Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2023

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the early 1990’s, Tim League spent $50,000 in savings to lease an abandoned movie theater on the wrong side of the tracks—a shaky experiment that eventually grew into a thriving national chain. As Tim and his wife Karrie built theaters in Austin and beyond, they made a name for themselves by offering dinner with the movie, creative pairings (like sake with Godzilla), and roadshows where movie-goers could watch Deliverance in canoes, or Rocky on the famous steps in Philly. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema now has 40 locations across the country and a revenue of over $300 million, but there have been plenty of bruises along the way: a failed first theater, a fractious lawsuit with business partners, and a swan dive into the red during the pandemic.

This episode was produced by Carla Esteves, with music by Ramtin Arablouei

Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Carla Esteves.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	One year ago, a white man came to a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
0:14.0	He just walked around and shot all the black people.
0:16.0	How do you make sense of something, this terrible?
0:19.0	When you're a kid.
0:20.0	I think it was all my fault.
0:23.0	Listen now to the latest series from NPR's Embedded Podcast.
0:30.0	How I built this is pleased to have Upwork as our presenting sponsor.
0:34.0	Visit Upwork.com to get hiring.
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1:19.0	From Wondery comes a new series, flipping the bird, Elon vs. Twitter.
1:24.0	A story about what happens when the richest man on the planet decides to acquire a powerful social media company in the name of free speech.
	...

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