Project Drive-In by Honda

I go to the drive-in every summer. Haven't made it yet this year (and may not -- money's tight for renting a car), but that's the exception, not the rule. And I think a drive-in's a great place to see a movie, and certainly a helluva lot better than watching at home (which I do plenty, mind you). For my money, the communal experience is vital to movie-going.

Those who love drive-ins and might be interested in joining a friendly, medium-traffic discussion group devoted to them should visit http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/drive-ins and join the group I've been moderating for 19 years. All are welcome to join our nearly 650 members.

(Note: Yahoo Groups recently changed their software and we might be moving the group soon, but that'll be announced in plenty of time for all members to follow us wherever we go.)

Yeah, there's a lot to be said for being part of an audience. People do feed on one another's responses, for good (in the case of taking in an entertainment, for instance), and for ill (in the case of rioting mobs, to cite an extreme example).

In this age of big-screen TVs, the field of view advantage of the theater is becoming less of a consideration, what with viewing a 4-foot-plus TV screen from a few feet away being comparable or even superior to taking in the theater screen from a far greater distance. And the quality of the image on some of these new home screens, playing Blu-Ray discs, can be downright jaw-dropping.

I heard a cineaste type on the radio a couple of days age opine on why the experience of going out to the movies still beats watching at home, gee-whiz TV screens notwithstanding. The theater's real advantage, the film guy offered, is the immersion factor. At home there are almost always distractions -- telephones, doorbells, cranky kids, noisy neighbors, et cetera. And it seems that some people are incapable of not fiddling with their smart phones every few minutes, especially at home. (Alas, the film guy said as an aside, it seems to be more and more common for people to engage in similar behaviors at the movie theater. Can't say that I've witnessed much of this sort of thing myself, but as someone who takes in relatively few movies, my take on it doesn't count for much.)

My experience at the drive-in is that the distractions are typically equal or even greater to what I'd get at home. People bring kids who can't hold still for the whole movie (fortunately, the younger ones tend to drop off to sleep before long) and dogs, and teenagers who have to wander off to wherever they can to get away from the folks. They carry on conversations among themselves that are readily heard by nearby others. They fire up the engine during the movie, sometimes for heat or air-conditioning, sometimes because they decide it's time to go home.

So, if there's a movie I really want to watch, I wouldn't choose to see it at the drive-in. For my money, the movie itself is secondary to the drive-in theater experience.

By the way, skyvue, what's the thinking among the drive-in movie cognoscenti on just how perilous the movie industry's switch to digital projection will prove to be? The Honda ad campaign might leave a person thinking that it poses a potentially lethal threat to many of the remaining few drive-ins. I had heard similar concerns expressed about little independent art houses and such. But then, it seems the few of those of which I'm aware have made (or are making) the conversion. News of their imminent doom appears to have been somewhat exaggerated.

There's some disagreement. Some are of the "Hey, you gotta plan ahead and be ready for industry changes" school of thought; others (me included) figure that a theatre owner (and his or her descendents) who has hung on for several decades, making a decent living but not raking it in, has every right to feel resentful when he's forced to cough up 70K at the whims of the studios or go out of business.

There will be definitely be drive-ins closing because of the transition -- there already have been. How many remains to be seen.

I've heard that Sony is offering small-time operators zero-down financing for digital projection equipment. I know no details, however. So just how much that gear will cost the operator, once the principal and interest is paid, well, I have no idea.

I'd think that if the theater, drive-in or regular sit-down movie house, weren't struggling anyway, for whatever combination of reasons, that the cost of going digital, steep as it is, wouldn't in and of itself prove deadly. Although I can see how it would, in some cases, be that last shove over the edge.

So I have to dismiss as sheer hyperbole the comments of that young man in the Honda ad who asserts (at the 59 second mark), "Now we're facing the largest challenge that any drive-in has faced, and that's converting to digital projection."

He really should have pursued a career in law, or politics. I mean really, the largest challenge that any drive-in has faced? If that were true, we'd have considerably more than the 300 and some theaters we have now, which is something less than one-tenth their numbers during their heyday. It surely wasn't the cost of converting to digital that pushed them out of business over the decades.

I clicked on the link to your yahoo group. It didn't work, leastwise not for me.

One great image, by O. Winston Link, taken in 1956. Would have loved to have experienced such a scene myself. Might've made actually paying attention to the movie kinda challenging, but that would have been beside the point anyway.



Capturing this image was quite the undertaking. You can read about it here ...

http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/artists/link.html

tonyb said:

I clicked on the link to your yahoo group. It didn't work, leastwise not for me.

Click to expand...

Weird.

This should work: http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/drive-ins/info

I had every intention of going to the local drive-in tomorrow (Sunday) night. The second film of the double feature was to be some silly comedy ("This Is The End") which, according to the reviews I read, seemed about right for drive-in fare. It's supposed to be sunny and about 80 degrees tomorrow afternoon, which means the night should be at least tolerably warm. And dry.

But we had a big ol' lightning storm this past Thursday, which, according to an update on the theater's website, did some electrical damage to the drive-in, so it is closed until further notice. Sheesh!

But I was really looking forward to going to the drive-in! So I checked out what was playing at the big six-screen drive-in in Auburn (Washington), which is farther from me, and I'd rather drink in the ambiance at the little one-screen mom-and-pop operation anyway, but still, it's a drive-in, and the weather is nice, and who knows if I'll get another chance this year, etc.

Turns out that the big six-screen operation shut down at the end of last year's run and has since been demolished.

Further bad (really bad) news ...

On Wednesday night, Sept. 4, there was a one-car, two-fatality wreck on Hwy 8, over by the town of McCleary. A woman who works with my wife was acquainted with the victims, one of whom was a 19-year-old woman. She lived a few houses away. (McCleary is indeed a small town.) Among her survivors is a 3-year-old son. Turns out that the deceased gal had worked at the drive-in theater and was quite well regarded there. There's a memorial of sorts to her on the theater's website homepage.