“We were a bunch of friends who had one-bedroom apartments,” Colum Slevin says. “We all wanted to watch these movies together, but we didn’t have a space to watch them in.” | Photo by Mark Bialek
The shabby, welcoming confines of the Blind Pig, the beloved Ann Arbor dive bar and longtime music venue on First St., are also host to regular late-night gatherings celebrating the offbeat, idiosyncratic world of B movies.
The series is the brainchild of Blind Pig employee Colum Slevin, who started the Burnout Film Society in 2018 with a friend. “We were a bunch of friends who had one-bedroom apartments,” he says. “We all wanted to watch these movies together, but we didn’t have a space to watch them in.”
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They started out at a now-defunct Main St. music venue. “That first year, we were in the fucking hallway, and it was, like, five people,” he says.
The following year, they moved to the Blind Pig, migrating out onto the patio when the pandemic hit. And so 8 Ball Movie Night was born.
Every other Tuesday, Slevin picks a double feature based on a theme. Sometimes it’s seasonal, such as for the 4th of July or Halloween; other evenings are themed on a specific actor, such as “Carradine Collisions,” featuring David Carradine, “Hole Lotta Love” with Courtney Love, or “Marxism 101,” a night of Marx Brothers films.
He pairs better-known films with more obscure ones. For “High Seas Adventure,” the draw was the surreal 1990s cult classic Cabin Boy starring Chris Elliott. First, though, Slevin showed Czech director Karel Zeman’s Invention for Destruction, a vivid 1958 semi-animated adventure based on the works of Jules Verne.
“That B-side is the one that I want people to see,” he admits. A pairing of films by Prince featured Purple Rain—but only after he showed Under the Cherry Moon, the musician’s 1986 musical romantic comedy. Though it was poorly reviewed at the time and flopped at the box office, Slevin maintains that “it’s a wonderful movie.” And this way, “you have to actually experience it if you wanna get the ‘sugar-fix’ movie that you’ve seen a couple of times already. … That’s, like, my holy grail for all of this stuff: showing people something that they might not be aware of.”
8 Ball Movie Nights have a homey vibe, with a spread of free snacks and ten to twenty attendees enjoying pitchers of beer. In warmer months, they’re held on the back patio, with the films projected from the roof of the bar onto the gray-painted wall of the office building next door. The atmosphere is loose and funny, with viewers shouting jokes at the screen, Mystery Science Theater 3000–style. There’s a warm camaraderie among the mostly Gen X and Millennial crowd, and a shared appreciation for the unconventional and the unexpected.
Between films, there are trivia contests with prizes for winners after three rounds (a free DVD from Slevin’s large collection, which he brings in a huge tote bag), as well as portable games of mini golf from Ypsilanti-based Putt-R-Round.
“It’s become this sort of community of friends,” says Slevin. “The response that we’ve had as of late these last couple of years has been so good: just being able to sit down, fuck around, watch something weird and stupid, and just have an experience together.”
