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Topic: New Article on Drive-Ins

Michael Coate
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1904
From: Los Angeles, California
Registered: Feb 2001

posted 07-31-2006 04:25 PM

Here's a new Reuters article on drive-in theaters.

quote:

Drive-in movies make a comeback
Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:44 AM ET
By Holly McKenna

AVERILL PARK, New York (Reuters) - It's a smokers' and drinkers' paradise where pajama-clad children and crying babies are welcome and bug spray is essential: The drive-in movie theater is making a muted comeback in the United States.

While it's not quite a return to the heyday of the 1950s, when there were more than 4,000 outdoor theaters across the country, 20 new drive-in cinemas have opened up during the past year, taking the national total to 420.

Jessica and John Catlin began watching outdoor movies when they were children and they now drive their red pick-up truck to the 54-year-old Hollywood Drive-In Theater in Averill Park, 30 miles from New York state capital Albany, most weekends.

They bring their 2-month-old daughter Jadyn and 9-year-old son Jacob and like the way the drive-in can cater to all ages -- they were able to change Jadyn's diaper in the car, as Jacob sat glued to "Pirates of the Caribbean 2."

"We like being able to be in our own vehicle so we don't disturb others," said John Catlin, adding that he enjoys being out under the stars during summer.

The family-friendly atmosphere is a stark contrast to the dark days of the drive-in between the 1960s and 1990s when many were closed and others began showing X-rated movies in a last-ditch bid to attract customers. There are no longer any pornographic drive-ins.

"The drive-ins are coming back due to the value they have to offer," said Walt Effinger, president of the Baltimore-based United Drive-In Theater Owners Association (UDITOA).

"You get two movies for one low price," he said, referring to the practice of drive-ins screening two movies a night for one admission charge.

The "double bill" can be a children's movie with an adult movie, two children's features or two adult films.

PILLOWS AND MOSQUITO SPRAY

Effinger, who owns a drive-in, believes the future of the outdoor theaters is promising because of the experience they offer.

Movie-goers can take their own food and drink -- they don't have to sneak it in, like many do at indoor theaters -- and can also take home comforts like pillows and blankets.

At the Averill Park Hollywood Drive-In people play baseball and
football as they wait for the movie to start, teen-agers are able to congregate away from their families and lawn chairs dot the parking lot.Fifty-year-old commercials for the concession stand and an old-fashioned mosquito killer appear on the screen before the movies. Bug sprays or citronella candles are needed to combat the battalion of bugs because many theaters are in heavily wooded country areas.

One of the downsides at the drive-in is the long line at the bathroom during intermission. There are often too few stalls and at older theaters many are dirty and haven't been updated since the drive-ins opened decades ago.

Patrons used to listen to movies from speaker boxes that attached to the car window, but now they tune into a special radio frequency, and instead of being charged per car movie-goers now pay per person an average of $7.

"Our business is all weather-dependent," said Frank Fisher, owner of the 400-vehicle Hollywood Drive-In and a board member for the UDITOA. "The summer has to be good for us to have a decent season."

Karen Dapper and her family drove 45 minutes to the Hollywood Drive-In from their home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

"You get two movies for the price of one and you can talk in your car," Dapper said. "I like to be outside for the experience."

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Barry Floyd
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1079
From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 08-01-2006 10:21 AM

Nashville Scene STARDUST MEMORIES
Summer nights swim with stars at Watertown's drive-in movie theater
by Jim Ridley

When most people hear the national anthem, they stand still. Christopher Floyd runs. Every weekend night, at the Stardust Drive-In in Watertown, the voice of LeAnn Rimes singing “The Star Spangled Banner” echoes from several hundred car speakers. Long before she gets to the rockets’ red glare or the bombs bursting in air, Christopher is on the move, bolting toward the drive-in’s projection booth with his custom yellow security vest flapping. As fast as his 6-year-old legs can carry him, he ducks into the booth and stands at the ready, awaiting his cue.

The instant Rimes trills, “O’er the land of the free-EEEE,” the kid his father Barry calls “the yellow-vested man of justice” flips the switch on the projector. Just after the song ends and scattered cheers and applause ring from the far corners of the lot, a dense white beam of light shoots out of the booth’s window, above the heads of families hunkered in pickup beds and couples snuggled in SUVs. The first image of the night flickers onscreen.

This scenario plays out about seven months of the year at the Stardust. When the weather turns cold and frost blankets the grassy grooves, or “rake,” where cars park on a slant for maximum screen visibility, the screen will sit empty on a wide piece of acreage off Highway 70, about 45 minutes from Nashville. But when the wild daisies that grow on the lot’s fringes start to bud and bloom and the sun starts going down in prime time, cars will snake down the Stardust’s gravel lane for another summer outdoors at the movies.

“The last movie I saw here was Van Helsing,” says Josh Mauthe, who drove all the way from Donelson with his wife Maria. “Van Helsing sucked, but I didn’t care.” They’re sitting outside their Honda CRV with two miniature dachshunds, Thelma Lou and Gabby, one of whom tries to snag a stray sausage from Maria’s pizza. When their first child is born in September, Mauthe says, they’ll have just enough time before the Stardust closes for the season to bring him to his first movie.

To people who didn’t grow up during the heyday of drive-in theaters, a night at the Stardust is an odd, inherently retro experience. It’s pure Americana, from the kids tossing footballs in the grassy lanes to the carnival-midway smell of funnel cake, popcorn and straw. It’s also something that was once headed for extinction. From a peak of 4,063 drive-in theaters in 1958, according to the United Drive-In Theater Owners Association, the number of America’s remaining “ozoners” has dwindled to 402.

The Stardust, however, represents a flicker of hope. Where the 1990s saw vintage drive-ins across the state padlocking their gates—including Nashville’s nearest, the Sumner in Gallatin—the Watertown blacktop is one of three new drive-ins to open in Tennessee within the past three years. All have adopted the features that allow outdoor theaters to compete with big-city megaplexes and home entertainment: multiple screens that downplay the risk of a dud and concession stands that essentially function as onsite restaurants.

“This will be our first year in the black,” says Barry Floyd, who opened the Stardust with his wife Dawn in August 2003. It is a cool Friday evening, less than an hour before showtime, and twin jet trails streak like comets across the sky over the slowly filling lot. In the distance, off Purple Tiger Drive, cars are just beginning to line up at the ticket seller’s shack.

The movie is Mission: Impossible III, a far cry from the Roger Corman cheapies, slasher movies and sex-bomb sagas that were drive-in staples during the slow fade of the 1970s. Die-hard drive-in fans don’t consider Tom Cruise an improvement. But it’s clear, watching the Stardust’s lot fill with activity, that the feature is almost beside the point. The main attraction is the hubbub of kids and parents, the proudly buffed trucks and vans, the pop songs echoing from speakers across the lot—the elements of a social occasion that, although more scarce, has changed remarkably little over the past 50 years.

The very idea of the drive-in is surreal: row after row of cars in an empty field aimed toward the tallest structure in sight, a giant movie screen rising incongruously from its rural surroundings. No wonder some lots are used as churches: it produces a kind of amazement, as if you’d stumbled upon some sort of shrine. On summer nights, the woods that circle the Stardust chime with cicadas and frogs, and little outside light reaches the lot. It’s essentially an outdoor room, with a sky full of stars as the ceiling.

“Any sign of ’em?” Floyd asks his wife Dawn through a walkie-talkie as he walks the lot. It’s hardly uncommon to see Floyd criss-crossing the grassy lanes: he strolls the area on both sides every night, greeting customers and checking car tags—Wilson, Davidson, Indiana. A 7-year-old boy walks up with his mother near the creek that trickles past the concession stand. “What’ve you got there, a frog?” Floyd asks. “Grasshopper,” the boy says, extending his closed fist. Then he corrects himself dourly: “one-legged grasshopper.”

Tonight’s walk, however, has an unusual urgency. In a sea of more than 200 vehicles, Floyd is searching for a single Honda Accord. Two days before, a girl named Jani brought by a special recording that she wants played before tonight’s feature. It is of supreme importance—so important that it prompted a minor crisis when Floyd tested it over the theater’s loudspeakers. The CD-RW Jani handed over wouldn’t play, and not a single store could be found in Watertown that carried the necessary CD-Rs. In the end, the ticket seller dipped into her own home reserve.

The car has been spotted. “Everything’s ready to go,” Floyd says. He begins the long walk from the front rows toward the concrete pavilion that houses the concession stand and projection booth. The peach-colored twilight on the horizon is fading to black. Unseen birds hoot and trill from the woods. The lot is virtually full. Children are settling into their parents’ laps, and in the spacious bed of a Dodge pickup, two guys hunker down in folding mesh chairs with their Big Gulps.

The pop song playing over the drive-in’s FM-radio frequency goes silent, and Floyd’s voice sounds from hundreds of cars all the way to Purple Tiger Drive. He makes the usual announcements: coming attractions, concession-stand offerings, a reminder to turn off lights while the feature’s going. “Where’s the birthday girl? Where’s Jessica?” he asks over the radio. Far off in the darkness, a chorus of squeals goes up from a pickup.

“Jessica’s spending her 17th birthday with us tonight,” the voice drawls. “Let’s give her a Stardust Drive-In Honk-A-Thon.” The lot erupts in beeps and honks, muffled only by the cavernous outdoor space all around. There is only one item left on the preshow agenda. “Somewhere out there tonight is Joe,” crackles the voice, “and he’s out there with Jani. We’ve got a special message to play for him, and we need everybody to be quiet for a minute.”

A hush falls over the lot, and then a girl’s trembling voice emerges from 300 car radios. “Hey sweet boy!” she says. “I love you more than anything in the world, and I am going to ask you if you will marry me.” In the dim light of car stereos, couples can be seen turning to one another. Floyd’s voice comes over the radio: “Do we have an answer?”

There is an awkward silence. Then, from somewhere on the lot, hidden among rows of club cabs and minivans, comes the faint but assertive honk of a Honda Accord. Whoops and hollers follow from all corners of the field. Over the radio, Floyd cues up the song that has become synonymous with the joy of impending matrimony: the theme from The Newlywed Game.

“I was making enormous amounts of money as a wedding DJ,” Floyd had said earlier in the evening, as the rows were still filling with cars. “But I needed something more.” He adjusts his glasses and looks around the lot. “On Sundays, my boys bring their bikes out here and terrorize the customers. When it calms down, my wife and I get to walk the lot. We go strolling down these gravel driveways, watching the families. That’s where we really get our satisfaction.”

In November, the Floyds’ third child will be born, just as the Stardust is shutting down for the year. The screen will sit barren, bare trees and cedars will flank the empty lot, and occasional snows will dust the grassy embankments where cars park in the summer. But tonight holds only the promise of warm breezes, new love and popcorn under the stars. All across the field, the strains of “The Star Spangled Banner” echo from hundreds of vehicles. Right on cue, just seconds after LeAnn Rimes salutes the land of the free, the screen fills with light. Christopher Floyd is on the job.

“It’s just a simple switch,” Barry Floyd says, with a father’s pride. “But he does something huge.”

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Jeffry L. Johnson
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 809
From: Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Registered: Apr 2000

posted 08-01-2006 01:13 PM

Pending Sale may close Cuyahoga's last drive-in

quote:
Pending sale may close Cuyahoga's last drive-in
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Shaheen Samavati
Plain Dealer Reporter

Michael Goebel of Parma remembers going to the Memphis Drive-In in Brooklyn in his pajamas.

Goebel, 35, and his brother would be in the back of their parents' green AMC Gremlin. "We'd start out watching the movie, and then we'd fall asleep," Goebel said Tuesday night as dusk fell and he waited for the start of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."

Now Goebel and others who have been visiting the drive-in for decades are disappointed.

After more than 50 years in busi ness, this could be the final season for Cuyahoga County's last drive-in movie.

Russell Wintner, who manages the site and is one of six partners who own it, said Tuesday that an unnamed buyer made "an offer we couldn't refuse" to buy the 20-acre lot in May. He would not disclose the amount offered.

The anonymous buyer is working through Cleveland real-estate brokerage NAI Daus, Wintner said. He has no information about the client or how the site will be used. No one at the brokerage on Tuesday was able to comment on the deal.

The drive-in owners accepted the offer earlier this month, Wintner said, and they told employees about the decision last week. A 60-day "due diligence" period ends in early September, when the buyer must decide whether it will go through with the deal, Wintner said.

But no matter what, he said, the drive-in will stay open through the fall.

Alec Pacella, a real-estate broker in the Cleveland office of Grubb & Ellis who is not involved in the sale, said he suspects that the buyer could be a large retailer such as Wal-Mart or IKEA.

Rumors floated around at the drive-in's flea market last weekend that the buyer is a "furniture warehouse," said Csilla Korossy of Cleveland.

She frequents the flea market held at the drive-in every Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday during the summer.

Sean Manz of Cleveland, who sells books and novelty items at the flea market, said he has heard the same rumor. Other rumors say the site will be turned into condominiums or a parking lot.

"Nobody's knows," he said. "It's all just speculation and talk right now."

Joseph Roth, Swedish furniture seller IKEA's expansion spokesman, said the site does not meet the company's strict criteria for its store sites. It just makes the minimum 20-acre size requirement, but would need to be visible from a major highway, Roth said. And although the drive-in is near both Interstates 71 and 480, it isn't visible from either, Wintner said.

"IKEA would have to want to be in Cleveland pretty bad to look at that site," Pacella said.

While it's not a prime retail location, he said it would make even less sense for a company to pay a huge amount to put an office or industrial building there.

The site is sandwiched between an American Greetings office building to the south and Gateway Safety, a safety gear manufacturer, to the north. Across the street is Memphis Kiddie Park, which is owned by Wintner's family.

"The kiddie park . . . is not for sale," he said. "It will be there forever."

If not for the incredible offer, the partners had no plans to sell the drive-in either, he said.

"This summer we've had record business," Wintner said.

He said Memphis is the highest-grossing drive-in in the state. "It competes very well with the indoor theaters in the area," he said.

Manz said he prefers the drive-in to regular theaters. "You go to a theater in one of these malls, and you pay $8 or $9 for each person," he said.

Admission at Memphis is $7 per adult and $2 for children under 12. Manz said he and his wife, Kathy, try to see a movie there once a month.

With 34 drive-ins as of early this year, Ohio is tied with Pennsylvania for the highest number in the country, according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association.

Nationally there were 407 -- about 10 percent of the 4,063 that operated in 1958.

According to Jennifer Sherer Janisch of drive-ins.com, suburban sprawl is the No. 1 reason for drive-in closings.

"The fact that the land is more valuable than maybe the drive-in business itself kind of makes it inevitable that the land will be developed as something else," she said. Lately, the number of drive-ins opening has about matched those closing, she said.

Tuesday night, customers were surprised to hear of the impending sale.

Sitting in his Dodge pickup with his wife, Nina, in her pajamas, Karl Reed of Cleveland said, "It'll be a bummer . . . We need more stuff like this."

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