Bottle Rocket: 30th Anniversary!

Paramount and Stateside Theatres are bringing Bottle Rocket back to the big screen on Saturday, August 15, for its 30th anniversary. The screening is part of the Paramount Summer Classic Film Series, presented by Capital Metro.

Bottle Rocket was Wes Anderson's debut feature, and it's a family affair: it stars the three Wilson brothers—Luke, Owen, and Andrew—as a group that sets off on a road trip in search of Owen's former boss, played by James Caan. The more they learn, the more they realize they don't know the first thing about crime. It's the movie that put Anderson on the map, and seeing it in a theater is a different experience than catching it on a small screen.

There's a bit of history to the venue, too. The Paramount has stood on Congress Avenue in downtown Austin for over a century—built in 1915, it's the city's oldest surviving theater and a City and State Landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It started as a vaudeville and variety house, and it still stages comedy, drama, music, dance, spoken word, children's programming, and films, drawing more than 200,000 patrons a year. It's one of the few remaining 'hemp houses' in America, meaning it still works with ropes and sandbags, and it shares the street with the State Theatre next door under The Austin Theatre Alliance, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.

Doors open at 6 PM and the show starts at 7 PM on Saturday, August 15, at the Paramount and Stateside Theatres, 713 Congress.