25 Years of Alamo Drafthouse: How a Local Movie Theater Became One of the World’s Most Influential Cinemas

A big university town with a vibrant film scene, the Texas capital was a center of 1990s counterculture. Filmmaker Richard Linklater, the founder of the Austin Film Society, had helped establish a grassroots cinephile community in Austin. It was an ideal site to launch a new theater … if they could secure a lease and the capital to open it.