Field Trip: A visit to Brooklyn’s reRun Theater

Located at 147 Front Street, ReRun is a snazzy add-on theater tucked away in the back of ReBar–a red-hued gastropub that looks like the illicit lovechild of an industrial Brooklyn warehouse and a 1920’s speakeasy den. When you wander into the building, things aren’t laid out too obviously; you simultaneously enter the lobby to an office building, the entrance to a small coffee shop and the waiting area for a restaurant because Brooklyn is crazy and doesn’t conform to labels dude, so just step off.  Really, it’s all just a test to intimidate you. Simply climb the stairs, walk past the empty space where the Maître d’ should be politely greeting you and head straight down the hall to a room that looks like a theater. Congratulations, you win. This is the theater.

What you have won is access to a mini Brooklyn Alamo Drafthouse–a place where you can drink alcoholic beverages while watching a film. I’m not quite sure what the big deal is there, it’s not as if there’s airport security at multiplexes stripping you of all liquids at the gate. Anyone passionate enough for a drink with a movie can sneak it in. The trade-off is that you’ll feel like an alcoholic when forced to resort to illicit sips from flasks and brown-bagged beer bottles at that 10 A.M. screening of Cars 2, but to be perfectly honest, you probably are an alcoholic if you’re resorting to that anyway.

More importantly, the movie that you have won (a chance to purchase a ticket for) at ReRun is not just any movie at your local AMC or Regal or a strange lady’s trench coat pocket in Chinatown. It’s an indie movie–and not even a Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Jason Reitman movie pretending to be an indie movie when you know Fox Searchlight is really going to buy and distribute it all over the country. It’s an actual indie movie, fresh off the festival circuit and looking for a distributor.  And when it’s not indie, the film could anything from a rarely screened foreign classic to whatever the hell curator Aaron Hillis decides he wants. Either way, odds are that on any given day, ReRun will probably be screening a film you can’t find anywhere else in the city.

That should normally be enough of a prize for any moviegoer, but there’s an even greater prize awaiting visitors at this fine establishment: a magical sounding snack called Bacon Fat Popcorn. I don’t mean Bacon Fat as a hip adjective describing the awesomeness of something. This is actual Bacon Fat, people. Poured on popcorn. Perhaps slathered. Drenched. There are other popcorn topping options like Brown Butter Grease and Duck Fat – perfectly pleasant alternatives – but really, it’s like a choice between your first kiss and losing your virginity, or the decision between casting Sienna Miller and Naomi Watts for a role.

So naturally, as I entered the theater, my first instinct was to head to this Bacon Fat Popcorn dispersion station (“the bar”) and ask the Bacon Fat Popcorn man to further acquaint me with his delightful product.  After clarifying his official job title (“bartender”), the Bacon Fat Popcorn man informed me that he stops serving food ten minutes before the show. I was three minutes too late. I tried to inform him that Bacon Fat Popcorn was not a mere “food”. It was a gift from the gods, a transcendent state. Surely it wasn’t subject to the laws of the physical world.

Apparently, it was.

After mustering up a nod of noble fortitude, I climbed into the elevated theater seating area and surveyed the dim space, unsure if the darkness was due to standard theater procedure or because all the light has left a world without Bacon Fat Popcorn. I sank into my vinyl seat and prepared myself for the lonely road ahead. You see, that’s actually a strong metaphor when you consider that ReRun’s seating is entirely made up of reclaimed car seats.  It’s a unique sort of hybrid between the drive-in theater and a bar: three pairs of seats make up every row, car bumpers are re-appropriated as shelves for liquor bottles and an assortment of hubcaps decorate the underside of the bar. With the paired seating, it’s the ideal place for a date and it’s also the ideal place for the curator to introduce the film with great one-liners like “buckle your seatbelts!” and “get ready for the ride of your life!”  Unfortunately, we were just told to enjoy the film.

There was no new car smell to the place, though there might have been some smells too obscure for me to have ever heard of because this place is, if anything, about being hip. During the wait before the film, the theater abstained from painful advertisements and instead opted to blast catchy dance music and post-rock while the screen displayed a ridiculous Japanese classic called The Samurai Pirate on mute, featuring Toshiro Mifune and a man who could transform into a blue mist and touch (or rather, condense on) women’s breasts. There’s a nice atmosphere to the place, but one not unlike other Brooklyn and Lower East Side bars where everything feels slightly cooler than you. It’s the complete opposite of those cozy, artsy theaters where you go alone because none of your friends want to see that weird-ass movie and you feel a silent sense of camaraderie with the other awkward and genuinely passionate people in the audience.

ReRun is more about having a fun night out, hanging out with friends at a bar or restaurant and amusing yourself with a nearby movie in order to “do something” beside just eat and drink. The theater encourages viewers to come early and hang out for thirty minutes before the show, partly because it’s a small theater with about 60 seats that could easily fill up for a popular showing and partly so you have time to order other delicious sounding foods like stuffed pretzels and stuffed focaccia and presumably pretzels stuffed with focaccia. To make things more tempting, ReRun gives you the movie ticket for free if you order seven dollars’ worth of food.

Just be sure to order before the ten minute Bacon Fat Popcorn cut-off mark that was not at all mentioned anywhere on the website and really should have been disregarded because the movie ended up starting 15 minutes late, which would have allowed for twenty-two minutes of ample Bacon Fat Popcorn popping time. But that’s OK. No one is bitter at all.

Written by Tarun Shanker (@tuna365)

After tragically losing his childhood innocence by watching Steven Seagal kick a man under a train in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, Tarun emerged from the shadows to graduate from NYU with a degree in Film & English and become a mild-mannered New York City assistant by day and a… More »