YouSaid · the spoken record

Tim League

lines on the record: 101
first: 2023-05-22
most recent: 2023-05-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's definitely a mix. And I'm not unaware of the basic luck that I have, just the privilege of having a stable family life and supporting parents and a good education and not really having a nuclear family. It's all I know, right? But I know that that's not everybody and I'm keenly aware that that has given me what others don't have. I certainly work really hard. I still like doing it. And on the flip side, just like life is just full of these weird little moments like having a release son pop up or, you know, That we were able to get financing before we ran out of payroll, right? So I put the scales more in luck than in hard work, but gosh darn, I can work pretty hard when I need to.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say that a lot of it has to do with hard work. We worked eleven hours a day for seven days a week for probably five years. But at the same time, we have been incredibly lucky because of all of the people that we've come across who have been so supportive and kind from the film distributors early on to the people who helped us get started in Austin. We didn't tell you the story about the food purveyor at Cisco who knew that we were an impoverished couple that was asking him for samples to develop our menu just so that we would have something to eat. And he provided us with huge amounts of samples anyway. He knew that that's what we were doing, and he did it anyway. So, yeah, also a good deal of luck in there.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm gonna answer that call. If there's a little pause where it's a little bit lull in a movie, because I'm addicted to my device, I have this urge to pull it out. So being lights down in an excited theater, experiencing something fresh with a group of people, that's the core experience. Like that core product is beautiful. I love it. Yeah.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got a really good one. You mean a stove shop? Yeah, that's awesome. But you still go out to restaurants, right? Every once in a while? Yeah. So that's really it. Humans, and I think this is so evident after COVID. Like the first time I step back into movie theater, we put together a very nostalgic clip about welcome back to the movies, but I was in tears. I was just so happy to be out of the home. Every once in a while, no matter how much streaming content you watch at home, you want to get out. You want to be a part of an event. You want to have experiences. So I think there's legit pressure to up the game to make sure that our industry, cinema industry delivers exceptional experiences. There's just something about a lot of times I hate the home experience in a way because there aren't the rules. Like if somebody calls me...”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And so we weathered it, right? So it's far from ideal, but we lived a ride another day, right? So the balance sheet looks good, and we're actually growing and expanding new theaters. We're bullish on the future of the industry and looking for opportunities to grow.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guys had to sell, I didn't get to sell a lot of your assets or some of your assets to a private equity group or a venture group, right? I mean, that's essentially what happened. That helps you emerge from bankruptcy.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's a little bit more complicated in that we probably had about two payroll cycles left before we were done. Wow. And so in December, we took on some basically distressed asset financing, right? So that money's not cheap. But turns out not a lot of people waiting in line to invest in movie theaters in December 2020. So, but at the end of it, it did what it's supposed to do, right? So we're back. Yeah. We were healthy. Everybody took a little haircut. We took a big one.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, everybody knows it. It's not a unique story for us, but we had no idea at the time in March of 2020 when, if ever, this is coming back. And we knew very quickly our burn rate as to what debt was accumulating from some very expensive leases. And we had gotten a little over our skis in terms of being bullish on expansion and had mounted some debt and had a big team”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there were sexual harassment issues, there were allegations of racism, there was individual managers that I don't think were kind You know, so what we did in the wake of it is we established a really robust, anonymous engine where I would start my day every day and just read comments from teammates across the country and we had a monthly all-staff meeting where the ones that were the hardest, we would address them publicly in front of everybody. We grew from it. It was really hard and painful and were better because of it.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And once that happens, especially at the time within a very important movement in our culture, it's also not a place for nuanced dialogue. But clearly what had happened is I was I embarked upon a tour and went to every location and apologized and was basically a listening tour of like, what's wrong in the venues that I may not know about. And we truly want to be the best theater that has ever been. Help us.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Long time. Yeah, yeah. He was a friend. So I kept in touch with him, and it was just, I saw that it was challenging for him because he didn't find any pathway to write. Anywhere anymore, and was depressed, and I was worried about him. And so I made the decision at the board meeting to offer him a copy editing position that he could do from home.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and you may have noticed that when we've been talking about the expansion and every time we expanded that I was the one with far more reluctance. So when the companies got crushed together and it was a major commitment to essentially unlimited expansion, that was when I tapped out and said, okay, I'm ready to have kids now.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She was very funny. And I mean, it's probably, I don't know how many, it's big for us. I don't know, 10 million, 12 million views on it. So it became our calling card for a long time.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we consulted with our lawyer first because I wanted to find out property ownership on that. So apparently, the way I understand the law is if somebody leaves you a voicemail, it's your property as long as you don't sell it, because then you'd have to kind of work out a deal with the person. So we didn't sell it. We just turned it into a little bit of a snarky clip because she was very mad. She was obviously a little bit intoxicated and was furious about getting kicked out because she was using her phone in the theater.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree. And the beauty was that once we did it, because obviously cutting ahead, we said yes. And the idea of growing so that we can truly support the movies that we love got super exciting and helping craft that plan to open in LA, to open in New York, and to be a force in the industry, that was a totally different game. And they had built a great structure and system and knew how to grow, knew how to expand. They had running laps around us and accounting in operations. And we had the perfect Counter strengths”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my gosh, I was so scared of her. So he proposed the idea. It's like, hey, I have a left field idea for you. What would you think about crushing the brands back together and you stepping in as CEO of the consolidated company? Wow. So basically it's like liked what we had to say, liked our vision for the company and the brand.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we finished the day of deposition, and afterwards Dave Kennedy, to his credit, texted me and said, hey, would you have time for breakfast tomorrow morning? And I said, yes. And it was a pretty bold move on his part. Yes.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So we went first, I think, and he sat and he listened to our deposition about the fact that, you know, a lot of the things that we did were not done for profit. And during my deposition, they came out with an email where I had, I don't know if it was an employee or a partner in one of the events that we were doing. And I said, well, we really want to do this thing. And I know it's going to add a lot to the cost, but it really doesn't matter if we make a profit. And so they took this email and they threw it at me in a kind of an aha way. Sort of accusing us of trying to tank the company by not caring about profit And it gave me just a really great diving board for explaining the difference between short-term profit and long-term investment in a brand”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was clear that this was ugly enough that there were going to be no winners other than the lawyers. But the interesting thing about it is that to that point, we had never really met or spoken to Dave Kennedy, who was the guy who had put the money in to buy The franchise.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it was like we were angry and we were just like baffled by it. It's like, no, come on, it's pretty clear language and this trademark infringement and things like that. So then we countersued to unwind the deal, basically. So we felt that there was things that had happened between us that they were in violation of. And so you're going to push me. I'm going to push you. So we went to war”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we were just doing that. We were doing whatever we wanted to do. We were having a great time. And in the meantime, the franchise was working very, very hard on systems and efficiency and all of that sort of a thing. And they became increasingly unhappy with people calling them and saying, but the Alamo is supposed to do it this way. Why is this theater in Denver not doing it this way? And referring back to us That was making them very unhappy, and they wanted to retract some of the language in the contract that was going to allow us to not pay attention to what they are doing.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were having a great time, but when we sold the franchise rights, we made very, very sure in the contract that we were going to be allowed to do whatever we wanted regardless of what direction the franchise took.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I remember that scene punching those carcasses of meat and the newscaster, the news reporters there, and they're doing a segment. And oh my God, that's so cool. So you've got this going. And I guess around 2009, you start to have second thoughts or maybe second thoughts as an understatement about what's going on with the franchising. You're not happy with how it's turning out, what was going on, what was making you uncomfortable about how the franchising was rolling out.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's very wasteful, I'm sorry. But it was such a cool thing, and it dripped a lot on the steps, and I apologize to the City of Philadelphia”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we did Rocky 1, 2, and 3. And it was a marathon. And we also had these giant slabs of beef up at the top of the stairs that people could take pictures of themselves punching. It was really gross.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so they're opening franchises. But meantime, you guys are now really able to just, those guys are doing the franchising thing, whatever. You're focusing on your own initiatives and you really kind of double down on this rolling roadshow thing that you do. And then you take it outside of Austin. Like you guys did so cool. I wish I was there. You screened Rocky on the rocky steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, even in those early days of franchising, we were very upfront. This is not a normal franchise. And yes, we're undeniably a chain, but we started preaching this mantra. It was like, we're a loosely connected network of local community theaters.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So, just to clarify, there were these guys, John Martin and David Kennedy, and they basically said, look, we want to create a new business that is a franchising business. We will run it and own it. You guys will own a part of it, and you were okay with that.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was actually a great deal, and it was causing us a lot of stress. I preferred putting on a show aspect of Alamo. But it was very enticing to us, so we did it.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel like we had been sort of dragged kicking and screaming to every level of expansion. And finally we were ready to say no. No, we don't want to do that because now the forescreen first run theater was financing all of the cool stuff that we were able to do at the single screen theater. Then suddenly people were talking about going nationwide. And I think we just didn't want to think about that.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, at that point, I think we had become really ingrained in the Austin community and were enjoying the aspects of community building at the real scale. And there was more. More headache on the franchising, and I didn't, it wasn't where my passion was”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I read that by 2003. Alamo was making much more money from food than ticket sales. And that might have happened even before, which makes sense, right? I mean, because that's really where, especially drinks, right, when people are buying multiple drinks.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was a very similar situation where the landlord called us and said that there was a competitor potentially moving in. I feel like Most of the expansion that we've done or that we did early on was entirely based in fear.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, well, I mean, different. It was bigger work, and it was a bigger kitchen because it was four theaters, double the amount of seats.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had no plans to expand. And the landlord of the village theater was a fourplex in central Austin called me and he's familiar with the theater and he had seen a line around the block for our theater and said, hey, I just want to let you know that I have a ready-to-be executed lease with a competitor of yours, and I'm going to sign that lease. Wow. But if you want it You can have it. It's yours because I'd rather work with somebody in town, local, and I like what you do. But here's the proviso. You have to sign it by this week, by this Friday, and you can't change a word in the lease. And how?”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought that in this I do feel like it was forward thinking, that it would instill loyalty to us. Here's all the things I hate about going to a movie theater. We're not going to do this to you. This is, you know, maybe Super Bowl ads are somewhat entertaining, but I can tell you the caliber of cinema ads in the 90s was not. No. And I just found it offensive. You still are not. Just thought that that would be a long, like that's how people...”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we did those were also the things that people would write about and talk about. It became part of our identity to one up ourselves in these fun things. But all the while... Just having a blast. And they”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People would come and they'd hang out in the lobby afterwards, and people would have another beer, and we'd just talk about things, and a lot of ideas. Once you start doing crazy, weird things, then everybody has ideas for crazy, weird things. I remember very distinctly, I mean, it wasn't a money-making venture, but for five years we had an annual cannibal film festival where we showed cannibal films and purported to be selling actual human flesh.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, all of the extra stuff that we did, the feast nights where we would show a food related movie with a matching menu, the rolling road show, the scavenger hunts that we would do, all of that was for us. That was for fun. And it was for the community that we had developed all of the people that we saw, you know, week in and week out that would come to the theater and became our friends.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. We'd hire banjo players on the river to do this a river cruise and Carrie roasted a whole pig on a spit. It's just for the squeal-like pig parallel. For six hours. But it was so awesome.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm curious about some of the things that you did because this was, we're talking when it was one theater, and there's something that you guys, I mean, there are many of these sort of events that you would mount. Like, for example, you started this thing called the Rolling Roadshow, and I think one of the things you did was you somehow got a like 60 or 70 canoes and you hold them out to the edge of a river and you screen the movie deliverance so people could watch deliverance in canoes on a riverbank.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So it was a leap for our ability, for our culinary team, because we weren't hiring Michelin-rated chefs. So yeah, I think it took us a while. I remember week two, the servants would finish and they'd pick up their checks and they'd check out and then Carrie and I would just clean the theater. And then one of the waiters.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So the Austin Powers kind of thing just really kind of just helped you guys find your footing. And I think within a couple months, maybe within a year, you started to do more of these special themed menus. If you played streetcard names desire, you would serve New Orleans food or Godzilla was being screened, you'd serve sake”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's not perfect, right? I mean, we take a hard stance on guest behavior in terms of no talking, no texting, but we acknowledge that we're not a pristine environment. There's cinemas in France that don't allow any food at all into the cinema. It's just a pure experience, and we're far from that. But it's a huge part of our training to wear black and crouch down and know the movie, don't disrupt during a key pivotal moment. And now we're in a different era where we're to pre-order in advance and you don't have the checkout process, so you kind of eliminating the touch points of server interaction with you.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, thankfully, we made it through that night, and from there on it was actually. Pretty great. It worked after that.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were two in the kitchen and carrie and two waiters. So there were four. But the bartender showed up in the middle of the rush and I was like, Damn, put on an apron. And so he actually worked that shift. And then I weighted tables.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100%. And so a couple things happened pretty early. You know, the folks at the Austin Chronicle were very kind and wrote about our events. And the midnight movie programming worked pretty quickly. And then about three weeks into operation, Austin Powers, the first one, hit the second run market. And it hit us like a freight train. What do you mean? Well, at the same time, before that weekend, Ann Hornaday, who's now a critic for one of the Washington posts. Washington Post. So she wrote a really nice article about what we were and what we represented and what we were trying to do.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But here's the thing. I'm assuming that your value proposition wasn't, hey, we're an Arthouse cinema in Austin, or hey, we're a second run movie theater in Austin, it was, hey, we serve beer and good food, and you can see a cool movie.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so it's like this is our target audience. Let's do them. And then we're routinely chased away from those marketing opportunities.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we started taking out some ads, and then we would also, when we closed down, and this probably sounds terrible, but we were desperate. We would go to the other movie theaters with some pretty snarky flyers. Like, why are you here? Just used to be at our theater.”
2023-05-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Tim and Karrie League · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT