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♪ We're going to the drive-in on a Saturday night ♪
♪ We're meeting up with the girls and we'll be out of sight ♪
♪ 'Cause Danny likes Pam and Susie likes Freddie ♪
♪ 'Cause Johnny and Ginny are already going steady ♪
♪ Ooh, ah, we're going to the drive-in ♪
♪ You're cruising for a bruising if you try to sneak in ♪
♪ That old man Jenkins sure gets under my skin ♪
♪ Just when you think you fooled I'm and got in for free ♪
♪ They call the cops and have them throw away the key ♪
♪ Ooh, ah, we're going to the drive-in ♪
♪ At the end of the night, we get our story straight ♪
♪ We all watched the movie and we thought it was great ♪
♪ The movie was a thriller and a really good fright ♪
♪ We know what we're doing next Saturday night ♪
♪ Ooh, ah, we're going to the drive-in ♪
[soft music]
- My name is Jennifer Miller.
I bought the drive-in in 1984,
so I've owned it approximately 37 years.
This is the best business to own to raise your children.
I've got two great kids.
They've worked it since they were five years old
and they're in their 40s now.
- I love it. This has been my favorite job I've ever had.
I've been here almost two years.
- Older people that have come to me and said,
"I used to work in a movie theater and it was one
of the best times in my life," you know?
And I go, "I know, exactly."
And I mean, it's picking up the cigarette butts,
It's picking up the trash, it's everything.
Built in 1952. It's always been in operation.
It's never been closed. Last year there wasn't anything new.
So everything we played last year was old product.
Like "Back to the Future", "The Flintstones",
"The Rascals", and all the families came in droves.
Now that everything's back open again, they're not here.
They're very picky at what they wanna see now.
But it was fun. I mean, it was fun while it lasted.
[birds chirping]
[upbeat music]
- Found out yesterday at noon that I have two bands
playing out here before the show.
So, you know, regardless of what goes on,
every night we show a movie,
I have to be out here cooking hamburgers and brats
and hot dogs and getting everything around,
so that when the crew comes in to start working,
we're ready to go.
But I can see the first band starting to set the stage up.
That's a little bit exciting.
- This is the first year that we've brought bands
in from outside of the area.
So working with a promoter.
- Yeah. 14 years of having parties in my backyard.
It's a...
It's a combination party-carnival.
My buddy says, "Hey,
whatever happened to that drive-in idea?"
And I said, "Well, we shelved it,
it's got to be too expensive.
The town was a little iffy about it."
He goes, "Put it in your backyard."
I said, "Jarvis, I'm gonna go home.
I'm gonna tell Donna
Jarvis says, 'We gotta put the drive-in in our backyard.'
She's gonna tell me to quit drinking and stop hanging
out with you." - That's true.
- And I said, "Two weeks later,
she's gonna come to me and go,
'Do you think we can do this?'"
I've had probably seven comments today. "I like your shirt.
Are you really?" [laughs]
- Yes. - Yeah I am.
[soft music]
You know, now that things are opening back up, I mean,
the drive-in isn't the top of the choice any more.
It's in the middle. And our crowd is showing that.
Two and a half, three hours from now,
the first people start showing up and when the kids
get out of the car, look around,
get the smile on their face,
they get the frisbee or the football or the softball,
baseball out, start throwing it around, and just, you know,
you can't put a price on that and you can't really
explain that feeling.
And then being a phys ed teacher on top of that,
seeing people move around, um, is...
That's the best part.
[uplifting music]
- We opened May 13th this year,
and the governor was here and helped cut
the ribbon and stuff.
And then Thursday night, Friday night,
Saturday night that week we rolled
into "American Graffiti" and "Grease" all weekend
and that Saturday night
saw our first near capacity crowd of,
we had 514 cars here for that night.
Team get out of the starting blocks so that you could
get anybody to talk to you about financing.
You had to know way more about the business
than one would think.
But now that it's time to do it, you've talked
and coached somebody through it so many times...
Part of what they were trying to get us to quit
is what they were doing.
And it is a crazy idea,
especially when we started this back in 2017
when we bought the property.
It was the dumbest thing anybody'd ever heard of.
What the hell is wrong with you?
Why do you wanna open a drive-in?
And it's like trying to explain rock and roll
to somebody that's never heard it before.
They started to get it after we put some plans together,
Jenny being an architect,
things we knew going in that it would work.
They all started to kind of figure out that we said
we were gonna do this and we're going to do this.
And March of 2020, all of a sudden we were
geniuses because everything had turned into drive-in.
- My typical job is I'm a healthcare architect.
I design hospitals, clinics,
but I love mid-century architecture.
We live in a 1955 classic mid-century house
and I really love the atomic era of the '50s and '60s.
So space race, that kind of stuff.
That's partly where our name came from,
Quasar, the white light from a black hole,
with a big vendor.
And that was a piece I just really wanted to salvage.
I was so jealous when I first saw
it at the Boulevard Drive-In in Kansas City.
And when I got my own, I was like,
I'm designing around this piece.
- These screen pieces started life as three
70 foot Selby screens at I-70.
And we took 'em out when they closed,
they got about a month's notice,
re-engineered and reassembled the pieces,
it's already seen 80 mile an hour winds here, so,
and we haven't lost any panels out of it, again,
knock on wood, but it's,
we've got enough pieces to duplicate that screen
on the other corner of our property.
- All the stainless,
the little vendor and our Cretors popcorn maker are
all from the I-70.
These were pieces of equipment that had been used
for 40 years.
I mean, there was so little we really had to do to any
of this to get it to work.
And it's just, it's all labor of love.
- I've gotta block some space
for friend's birthday tonight.
I told him I'd hold some of the spaces
in the middle for them.
Two, four, six...
That's eight spaces. I promised him eight spaces.
I should split 'em between rows though.
I'll have to come, maybe I'll send Jay back to do that.
[upbeat music]
- The tower was restored end of last year. We finished it.
It cost me a fortune. And it's beautiful.
Do you see the other side? It's all silver.
It's back to the original.
Sean, just before, when I ask you the last time, we were
at 160 tickets?
Was that right?
- No, 116 or no, 135.
- 135. Oh that was your prediction.
- Yeah. We should get to 160. - About a 100.
He's thinking about 160. I'm hoping for more.
[soft music]
You get a quick glimpse, but don't anybody read it. [laughs]
Those are all our notes.
Fix and repair daily.
Nice day to people.
You know, it's a 64 year old physical plan,
not me, the drive-in. [laughs]
Actually it applies to both. Okay?
Some of them still have this hard surface and you'll
see some on the roadway here that are just precious.
I need to get them restored. It just, it's a real project.
Boils down to everything else,
costs and you've gotta weigh out what's important
for us to...
What's next, et cetera.
- I take it you're all vaccinated. Right?
- [Both] Yes.
- You know, you don't have to call me.
You don't even have to tell me that, you know that.
- I'll proudly tell people.
- This happens very, very often. Uh-oh.
I didn't realize it. I got a sign repair too.
Evidently that hit that on its way down. So...
And you see that great big sign.
Do not enter, if the box, day or night...
Do you know how many people do it anyway?
No, it's silly. It's a very hard place to protect.
These were my favorite.
See these little things?
They go out when they're done, right?
They're blocked this way.
Now all the paint's come off,
I have a chance of doing again.
But these all glow, it looks like a little flying saucer.
All these LED lights,
the signs that move and have changeable copy,
I'm not allowed to have a chaser,
that's why I stabilized it and only use the outside,
the middle row.
But I'm thinking what's difference
between that and an LED sign?
So I might be able to.
[upbeat music]
- We've been doing more and more props this year
than ever before and it's really coming across
very, very well.
Like bowling balls, bowling pins, Dude cookies.
You have to have a Dudeish sweater just in case.
I have to be really mindful about what candy I put
in here because it's so hot,
especially once we get to August, that I can't really
have anything that's chocolate,
otherwise it will just melt.
This came with the drive-in.
It doesn't function so it doesn't actually
keep things warm.
But we just use it for display.
- Okay, what do I need to go? I need to get the bar...
- I would start getting it- - I'm getting the bar then.
[upbeat music]
- Dwight originally thought that a regular size
Tic Tac is small enough.
So why do we need mini Tic Tacs?
And I said,
because mini is just mini and you can't help yourself.
I mean we also have mini Nutella, like who doesn't want
a little tiny Tic Tac or a little tiny Nutella?
But this is gonna be the big seller tonight, I know.
We've got our shortbread cookies.
We do custom ones for some of our films
and they always sell out really fast.
- Dedication to your craft. Yeah.
Now I just need to, gotta get them.
There, there...
Those two items there...
And we're ready to go.
All right.
So, this area here at the Greenville Drive-in is known
as the Projectionist Club.
It's kind of the licensed area that's attached
to the concession area.
And one of the things that we're known
for is our cocktails.
Tonight, because it's "The Big Lebowski,"
the ephemeral cocktail
is the White Russian, of course.
People do find it a little unusual that they can come
to a drive-in movie theater and get a cocktail.
And it pleases me that people are confused by that. [laughs]
We basically throw a movie party every night.
The majority of the movies that are shown here are
movies that people have seen numerous times and really
get into the spirit of it.
We obviously encourage people.
And we love it because we have random people
who just show up dressed in the attire from the movie.
One of Lee's top favorite stories from running
the drive-in for the last seven years,
she came in here like she just has now to the bar.
I was making a drink and I looked across the bar
and there was a duck sitting on one of our tables.
- And I said, oh that's just Gary. [laughs]
- See, you spoiled the joke.
- I had invited Gary to come.
- You spoiled the joke.
Let me, can I do that one again 'cause she jumped
in too fast.
Okay, well let me take your sticker off of your glasses.
- Okay.
- I guess I'm have
to redo the whole thing 'cause I got the stickers on.
But then it was kind of funny.
[upbeat music]
- Wait 'til you see when this place fills up, [laughs]
it totally changes.
Has to, sometimes. There's a lot of people here.
Like when we have 900 cars,
if it's three to four persons per car,
that's a lot of people in here.
We have a brand new movie for a change.
We have the "Fast and Furious".
Usually we'd show double features.
We're understaffed so we can't do double
features right now.
It's been really hard with staff.
Staffing has been probably our number one problem.
Last week I think I ended up doing 53, 54 and then some
of my staff are doing 45 to 50 hours
and they're still teenagers.
They're 16 to 18 years old doing that.
I felt really bad during the winter this year.
I mean, kids that working 40 and 45 hours a week
that really need to be concentrating on school
and doing their homework and stuff like that 'cause
school had changed for 'em even.
And they would, wanting to come here and give us,
but then I'd hear things like, well,
I'm failing this class and I'm failing that class.
Oh and it just hurts me so bad to know that
that they're falling behind and what's more important
for them at this age,
or some of our staff went through depression.
You saw that too because of COVID, being locked up
in their home for so long.
You see it out here with our customers too.
You see a more aggressive customer.
It brings it out in people,
when they finally get out here and get loose,
they're still a little aggressive for being locked up
all the time.
Yeah, that was actually really scary for a little while.
[soft music]
- We would normally expect probably 200 to 300 cars today,
if it hadn't rained and had severe thunderstorms
an hour before opening.
We'll probably only have around 50 cars...
I scale back to two cashiers, two people in the kitchen.
It's not gonna be a great night tonight.
So after we were open for a couple of months, I, uhh,
had to go and increase all the prices
because of the inflationary situation.
Supplies: candy, popcorn cups...
Even our Pepsi supplier has problems bringing in some
of our syrup.
I don't even know where to start. [laughs]
Well, the pandemic made everything twice as hard
and it's gotten much easier this year than it was
last year from pandemic standpoint.
We don't have to wear face masks
if you're fully vaccinated,
we don't have to have 50% capacity.
But then there's other problems.
Staffing has been extremely difficult.
There's a lot of people that were laid off
and they're just not ready to go back to the workplace.
I've never had so many people do the no show, no call,
just kind of vanish off as though Thanos snapped
his fingers and they disappeared into the ether.
Never had that happen before.
I've had more of those this year than in the past
30 years combined.
We're still in the midst of this period of uncertainty,
date streaming with new movies,
is that going to be a permanent thing?
I hope it isn't. 2022 is a different year.
I think that the studios will be reevaluating
their first-run business models,
and they'll have to decide, how much of a priority
is the theater going experience?
[upbeat music]
- I started in 1987, became one of the owners in 1997.
So I've been here for 34 years.
First couple of summers it was in between college
and in the Marine Corps.
With COVID, we had a little bit of consistency,
which is good because you knew you were capped
out at the 300 cars and we knew that like everyone
wanted to come and get out of the house.
This summer It's kind of been back to that,
they have to have the real reason to get out and come.
As you can see,
you're literally from within our own field-
- [Radio] 645, six out of 81.
- So let's see how- - Thank you.
- Fog works in this area sometimes. [chuckles]
We are somewhat prone to fog here in Wellfleet.
It's the F word. In fact, no one's allowed to say it.
I just broke my own rule.
You can say og, there's various alternate names to it.
It's not bad to the point where we're defect to show
it at this moment.
But the fact that it's only 5:52
could mean it could get progressively worse.
If you're seeing "Jaws" and, you know,
adds to the effect. [laughs]
Real special effects I guess you could say.
But the ocean is right down there and it's so foggy,
we can't see down to see the ocean.
So it is pretty bad here.
And this would severely affect the movie
if this made it all the way in.
And in this case, rain would actually,
a little bit of rain would be
preferred 'cause it would wipe out the fog that has
the better part of Massachusetts except
Cape Cod, and it's marching a little north.
So I don't think we're gonna get any rain tonight.
We're right here.
So hopefully it doesn't get much worse. [chuckles]
[birds chirping]
- Hi everyone, this is Ben coming to you live here
at the Harvest Moon.
As you can see,
our weather right now is actually pretty fantastic.
We have a light breeze. It is nice and blue skies out here.
We did get drenched here a little earlier,
however it looks like most of those have gone
through now and it should be a really nice night
for drive-in movies.
So it's also our final night for showing "F9: The Fast Saga"
in the primary movie slot.
So if you guys wanna see that during the regular
prime time, you definitely wanna come out and join
us tonight over on screen two with Vin Diesel and the gang.
- [laughs] Geez. - it's not a great one.
The drive-in isn't as big as ones I've been
to in the past.
There is a train that goes by at 9:45 directly behind
the screen two.
So we miss part of the film.
I would suggest the management,
that you coordinate intermission with the train.
[indistinct] - I know.
You can do this like every time now.
That keeps you in there. [child babbling]
- Yeah, so you don't fall out.
[child babbling]
- Yeah. We gotta take it apart and try and fix it.
Yep. It doesn't work this year.
- So I wanna get a hold of the railroad
so we can coordinate that as soon as possible
so we can resolve that issue.
- This will be the third generation of our family
in the business. [soft music]
But she gets older-
[child babbling] - Right. Yeah.
[child babbling] - Mm-hm.
Dad can't wait till you're old enough to go.
- That good?
- Leave your truck here with- - Yeah!
- Okay, leave your truck here with Uncle Ben.
You can get it when you come back, all right?
I'll be back in a little bit.
That's our first customers.
Hello. - Hello.
- You have pre-sale tickets or you need tickets?
- No. - Okay.
All right, you're gonna be on screen one tonight,
which is one in front of you.
It's 91.3 FM for the radio station.
- Okay. - Our main snack bar's open.
It's the big building in the middle,
two cars between the poles when you parked.
That wasn't so bad.
- Nope. - Now we wait.
[tense music]
- It opened in 2003 but me and him did most
of the building.
It's really bad.
I got to put the whole floor in the projection booth.
- The biggest problem now is having employees,
people to help.
I mean, we're so shorthanded now,
it's like barely getting by.
- We used to have enough to run two separate
concession stands and have every single box office
open and now it's just trying to keep enough to keep
a concession stand open.
Luckily, now they're old enough they can just take
over everything for us.
- 'Cause you're a lot nicer than I am.
- The managers, the kids, I love them.
They're really chill people.
And I love working with people here as well.
'Cause I've made a lot of friends.
- There was a new concession stand in the works.
A new marquee was in the works,
a lot of things were in the works and then COVID
happened and now nothing's in the works.
[laughs] We're just trying to keep heads above water
and keep rolling right now.
- The theater was put up in 1957.
It was a single screen, 1200 car theater.
And then when the suburban multiplexes started opening,
they decided that they would turn this into a fourplex
so that they could play more movies for the customer base.
[soft music]
We're very fortunate in this COVID-19 issue to have been,
for the most part, permitted to continue to operate.
Folks are in a hurry. They want that best spot, you know?
we're gonna have to bring you in over here. All right?
- Yeah, I'll get 'em, I'll get 'em.
- Okay.
- So we do have some rules that have changed.
Any time you exit your vehicle, please wear a mask.
Don't sit up chairs or sit outside the vehicle
and please park one place away from everybody else please.
- All right, thank you.
- You're gonna be in screen number one and it's 106.9 FM.
We had a lot of new customers and they're unused
to drive-in and everything has to be explained to them,
and it slows down the box office.
So I'm there to keep it moving, keep it moving.
[upbeat music]
- I have quite a reputation, good or bad.
I mean most people, depends on what side you're on.
I have those who love me for having rules and I have
those who say I shouldn't have any at all.
And to those people, I say, if you think that,
don't come here because I'm not gonna run
a free-for-all, I refuse.
But I've actually got compliments about having rules
that at least it establishes boundaries
so that you don't have patrons arguing with each other.
They were very grateful last year just for me to be open.
And that was a challenge because we were greatly
reduced in capacity.
And then I had that other problem is like
I even had somebody say to me, believe it or not,
"D, why are you playing those old movies?"
And I was like, what is it do you think I could play?
'Cause they're not releasing anything.
And then it was like, "Oh yeah,"
I used to have, and I need get them.
We didn't use them last year, we didn't need to.
Little blinkers so it calls your attention to them,
see as they go, and some are very diligent
about, and the other ones are just total disregard.
It's right in front of their eyes and they could care less.
It means everybody in the world but me.
Movies used to mean something, and people used to anticipate
their release and there was something called
showmanship when you attended a theater,
and you're not gonna get that on your TV at home.
And I don't care what unit you bought or what you did,
you're not gonna have the same thing.
Will it survive? I don't know, I really don't.
I think drive-ins have a better chance
just because it's a venue and it's an experience all
by itself with or without the movie.
But I worry for the indoor, I do.
It just hit me and I just realized
that the S is turned.
You see it?
I'll tell you, it's funny too because the man who did
this is pretty professional, but yeah, that's upside down.
We can go to the other side, you see?
See, we can't pick up and discharge people
on the roadway so don't know what's going on.
I guess she's not, oh she's gonna go ride with them maybe?
I dunno where to go.
These people are pulling over to cover their lights.
[people chattering]
- I'd recognize that- - There you go.
- Pick it up. All right.
And if you have trouble,
if it's a hotshot or whatever, we do rent radios,
but if you can use that, good. [gentle music]
[chattering on radio]
[person shouting]
[chattering on radio]
Okay, Sean.
What time do I start the countdown?
[chattering on radio]
- Okay, 10-4.
[upbeat music]
- Favorite part right there.
[people chattering]
- Your part is gonna be able to go.
- Can't go across this- - You got another.
- Give ourselves more-
- You got more extension boards?
- Yeah.
- Every day A new adventure.
- Help me to empty a trash can up here?
- Yeah. - I'm not strong enough
to do it by myself.
- Tell me then you run just, like,
I just wanna make sure 'cause like at least see
the shows, some of you...
- You guys play both kinds of music, right?
Country and Western.
- Right. - Okay.
- Do you have any idea what movie I just quoted?
- No. [gentle music]
- Lets move it back.
[upbeat music]
- It's 891 on the radio. - Thank you.
- You're welcome, y'all have fun.
[people chattering]
- They love the drive-in because
they can come as they are and they can bring chairs
and tables, set up a camp,
I always call it if they get it early enough,
and sometimes there'll be four or five cars
that come together and then they can stay
a while before we start the movie and it's just great.
We see, we've had proposals out here and people walk up
and down with their dogs and they hold hands.
It's really a lovely place, and it's romantic.
The drives are romantic.
- There's a few locals that come every week but most
of our customers are tourists and probably, I don't know,
50% each night are new newbies that come to see us.
Pandemic brought out,
I don't know if it brought out new people,
it's just because they couldn't go to the theater.
They walk in, hard top, they call 'em.
They couldn't go to restaurants, they couldn't go to any,
the kids were stuck at home.
And so this was a,
you know, you keep your distance and they came
to the drive-in.
- Last time. - Yes.
And that's the only reel worth showing today.
We just get that one screen, so...
Well, we've got a few more cars than last night.
Of course, that's par for the course.
Saturdays are usually a little bit better than Fridays.
- Large nacho, extra cheese, and a hamburger with cheese.
- I hope y'all enjoy the movie?.
- Three cheeseburgers, three drinks and two candies.
Oh, water too. - Do you take cards?
- Yes, ma'am.
They do work fairly well and they'll last up to two weeks.
I usually, when I wear one...
It's sad, and it'll come back. You just don't know when.
You know, another generation probably and it'll come back.
You know how the wheel turns really slow, comes back around.
[light music]
- We're just coming into our third calendar month.
We started May, 13th, so just a little over a month
and a half under our belt.
We keep getting continually newer crowds every time.
- It's teaching a lot of people how to use
a drive-in because actually we here in Nebraska
haven't had, in Omaha, haven't had a drive-in since 2006.
So there's a lot of young kids who have never been
to the drive-in.
- I have no idea what this movie is.
- Most of the equipment that's manufactured
for outdoor theater projection is made to go
into an existing drive-in.
Those were always three phase power.
It was gonna be about $30,000 to get it to our curb,
and we've gotta get it from the property line
to the middle of the property for the building.
So that expense we took and rolled into a laser
projector that runs off of single phase 220.
It plugs in like your clothes dryer.
I was down by the lower left and I took a kind
of nice little artistically framed photo with the trees
in the side, and Jenny accused me of Photoshopping it.
[gentle music]
We've had a lot of friends through the process.
Everybody from Rick Cohen and D Vogel
and the Neils outta Kansas City.
But one of the things that sticks with me,
Rick helped me out with some vintage blueprints
for Selby Foundations because we had
to engineer foundations from scratch.
I think he's put a couple of Selbys up out of transit.
But I did have an inkling
that they had kind of a canoe shape.
I didn't have any figures,
I didn't have anything engineering wise, and Rick had
a set of prints that had the data
on it that we needed to extrapolate.
But I asked him, I said,
"Rick, is there anything I can give you for these prints?"
And he says, "You know what? Just build a good drive-in."
[gentle music]
- And because of the weather,
most people made their decision that the drive-in
wasn't gonna be open tonight or they weren't gonna
come out to the drive-in tonight,
they weren't gonna risk it.
So we opened the gate at eight o'clock and of course
it's not raining at all.
It may not rain at all for the rest of the night,
but the damage is already done.
It's gonna be pretty dead.
Basically wait around for the movies to start then
get off lights. - Okay.
- The Segways came about.
We were promoting the "Paul Blart II" movie "Mall Cop II",
it came out in 2015.
So I borrowed a Segway and I did a cosplay,
and I dressed up as Paul Blart, and now we're up
to four Segways, and our staff is on them,
and they really come in handy with helping people
to get their lights off during the movies.
I started working here when I was 15
in the concession stand, and through the years, I moved
up to cashiering, projection, and when I was 19 years old
I took over as manager.
So I've been managing the drive-in theater
for over 30 years, and what I like most
about it is probably just seeing all the families
coming together and having a good time and having
this shared experience doing something that's unique.
Now, we'd like to have the drive-in theater here
for another 60 years.
Just we'll see how things work out with Hollywood.
[gentle music]
The thunderstorm watch is in effect until 11:00 PM tonight.
So a lot of people, they're just not gonna risk it.
We'll be lucky to have 20 or 30 cars.
Maybe next week will be better but it's supposed to be
thunderstorms all week.
This is the fourth week in a row
that there's been thunderstorms.
Literally, if not every day, then every other day.
[upbeat music]
- Do you guys have a reservation?
- We do, no. - No problem.
- We've got plenty of spots open.
- Okay. - Have you been here before?
- Nope. - 88.7,
Dwight will put it up on the screen so you just tune
into your radio.
We have also radios you can borrow for a buck inside.
Beer garden is open. He's making White Russians.
- Awesome. - [laughs] Awesome.
You guys have a great time.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
- See you. - Hello-hello.
Do you guys have a reservation tonight?
- No. - No problem. Two?
- Yep. - Bar's open.
Ice cream sandwiches.
I made 'em last night so they are fresh and ready
to go for you.
- Awesome. - Awesome, thank you so much.
So you probably know what our beer garden
special is tonight.
- White Russian. - You bet.
- I brought my robe.
- Wave number one. [laughs]
[upbeat music] [people chattering]
- That would be mostly me, I think.
I mean, for us, it's been nice.
Like we, in terms of like last season we had a season,
but for, so like, but for these,
for other businesses who lost all of last season and then
to have the rain this season. - True.
- For 2020... [indistinct]
- This is our seventh season.
So the drive-in itself has been around since 1959,
but this is, for us, year seven.
The other reason you need to remember E7
is if you want a one chocolate chip cookie delivered
to your car during the movie.
We have a friend who made these for me
because I found that people,
when I tried to explain to them next to the pole,
they still wouldn't park with enough room for another car.
So we made these little dioramas so that it could
be really clear to everybody, you know,
what the expectation was, right?
So we have, we actually have two versions.
We also have a version with the pickup truck
so that they can see it's okay to put your pickup
truck the other way around and sit in the back if you want.
I have a couple of local friends in the community
who help me out with the box office and sometimes some
of the youth who work here will do the box office.
But I like it 'cause it gives me a chance to see everybody.
I at least get to say hello to everyone.
So, not everyone goes to the beer garden,
but everyone comes through here.
- It was funny, I, like, pulled the 7 and 7
out on kind of kind of a whim
for airplane, and then I discovered I really
was enjoying it as like my summer drink.
So I'm like, you know what?
I'm just gonna put it back on the menu.
[light music]
[upbeat music]
[gentle music]
- Like everyone, we're experiencing hiring challenges,
and the supply chain challenges have been real.
I've never seen anything like this where basic things...
We're still in a weird situation.
It's 2021 and things are not totally back to normal.
I think everyone knows that.
It's nice to feel like you're getting there,
but it could be the worst July attendance-wise on record.
But that could flip. We'll see where it goes. [chuckles]
Customers really like them. They are a pain. [laughs]
We try to maintain every spot to have it.
We're running into some underground wiring problems.
So some rows are weaker than others.
This is our speaker shop.
We're fortunate enough to have a RCA former technician.
He repairs the speakers for us.
These were pulled out of a drive-in in the eighties
and have not been rebuilt yet to be put in service here.
Hopefully, obviously we wanna use as little
of those as possible every year.
And this is one that obviously damaged beyond repair,
if it weren't run over.
If the underground wiring problems are not localized
to this speaker pole area,
it's tough to justify digging up the pavement.
So... [gentle music]
All right, this is our 1957 projector.
one of two original 1957 RCA 9R.
Also it's a rebranded
Ashcraft Super Core Lite Carbon Arc projector setup,
with Century heads.
This was in use right through this end
of the summer season in 2012.
We actually have a 1.33 lens,
and we would run the film dancing hotdog
and the welcome to the show in 1.33
as it was originally produced, which,
you know, was the TV,
what is now known as a TV aspect ratio where,
the older TV aspect ratio.
And this is the motor generator control.
We could fire the Carbon Arc by either motor generator
or those rectifiers.
That's our field speaker switching thing. Original 1957.
11 is bad going out there.
So we out in the field, we've got it sliced on,
I think, about 12.
This is the Barlow 32B, which I'm sure you've seen
in many other drive-ins,
and that's a sound rack broadcast, warehouse transmitter.
[light music]
- My father owned and operated several movie theaters
and he was able to redo enough stuff here
by used equipment to reopen the drive-in June 16th, 1989.
And ever since then, we've been operating the drive-in here.
- 36... About 40 people tonight.
That's what they had last night. 40 some people.
And we usually get half of that in cash sales.
- Da-da. I know. You got another truck.
This is a new one. Where'd you pick this one up?
Okay, you can have it back.
- Yeah.
- Some random night I got a friend request from him.
And literally five blocks away from home, and there he was.
- I think the third date I brought her here.
- I don't remember what movie it was.
- I think it was "The Jungle Book".
- I think so too. Yeah.
"Jungle Book" when that came out in live action.
Two years later, he asked me to marry him,
a year and a half later,
we got married in October, they closed, and then
weekend later we got married and it was great.
And, I mean...
- And then we start off our first year of marriage
right into the COVID catastrophe.
[both laughing]
[people chattering]
It's kind of combined here. - Yeah.
- You move from, okay, cool, you run a drive-in,
and now she wants to go visit every drive-in.
- Yes, I would really love to go see a lot
of the drive-ins.
It's just one of those things that just makes
you feel really good,
like you are actually doing something good
in the community or just in general that people
are actually expressing it to you.
people don't really do that a lot.
- The highest we did get last year
with COVID, because people were appreciative
of having something to go do.
- Yeah.
[uplifting music]
- We have four screens, we have a bar,
a snow cone trailer, frozen margaritas.
We have beer, we don't have any liquor.
We also have a concessions.
We have four box office lines that run the vehicles in.
Normally we'll have a caboose out here that has
our merchandise in it.
Yard games, couches, everything so you can sit outside
and enjoy the movie from outside the pavilion.
Then we have a beer garden,
which is very popular on Friday and Saturdays.
Got a little bit of popcorn candy,
cotton candy that we make here daily.
Cheeseburgers, bacon cheeseburgers, hot dogs,
corn dogs, pizzas, nachos.
And I make a pulled pork barbecue now too.
That's really good here.
Nacho chips were hard to keep up with this year.
Some of the styrofoam and things like
that were pretty easy.
We would have to change, but we could get 'em.
We couldn't use the ones we normally had.
So, but we could still get those.
There was a time period where this year
where we couldn't get popcorn boxes.
We had to actually drive to Arlington and find
a different style of popcorn box,
which is really, really weird.
This is our delivery system back here.
When the order first comes in... Lemme show you.
You confirm.
And then they'll put the order together,
then grab the food right outta the kitchen,
which is directly right here beside it.
And you can just order it, make the order on your phone.
And then somewhere around 15 to 20 minutes later
we'll bring the food up to your vehicle.
- Two to eat.
- You know, just take it.
Yep. Grab the popcorn, cheeseburger, hot dog.
When we first opened, it was insane.
There was a huge volume coming in.
Somewhere in between 100 to 200 tickets.
To where now it's somewhere in between 30
to 50 tickets.
There you go. Perfect.
And then right now on a slower volume night
like tonight, I won't even staff my runner position
or my filler position,
managers, different kids like that
who kind of help me out on it.
We'll actually have my grounds crew,
which we'll call 'em on the radio,
to come run the order.
Are you gonna run them? - Yep.
- Okay.
Sometimes we'll go out to doing the delivery
and there'll be nobody in that spot.
And so we can actually call the phone number
on the ticket or look in the tablet and call it.
And most of the time, the customer is giving
you the wrong spot number.
1C 28. Awesome.
- 28. - Thank you very much.
- Well, we're 15 minutes to showtime, and Thursday night,
pretty good crowd.
The horror movies are filling up and the family movies,
it's not quite the family night.
I think we're gonna be pretty good getting a nice
house and getting the movie starting on time
without too many stragglers coming
in after the movie starts.
I grew up outside of Philadelphia and we had
four drive-ins within a half an hour of where I lived.
They were all big single screen drive-ins,
100 foot screens.
And the bulk of the audience was in my age cohort.
They were teenagers.
And then by the time I got into college
in the late '60s and '70s,
that's when the drive-ins started disappearing.
Shopping centers would be put up,
other kinds of business venues would be put up
and the owners of the old drive-in lots would get
out of the business.
We've stayed in by multiplexing and being able
to show eight movies a night,
which helps you stay in business.
So we have 21 screens now across six venues.
San Diego, Riverside, here in Montclair,
in Salt Lake City and another one in Atlanta, Georgia.
[train horn honking]
[gentle music]
- Last year during the height of the pandemic,
we were running side by side of streaming
and on the screen.
Well now they've decided if we're gonna stream it,
we can't let it go on the drive-in screen.
Well, why not?
All it's gonna do is sell their product even more.
We look ahead and like, oh great,
it's finally gonna break loose.
We're getting ready to roll again.
And next thing you know they say, well,
we're going straight to video with this one.
Now, "Fast and Furious" is doing quite well.
This is the first busy weekend we've had
since COVID started. - If it wasn't for "F9,"
we wouldn't be this busy.
I mean we, there'd hardly be anybody out here.
The "F9" is actually what's bringing them in,
and I'm hoping next weekend's a good weekend
as well without rain.
[gentle music]
- Still fit? - Kind of, just this finger.
- [Jeff] Should we see if Dad's still fits too?
- Oh, yeah. - Yep.
He's got some sweat equity out here already at six
that a lot of kids don't have in the family business.
So...
Thanks for the footprints.
[child laughs]
Walk all over me.
Oh my gosh.
Are you guys coloring your space ship?
That's awesome. - I'm Jason!
- That... You're Jason, you're scary.
This is our boy Wes, he's our youngest and his namesake
is down in Kansas City, Wes Neil, who's the kind
of the patriarch of the Boulevard Drive-in.
- Wes. I mean Jason. - Yes.
We're gonna take the spaceship and then
we're gonna build it.
- I got a lot of pre-show content that I put up
that really is so washed out, you can't see it,
but it's something to put over the air and let people
know they're tuned into the right channel.
We've got a runway.
That was always one of the things I thought was
so cool about indoor theaters when I was a kid
were the lighted strips in the floor
along the center path and we've got a runway path base
of the screen which beckons them and leads 'em right up
to the snack bar where we can feed 'em or they can get
to the bathroom or whatever.
So I love to see people interact with what we made.
- It's just such a compliment to hear them say
that it was so nicely designed and planned
because it really was.
I went through and I took aerial shots
of over 50 drive-ins about how they were laid out,
how close they were to the highway,
their queuing distances, every little thing.
We spent two years planning and going
over that with government entities and everything.
I mean, we really put the research into it and I think
it paid off.
- Is this the De George party coming in?
These slam short boxes.
- You are correct, sir. - Ooh, all right, well,
I'll lead 'em to their way and we'll get 'em parked.
- All right. - Back in.
- I'll take it on, so you coast with me.
[gentle music]
- The wind's just the wrong direction tonight. [chuckles]
I've seen a lot worse with the, as we call it, the F word,
we're not allowed to say it.
I've seen a lot worse with the,
I've seen it where I can't see the screen and I can't
see the marquee.
I can see both.
So as long as it doesn't get too much worse,
I think we'll be okay.
Well, you never know.
It could get worse in five minutes and then
it could totally clear out.
I've had that happen.
It's totally a point you can't see the movie
and 10 minutes later it's clear as day.
I saw "Back the to Future" here when I first got
my license, I saw all the classics here
from "Star Wars" onward, "ET",
before I even worked here.
Started the summer of '87 in that ticket booth, main one,
six nights a week as a second job.
[laughs] Which a lot of kids these days could learn
something from that. [laughs]
This probably would've been a 300 car night.
Some customers aren't deterred by it.
So I think we have,
actually you can look at the old school counter.
We only have 117 in so far and that is slow for Saturday.
Especially when we have the staff for 300 or so.
It's one thing to be expected, but...
Yeah, so we'll see. I'm gonna wait.
I wasn't automatically programmed to start at 8:20.
I pulled it off the automatic program
or I'm gonna manually start it and I think
it's really dark.
So that it's hopefully gonna be a decent picture.
It's "Space Jam," which I guess is bright, so we'll see.
[gentle music]
- I used to wake up in 1988 when I bought
the drive-in, '89-'90,
I wake up every morning and say,
what do I have to do today?
And then you get it there and you get into your 20th year.
I'm in the 34 now.
And then you get into what the hell's gonna happen
to me today?
What's gonna break? Who's not gonna show up?
But it's still, how do I say that?
High energy, you have to be a little bit of high energy
to deal with it and you have to look at whatever happens.
It's one of my favorite sayings, and Sean and Ken
both know this,
I come in to do one thing, and I never get
to it because of at everything that might show up
in the interim.
The most favorite is show start.
It's gotta be. Even on the day when we're operating.
Even in the winter 'cause I'm here
just about every day, truly.
Sunset. And you see that shadow cast upon the screen.
It's kind of a blue just before it turns little
dark and gray.
And so we're able to receive one, and being able
to start the show, do a good presentation.
That part never gets old. And I always feed on it.
Folks, this is a comprehensive list
of all our household policies.
It's a mighty good start.
We refer you to the flyer that you received
when you came in tonight,
and all of our household policies are in it.
- Yeah, we missed him. He hasn't been on the radio.
- He has not been here doing that.
- [Edward] So in the bar then...
- Sometimes he'll say the one he should have saved
was the gateway.
I don't know, I never saw the gateway.
- [Edward] But here we go.
If you too put on 106.9 FM, I'm sorry-
- Needed to be saved.
- [Edward] So you're not draining your car battery.
One of the biggest movie theaters...
[upbeat music]
[people chattering]
- Everybody I've talked to is cool with us around. Yeah.
Might not be our music but it's still live and it's cool.
I'm like, okay.
We're trying different things
and I don't always know what I'm getting.
[people chattering]
- All right. I'm gonna go do some Facebook Live.
You wanna come with me? - What?
- Do Facebook live? - No.
[gentle music]
[people chattering]
[upbeat music]
[people chattering]
- Now if you don't mind,
make sure you all the headlights along vehicles off.
Please rise for singing the national anthem... [inaudible]
[soft music]
[people chattering]
- Yeah, I saw lightning to the north.
- [Ben] It's to the north and the south.
- So is it gonna hit us before in intermission or no?
- No, look, right in the middle.
- Good. - We're in a pocket.
- Please turn your headlights out as soon as you get
parked and have a great night.
Thank you.
- So far it's missing us.
- I've been seeing lighting- - Yeah you see it
in the distance.
- Car that came in a few minutes ago
said that it was raining like crazy over Packs.
- I believe it.
I think that's one of the red dots.
I learned how to shut off
a 2021 Hyundai Sonata lights today.
We used the old fashioned handbrake trick.
They were trying everything, like well you can tape up
the lights if you want.
I'm like, well see if you can figure something out.
And then on my way back I Googled it.
I'm like, oh, that's easy. Went back out.
Hey, pull this lever. Voila.
Lights out. [laughs]
Our intermission, it's 9:24.
- Got it. - That can't be
the same train then.
- Oh yeah. - Because
he's already blowing his whistle
so he is gotta be down here.
So he's gotta be going this way.
- Good. I'm running! [group laughing]
- It was 9:45.
- Yeah.
- This one's going south. - Stop it right in the middle
of this action scene. [group laughing]
- You just gotta base it on the train now, I guess.
You don't get
to go off the movie. - Like it's been
10 minutes since it's been on.
I don't care. The train goes by right now.
- I do take it personally. [laughs]
Well, think of all the positive people and then
you get that negative like 5% out of that 100% of positives.
- And he's not going very fast either.
- I like watching the trains,
I don't know what they're talking about.
That's why I cut those trees down
so people could watch the train.
[gentle music]
- I think it is harder to run a drive-in now.
It's more complicated.
There's more people you have to please,
and, uh, it just is.
Yeah.
And I drove up today and there wasn't any line.
Of course, you know, I got here half an hour
after they opened but even so in the old days,
that line would be continuous, and it's so cool
because you see all the headlights of the cars waiting
in line and they pulled over to the side and those things...
Those things aren't, haven't been around for a while.
They just haven't, you know?
Jennifer, I have a guy that wants to buy
that poster, he wants pay for it now.
It'll be $5.
Is that all right?
- But it'll be three weeks. - That's the way I told it.
- Well maybe, maybe...
- Always been looking at that movie out there to see
if it's on the screen. [laughs]
Yeah. Oh lordy, just have it.
[people chattering]
We used to have 35 millimeter in that.
I always thought I was gonna miss that a lot,
but I really don't now.
I do miss that click click click click click.
Give him that tonight even.
If he pays for it, he's gonna have it tonight.
I don't know if we're allowed to take that down
and another poster another day.
- 25 giving- - But what if it's not?
- Thank you. - Thank you.
Enjoy the movie.
- We have a window from the concession that looks
in there that we could always keep an eye
on the 35 millimeter, but now we can look
at the computer screen and see how long the movie
is before it's over.
So it's pretty nice. We do like that a lot better.
Yeah, overall it is better.
but it was sad to see 35 millimeter go.
- And jalapenos on the side. - A large nacho.
I would love it when they want jalapenos on the nachos
'cause I really load it on.
And we used to only have one size,
we had the smaller boats for the hot dogs.
So when we ran out of the large boats one night we said,
well we're just gonna have to sell smalls.
And so that's how we came up with two sizes.
And that's only happened like two years ago
and I've had this place for 37 years.
So trial and error, I've learned a lot.
- Do you need a little tray or you think you got it?
- I've got it, yeah.
- I've used the expression before about some
of my employees, and I love them, I love them,
but if I tried to run 'em off, they wouldn't leave
because they love it, the drive-in, and it, excuse me,
but it's bullshit too because they'll go home and talk
to their parents about it, how many people were here,
something that happened that night or
or go to their other job
and talk to 'em and then they'll have
a friend that says, "Oh I wanna work there."
So then we'll hire their friend to come and work.
And that's usually how we hire everyone is somebody
knows somebody else that wants to work.
It's not running an ad or advertising at all.
- Could have saved 20.
- Oh. [laughs] - And then we could
have split it all on- - Oh, we could.
I'll tell it and see what he says.
He says it's not between anything.
He wanted it that bad.
- [Person] I would not do that.
[uplifting music]
- Yeah, I think he snuck in.
- See if you can head toward screen two.
He's headed that way.
- Yeah, he came in next. - Yeah.
- It's different every day, you never know what to expect.
I just get tired of some of the surprises. [laughs]
- Yeah, some of the surprises are not really good.
- I mean...
- It's a really good business for a ADD person
because I don't like focusing on one thing.
I keep many things going in my life at all times
and the drive-in is different every single day.
But there's just some things that become more
than you can bear. [car horn honking]
- And people are destructive. I mean literally destructive.
I mean they'll go in there, they'll rig the toilets
to where they're constantly running the,
they steal the tank lids off of the toilets.
They steal the toilet paper, they steal paper towels,
they steal the soap, so I mean...
And we've been dealing with this ever since we opened.
I mean, it's just been a continuous thing.
- But I've cut both those off.
- Behind the cooler, on the other side of the wall,
turn around about there. - Okay, gotcha.
- We'll have to call the service guy.
He told me not to be messing with his machines,
I can't do that.
One thing a lot of people don't know is every screen
here is different, but every one has a different reason
for being built.
Every one was actually almost a copy from my mind of one
of my favorite drive-ins that I had been to at some
point in life.
[gentle music]
I tore down a lot of drive-ins.
I started back in the '80s and worked
with a theater company
out of North Carolina and I tore down a lot of drive-ins.
I destroyed a lot, but that was my job at the time.
There were things that I hated to see go.
There were things that I kept from those drive-ins
and some of 'em are implemented here.
I'm the only one that even knows it.
Nobody even knows what I did.
And I can look at it and I'm like, oh this come from there,
this come from here, this come from here.
But nobody else even knows or cares
because the property is so long gone,
you know, it has industrial parks or strip malls
or different things built on top of 'em now,
and nobody would ever know.
It's just all stuck in my head and when I'm gone, it's gone.
So many people immigrate to the Dallas Fort Worth area
and, you know, we are very diverse and we have met
so many great people from around the world
that we would never do if it weren't
for this location right here.
[upbeat music]
[people chattering]
[gentle music]
- We were having problems with the DCP last night.
One of the reasons why I like showing the older movies
is 'cause we have redundancy.
So we're gonna start up the DCP and we'll see if it works.
And if it doesn't, we'll switch it to the Blu-ray.
- Please be sure to tune your own radios to 88.7 FM.
That's 88.7 FM.
For those without a radio, please visit
the concession building and pick up a portable radio.
Don't forget the projectionist club
is always wired for sound.
Thanks for choosing the Greenville Drive-In
Enjoy the show.
- Please help us keep the Greenville Drive-In
and do not consume outside alcohol.
Alcohol consumption is forbidden
in the licensed garden area.
You must be at least 21 years old-
The spiders move quickly.
[gentle music]
[upbeat music]
- It's just been really different.
Like, we were just talking about this the other day.
About the first few years we were open,
maybe once a year we'd have some type
of negative interaction with a customer.
But this year it's every weekend.
Any time you try to approach a customer on any rules
that may be being broken or just any type of situation
where maybe parking a vehicle in the wrong spot,
they're very aggressive to come back and attack
you like you're doing something wrong with them.
During COVID was the worst with the masks.
I mean, even if you would just ask a person to pull
their mask up or have their mask on,
they would curse, scream at our...
Some of my staff are 15 years old and they're up
there getting cussed out.
A lot of threats.
I've had rocks thrown at me. I've had my life threatened.
I've been chased. It's been, wow.
We've had people urinate in the pavilion.
I hear it over the radio.
"Ryan, there's someone peeing in the pavilion."
And it was a lady,
she just took her pants up and squatted down
in the pavilion.
Yes. I couldn't believe it.
I came around the corner and saw it.
I just couldn't believe that was what was going on.
And she was like,
"I'm not wearing a mask to use your bathroom.
I'll go wherever I want."
She did, she went right out at the pavilion.
All the customers' kids were out to see it.
Yeah, it was very embarrassing. Very embarrassing.
Yeah. We had that happen twice this year.
Just got body cams for that exact scenario.
That way we can make sure everything is copacetic
when, if some scenario goes down and it needs
to be recorded or shown.
[gentle music]
[people chattering]
- Yeah, we try to share the history of the experience
as well as the wall.
This is from an old Simplex manual,
and that's from an old Century projector parts manual.
And these are all name plates and badges
from old 35 millimeter projection equipment.
Some little way I have of holding onto the past.
[gentle music]
Yeah, I think I said 50 to 100 cars, didn't I?
It's really hard to predict,
but this is still way down for what we're used to.
[people chattering]
Just gonna run to the safe.
Out of singles at the ticket office.
Try not to slip on the stairs.
Hop on the Segway and zoom out there.
Pack of singles.
[gentle music]
And I'm off.
[upbeat music]
- Okay. That looks good... [indistinct]
A lot of work to do.
Good.
Yeah, I know you're next.
How you doing? - I'm doing well.
How are you? - Good good.
Walk into my world. [gentle music]
[people chattering]
[indistinct]
- No, not the walleye. - Yeah.
[people chattering]
- So normal for a Sunday,
be even a little bit busier yet.
But I'm thankful for what we have here tonight.
[people chattering]
Right now because of what had happened
with COVID, et cetera,
we're limiting as to when we use it only when we have to,
because now we have this new idea where we can sell,
These are our ventures, driver memorabilia, rent radios,
and in car heaters when necessary.
The people that will come behind me are with me now
and hopefully would carry on.
Realize Ken Adam will be here,
has been here 27 years.
And that's Sean here.
Just get the back of him.
Sean, I think is over 12.
Between 12 and 15.
And he met his wife here.
I hire tall people to save me money on ladders.
He is one of them.
So I call him respectively my right and left arm.
[upbeat music]
- So theoretically we should never have to use our equipment
for anything other than stuff that I...[inaudible]
- Right. - Okay.
- Derek. Derek.
That was driving me nuts tonight.
Customers don't know how to turn off their lights.
They don't know how to turn off their dome lights,
when they open their dome lights or, I mean,
when they open their hatch, the dome lights come on,
you can't get 'em to turn off.
They don't know how to put their car in accessory mode.
There needs to be a drive-in packet that's given
to all new car owners. [laughs]
- Counting what we made today. $5.
The rest goes to the movie studios. We gotta love them.
- Come on.
- Do we have any boxes?
[people chattering]
You know, I'm always afraid of trying something new
and alienating customers.
My chat with customers tonight, they liked it. You know...
Might not have been my style of music at the beginning,
but that band said
they had 25 kids lined up to buy merch from them.
I didn't see it. I don't understand it.
But they were jumping up and down happy.
- Last Friday was holiday weekend and we had
brand new movies.
So to be up, I'm pretty happy with that.
Very happy with that.
We should have been down about 25%.
So maybe bringing the music in made a difference.
[upbeat music]
- Hello, how many have we got in there?
- Two. - What movie
are you going to see?
- It's just become part of life and I've just kind
of jumped into it and drive-in is in our conversation
at home and here all the time.
I wonder what other drive-ins are doing.
It's just a part of everything we do.
We kind of think about the drive-in
and all these lights on here.
If someone had made these with the Harvest Moon logo
on there for our lighting.
- Some of the short staffing issues can be a problem.
And then there's the unruly customers.
We talked about like the policies
with COVID that they didn't wanna comply with
and things like that.
This season hasn't been too bad for that though,
'cause our attendance has been down.
Obviously there's the hope that it holds
out for the future so she can be part of the business
as she grows up and work here and then eventually own it.
But in the same sense,
I don't know the longevity of it any more
with everything going on.
And I've seen more older owners trying to get out,
especially this season, selling off,
whether to retire or just done with the business,
'cause the way the market's been, it's such,
it's not holding like it used to,
in what they were used to as the norm.
So now it's all up in the air on whether you're gonna
have a good season, bad season or no season.
[uplifting music]
- All right. So it's as good as it's gonna get.
It's a flat movie, which will be brighter.
So let's go see what it looks like.
It does look better from down there,
but I am gonna wait just a little bit more.
Let's see.
- 23 come in. - Go ahead.
- How's it look down there? I'm up in the office.
- Man... - [chuckles] Received.
I'll wait a little more.
So this is the oggiest night I've had
in probably three years, I can now say.
So we're gonna wait a little while longer.
Later than we had intended. That's all right.
Rather have a better picture.
National anthem is on the screen at 8:34.
[gentle music]
But it's part of the drive-in experience.
- It's finding a perfect storm place though.
- Do you have- - Maybe in the movie.
- Do you get any fog out there? Like here?
- Once in a blue moon we have that issue.
- This is as bad as we've had in probably three years.
So it's not a normal occasion.
I mean it's occasions for us to get some fog but not
as bad as this.
- I love seeing theaters - [laughs] Likewise.
- One of the best part of being a drive-in owner
is the community.
- Yeah, we are very close for sure.
Very tight knit. We're very open book to each other.
- Oh yeah. - At all times.
- Yeah.
- On all our calls, all our visits, convention, everything.
- And it's funny how it's so much similar,
like the business, I was talking to some
of your employees and they were kind of describing some
of the issues we're having and it's like
we're completely other side...
Way down south.
Yeah. Other side of the country practically.
Having the same exact issues with it, so...
[gentle music]
- I'm here so much.
I'm here between 20, 40, 50 hours a week,
sometimes more than that.
So I love being with my family, basically,
everybody up here is my family.
I met the love of my life here working
at the drive-in too.
So yeah, I'm Coyote all the way. I love it.
The money's not the best but my job is the best.
Stress of this place or just different things,
would run people off, but not for me.
For me, I just love it. There's new challenges every day.
Every day seems like I learn something else here.
I definitely learn something more about people every day.
Everybody here kinda is, I call 'em my kids,
because they are, seems like I gotta help take care of 'em.
For sure. I do my best to look out for 'em too.
I will not let 'em get cussed out by the customers
and stuff like that.
I'll definitely step in,
won't let 'em to get degraded.
People are gonna get upset about scenarios a little
bit and speak to you negatively and a little bit
of that I'll take and let happen.
But if they start cursing or just demeaning them
in any way, I will,
I'll stop that very quickly and definitely remove 'em
from the drive-in theater for sure.
I've had to do that quite a bit for people cussing
at 15 year old kids and 16 year old kids or making
negative comments towards 'em
or sexual comments towards 'em, we've had to remove 'em
from the property.
I'm actually in my '40s
so I've been to quite a few of the drive-ins.
My mom would bring us, we would pop our own popcorn too,
bring in our own outside food products
to these drive-ins growing up.
But yes, we would go to scary movies too.
They would do like double features and the scarier
movie would usually be the second movie.
So I spent a lot of time growing up going
to drive-in theaters here in Fort Worth and then some
of the ones that were outside of Fort Worth too.
So it's kind of in my blood a little bit, I guess.
I still think about it when we're popping popcorn
in there and putting the popcorn into the boxes,
about my mom doing it on the stove
and these big poppers and then just pouring
it into those paper bags.
It was so, it's just brings back so many memories there.
I lost my mom this year,
and I do believe that without Coyote drive-in I don't
know where I would be,
like, they helped me really get through that.
I spent a lot of time coming here.
I didn't take any time off.
I actually came here the day at the funeral too
'cause this is my family and I spent more of my time
here and I really needed that.
It was a big loss in my life. She meant so much to me.
And without the drive-in I don't know where I would be.
I really don't. I don't know where I would be.
[gentle music]
- We got hit once by that wind shear hit it and took
out a quarter of the screen and tipped over my marquee,
completely over on the side once.
And we had rebuilt that,
but some of that is because it was rotten,
and it just needed to be rebuilt.
When we bought it, it was pretty much put together,
held together with baling wire. [laughs]
But I put a lot of money in getting
it to look good and be strong, and it is,
it's in good shape.
And we have to get that screen painted
about every four years because of the hail that hits it,
chips it away.
It's all wood covered in sheet metal. Yeah.
Back in the day, they would either blow down or burn down
and then they'd put 'em back up with steel,
which is so impersonal, it's just, that's not attractive.
That's not what a drive-in's all about. The old-timey look.
[people chattering]
Yeah, I would like to sell and pass
it on to a younger family and let them have
it for at least 20 years.
But I don't know if that's gonna happen
because the land values are getting higher versus
what the business is worth.
But if you got in there and really marketed it,
it would be better.
'Cause when I bought it didn't do this kind of business.
The couple were older and they were wanting to retire
and so I marketed it because my kids were young,
and really worked hard,
but now I'm where they are, were,
and I'm wanting somebody else to take it over.
[gentle music]
- I was just here last night seeing
"Groundhog Day," so it's been twice for me this week.
I love the open air. I just love the vibe in general.
The first film I ever went to see on a big screen was
at a drive-in.
So they're very special to me.
And the Mission Tiki has an amazing concession stand.
I can grab a taco and burrito and watch a movie.
I think it's the only place that I could do that I know of.
- It's like going back in time to see the drive-in,
and once you're in here,
a lot of the different things that are going on now,
especially the negative or stressful things don't
exist once you're in here.
- I think that one of the positives that will come
out of this whole situation is more people will go
to drive-ins, that maybe hadn't gone before.
It's common knowledge that we sold this property
to a developer who's gonna build a tech-centric
business park here.
They paid us a substantial amount of money,
more money than we could make operating
the drive-in theater in 25 years.
- Oh, well, that's, yeah, that's a bummer.
I guess I'll have to enjoy the time here
as much as I can. [laughs]
Yeah... Oh.
[upbeat music]
- We're fine, somehow. - You've made sure.
- Yeah.
They've usually forgotten that they actually order
them by the time we bring them out.
So it's like somehow this is some big magical surprise.
Right?
That's there? - Yeah.
- [Employee] There's still dishes in there.
- It'd be awesome. Thank you.
Make sure everybody gets a chance to get a Dude.
So yeah, I did save a few for tomorrow.
So that's why we have some more evergreen ones.
So at least if people really want a cookie,
they can get our neon sign, which they like too.
- I should be getting better at like being able
to calculate like, okay,
we have this many people for this sort of movie,
that this ephemeral,
I should know that's like, we're gonna sell that.
I can't do that kind of math.
- The big thing about tonight too is we had so many people,
it was their first time here, which,
that always just excites me when it's someone's first time.
- And now we're starting to see some new faces.
Tonight was the first night I saw a couple
of our regulars for the first time in like two years.
Combination of pandemic and babies and all sorts of stuff.
So it's nice when we see the next generation.
Hey Lee, we don't have any more
of the infant onesies, right?
- Any more of the what? - Infant onesies?
Just for Antonia and...
- Oh, good call. Let me check.
Do you have the key, Ben?
- Okay.
[gentle music]
- I thought it would really be fun to spend
our retirement at a drive-in.
I didn't realize that we would spend our retirements
on a drive-in as well, but here we are.
So...
- [laughs] It is really truly out of stubbornness
and maybe stupidity, I don't know,
that we're standing here today and-
- I'm willing to try anything once,
twice if it doesn't kill me. [laughs]
- Yeah, we, my goal was to show my boys that if you have
a dream, you can build it.
And we'd been talking about it so long,
even with our older kids,
and we just didn't wanna be one of those people
that it just became like, oh, someday,
and it never happens.
And we just saw the opportunity and figured with both
of our talents, we really could make it happen.
I don't think it's quite gone off as well
as we had thought for these first two months,
I mean, weather and the new movie release schedule,
but we've made it work,
and I mean we try to keep a positive attitude.
- You know, there are a lot of things
that I kind of pigheadedly
tried to do all on my own for a while.
There's 11 acres of grass that need to be mowed every week.
I've got a 54 inch riding lawn mower.
That was what we could fit
in the car when we were buying that equipment.
I finally hired that out this last couple of weeks and...
[laughs] Sam comes on Tuesday to mow,
or Wednesday, depending on the weather.
- The biggest thing for us was meeting all
the other owners.
A few were standoffish at first,
but most of them welcomed us with open arms and they-
- As soon as they found out where we were gonna build.
- Yeah, as long as- [Jeff laughing]
- And I get it, I totally get it now.
Those are the only people I talk to any more 'cause
I'm like, I know they're up.
[gentle music]
- Yeah. But yeah, it does that sometimes.
Like you'll just randomly get surprised,
like usually some days are kind of laid back,
not as many people.
- Yeah, definitely not like this.
- Yeah. So this was kind of a surprise tonight.
If I see it need to be done, I'll just hop in and help.
Like, I was just down in box office helping get
that line down a little bit ago, so, it just,
if I see it need to be done, I just hop in and just,
you know what, here we go, let's just get this done.
And everybody's like, oh I hate doing popcorn.
It's so hot right here. But that's what I started out doing.
So, like I still have a little,
probably can't even see it now,
but there's a little scar right across my pinky right here.
It was super busy one night,
just dumping one kettle after another,
putting more popcorn up under the heat lamps,
and my hand had just gotten sweaty and everything
and I grabbed a hold of that handle to dump
it and my hand just slipped right into the kettle.
It was blistered to- - Hurts?
- Huh?
- What hurts is when a kernel pops out of the kettle-
- And go down your shirt? - It sticks...
- Drive-ins have had to completely reinvent themselves
time after time after time.
And I think we're going through a reinvention process now.
Now, one thing that I have always done personally
and a lot of the older owners have always done,
is we look back on history, what was done in 1962 when,
you know, the first,
very first color televisions came along.
How do we combat that?
And we used that in the '80s,
when HBO, Cinemamax, the cable television came along.
We used little tricks that were done back
in the '60s, duplicated in the '80s.
Well some of that won't work today.
We have to reinvent again.
And because the pandemic was something nobody has
ever seen before, that's never happened.
We're having to kind of find our place and figure
out where to go.
There's nothing to look back on in history and say, well,
we can do this, it worked before.
That doesn't exist.
So we're gonna have to find our place and move
forward from there.
I don't think it's the end of the world by any means.
I think drive-ins have a bright future,
but we just have to find our place...
- Because it's been busy the last couple nights,
because Friday and Saturdays we've run out of strawberries,
we ran out of nacho cheese tonight.
Yeah, we need chips, cheese, strawberries,
maybe powdered sugar.
I think we have two cases of powdered sugar.
A lot of people just get regular powdered sugar,
but a lot of people want chocolate syrup or they want
the strawberry topping on their funnel cake and everything.
- Yeah, chocolate too.
- Yeah, we might be low on chocolate. I'll have to check.
- We have no intention of going anywhere.
We're gonna stay right where we are. Keep moving forward.
I mean this is not the first tragedy
that's ever happened and it won't be the last, I mean,
we'll just deal with it.
Tomorrow's another day.
♪ We're going to the drive-in on a Saturday night ♪
♪ We're meeting up with the girls and we'll be out of sight ♪
♪ 'Cause Danny likes Pam and Susie likes Freddie ♪
♪ 'Cause Johnny and Ginny are already going steady ♪
♪ Ooh, ah, we're going to the drive-in ♪
- So I'm not sure how good this will work being
is how we don't have much reception out here without WiFi.
But this is our current situation.
We got some water.
So we're just kinda out here waiting to see
if it's receding, which it has gone down already
a few inches since we've been out here.
It was coming up rapidly before, but it's going down now.
We're happy to be here. We're still standing.
We've survived so many years where we shouldn't
have continued on.
We're pretty confident we'll see the sun rise again
and it'll be back to where we were.
[upbeat music]
- There was the one in Chardan,
I think it's called the Midway.
It was breathtaking.
This is like the best form of entertainment as a kid.
It's memories that people will keep forever.
And I seen all those people there were
there for that reason, to create those memories.
And I, it, sorry, I fell in love with it.
So it changed my life.
That night it was like an infusion in me too,
to bring it back, to make it happen.
I didn't know how I was gonna make it happen,
but I knew I was going to,
I knew it's gonna take a lot of money to do it.
How do I, how?
I've been in the business of auto mechanics
for, at the time, 15 years.
And I just figured, well,
if I own my own shop then maybe,
maybe I'll make enough money to build a drive-in.
We came across the old Denniston drive-in,
the Denniston closed in 1985.
But when we found it- - Thank you.
- It was it. We knew we were home.
It had closed, it had never,
nothing had ever been built on it since.
Mother nature completely took the place over.
The fact that we were not only building something
of history, we were building a part of history, that, to us,
which, this is Don by the way,
that, to us, was the cherry on top.
We're bringing back one that was,
that all the locals have memories of going to.
- Peace.
- So that's where we came up with a name
Memory Lane drive-in.
[laughs] Everybody kept asking me,
how you gonna build a drive-in?
And what do you know about that?
I don't know anything about it,
but I'm gonna figure it out.
The kids that we see, the families that we see out here,
the first time I see the kids playing on the playground,
my back don't hurt no more.
Like, the all the anguish and all the mental abuse
that I took and it just pretty much just faded away.
- For that playground.
- That's why we wanted to build a drive-in,
because we needed it.
And as crazy as this world has gotten,
we need to rewind the clock a little bit.
So this is our contribution.
It may not be inventing the internet or cure for cancer,
but this is what I got to bring to the world,
and Don, and I think we're both damn proud of it.
- [Person] Tilt on the screen.
- This place turned out really nice.
- It's gorgeous. - Was so small...
[gentle music]
- Funnel Cake is, works real well for us.
What got it really going is this when the smell would
come through the thing and it would just attract people.
Last year it was all retro movies,
and we did rather well with them because we were
the only show in town.
This year, the releases by Hollywood are being done
in conjunction with them also data streaming.
So that kind of cuts the crowd a bit.
- Yeah, we had a storm.
- Friday, we did okay.
- Yeah, we did well on Friday.
No sell out, but no, we did well.
- Actually, Friday was the highest number to date,
and to me it's a little more.
- That sort of thing. Yeah.
- But I'm not alone. We're all in this together.
- Yes, we are.
- When things finally do settle down and everyone's
pulled out of this, that, the industry,
who knows it'll if it'll go back to what it was
two years ago.
But we feel a little bit optimistic about that.
- If you take care of it and keep it up, people will come.
Myself and my wife have owned it for 27,
have worked it for 55 years.
It was always my dream to own a drive-in.
So dreams do come true.
I just hope that all theaters fight to keep
their audiences and, basically, to survive.
We need the theater business to keep going.
We gotta all get in this together and fight.
It's just time for someone else to take the helm
of it and go with it.
And I just hope that they keep up to the same standards.