Butt-Numb-A-Thon is an annual film marathon held every December since 1999 in Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

.It is hosted by Harry Knowles

Harry Knowles

Harry Knowles is known for his website called Ain't It Cool News. Knowles is a member of the Austin Film Critics Association.-Biography:...

 of the Ain't it Cool News

Ain't It Cool News

Ain't It Cool News is a website founded and run by Harry Knowles, dedicated to news, rumors and reviews of upcoming and currently playing films and television projects, with an emphasis on science fiction, fantasy, horror, comic-book and action genres...

 website in celebration of his birthday. This mini-festival shows 24 hours of vintage films as well as premieres.

Event admission

The marathon is invite-only via an application process. Before BNAT 5 in 2003, there were typically two ways to gain admittance – one for Austin residents that usually involved some event (such as BNAT 4 in 2002 having a costume contest at a horror movie screening at an abandoned mental institution on Halloween), then a separate one for those not in the Central Texas area. After BNAT 5, the application process was changed to internet-only involving 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 10,000 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 and notable guests

Films that have been shown include the first public screening of Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson

Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson, AO is an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Born in Peekskill, New York, Gibson moved with his parents to Sydney, Australia when he was 12 years old and later studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art.After appearing in...

's The Passion of the Christ

The Passion of the Christ

The Passion of the Christ is a 2004 American drama film directed by Mel Gibson and starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus. It depicts the Passion of Jesus largely according to the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John...

, as well as the The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings film trilogy

The Lord of the Rings is an epic film trilogy consisting of three fantasy adventure films based on the three-volume book of the same name by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are The Fellowship of the Ring , The Two Towers and The Return of the King .The films were directed by Peter...

trilogy, Dreamgirls

Dreamgirls (film)

Dreamgirls is a 2006 musical drama film, directed by Bill Condon and jointly produced and released by DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures. The film debuted in three special road show engagements beginning December 15, 2006 before its nationwide release on December 25, 2006...

, Chicago

Chicago (2002 film)

Chicago is a 2002 musical film adapted from the satirical stage musical of the same name, exploring the themes of celebrity, scandal, and corruption in Jazz-age Chicago....

, Black Snake Moan, Snatch

Snatch (film)

Snatch is a 2000 crime film written and directed by British filmmaker Guy Ritchie, featuring an ensemble cast. Set in the London criminal underworld, the film contains two intertwined plots: one dealing with the search for a stolen diamond, the other with a small-time boxing promoter named Turkish ...

, Magnolia

Magnolia

Magnolia is a large genus of about 210 flowering plant species in the subfamily Magnolioideae of the family Magnoliaceae. It is named after French botanist Pierre Magnol....

, Knocked Up

Knocked Up

Knocked Up is a 2007 American romantic comedy drama film co-produced, written, and directed by Judd Apatow. Starring Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, and Leslie Mann, the film follows the repercussions of a drunken one-night stand between Rogen's slacker character and Heigl's just-promoted...

, 300

300 (film)

300 is a 2007 American fantasy action film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller. It is a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant...

, V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta is a ten-issue comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd, set in a dystopian future United Kingdom imagined from the 1980s to about the 1990s. A mysterious masked revolutionary who calls himself "V" works to destroy the totalitarian government,...

, and both the original King Kong

King Kong (1933 film)

King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...

and the 2005 remake. Guests have included Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson

Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson, AO is an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Born in Peekskill, New York, Gibson moved with his parents to Sydney, Australia when he was 12 years old and later studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art.After appearing in...

, Zack Snyder

Zack Snyder

Zachary Edward "Zack" Snyder is an American actor, film director, screenwriter, and producer. After making his feature film debut with the 2004 remake Dawn of the Dead, he gained wide recognition with the 2007 box office hit 300, adapted from writer-artist Frank Miller's Dark Horse Comics...

, Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson

Sir Peter Robert Jackson, KNZM is a New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, known for his The Lord of the Rings film trilogy , adapted from the novel by J. R. R...

, Seth Rogen

Seth Rogen

Seth Rogen is a Canadian stand-up comedian, actor, producer, screenwriter, and voice artist. Rogen began his career doing stand-up comedy during his teen years, winning the Vancouver Amateur Comedy Contest in 1998. While still living in his native Vancouver, he landed a small part in Freaks and...

, Eli Roth

Eli Roth

Eli Raphael Roth is an American film director, producer, writer and actor. He is known for his role as Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds for which he won both a SAG Award and a BFCA Critic's Choice Award...

, Craig Brewer

Craig Brewer

Craig Brewer is an American film director and screenwriter. His 2005 movie Hustle & Flow won the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and achieved commercial success, along with an Academy Award for Best Original Song, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp".- Life and career :Hustle & Flow...

, Bill Condon

Bill Condon

William "Bill" Condon is an American screenwriter and director. Condon is best known for directing and writing the critically acclaimed films Gods and Monsters, Chicago, Kinsey, and Dreamgirls. In 1998, Condon debuted as a screenwriter in Gods and Monsters, which won him his first Academy Award....

, Vin Diesel

Vin Diesel

Vin Diesel is an American actor, writer, director and producer. He became known in the early 2000s, appearing in several successful Hollywood films, including The Fast and the Furious and xXx...

, Guillermo Del Toro

Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and designer. He is mostly known for his acclaimed films, Blade II, Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy film franchise. He is a frequent collaborator with Ron Perlman, Federico Luppi and Doug Jones...

, Jackie Earle Haley

Jackie Earle Haley

Jackie Earle Haley is an American film actor. Establishing himself from child actor to adult Academy Award-nominee, he is perhaps best known for his roles as Moocher in Breaking Away, Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears, pedophile Ronnie McGorvey in Little Children, the vigilante Rorschach in...

 and McG

McG

Joseph McGinty Nichol , better known as McG, is an American director and producer of film and television, as well as a former record producer....

. Some celebrity guests, such as Eli Roth

Eli Roth

Eli Raphael Roth is an American film director, producer, writer and actor. He is known for his role as Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds for which he won both a SAG Award and a BFCA Critic's Choice Award...

, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt is an American actor whose career as both a child and adult has included television series and theatrical films....

, Laura Harris

Laura Harris

Laura Elizabeth Harris is a Canadian actress.-Early life:Harris was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, the daughter of school teachers. She began acting in radio dramas and animation series when she was five years old. As a child Harris was educated at Crofton House School and attended college...

 and Elijah Wood

Elijah Wood

Elijah Jordan Wood is an American actor. He made his film debut with a minor part in Back to the Future Part II , then landed a succession of larger roles that made him a critically acclaimed child actor by age 9. He is best known for his high-profile role as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's...

 have attended the event, even though they may not have any films exhibited. Though he was not present for the screening of King Kong in 2005, Peter Jackson introduced the film with a video-taped message in which he was seen pointing at various locations inside the Drafthouse theater, such as the stage area and specific seats, showing intimate knowledge of the theater from previous visits.

The event's unique style

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 acceptable.

BNAT has also been characterized by such novel surprises as having a live jug band accompaniment to Buster Keaton's silent classic The General

The General

The General may refer to:Film and television:* The General , a Buster Keaton film* The General , a John Boorman drama about Dublin criminal Martin Cahill...

, the delivery of fresh meat pies to attendees during the early screening of Sweeney Todd, shot glasses of caviar and vodka given to attendees to mirror a scene in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (film)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a 2008 American fantasy-drama film directed by David Fincher. The screenplay by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord is loosely based on the 1922 short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald...

, and the use of electrically shocking devices to zap sleeping audience members during an intentionally interminable 3:00am viewing of 1950s creaker-classic Attack of the Gila Monster.

Location

Butt-Numb-A-Thon is held annually in Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

, for the first eight years at the Alamo Drafthouse

Alamo Drafthouse

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is an American cinema chain founded in 1997 in Austin, Texas, United States. It has screens in nine locations across Texas and one in Winchester, Virginia...

's (now closed) original downtown location at 409 Colorado St. In 2007, BNAT 9 was held at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz location at 310 E. Sixth Street. Since 2008, the festival has been held at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar at 1120 South Lamar Boulevard.

On June 24, 2007, as an acknowledgment of the last days of the Alamo Drafthouse

Alamo Drafthouse

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is an American cinema chain founded in 1997 in Austin, Texas, United States. It has screens in nine locations across Texas and one in Winchester, Virginia...

's original downtown location, Harry Knowles

Harry Knowles

Harry Knowles is known for his website called Ain't It Cool News. Knowles is a member of the Austin Film Critics Association.-Biography:...

hosted a hastily assembled half-birthday marathon titled Half-Ass-A-Thon. Half-Ass-A-Thon was to initially only show four features, but by unanimous vote of the audience the marathon was extended to five features.