Have screen, will travel

Today's cinematic soiree calls for participants to congregate in one park, canoe a few miles down the Colorado River, partake of a pig roast, listen to live banjo music ("Deliverance" made the song "Dueling Banjos" a hit), and, at dusk, get down to the business of movie watching, replete with clips from other Reynolds vehicles, such as "Gator," "Cannonball Run," and "Hooper." The screening is made possible by the Leagues' beloved new toy, a portable, inflatable, 25 x 50-foot screen.

At the outset, Karrie League directs her eager charges into the 50 purple, yellow, green, and red canoes, each punctuated with bright orange life vests. Mexican polka music blasts from the speakers of a bright blue Miata. A chihuahua in a lemony bun-style life preserver prances around, eager to go.

Some moviegoers sport overalls in tribute to the hillbillies. Most are wearing swimsuits, though only a few wind up in the river courtesy of a poorly maneuvered canoe. There's no white water to make this a rough trip. With the recent drought, there's hardly any water at all. Hence the advice from the canoe rental guy: If you fall in, don't panic, just stand up.

A.J. Whitney grins easily and paddles even more easily down the river. A friend of the Leagues, he adds to the woodsy ambience, recounting his recent trek along the entire Appalachian trail. He's not a plant - he really did come here just to have fun - though last year the Leagues had special guests to enhance the experience. "We had people planted by the side of the river with overalls and blackened-out teeth," Karrie League says. "But one of them came down with the worst case of poison ivy ever, so we're not doing that this year."

The Leagues, who recently opened their third location, have managed not only to find business success in an otherwise dismal economy, but also respect in a city passionate for alternative film opportunities. This has been a pleasant turnaround from their initial foray into the world of cinema.

"My wife and I started a theater in Bakersfield, Calif.," Tim League says. "It was a terrible failure. We learned what we did wrong - it was a bad location, we were an art house with live music and special events ... we didn't have any employees." They had to race around dividing multiple roles - cashier, ticket taker, projectionist, concession stand operator - between them.

They sold the space to an evangelical church and returned to Texas.

"The year we moved to Austin, we lived on $5,000 total," says Karrie. "We apartment surfed and couch hopped. We ate bologna and ramen." They opened the first Drafthouse in 1997, during Austin's high-tech boom.

Today, all three locations offer food and drink served by waiters, leaving moviegoers to sit back and enjoy a variety of events, many of them kitschy, including the ongoing Mister Sinus Theater. A regular sellout, Mister Sinus is a bawdy spoof of the cult TV show "Mystery Science Theater."

On May 31, they commemorated the 10th anniversary of local filmmaker Rick Linklater's "Dazed and Confused," the movie that launched the career of Matthew McConaughey. This summer, the Leagues are looking to rent a camp and hold perhaps their most ambitious event to date. After a day of sundry camp activities, it'll be another all-night horror-fest, this time featuring scary camp movies. And if it gets too scary? The men may retire to the boys' cabins and the women to the girls'.

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