One of the true pleasures of living in Austin is the Alamo Drafthouse, a movie house in Austin that shows off-beat films, all served with food and drink (I prefer the ‘Godfather’ pizza with a sangria). The reason why Alamo is so successful is that it is run by a man who truly loves and embraces film – not from a pretentious art-film vantagepoint as much as from the view that film is a wonderful social event.

The Alamo runs Mr. Sinus Theater, which is basically Mystery Science Theater 3000 done by live comedians. The primary difference is that, instead of mocking obscure ’50s sci-fi films, they aim both barrels at the movies that our generation is ashamed to admit we loved as kids: movies like Top Gun, Xanadu and Red Dawn. Their send-up of the Karate Kid is one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen in my life.

The Alamo also frequently has events for would-be film-makers. Last night, the Alamo announced the Blank on a Blank contest, where each competing team must make a parody sequel to Snakes on a Plane. From the email announcement:

This July, teams of filmmakers all over the world will be participating in the Blanks On A Blank challenge. Inspired by Snakes On a Plane, Blanks on a Blank assigns each team a random animal/vehicle combination and gives the filmmakers the challenge of completing a 2-5 minute disaster film based on their blanks. After registering a team online, participants will be assigned their animal and vehicle combination and then they will have from that minute until Thursday, August 3rd to submit: either upload their movie directly to our webserver or snailmail their film to us on DVD or miniDV.

Animals and vehicles: they just don’t mix. The biggest film of this summer, obviously, will show us the inherent dangers of putting motherf***ing snakes on a motherf***ing plane. But what will be the biggest film of NEXT summer?

To us, the success of SNAKES ON A PLANE is a foregone conclusion. And when any film is a success, sequels are inevitable. But how do you follow up the brilliance of S.O.A.P.? Do you put snakes somewhere else? Do you put a different animal on a plane? The options, of course, are endless, and as we were sitting around a table at a pub talking about all the different possible cinematic combinations, we realized that we really, really, really wanted to see all those movies become a reality. And so we set up the Blanks On A Blank filmmaking challenge, giving the whole world the chance to show us the future of animal/vehicle disaster films.

This sort of thing makes me wish I had, you know, talent.