Drive-In's

I am learning that I am a very nostalgic person. I am also a very realistic person so sometimes despite my earnest feelings towards things, I understand why they are the way they are. Case in point, Drive-In Movie Theaters. The past 100 years have been nothing but unrelenting progress. Progress has brought us every convenience we have today and with convenience and progress comes the fall of the things that preceded it. Early on movie theaters were built like grand opera houses. The Broadway Corridor in Downtown LA was the film equivalent to the playhouses of New York's famed Broadway. Now LA's Broadway is a blighted hell hole, the facades of the theatres remain fairly intact while churches or junk merchants now occupy where these great theatres used to operate. How does this happen? Progress. During this period of the great movie palaces the theatres were owned by the studios that distributed them, so Warner Bros. films were shown at Warner Bros. Theaters. These monopolies where eventually broken up and theatres were run independently of studios. As time went on the advent of the single run theater become obsolete as the multiplexes took over. People moved from the cites in droves to the suburbs eventually taking the business for the single run theaters in the Downtown area with them, many of which became adult theaters.

Drive-In's became popular as the car became an affordable, accessible commodity, and people wanted to do everything in their car. This included seeing movies, yet as cars became a part of everyday life, the Drive-In's became more obsolete, reverting to Grindhouse and B movies until many closed. I grew up in Scottsdale, AZ and had quite a few experiences at the Drive-In (which is still operating as far as I know), none of which I remember concentrating on the movie very much, and not for the reasons you would think. These are mainly childhood memories, I think I found it distracting, we were eating food, there are 6 other screens some playing R-rated movies I was trying to sneak a peak at - more interested in although I vaguely remember watching Fletch Lives. The last Drive-In experience I had was driving out of Vanilla Sky after about 30 minutes of that abortive remake of the vastly superior Open Your Eyes.

Yet when I see the signs like these I become nostalgic for that culture, which is not very distant from today yet mostly forgotten. We move on much too soon to the next thing before we truly absorb what is there now. Without much thought or care people move on to the next thing. I think what has happened in the Broadway Corridor in Downtown LA is a tragedy despite the circumstances and a revitalization is a huge necessary step. On the other hand I think what has happened to Drive-In's is an inevitability of progress and well, land usage. That being said I think the main draw to something like a Drive-In theater, nostalgia, is being ignored by the ones that are still operating today and if they did revivals (why are old car shows at a McDonald's parking lots as opposed to a Drive-In's playing American Graffiti?) Either way as a Drive-In goes under it's easy to develop the land as it is nothing but an empty plot and some screens, hence they are generally torn down without much of after thought. The ones that are here in LA County now operate as swap meets but still have the classic signage that represent what was then progress but what is now history.

I must say it is very unfortunate that I missed out on the Pyromania Tribute (giggle) to Def Leppard, I could only imagine the crowd at that thing.