SLURP N’ SCREEN

Tired of popcorn and Milk Duds? If you’d rather chomp on a steak sandwich and slurp a cold Bud during your movies, say howdy to Cinema N’ Drafthouse, an Atlanta-based chain of movie- cum -public houses with plans to pop the cork in Sunnyvale (near San Jose) next month, a Westwood site next year and at least 18 other California locales by 1988.

The operation started in 1975 in Orlando, Fla., and has 21 now working, mostly in the Southeast.

Said Dan Norton, director of development: “We’ve created a market that really wasn’t there before--movies in the most relaxed atmosphere possible outside your house.” For some, these replace the corner tavern. “People come in every week, sit down, buy a drink and ask, ‘What’s the movie tonight, anyway?’ ”

The typical theater offers just-off-first-run films (such as “Pale Rider”) at $1.50 a head, and a menu that includes steak, salads and sandwiches. All that munching isn’t bothersome to cineastes , Norton claimed. “It’s no more noisy than your own living room when everyone’s caught up in a movie. And you know how quiet that can get.”

As to which genres drive people to drink, he said there is increased bar business “on the comedies and the ones that are more or less plotless, like ‘The Big Chill.’ ”