A New Generation of Moviegoers Discovers the Value of the Drive-in By Wendy Carlson When Thomas Intrier searched the Internet for an outdoor movie theatre he came across the Pleasant Valley Drive-In. Just a bend-in-the road in the state’s northwest corner it was a two-hour drive from his Greenwich Connecticut home. But for Intrier 49 the trek was worth it to share a slice of Americana with his children. Drive-ins a roadside icon that turned 75 this year are fewer and farther between these days. Yet outdoor theatre fans – spurred by nostalgia and pining for the past – are willing to travel the distance to experience what at one time seemed destined to go the way of carhops. “I wanted my kids to have the same experience I did as a kid because I know the drive-in may not be around for long ” Intrier says. “There are fewer and fewer of them.” In the backseat his three children dressed in pajamas popped in and out of the sunroof like a trio of prairie dogs. As dusk crept over the grassy lot a steady stream of pickup trucks SUVs and minivans rumbled in holding legions of children with sleeping bags and pillows. They would be up late watching Chimps in Space followed by The Dark Knight. Within a half-hour the place was packed and an impromptu tailgate party ensued with adults unpacking coolers unfolding lawn chairs and unfurling blankets. Under the enormous screen tower a rag-tag group of young boys ran wild. Smudge pots kept away the mosquitoes and grandparents hunkered down drawing their blankets tightly around them during the chilly night. Young and old converged here for the same reason and it wasn’t just for the hot dogs and a double feature. “It’s a tradition that brings us back to old times ” says Tom McDermott of Simsbury who along with several families was dining al fresco on sandwiches and glasses of wine. In the mid-1950s when drive-ins were at their zenith more than 4 000 dotted the American landscape. Saturday night at the drive-in was a sacred family ritual. Today about 400 remain with a total of more than 600 screens according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association. That figure pales when compared to the nation’s 5 600 indoor theatres with 38 204 screens according to the National Association of Theatre Owners. Connecticut’s two surviving drive-ins Pleasant Valley Drive-In and the Mansfield Drive-In northeast of Hartford are both in rural countryside. New York State has more than 30 outdoor theatres and ranks third in the nation after Pennsylvania and Ohio respectively. But New York metro patrons have to drive upstate past the cornfields to the Overlook Drive-In in Poughkeepsie to catch a double feature under the stars. In New Jersey where the country’s first outdoor movie theatre opened in 1933 one drive-in remains in Vineland south of Atlantic City. But North Jersey residents are closer to the Warwick Drive-In in Warwick New York. Television the advent of VCRs the onslaught of multiplex indoor theatres and eventually the Internet led many drive-ins to go permanently dark. But soaring property taxes and rising real estate were the real culprits. “One of the reasons we’re still here is because there’s not a lot of development ” says Michael Gungden 60 owner the Mansfield Drive-In a 900-car triple-screen theatre. Most of his regular patrons travel from Massachusetts and the Hartford area. He supplements ticket revenues by operating a flea market on 40 acres he owns adjacent to the theatre. Pleasant Valley Drive-In a 250-car single-screen theatre with a clapboard ticket booth and wooden sign instead of a marquee exists in a time warp of its own. The owner Donna McGrane fields calls from patrons seeking directions to from as far away as Manhattan Massachusetts and Rhode Island. “There’s a guy who lives in Korea and every time he returns to the States to visit he comes here ” she says. That doesn’t come as a surprise to a retired filmmaker Gene Cetrone 51 whose passion for cinema al fresco led him to start driveinmovie.com in 1998 a Web site dedicated to the history preservation and promotion of outdoor theatres. Cetrone lives on New York’s Upper West side but as a teenager he haunted the Nyack Drive-In which had a 120-foot screen. “At that time it was astonishing; larger than life ” he recalls. A founding member of the Society for the Preservation of Outdoor Theatres Cetrone spends his spare time scouring the country looking for abandoned drive-ins to re-open or opportunities to build new ones. He’s optimistic about the future of drive-ins noting that a number of drive-ins have opened or reopened over the last few years. In a tough economy “drive-ins are still a good deal ” Cetrone says. “Parents don’t have to hire a baby sitters they get to see a double-feature and often the kids under five are free. It’s a family night out.” For Stefan Cattaneo 45 from Hopewell New York who took his family recently to The Overlook Drive-In it was not only a bargain [it was] a first-time experience. “I grew up in Yonkers we didn’t have drive-ins ” he says. “This is great I’m hoping I can smoke a cigar.” Paul Sommerstein 39 rented a car and drove up from New York’s East Village with his girlfriend to escape the city on a Saturday night. “We came more for the experience of the drive-in than seeing the show ” he says. Despite their cultural impact preservation groups rarely take drive-ins under wing. Peter Brink senior vice president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation says the group has not taken an initiative to protect drive-ins as it has for historic downtown theatres. “We haven’t seen the community groundswell of support either for a particular iconic drive- in or for a group of them threatened with being demolished ” Brink says. “Certainly they are culturally significant; all us have memories of the drive-in.” Indirectly though Scenic Hudson a nonprofit preservation group prevented the Hyde Park Drive-In Theatre in Poughkeepsie New York from closing in the 1990s. At the time the group bought the land across from the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidential library and museum and then leased it back to the original theatre owners. “Scenic Hudson bought the land because they didn’t want a Wal-Mart to going in right smack across from the Roosevelt home ” says Andy Cohen the theatre’s manager. Cetrone also points to Lexington Virginia where the community members and preservationists saved Hull’s Drive-In reopening it as nonprofit outdoor theatre. In Europe and Asia drive-ins have a following that has sprouted two in China and in Norway a seasonal drive-in is constructed entirely out of ice blocks he says. And the communal appeal of watching movies outdoors has even spawned an underground movement of “guerilla drive-ins” among techno gen-Xer’s on the West Coast. Kids with know-how and bravado set up their own projectors and sound systems using vacant warehouses in industrial wastelands as outdoor theatres. But many say the drive-in no longer suits American sensibilities. “Sure the concept of drive-ins will always be around but its heyday was dead and gone a long time ago it will never be mainstream again ” says Jay Gitlin 59 a lecturer in American social and cultural history at Yale University. “Drive-ins thrived during what I call the great age of ‘auto-sociability’ in the late 30s 40s 50s when people were very social in their cars ” he says. It was a time of carhops auto camps drive-in restaurants cruising; and there was something both very social and very private about the drive-in he says. “You could smoke come in your curlers and wear your pajamas and I don’t think people feel as comfortable in public today. To the younger generation it’s something completely alien. When I talk about cruising they ask: ‘People really did that?’” For Donna McGrane of the Pleasant Valley Drive-In the theatre has become a part of her family. “My mother used to run the ticket booth and my Dad would work part time running the projector so weekends they’d put us in pajamas and pack us into the station wagon and that’s how we spent our summers ” she says. “When the theatre came up for sale 11 years ago I couldn’t let it go.” Now her teenage daughters run the concession stand. Her husband operates the projector and her mother helps out at the ticket booth. Over the years under different ownership Pleasant Valley struggled to make ends meet. In the 70s like many theatres it survived by showing what the multiplexes couldn’t: X-rated movies. But these days families are their mainstay and G-rated movies the crowd-pleasers. The back row “the passion pit” is still unofficially reserved for singles like Kelly Gelzinis 21 of Winsted and her boyfriend Dan Lippincott 18 who were snuggled under a blanket in the open hatch of their car. “This is sweet ” says Lippincott who had never been to a drive-in before. If McCrane has her way Pleasant Valley will continue operating much as it has since it opened in 1947 running reel-to-reel 35 mm celluloid film on a carbon-arc projector that dates back to the 1920s. Car speakers have been replaced by radio-projected sound. But in between shows she runs classic trailers including an animated dancing hot dog. Once the movie industry turns completely to digital cinema technology outdoor theatre owners concede they will have to invest in expensive technology. But for now being with another season behind it time stands still at Pleasant View Drive In.
