Have screen, will travel

Thirteen miles east of Austin, the four-lane Martin Luther King Boulevard gives way to a narrow, curving two-lane country road. The air is thick and humid, and the heat-heavy green leaves of trees and plants sag toward the ground.

But what might seem unwelcomingly sticky for some proves auspicious for the hundred or so movie fanatics winding their way toward tiny Webberville, past the hand-painted sign that announces, in English and Spanish: Pigs for Sale.

These folks have shelled out $40 apiece to enjoy a full-immersion viewing of the classic 1972 Burt Reynolds flick, "Deliverance," in which four manly city friends spend a hideous (to put it mildly) weekend canoeing down a river in a backwoods area, fending off the inbred locals.

The canoe trip, courtesy of Tim and Karrie League, owners of the Alamo Drafthouse Movie Theater in Austin, is one in an ongoing series known as The Rolling Roadshow. The Leagues gather enthusiastic movie fans in unusual locations following the film's theme and add their own special effects, thus taking dinner and a movie to new heights or, in some instances, depths.

The idea of an independently owned movie house that's not only hanging in there, but succeeding well enough to offer field trips to patrons is probably foreign to most Americans, for whom moviegoing means the multiplex.

But the Rolling Roadshow is just one of many film programs - some silly, some gastronomically intense, and all innovative - the Alamo Drafthouse offers to Austin movie aficionados. More about passion than profit, some events barely break even. Others aim not to raise company revenues but provide funds for local nonprofits. "As long as we're having fun and make a little bit of money, that's what we aim for," says Tim League, who gave up an engineering career for the ups and downs of life as one of the small group of independent theater owners (there are 450 left in the US).

The Leagues' creativity and love of the movies certainly play a role in their success, but part of the reason may come down to their choice of location.

"It's so Austin," says Stefan Caporale, a New Jersey native who's a graduate student at the University of Texas. "The concept - dinner and a movie - isn't new. But the success of this is the eclectic nature of Austin. Austin has a cult of movie fans better than I've seen in any other city."

This is not his first Rolling Roadshow. Over snacks, waiting for the spit-roasted pigs and industrial-sized cans of beans to finish cooking, Mr. Caporale waxes nostalgic over past events. He saw "Jaws" while sitting in an inner tube on a nearby lake. Scuba divers were hired to randomly grab audience members, and a swimmer wearing a fake shark fin added to the excitement.

He and Lorrie Houston, a chemical engineer who is also along for the canoe trip, both saw "Goonies" inside a cave. That night, the movie's no-longer-a-child star, Corey Feldman, made a live appearance. They watched "Speed" on a bus, driving around Austin's Hill Country looking for the home of the movie's star, Sandra Bullock. (Unsuccessful, they stopped and photographed the group in front of a random fancy house.) And there was "The Big Lebowski" at a bowling alley, and a dusk-till-dawn horror marathon at an abandoned mental institute.

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