Drive-Ins and Us

There is something sad about this race toward the future that we seem bent on. And by we, I am in that group. 

Hi, it’s me. 

We all want convenience, we want what we want the moment we want it, and it seems we’re willing to pay more to get these things. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with all of this but what we’re losing in our speed toward the next thing is who we are as a culture and a people. 

We are burying history beneath single-use packaging and apps. 

One of the things COVID did was to show us how much we can adapt, and how quickly. Once we were all stuck at home, the focus was on delivery, streaming, and immediacy. We got used to streaming television and movies, and we expected both to be given to us as soon as it was available. There’s nothing wrong with that but it’s forced us into a dangerous relationship with streamers, content providers, and restaurants. 

Restaurant service has dipped drastically because they know we don’t care enough to go in. 

Streamers raise prices at the drop of a hat and delete content to save their own money. 

Content providers give us what they think will sell and don’t support older material, reach for new material, or support material after it has been released. 

It’s very much a one-night-stand mentality. 

In the shadow of COVID, we have seen movie theaters become quaint and almost antiquated compared to movies at home. Drive-ins? Forget it. 

We’d rather stay at home and watch movies. 

And I get it, I have a toddler at home and it’s hard to get to movies without finding someone to watch the kiddo and dogs. So we watch at home. We have a big television, a surround system, and loads of stuff to watch. 

It doesn’t take the place of a movie theater though. 

It never will. 

Convenience is great and it’s fantastic to have the option to watch things at home but much like the act of going to a church can make faith a real thing for some, so too can the act of going to a movie make it more meaningful. There is a formality to going to the movies, to going out, to finding getting snacks, to finding your seat, to watching trailers, and to focusing on a movie for its duration. 

We are so distractable, and so easily pulled out of things that we need that darkness to force us to focus and leave the world of distraction for a little while. 

Heck, you go to a concert now and people are more focused on filming it or filming themselves there singing or dancing than they are the music. It’s the attention we seem to want more than the thing itself. 

Crazy.

As movie theaters try desperately to re-invent themselves and survive a post-Covid world we are seeing drive-ins becoming like records were thirty years ago – a piece of the past we seem to have moved on from. Like records, let’s hope there’s a chance to rediscover them before they are gone for good.

There is something so utterly charming about drive-ins that it’s heartbreaking that we’re losing them. To be sure, they need a bit of a makeover and a bit of a freshening up, but they can still be an amazing and vibrant place for memories and fun. 

For me, the problem is the thing that sorta the same thing that keeps these places alive and it’s that most are mom-and-pop places that don’t have the means to upgrade equipment or invest in what they have. The reinvention that needs to happen would have to be funded by a means many don’t have. 

But were it not for these places being run by families or small business owners they’d have closed up ages ago. It’s that they are often regional businesses that operate during warm months at night allows there to be other jobs to keep food on the table when times are lean. 

Logic seems to say – let them die – but logic is wrong. 

If we let everything die that ties us to memory, to nostalgia, and to experience then we are letting the very things that make us what we are die. 

The futurists of the world who race toward whatever new tech they think will make the world ‘better’ are also happy to kill the human side of us. They want us to be efficient, and daring, and ‘better’. I get that. But without retaining that sense of the past and history we give away the soul of us. 

Drive-ins are part of that soul. 

They need to evolve or die.
There’s no two ways about it. 

They can never keep up with the technology found in a home or megaplex theater. 

Never. 

So don’t try to. 

Going to the drive-in is an experience. 

LEAN INTO THAT. 

LET’S SAVE DRIVE-INS!

Start with the food. 

Offer more varieties and better varieties. 

And if you can’t, and most can’t…invite food trucks. Have THAT be part of the fun of a night at the show. You never never know what truck will be there. Have them set up before, or during the first show, and then they can skedaddle after the first intermission. 

People will always bring in food and drinks but if you give them something they CAN’T just bring in then that becomes part of the draw. 

Stop always chasing the blockbusters. 

It’s great and necessary to show the new stuff but you have to also remember the past. Show older films too. Have themed nights. 

Scary movie night. 

Classic comedy night. 

Kid’s night. 

Show the original STAR WARS and the original STAR TREK film and invite the fans to come dressed in costume. 

Themed nights!

Make these showings bigger. 

Yeah, it’s work so you only do it maybe once a week, but make it an event. 

Have a festival every summer with food, bands, and cult movies. 

People will travel for something like that. 

Think of other ways to boost business. 

Around here a drive-in added a haunted house for Halloween. 

It was simple but great. 

Paired with scary movies it’s an amazing draw. Charge a buck or two extra for the house or have that as a fee at the house itself. 

POW!

Now the costly stuff. 

Modernize. 

Have areas where there is a cover for cars to drive under in case of storms, like a canopy. Not everyone can use it but even a few may get people to come during inclement weather. 

See if you can utilize more online audio for people to steam to phones and speakers. 

Encourage people to watch the movie outside, or with the windows down. Try to remind people that it’s about the experience, and not about hiding in a car with the windows up. 

Unless you know, you’re smoking that wacky weed or necking. 

Then, well, you know. 

There are a thousand ways that drive-ins can be updated, or at least reinvigorated and most of it is just up to what the owners want to do. Leaning into the nostalgia more, with classic ads, trailers, and intermission fare is a great way to start. In the end it’s the public that have to make the commitment to return but if they are reminded of WHY these places are so important they may. 

We just have to evolve what they are. 

It’s an experience, like a live sport or concert. 

There are ways to make it so you don’t have to have your car on for four hours if they can figure out the logistics. 

Modern technology and the ability to see movies at home in as close to the way the movies were meant to be seen visually and audibly is amazing. In doing that though we lose that movies were also once communal and drive-ins were the churches moviegoers once attended. 

I don’t get to go to the drive-in right now but it’s my hope that they’re still out there when I am able to return and can take my kiddo as well. 

…c…