen, and with Fantastic Fest, a film festival catering specifically to the genre crowd, which opens September 19th and runs to the 26th, Austinâs film scene has become legendary. The man behind both of these is Tim League, who started as a film exhibitor in the mid-’90s and is now a distributor of movies both cult and Oscar-nominated. We spoke to League about this yearâs Fantastic Fest, about Drafthouse Films and about the possible jump to producing.
NERDIST: Fantastic Fest has becoming a premier genre film festival; did you have any idea at the beginning it was going to become so influential?
TIM LEAGUE: I think itâs evolved over the years. Our first desire for putting Fantastic Fest together was to put a regional festival together. We werenât getting enough of these types of movies in Austin, and we had a community that I thought would really like this type of stuff. So, really, that was my first idea: building something toward the Austin audience. Then, over the years, weâve developed different goals, and now a lot of the moves we make with the festival are about how we can support genre filmmakers for potential sales opportunities, and now this year with the market, hoping to get more and more films like this financed.
N: As the festival has gotten larger, Iâm sure submissions have grown exponentially as well, so what do you look for in films that go into the Fest?
TL: Well, one of the tentpoles, I guess, is horror, but we end up playing not very much horror at all, because I donât have much patience for bad horror, and thereâs a lot of that. I think the particular type of film that weâre looking for is, obviously, something that dabbles in genre film, dark subject material or science fiction or fantasy or horror. We look for emerging auteurs, we look for incredible storytelling. Storytelling is going to stand up to the âcritics,â if you will, first and foremost. Thatâs something thatâs become a bit of a pet peeve for me, so many people just looking down upon genre films, saying theyâre just B movies or âtrashâ movies. Thatâs the way to piss me off the easiest. And so, the festival was built around this idea of taking genre films out of the nearly-midnight category and saying these stories are incredible and the filmmakers telling these stories are some of our great talents and lifting it out of the perceived B-movie category.
N: Alamo Drafthouse has been doing that from the beginning; is that why you became a distributor in the first place, to try to show movies that people might have passed by initially?
TL: Yeah, sure. I mean, I got into the movie exhibition business really and only because I loved movies. I didnât know how to run a business, let alone run a movie theater, but Karrie and I wanted to build a theater that we would find fun. Kind of a simple idea, but that was exactly what it was, this desire to share films, and thatâs the mantra we follow with Drafthouse Films, our releasing company.
N: What are some of the films this year at Fantastic Fest that youâre most excited for people to get to see?
TL: Well⦠thereâs a lot. The cool thing is, we didnât have to dip down into the âmaybes,â if you will, at all this year. You know, sometimes you get to the end of the programming cycle and youâre like, âOkay. Weâve accepted all the âI love itâ ones, so weâve got to take a look at the ones that got mixed responses from the programmers.â We never had to do that. So, itâs a pretty strong lineup. One film in particular I really want to share with people is a film we actually bought at Cannes, so this is going to be the North American premiere coming to the festival. Itâs called Nothing Bad Can Happen. Itâs a drama, but itâs similar to Bullhead in a way. I think the response it got at Cannes was good, but I think itâs so violent at times and pretty hard that my hope is that when our audience sees it, theyâre just going to explode. Itâs just amazing performances, really fresh and interesting story, but tough as nails.
N: You also picked up and are screening Ben Wheatleyâs A Field in England, which looks phenomenal. In the UK, it had a really interesting release in that it came out in cinemas, on Blu-ray, on digital, and on Channel 4 all on the same day. Are you going to be doing a similar thing for this movie over here, and what are your feelings on that kind of simultaneous release in general?
TL: I do like it. We do a bit of that with our Drafthouse Films titles. For some titles, weâll release them day-and-date on VOD, on iTunes, and theatrical, basically at the same time. And it helps for small folks like us who donât really have a big budget for promotion. You can promote it once as opposed to twice. Film 4 was one of the financiers of Benâs film, so putting it on their television channel was part of the program as a low-budget feature project. By all accounts, it was a pretty successful launch in the UK. I certainly think itâs an interesting way to release a film. In the States, by doing so you end up sacrificing theatrical, because thereâs a lot of people who just wonât go to a movie theater if theyâre following that model. We happen to own a movie theater [laughs], so at least we can break the rules for our own movies.
N: Last year you screened and picked up I Declare War which just came out fairly recently; what kinds of movies are you looking for from a distribution side of things?
TL: Well, weâve just been to the Toronto International Film Festival and Toronto is where we picked up The Act of Killing, which wasnât a huge target for us going in to the festival, but we were so struck by it when we saw it that we knew it fell into the category of films we love, so that was our primary objective last year at Toronto. What we generally do is we hit all the major festivals and we put a hit list together of anything that sounds like it might be our taste. And really, anything we do with the label is very much in tune with the way we pick Fantastic Fest. A lot of that work overlaps, as weâre looking for the festival as well.
Itâs interesting; several acquisitions, I Declare War and Bullhead, we only thought to pick them up for distribution after they got such a strong response at Fantastic Fest. Bullhead won the Next Wave Award and I Declare War won the Audience Award. The festival audience is a good way to see what has legs. Also, the critical response. The response from critics in Toronto of The Act of Killing was really strong, but also divisive. We like films that divide an audience. So, for some folks thatâs going to be a negative; for us, itâs a positive.
N: You began as an exhibitor and transitioned into a distributor, which is sort of a model that doesnât exist anymore. Itâs very Golden Age of Hollywood. At what point did you start actively pursuing that angle of it?
TL: It was something that weâd talked about idly for a couple of years, similar to Fantastic Fest. We talked about putting something together like Fantastic Fest idly for three years before we actually did it. The straw that broke the camelâs back for Drafthouse Films was really, honestly, frustration, because I had seen Chris Morrisâ Four Lions at Sundance, just as a fan; I wasnât there as a distributor, I was just there to watch movies. And I loved it, and as Fantastic Fest was rolling around I realized it was still on the vine. Nobody had picked it up, which I thought was absolutely absurd for a movie of that quality. It was because itâs a jihadist suicide comedy and people were afraid of it. I didnât think there was anything offensive in it. I actually think itâs very respectful towards the religion of Islam, so I thought it was fine. So, just the fact that it was there, just sitting there, and nobody was taking it led me to take the leap into distribution.
N: Youâve also been distributing older and kind of forgotten films, like the amazing Miami Connection. Are there any in the pipeline that you can talk about that youâre particularly interested in people seeing again or for the first time?
TL: Yeah, we have a couple slated for this fall, actually. Fall/winter. Weâre bringing back, for the first time in HD, this movie The Visitor, which is such a weird movie. Itâs one of the weirdest movies Iâve ever seen. And that one came to us because itâs been such a staple of our programming; our weird kind of 35mm repertory programming for a number of years and itâs one of the all-time audience favorites at the Alamo. We finally got the rights all sorted out, got the distribution, and weâre going to release it this winter. Also, Abel Ferraraâs Ms. .45, which has never been in HD before. Those are the two weâre focusing on right now, but we also want to do that with films that havenât really had a proper home video release before and do a real nice job with them, with plenty of extras and something thatâs not just a cheap gift but something with nice, good content.
N: Finally, where do you see the future of Drafthouse Films going? Are you going to take that step into producing new films?
TL: My wife tells me Iâm not. We have dabbled in it a little bit. ABCâs of Death I co-produced with a friend of mine and weâre doing ABCâs of Death 2. But, honestly, he did most of the heavy lifting. My role there was the relationships with a lot of the filmmakers who participated. So, Iâd like to stay away from that, as tempting as it might be. Iâd like both of the companies to be a little more mature before we think about that potential distraction. Right now itâs finished films and watching them at festivals and taking them on market and taking them to the next step, not getting involved early.
Myself and Tim League in a human centipede where we were soon humped by director Nacho Vigalando of Time Crimes fame.
http://tinyurl.com/lh7puh3
yes we were very very drunk.