How LA movie fans created a cult following around RRR screenings

It doesn't matter that it's a Tuesday night, or that it's cold by LA standards. The online tickets for RRR sold out three weeks ago and the standby line is 15 people deep. During the winter months this line winds from the Vidiots hallway to the lobby, just past the wall of founders who are honored with their own VHS tape. Patton Oswalt has Tremors. Dana Gould, Pulp Fiction. Joseph Gordon-Levitt got a bootleg copy of Romancing the Stone

Image: Lee Keeler

Vidiots opened in summer of 2023, the only female-run nonprofit theater and movie rental store in Los Angeles. The foundation was started in 1985, where it rented a vast library of VHS and DVDs just off of the Santa Monica strip for over thirty years. 

"How many people are seeing RRR for the first time?" asks marketing director Saila Reyes, in her introduction before the film. Thirty percent of the audience shoot hands up. Recruitment is key to the phenomenon of RRR, especially at Vidiots. It has screened consistently since 2023 and sells out every time. 

RRR stands for Rise, Roar, Revolt, which is fitting. Tonight's event comes after a brutal month in LA that saw wildfires wipe out thousands of homes and a stinging return to tyranny in the White House. 

"Things are bad out there," Reyes reflects. "So if you need a place to come, we're here. We will always be here."

The film itself is ridiculous, and that's the point. These people have not come to see The Godfather. It's the closest thing I've ever seen to a live action manga movie, and I mean that in the best possible way. Characters scream and flex and punch through walls to deal with sadness. The moments of ennui are lifted by the absolute camp of the 10 fight scenes. When this much fighting happens in a Marvel movie, you can't remember what you just watched by the end; when it happens in RRR, you blissfully roll forward with the characters: Bheem, Ram, you and the audience. 

Oh, the audience. 

This is the secret to RRR in its final form: you need the loudest sound system possible, the biggest screen you can find and about 300 louts with beer in them. Given these elements, an audience will howl back at the film, guaranteed. After seeing it six times at Vidiots, I have become a lead heckler among them. 

This has not come without a degree of anxiety. I always try to warn the people seated in front of me before the trailers. In this, I now realize that RRR has become my version of a Dodgers game. 

People sometimes jump into the aisles to dance the Naatu Naatu, but not tonight. It's a frantic challenge, so if you don't dance, you're compelled to at least stomp and clap along. Naatu Naatu won the Oscar for best original song in 2023, the only Oscar by a film from India, which sounds …impossible?wrong? You'd think Satyajit Ray would have had a pile of them lying around. 

By the climax of the first act, I don't feel as bad about acting out. The entire auditorium is thundering:

Our throats go raw as stuffy British officers are torn asunder. We need this. It is a moment of cathartic release in a time when monsters rule the land. 

Out on the sidewalk, handfuls of friends cluster up at intermission. Some are smoking, all of them ecstatic. 

I roam towards the largest circle. "My crew was supposed to fly to Oklahoma the next day, but we got grounded," an airline pilot confides to his friends. "So I said 'Have I got the film for you.' They freakin' loved it."

Two young women are jumping up and down, clasping their hands together and giggling. 

"This is my first RRR and It's amazing." 

Image: Lee Keeler

When the lights come down for the second act, things get a little somber with the village backstory of Ram. But as soon as he dogpiles on six British officers, other folks are hooting again. I toss out a snark at the start of the prison break scene and get a solid chunk of laughs. 

Everyone claps during the final credits. And then everyone cheers after the final credits. 

When you watch folks come out of RRR, the doors open and the people flow out as if coming off of some cartoon cruise ship. It doesn't matter if there will be stress tomorrow, or the next day. In this moment they are altogether lifted and a little more whole.

And look, that's not how these people come in.They filter into the seats in little pieces, here and there, breaking away from their own troubles and day jobs and modern bullshit, strangers to each other and maybe themselves. Over the course of three hours, they find themselves cackling and hooting at a bunch of imperialist douchebags getting shot in the guts. They share this sacred time in the dark and have found grand communion. 

I stop an Indian pair heading to their car about how things went. 

"It's awesome. We are from this area, Telangana and Andhra, the same as these actors. We are so proud of the director and have watched these actors since their inception." 

I ask them how many times they've seen this. 

"This is our 11th time," the man proclaims. "It's actually our first time watching the movie in LA. Before this, we watched it when we were in Vancouver."

Image: Lee Keeler

The woman sticks a finger in the air. "But here the audience here was more interactive." 

My ears start to burn, the anxiety kicking in. I ask if all this shouting is okay. 

"That's actually how people watch it back in India," he laughs, "It's amazing. It's almost like someone here taught them. I don't know how that happened." 

I start to tear up as they say this. I don't tell them why. 

Vidiots screens at RRR every three to six months, and tickets are usually just twelve dollars. All you have to do is keep an eye on their coming soon page or better yet, get a membership

If you need me, I'll be in the right aisle seat, fifth row from the back, yelling my head off.

Lee Keeler is a writer and educator living in Northeast Los Angeles.