Christopher Nolan is known for two things: Making incredible movies and not having a cell phone. The Oscar-winning director is famously offline and doesn’t personally use email or a phone to keep track of his many hugely successful filmmaking endeavors. Which is why it’s kind of funny that a theater where you specifically have to use a phone to order now carries his name.
This week, Alamo Drafthouse announced that it was renaming its flagship San Francisco New Mission location “The Christopher Nolan Cinema.” It’s an honor that, of course, Nolan was flattered by. “San Francisco’s New Mission is a beautiful, historic, iconic cinema with more than a century of rich history,” Nolan said in a press release. “To be recognized in this way by Alamo Drafthouse, and with this particular theater which continues the great tradition of showing films on 70mm film, is an incredible honor.”
It’s an honor to be sure, but one that feels a little off. That’s because after years of being well known for not just their incredible theatrical experiences, repertory screenings, in-theater food services, and a no-tolerance phone policy, Drafthouse drastically changed a few of those in recent months. In the past, if you wanted to order food at your seat in the theater, there was a little piece of paper you could fill out that was decidedly less distracting to the people around you. Now, though, you have to scan a QR code with your phone to access the menu to place orders. Phone usage at the Drafthouse used to be frowned upon. Now it’s necessary. Remember this?
To us, that was a way to really champion cinema. Now, the company is doing that in other ways. “By dedicating New Mission in Mr. Nolan’s name, we’re celebrating and thanking a filmmaker whose work has consistently championed cinema not merely as entertainment, but as a cultural inheritance worth protecting,” Michael Kustermann, Alamo Drafthouse CEO, said in the press release. “The same auditorium that ran silent movies in 1916 now has both 70mm celluloid projection sitting beside Barco’s state-of-the-art laser projector. That trajectory feels right for the Christopher Nolan Cinema.”
Kustermann is correct. It feels right for a top-notch theater to have Nolan’s name on it. But, maybe because Nolan isn’t online that much and doesn’t have a phone himself, he’s unaware that if he wants a refill on his Diet Coke in the middle of his 70mm film screening of The Odyssey, he won’t be able to get that.
The policy change was recently spotlighted by iconic actor and longtime Drafthouse fan Elijah Wood. “For the first time yesterday, I experienced the new Alamo Drafthouse QR code ordering system and I can tell you it’s truly awful,” Wood wrote on X earlier this month. “Rather than making ordering food and drink more efficient, it actually adds steps to the process AND if you want to order additional items during the film you HAVE to open your phone. No, your cute reference to that irony in your How To Alamo video doesn’t negate how ridiculous this is. Please don’t cut corners with your staff and revert back to physical menus and order cards.”
I have yet to personally experience this myself, but many, many friends and acquaintances have and echo Wood’s assessment. So while Drafthouse has done something very nice here in honoring an incredible filmmaker, we think it probably has more important odysseys ahead of it.
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