By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

Alamo Drafthouse’s Tim League Leads The Way With Consumer Care

Posted Friday, April 8th, 2011 - 1 Comment »
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Official response to those who disrupted the screening of Rubber last Friday
by Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 6:21am

Last Friday during a screening of RUBBER at the Ritz, there was a group of patrons in the theater who were talking and being disruptive during the film. Three conscientious patrons raised flags to complain about the talkers, yet the talkers were not thrown out and the problem persisted throughout the film.

First off, let me say to anyone whose moviegoing experience was disrupted, I am truly sorry. I cannot abide people talking during the movie and personally developed our system that is supposed to stop this from happening. Last Friday, this system failed. I am now taking this time to reflect on our policy and make some improvements to see if we can do a better job.

Here’s what currently happens. If there is a loud group of patrons in the theater disrupting the show, a customer can raise an order card to alert staff to the problem. The complaint is delivered right away to management who then comes into the theater to listen and identify the talkers. If they hear talking, they issue a warning, something to the effect of “we have had complaints from the other customers, if we receive one more complaint, we will have to ask you to leave.” If there is a second complaint, the manager again enters the theater and waits to hear talking. If they do hear talking again from the same group, we kick them out. That’s been the system for a long time, and we have quieted and/or kicked out hundreds of groups over the years for being disruptive.

Upon reflection of our failure to quiet the group of talkers on last Friday, however, I am hereby changing the policy company-wide.

1) We will retrain the entire Alamo staff. If a customer has to raise an order card about a loud and disruptive table, then we have already failed to a certain extent. The first change is going to be a retraining of all waitstaff to charge them with being the ones to be on the lookout for rude talkers or texters. If they spot people texting or talking, they must notify the manager at once.

2) A staff member shall be in the theater at all times during peak shows. As soon as the initial wave of food orders are all delivered, we will now require a staff member to be in the theater at all times during peak shows. This is good for two reasons. Hopefully this will both shrink the time from customers raising a food/drink order card until it gets picked up as well cut down on overall talking and texting in the theater. A monitored classroom is more orderly; the same will likely be the case in the theater.

3) Once there is a customer complaint, a manager or manager’s representative will stay in the theater for the duration of the film. Sometimes the manager will stay in the theater after a complaint and that presence alone with quiet a talker. Sometimes we issue a warning to the offending talkers that works for about 15 minutes, but then they slip right back into talking. Once there is a first complaint, the manager will now stay in the theater for the duration of the film and catch any recidivism as soon as it happens.

My hope is these three refinements to our system will fix the problem. We know that our hard-line policy towards movie-talkers is one of the reasons people like to come to the Alamo in the first place. It is one of our founding principles, and all of our locations need to live up to your expectations. Bear with us for the next couple of weeks as we do some additional training and get our managers up to speed with the new policies. Hopefully in very short order we will cure the problem and last Friday’s experience will not be repeated.

And to the jackasses that ruined Rubber for the rest of the audience last Friday at the Ritz, change your ways or stay at home. Rude talkers are not welcome at the Alamo.

Sincerely,

Tim League
Founder and CEO
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

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Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | 1 Comment »

One Response to “Alamo Drafthouse’s Tim League Leads The Way With Consumer Care”

  1. Andrew says:
    April 9, 2011 at 9:51 am

    I love Tim’s last sentence especially when juxtaposed to “sincerely”

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon