Austin Film Society Honors Drafthouse Founders at Texas Film Awards
Tim and Karrie League join Michelle Rodriguez and Noah Hawley as this year’s Hall of Fame inductees
By Richard Whittaker, Fri., Feb. 28, 2025
The last time a crowd of friends and peers gathered to give their opinion of Tim League before an audience, he was getting roasted. It was the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival in 2013, and just about every roaster laid into him about the Alamo Drafthouse’s misguided and short-lived idea to serve salads in the dark on a prison-style metal tray. “That was my fault,” he confesses. “I take full accountability for the dumb salad trays.”
There’ll be no metal trays next Thursday – except maybe carrying hors d’oeuvres and glasses of champagne – as Alamo Drafthouse co-founder Tim and his business and creative partner & wife Karrie will be inducted by their old friend, Elijah Wood, into the Texas Film Hall of Fame at a gala event hosted by Austin Film Society. Alongside this year’s fellow HOFers – Machete and Fast & Furious star Michelle Rodriguez, and Fargo producer Noah Hawley – they’ll join the ranks of previous honorees such as directors Tobe Hooper and Richard Linklater, screenwriters like Bill Wittliff and Bud Shrake, and a galaxy of acting stars. Tim described the honor as “weird and humbling, and there’s not a sentence where I should be named alongside Shirley MacLaine and Carol Burnett. That’s not logical.”
Not that Tim didn’t aspire to be a moviemaker when he was younger. In college, he took a couple of film classes “and realized that, ostensibly, I’m a talentless hack.” If anything, the induction of Tim and Karrie is reminiscent of when Janet and John Pierson were similarly honored in 2023. Their impact on cinema can’t be measured in IMDb credits but in broader influence. For the Piersons, it was their advocacy for filmmakers during the 1990s indie explosion, and Janet’s time as director of South by Southwest Film & TV Festival. For Tim and Karrie, there’s more than just the cinematic revolution they kicked off with the Drafthouse: establishing Fantastic Fest; founding Drafthouse Films and later Neon (the distributor of the Oscar-nominated Anora); redefining movie collectibles with Mondo and then Mutant; and constant, behind-the-scenes advocacy for films and filmmakers. Even having sold the Drafthouse last year and staying busy with their newest project, the Baker Center arts hub, they’re still worthy honorees. “I’m just glad that they expand beyond people with actual crafts and talents to receive awards,” Tim observed.
What’s really important to Tim is that it’s not just him, but him and Karrie. While he was the public face of the Drafthouse, she was just as important behind the scenes. “We drew straws early on,” he recalled, “and she went, 'You’re the one that’s onstage. I’m the one that makes sure the business actually works.” If it wasn’t for her, he noted, then their first cinema, the Tejon in Bakersfield, California, would not have lasted as long as it did and taught them the lessons needed to make the Drafthouse a success.
On the long list of their achievements, the duo also helped change the trajectory of the Austin Film Society by providing them with screening space. However, that relationship wasn’t immediate. “I think we confounded them right out of the gate because we served food,” Tim recalled. However, any iciness thawed when Robert Mitchum died in 1997, and the Drafthouse screened Thunder Road in tribute. “That struck a chord with [AFS Artistic Director Richard Linklater],” Tim said, “and he went, 'OK, OK, a theatre that plays Thunder Road can’t be that bad.’”
And now it’s AFS bringing them into the Hall of Fame. “It’s really just been about the accolades,” Tim laughed. “It’s the long con, and this makes it all worthwhile.”
2025 Texas Film Awards
Thursday 6, Distribution Hall
