The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema unveiled its plans today for the 2008 installment of the Rolling Roadshow Tour, the organization’s annual traveling film screening series. This year’s event takes place June 6-8 and will pay tribute to MGM’s classic Sergio Leone “Dollars” Spaghetti Western trilogy, with screenings of “Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More” and “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” in Almeria, Southern Spain, the original location where all three films where shot. Leone’s epics launched the career of four-time Oscar®-winner Clint Eastwood who set a precedent for the genre – and the generation – with his portrayal of the original anti-hero: “The Man With No Name.”
The Rolling Roadshow: Leone Edition is presented by The MGM Channel and Teuve in Spain. The screening schedule follows:
June 6: “Fistful of Dollars”
June 7: “For a Few Dollars More”
June 8: “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”
“For the past three summers, we have taken the Rolling Roadshow Tour across the United States, logging more than 30,000 miles traveling to the most famous movie locations in America,” says Alamo Drafthouse Cinema founder Tim League. “This summer we are expanding the vision of the Rolling Roadshow Tour further than we ever imagined, to one of the most important cinematic locales of the 20th Century.”
Admission to screenings are free to the general public and following each of the screenings the Rolling Roadshow Tour, The MGM Channel and Teuve will host a reception toasting Sergio Leone, a true maestro of cinema.
The Rolling Roadshow Tour
Every summer, the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema takes to the road, departing from Austin, Texas on a whirlwind tour, hosting free 35mm screenings of famous movies in famous places. Known as The Rolling Roadshow Tour, the organization has been to the “Field of Dreams” in Iowa to show “Field of Dreams” with Kevin Costner live in person, Devil’s Tower in Wyoming for a screening of “Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind” and Alcatraz Island for a screening of “Escape From Alcatraz.”
The Leone “Dollars” Trilogy
In 1964, Sergio Leone, an assistant director of Italian “sword and sandal” movies traveled to the Almeria region of Spain to shoot a small film based on Akira Kurosawa’s samurai adventure “Yojimbo.” The leading man was an unknown American bit-part television actor who at 34 years old was well past his matinee-idol potential. The film, was “A Fistful of Dollars;” the actor, Clint Eastwood. No one could have imagined the explosive force of this seemingly modest film. Sergio Leone is now considered by many film historians to be one of the most influential directors of all time. Few films have reshaped the visual style of cinema more than Sergio Leone’s quintessential “Spaghetti Western” trilogy, and even fewer films elevate the filming location to the status on par with lead actor. Like John Ford’s American southwest, Leone’s Almeria region plays a vital role in shaping the emotion and spirit of his films. Leone’s stylistic and graphic depictions of the Old West elevated a marginalized genre to an art form and influenced today’s filmmakers.
