About
Butt-Numb-A-Thon (also known as BNAT) is an annual film marathon held every December since 1999 at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. It is hosted by Harry Knowles of the Ain’t it Cool News website in celebration of his birthday. This mini-festival shows 24 hours of vintage films as well as premieres.
The marathon is invite-only via an application process. The application process is run through the Ain’t It Cool News website and involves several essay-style questions and submissions of pictures, which is then used to create a yearbook with all the registered attendees. Competition to get in is fierce, as thousands or more applicants attempt to gain one of the approximately 200 seats. This system was put into place to ensure that only die-hard film fans would be in attendance as well as to be fair, as attendance is limited to the seating capacity of the Alamo Drafthouse.
Films that have been shown in past years include the first public screening of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, as well as the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Dreamgirls, Chicago, Black Snake Moan, Snatch, Magnolia, Knocked Up, 300, V for Vendetta, and both the original King Kong and the 2005 remake. Guests have included Mel Gibson, Zack Snyder, Peter Jackson, Seth Rogen, Eli Roth, Craig Brewer, Bill Condon, Vin Diesel, and Guillermo Del Toro. Some celebrity guests, such as Eli Roth, attend even though they may not have any films exhibiting but rather for the love of the event.
While BNAT has been home to numerous special screenings and celebrity guest appearances, as much or more significant to explaining the thrust and tone of this event is the many other movies that have been screened, as well as the unique impact of seeing 12-13 films and 30-40 vintage film trailers back-to-back over a 24 hour period without ever leaving the confines of the movie theater. For every premiere or widely known classic that has been shown, there has been a forgotten gem, a tiny independent work, a foreign title or a film that is unlikely to receive a public screening in any other venue due to content that would generally be considered perverse, disgusting or a reflection of cultural sensitivities no longer considered unacceptable. The event has also been characterized by such novel surprises as having a live band accompaniment to Buster Keaton’s silent classic The General, the delivery of fresh meat pies to attendees during the early screening of Sweeney Todd, and the use of electrically shocking devices to zap sleeping audience members during an intentionally interminable 3:00am viewing of 1950s creaker-classic The Giant Gila Monster.
Proceeds from Buttnumbathon fund the Saturday Morning Kids Club, a monthly free movie series at the Alamo Drafthouse which screens family-friendly classics on the last Saturday of every month.
