A Fantastic Interview With Fantastic Fest's Tim League

Jordan Hoffman: So lets talk about brand expansion. I know you have Four Lions, which is the first of the official Alamo Drafthouse Films that's part of the distribution arm, and I also noticed your name is executive producer on Red, White and Blue. Is that the first time for you?

Tim League: Yes.

Jordan Hoffman: Your first...but that is not part of Draft House Films, it's more of an intermediary step.

Tim League: Well, I'm not that interested in pursuing that path of getting into film production; Red, White and Blue, Simon Rumley is a fantastic veteran. He came here in 2006 with Living And The Dead and it won all kind of awards. He had a really awesome time in Austin. A year and a half later he wrote a script, basically set in Austin, and he came to me and asked me if I wanted to invest in it. I said, "Hell no, I don't want to invest in movies, it's a suckers game."

I told him, "Well it's about Austin, I like the script and if you want I can help."

Jordan Hoffman: To facilitate with the town and...offer locations? [there is a scene set at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar.]

Tim League: Yeah, we did catering, helped him find crew, location vehicles, that cast and crew slept at my house for 8 weeks. You know...extras.

Jordan Hoffman: That merits executive producer credit in my book.

Tim League: I saved them a lot of money. I didn't pay any money but I saved money.

Jordan Hoffman: Next is Four Lions, which I have not seen yet that I am very excited about.

Tim League: I'm a huge fan of Chris Morris. I have a VHS of his TV work Brass Eye and The Day Today - I eventually bought legal DVD copies. I saw the film at Sundance and loved it, and then it kind of just sat there for a while. It opened in the UK, it did about 4.5 million dollars of business in the UK and is now the number one DVD.

Jordan Hoffman: So it played theatrically okay?

Tim League: Yeah, it was huge. It was a big hit. It did better than In The Loop.  Now with that said, we'll see how it does in the United States, but it's a really funny comedy. I think Chris Morris is super smart and is able to avoid the pitfalls of taking on this particular issue.

Jordan Hoffman: It's Jihadists as Keystone Kops, basically?

Tim League: Yeah.

Jordan Hoffman: Now some uptight people are going to say, "Shocking", but there's already been some precedent.  If you saw You Don't Mess With The Zohan, there was a the Rob Schneider character who was a Jihadist schmuck. He called 1-800-HEZBOLAH, or something. So if people give you a hard time...

Tim League:  [laughs] I didn't even think about You Don't Mess With The Zohan, you're right.

Jordan Hoffman: Well it's a very different movie obviously, but eventually somebody will say you're being flip about something serious, so you can fire back with that and direct them to focus ire their way, too.

Tim League: Honestly, you can engage in the political debate but he's really smart about how he handled it. He obsessively researched as well. He found it kind of interesting that you can just go to the actual news stories, they're not big news stories but...you know someone who is going to agree to be a suicidal bomber isn't probably the brightest dude in the book. So it talks about four different guys and how they ended up becoming Jihadist suicide bombers and there are different stories behind them.