Drive-ins don’t have anything you go to the movies for; there’s not great sound, the picture is ok but not pristine, there’s no quiet, no comfy seats, there’s not even dark, really.
But it’s amazing. You can eat whatever you want, you can lay on a blanket, the stars are up above your head. It’s a cinematic picnic - with no grass or sunshine, not entirely about the movie, really. Sure, there’s one playing; usually there were three – the first one was great, the second was always “ok”, and the third was usually an excuse for kids to make out. It’s just not n exclusively movie-focused evening, more of a film adjacent event. You wouldn’t take Martin Scorsese to the drive-in. Eeesh. He’d be really grumpy. Probably not even finish his hot dog. Truffaut might have fun – he’d probably bring really great wine.
Summer movies always had a different feel as a kid because you could see one on a Tuesday or Thursday, not just the weekend. But the summer event movies, the blockbusters, began with Steven Spielburg’s JAWS in 1975… the first movie that people stood in line for and saw over and over that made 100 million dollars. Apres shark, le deluge: all the tentpole franchises: Star Wars, Raiders, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future - came out in the summer. We looked forward to being amazed by something so incredible that we’d talk about it for months and maybe get the lunchbox for school next year.
My favorite drive-in movie was Can’t Stop The Music, the (probably) fictionalized story of the Village People, history told in song, much like Hamilton. It starred Steve Gutenberg and Olympic champion Bruce Jenner. As the images filled the screen, all leather and fringe and mustache wax, our little parking lot of midwesterners were gifted a glimpse of a world intriguing as any crafted by Industrial Light and Magic, but with music and dancing and super-tight pants. Every other year or so I watch it again, appreciating its sly style, optimism, and prophetic accuracy.
My favorite summer movie experience of all time was watching Caddyshack with my mother that same summer. My mother doesn’t think things are funny. I mean, she doesn’t automatically begin laughing when presented with “comedy”. She grew up on the greats - Sid Caesar, Jack Benny, Lucille Ball… it was hard to top these legends because they were always telling a story, building a narrative, not just telling jokes. But Caddyshack had some people from Saturday Night Live that she was familiar with because I had started watching it every week, and I believe I begged a great deal and told her it was about sports. Which should have been a red flag, really.
We got there a little late and ended up sitting in about the third or fourth row. For the first 47 minutes of the film, Mom enjoyed the air conditioning and the popcorn and maybe a little nap, but not really the movie. Then came Harold Ramis’s brilliant swimming pool set piece, a long burn that builds and builds. My mother began to laugh.
Then she laughed more. And more. She wiped tears from beneath her glasses. By the time we’d reached the gag’s denouement, she had one knee on the floor of the theatre… I’ll be honest, we all did, I did too, half the theater was literally on the floor laughing. But I’d never seen my Mom laugh like that before. As we left the theatre she told me not to tell anybody she had seen that movie, she was a schoolteacher, what would they think? “But you laughed, Mom.” I said. “Yes, that was fun. That was like my summer vacation.”
The movies I enjoyed in the 1980’s were mostly the haves against the have-nots (“…the cinderella story”). Ghostbusters, Dirty Dancing, Say Anything, The Goonies. The "little guy" was the hero, and I was that guy. There was honor and merit in rejecting status and defending compassion. I remember bonding fondly over the dignity of the underdog - all confidence and hustle and, again, compassion. Watching those movies created a crazy quilt of memories representing my American Dream - not what I could get, but who we all were.
But movies always reflect the world around them, and I realize now that there must have been kids with central air and wall to wall carpet who felt the same way about Risky Business and the mean kids in the John Hughes movies, who feel about the 90s the way that I feel about the 80s. Heck, there are tons of people who feel about the 1890's the way I feel about the (19)80s... just like me, they recognize themselves in those stories and characters and want to hold on to that feeling, but some want it so badly they are willing to burn the book rather than turn the page.
But a friend of mine once told me that I didn’t have to worry about burning books, because I had the power to write a new ones. Maybe, if I'm lucky, they'll turn one into a summer movie someday, and you can watch it, in your car, stars above you, eating an ice cream sandwich.
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