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Stephen

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I've also had the rather depressing job of dismantling a drive-in (with Gordon and former owner). I went up looking for concession equipment and left with the whole thing. Nothing as sad as an overgrown drive-in theatre. You can almost see the fun that was had there, and now gone forever. My only motivation and hope in buying this stuff is to maybe "save it's soul" in some way and use it again at my own drive-in.

Now, if I can only convince my wife that it really would look okay right here in the back yard!

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I have visited over 200 drive-ins in my lifetime (USA and Australia) the ones that close fall into the following catagories:

1. Big circuit sell to realise land value and put $ into an indoor multiplex - often operating profitably at closure.

2. Old Bill & Norma who have run it the same way for 40 years & finally run out of puff.

3. Single screener, can't book the right product, sells lousy food and don't know what the term "customer service" even means let alone marketing sell to meagstore developer.

Now picture the drive-ins that run today and will continue to do so:

1.Multi screens with 1st run product,

2.Know the market and where it comes from,

3.Networks with fellow drive-in operators and watches the indoor competition like a hawk,

4.Quality food, friendly staff that are a mix of youth AND experience,

5.Combine the best of old drive-in showmanship eg intermission clocks, speakers on posts, flashy roadsign,

6. Quality presentation with a BRIGHT picture no larger than 80ft wide that is 10 footlamberts not 3 footlamberts, Dolby stereo processors, platter and definitely no carbons!

7. Let the market know you are a drive-in that is still open - you would be amazed how many people think they are all gone when one may be close by but no longer on that major Hwy.

Follow these rules and you have a better than average shot of a very successful theatre business for the long term.

See how the good ones do it today at:
www.drive-insdownunder.com.au

One of Wesley Trout's articles advised projectionists to be sure to take pictures of a brand-new Drive-In before the first car drives in. Never again, he advised, will the speaker posts be so straight, the paint so new, the speaker cords so straight....

Now we have come to the point of history where most Drive-Ins are closed, or at the point of doing so.

It is an emotional experience, to walk the field of a closed Drive-In, one in which you have worked the booth, especially near dusk.

You can almost hear the sound of car horns, the rush of the concession staff to get ready for intemission, and, as you enter the booth, the whinning of the arc-feed motors.

You feel tempted to appproach where the sound rack used to be, to announce one last time that "The concession stand will be closing in ten minutes.."

When I purchased the projection equipment from the defunct "Woodzo Drive-In" in Newport, Tennessee, the theatre had been closed for over a year but when you walked in the door to the concessions/projection building everything was there waiting for the next show. There was still food in the concessions stand (i.e. 14 month old Nacho Cheese - still in the warmer), and trailers still threaded on the platter. It looked like they just walked out and and never came back.

By the time we had finished loading the equipment into the truck, dusk had fallen over the lot. The massive 104' concrete screen stood silently across the field - it seemed to know it would never see another film projected across it's face.

I imagined what it would have been like to see the lot filled with cars and children playing on the lawn beneath the screen. Like Rick said... if you listen closely.. you could hear them.

Now months later, I'm faced with the decision to sell my home, move my family to the middle of "B.F.E." nowhere, and take a $300,000.00 gamble, to show movies in the middle of a corn field - hoping the patrons will come.