The Enduring Appeal of the American Drive-In

[Allan Young]

All permanent drive-ins around here died a long long time ago.

I'm surprised there were ever any in the first place! Isn't the weather in your neck of the woods equally as shitty as the UK?

[Leo Enticknap]

Agreed. When I lived in the UK I heard of the occasional open-air, popup cinema (there was even one company that made inflatable screens for them, at the bottom of which was a tank containing enough water to float the Titanic, to prevent them from blowing away), but I never encountered any drive-ins before emigrating, or in any other country besides the US. I've always believed them to be an almost, if not completely, exclusively American institution. As you point out, the weather is a major part of the reason why they work well in Southern California: it probably only rains on 5-10 evenings a year, and even in the middle of the summer, it's dark enough to start a show by around 8.30. During a typical June in Northern Europe, it could easily be raining on half the evenings, and wouldn't be dark enough for shows to start until around 9.15 to 9.30.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Given reason to browse photos of drive ins, I’m also struck by the fact that they were way ahead of a screen market curve that cites “zero edge” (no masking or bezel), that is somewhat popular now in corporate settings, and also mimicked by direct view screens. Did they even file aperture plates, or just blast the rest of the frame into the sky?

I also wonder if any attempted some kind of ratio adjustable screen, part of the drive in “look” is to have the film framed by dusk night sky (or stars if you are lucky enough the be in dark sky country). Too cost prohibitive now, but might have been cool in the climax era to build a scope screen that could “roll” behind itself mechanically for 1.33 and 1.85.

Having said that, I wonder if we are not considering another factor that led to drive-in audience dwindling... the actual phenomenon of light pollution. A dimly lit sky due to a nearby metropolis with very few stars visible just doesn't have the same magic and charm that it would have before that problem got out of control.

Drive-Ins enjoyers, amateur astronomers, observatories, and folks who like camping should all be in the same anti-light pollution lobby. There are probably only a few drive-in locations left that could reasonably double bill (with expectation to have good viewing) a movie and a meteor shower!

[Ryan Gallagher]

Other tech advances beyond LED that would have served drive-ins well, ALR (ambient light rejection) screens or coatings.

[Mike Blakesley]

My first projection experience was at our now-defunct local drive-in. My best friend was the main projectionist -- his parents owned it. I never really worked there, I just hung out and eventually started helping my friend in the booth. They had the worst equipment imaginable but a lot of indelible memories were made at that place. I learned a lot of bad habits that I had to un-learn once I actually got into the business with the Roxy.

One thing I remember about the drive-in booth was, the projectors were tilted back at such an angle that the carbon drippings would fall onto the bottom edge of the reflectors. Every spring they would get new reflectors which were always cracked after the first weekend. I always wondered if there was an alternative non-glass reflector available, or some other way of avoiding that problem, but never did find out. I think they were Motiograph machines.

[Marcel Birgelen]

One solutions may be, to not tilt the projectors back and to use mirrors to angle and aim the beam onto the screen. It's not completely uncommon to use mirrors in complicated booth setups. Those mirrors will loose you quite some light though, which might have been even more of a challenge with carbon lamps.

I'm surprised there were ever any in the first place! Isn't the weather in your neck of the woods equally as shitty as the UK?

Yeah, the weather around here can be pretty... British, that obviously limits the appeal for permanent open-air installations a bit.

There were just a handful around here in the past, I'm not aware of any permanent drive-ins in the Netherlands still operating. The closest one was this one. It operated until 2003, the buildings and screen were just recently removed. The place has ever since been part of a large festival area, it hosts the pretty popular and long-running annual Pinkpop pop and rock festival among others. The screen actually was revived as "screen" during a few of those festivals.

Germany, which admittedly has more of a car culture than the Netherlands, has still quite a few operational drive-ins, they're called "Auto Kino" and they seem to be pretty popular and many of them operate in equally bad weather. Although, those located more to the south-East benefit from an earlier sunset.

Yet, still, there seems to be an appeal to "open air" activities. This "Open Air Film Festival" did sell out on almost every evening over the last years, for example. Utrecht even has a permanent rooftop cinema installation in one of their multiplexes, which seems to be pretty popular too.

[Terry Monohan]

The SFBay Area had many outdoor theatres at one time but now we only have two left. Many were on on Hwy 101 on the SF Pennisula. One in Concord CA and the other in the San Jose area still are showing movies. Both run by the Syufy family under 'West Wind '. Ray Syufy in the 1950's owned many in the area and then the land got way to expensive so the Syufy family took down all the drive in screens and built big malls in the late 1960's and 70's on the property with some containing a indoor multiplex cinema under the Century Theatres name.

In Santa Cruz CA we have the former Encina and re named the StarView DI. The large lot was bought by a local hospital many years ago for parking. They tore down the screen fast before the locals complained and the nice neon marquee was also taken out but the projection building , snack bar, restrooms and boxoffice remain.
,
The Syufy West Wind family needs to purchase the former drive in and let the hospital park during the day run a flea market on the weekends and put back the huge CinemaScope screen for future generations to enjoy in this CA beach city.

Boulder Creek & Watsonville CA nearby also had drive In 's but they were taken down in the early1950's ,never got a CinemaScope screen put in.

[Barry Floyd]

The drive-in that I service had the claim to fame as being the one and only movie theater in LA County that was allowed to continue operating during the worst of the covid lockdowns (spring to fall 2020).

Same here. Back in 2020 while all of the local indoor theatres in the Nashville area were closed, we were allowed to remain open. The concept of "social distancing" is kinda built into our standard business model. We did get shut down for the month of April due to us being deemed a "non-essential business" by the governor. Once we reopened on May 1st, we practically sold out every single weekend from May 1st till the 2nd week of January. Since the major studios weren't releasing new movies, we played a whole summer of retros, independent films, Netfilx and Hulu premieres (licensed through the studios on DCP), and people still came out. Not only were the indoor theatres closed, but the concert venues were also closed. I got contacted by tour management from Live Nation who wanted to use our drive-in to see if "Drive-In Concerts" were a financially viable option. We worked a deal with them, and our first LIVE concert was Keith Urban in mid-May. Not a recorded thing on the screen, I'm talking full stage, lighting, speakers, the works. It was a huge success... at least for us. (I got to meet Nicole Kidman that night too.) That one concert led to a whole summer of live concerts. We worked with a local Christian concert promoter and ended up with one or two big concerts each month. We had Toby Mac, Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, Mac Powell, Casting Crowns, Big Daddy Weave, Zach Williams and some Americana Folk singer named Margo Price. We did a live televised album release party for Kip Moore and some other guy I don't remember. Those concerts at the drive-in opened doors for my oldest son who now works full-time in the concert industry. He and his crew are in Los Angeles tonight at the Kia Forum on tour and he'll be back in Nashville in September.

By mid-summer of 2020 this place was literally printing money. By the time we finished our run of Wonder Woman 1984 in mid-January we had grossed almost $1M in combined tickets and concessions.
The concerts are gone now, but the new faces they brought out that didn't even know we existed before still come.

I started lurking here on Film-Tech back in the late 1990's scrounging for all the information I could about projection at drive-ins. After 22 years in this business, we figured we've got about 5 years left before we're ready to sell it and go camping and play with grand babies. I bought the property the drive-in sits on in 2003 for $8K an acre. The two empty lots next to us just sold in February of this year for $175K per acre. The drive-in land was a good investment.